This morning as I was driving back into town, Dr. James Levine was on The Splendid Table (or on the podcast I was listening to). Levine is the guy at the Mayo Clinic who invented the treadmill desk, and who has fifteen years of data on the salutary effects of getting up out of your chair. Walking while working is best, but even standing instead of sitting has positive effects. Here’s a link to a video of him talking about the issue: James Levine on Treadmill Desk I’ve made a few modifications over the past couple of weeks. I was…
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There’s a new community garden here in Livingston, and it’s right up at the end of my alley at the Lincoln School. The Lincoln School was converted years ago into artists studios — they’re not very expensive and there’s always a waiting list for those nice old classrooms with the big windows. There have always been two big patches of lawn out front, and when the International Fly Fishing Center was there, they’d have casting classes in the summer. This spring, someone got the splendid idea of converting all that useless grass into a community garden. Saturday I walked over…
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As you might have noticed, blogging has slowed to a trickle here at LivingSmall. For the next few months, I’m going to be prioritizing some other projects, including the new novel I’m working on. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt like I had a viable writing project, and now that I seem to have the employment/paying the bills thing sorted out, I need to put my writing energies into that project. Blogging won’t stop altogether, but it’ll be sporadic. Thanks for being patient everyone …
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I’ve had a bee in my bonnet the last couple of weeks about building one of these. Let’s just say that between all the freelance/contract work these past few months, and the fact that both of my dogs are increasingly gimpy, well, I haven’t been getting the amount of exercise I’d like to be getting. I’ve been spending way too much time sitting on my butt. So, I found a used treadmill at my local sports equipment resale store for under 200 bucks, and it was even small enough once the pedestal and arms were detached that we could get…
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In honor of Memorial Day, and because the lilacs just bloomed, a little Walt Whitman. When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed 1 WHEN lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring; Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love. 2 O powerful, western, fallen star! O shades of night! O moody, tearful night! O great star disappear’d! O the black murk that hides the…
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The hoops I built over the beds of greens worked so spectacularly well that I’ve hooped the tomato bed and planted the tomato seedlings a little early. I did discover that it makes a difference whether you use thin or heavy plastic — I think I’ve lost one seedling, and a couple others got a little burned up, but once I replaced the thin plastic with the heavier, the tomatoes are looking better. I think it’s not only the warmth, but the humidity. I also moved a bunch of greens out of one hooped bed, arugula, spinach, and some endive,…
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[I’m up against a bunch of deadlines, and just don’t have any blogging mojo right now, so here’s an oldie but goodie from the archives. Back soon.] Behold, my gorgeous
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I’m in a deadline zone, but here are some interesting links from around the intertubes that I thought you all might like: Weeds, being what they are, have developed their own Roundup-Ready varietals. Guess that whole GMO thing was so well-thought-out, eh? I have to confess, I used to resort to a little casual Roundup use around the LivingSmall ranchero, but between the frogs, and the cancer cluster in which I grew up, and my amazing Bernzomatic Outdoor Torch, I now just burn weeds up instead of spraying them with the dreaded Atrazine. Fellow Ethicurean, Steph Larsen, has incurred my…
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My new Bookslut Column is up: The Magic of Mushrooms, in which I gush even more about mushroom hunting, and review the following books: The Complete Mushroom Book: Savory Recipes for Wild and Cultivated Varieties by Antonio Carluccio, MUSHROOM FEAST: A Celebration of all Edible Fungi, Cultivated, Wild and Dried, with Recipes by Jane Grigson, and The River Cottage Cookbook by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.