In The Great Derangement, Amitav Ghosh takes on the question of why climate change, the great challenge of our time, is entirely absent from the modern novel. One of the novel’s many tasks is to take on the human stories of social change, and if you only read modern novels for information, you’d think the greatest crisis modern humans are facing is that husbands and wives seem to hate one another. One reason for this erasure, Ghosh posits, is the manner in which globalized capitalism has propagated the bourgeois idea that the world is reliable. He looks for instance, at the way…
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I started LivingSmall in 2002 not as a lifestyle blog, but as a political statement. My original tagline was “Thoughts on Literature, Food, Faith, and the Subversive Power of Living Small.” I moved to Montana not only because I could afford a house here, a house I managed this summer to pay off, but because I wanted to deliberately disconnect from the terrifying engine of consumer capitalism that I saw devouring the Bay Area (and pretty much the rest of America). This has always been a political project, and now, as we see the monster who is us — the big…
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If you’re interested in the kind of content I’ve always posted here at LivingSmall — please sign up for my TinyLetter: Is This It? I’ll send you an essay about every two weeks, covering the topics I’ve always covered here: cooking and gardens, living lower on the consumerist scale, the Anthropocene, Climate Change and politics, and how we’re all going to survive in a world that seems to be getting hotter and meaner and more frightening. And there will be recipes, because we need something to keep our heads above water. Please sign up here: https://tinyletter.com/CharlotteMF The recipe from my first TinyLetter…
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So — this quitting my job thing has been slightly more unsettling than I’d anticipated. I’ve worked steadily since I was fourteen — even earlier if you count babysitting (really, who’d let a 10 year old babysit an infant these days?). Anyhow, I’ve always had jobs. I’ve always known where the next chunk of money is coming in from. There always has been a next chunk of money coming in. Currently, I’ve one outstanding invoice. One. It’s been a challenge not to panic. I wasted a couple of weeks spinning my wheels and panicking. Complete with many, many dreams in which…
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So, everything is fairly terrifying right now. The election is horrific. Climate change is continuing to wreck havoc across the globe. I don’t have a job, or at the moment, even any freelance gigs signed. And the Red Sox, sigh. So I’m making things. I made the jacket in the photo above, from two fabrics in my stash. The blue wool is from a piece I bought on eBay a year or so ago, and has the loveliest selvage on it. I used it for the end of the sleeves, which you can see when they’re not cuffed. It’s lined…
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Hi everyone — I’m starting a TinyLetter called “Is This It?” Please sign up here: https://tinyletter.com/CharlotteMF I’ll send you an essay every two weeks about life in Montana on the cusp of the Anthropocene, with recipes. First recipe — Peach Jam with Aleppo Pepper, which I made this past weekend.
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It’s apocalyptic in Montana tonight. On the flanks of Emigrant peak, a place where we can usually see the Crazy Mountains 60 miles or so to the north, the skies are orange and grey with smoke. Wildfires are burning in Yellowstone National Park, closing off the south entrance altogether, and threatening the West one. The Yellowstone River has turned belly up like the thousands of dead whitefish that litter its shores, and the Governor has declared it a state of emergency. The US Fish and Wildlife Service is about to delist grizzly bears despite record numbers of grizzlies killed by poachers and automobiles last year…
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So, for anyone who hasn’t heard yet, the Yellowstone River has been closed to all recreational use due to a massive fish kill. This photo was taken from the bluff overlooking the Mallard’s Rest fishing access. On a normal August Saturday, there’d be boats and rafts and tubes and SUP boards launching and taking out by the dozens here. August is the peak of the season — kids are still out of school, tourists and fancy anglers are all on the river, fishing and floating. The problem is that the river is at a historic low flow during the hottest summer…
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Himself called from the cabin yesterday evening. “I have an idea,” he said. “Let’s drive up to Tom Miner and see if we can see bears.” I was in the middle of a project — I took on some freelance work that overlaps with the job-I’ve-quit-but-am-still-working-out-my-notice. I wasn’t at a great stopping place, and today is going to be a crunch, but when your person calls to ask if you want to go bear watching, you say “Great idea!” and “I’m getting in the car.” So that’s what we did. We loaded up the binoculars, a cooler, the dog and…
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The backside of the garden has gone a bit feral on me this summer. Actually, the whole veggie garden is pretty feral — there’s way too much grass, and weeds, and because I’ve been experimenting with broadcast sowing, things are just coming up where they will, or not. Domenica Marchetti, of the new book Preserving Italy (blog posts to come), has been using the hashtag #gardenofneglect, and that’s kind of how I feel about mine this summer. Or do I? Is it neglect, or have I finally gotten the garden to where it pretty much does what I want it…