We have had a couple of months of turmoil, and the fun isn’t over yet. Our landlord is moving into our house, so we have been evicted from our little urban farmette. Needless to say, it isn’t totally easy to find a house in a great, bikable neighbourhood, with a good school, storage for all our provender, sunny garden space and room for bees and rabbits. After two months of truly gut-twisting stress, we think we have a spot—now we just need to pack and move. And I must dismantle our greenhouse for the third time…
Depression Paralysis, which I am sure has a real name, is what I called my lack of desire to do anything at all because of the stress of not knowing where we were going. But, I did write a couple of posts. And my cocktails were accompanied with much good reading.
My Best Loaf Yet tells the tale of my 100% whole wheat, 100% wild sourdough bread, made with grain from British Columbia. Be sure to follow the links if you have a gluten sensitivity, you may find it very interesting. I updated the post today with new pictures and a digression into Dutch thatched roofs and commentary on my friend James’ new book, The Once and Future World. Three words—Buy A Case. He is on book tour, so you can get them signed. A favourite interview quote: “Nature may not be what it was,” he writes, “but it isn’t simply gone. It’s waiting.”
I Don’t Want Salvation riffs on hunting for deer, the Civil Religion of Progress being explored by John Michael Greer, and befriending death à la Stephen Jenkinson.
There are so many interesting links in the world, and most of them I send individually to people I think will be interested in them. Relating to I Don’t Want Salvation, a few links about slaughter:
These aerial shots of factory farming look like bloody zombie wounds
I went on a bit of a Wendell Berry kick this week. Here is A Conversation with Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson. Scroll down to the sidebar of his poem, For the Hog Killing.
Shooting Slaughter: A Q&A with Photographer Sheri Giblin
And a few generally interesting things:
Gail Tverberg, who is widely known for her writing on The Oil Drum as Gail the Actuary, gives her thoughts on Two Views of our Current Economic and Energy Crisis. I thought this was very worth reading.
The letters editor of the L.A. Times signals an important phase-shift in On letters from climate-change deniers. “Simply put, I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page; when one does run, a correction is published. Saying “there’s no sign humans have caused climate change” is not stating an opinion, it’s asserting a factual inaccuracy.”
And lastly, I was reminded of a book James sicced me on years ago, and which I greatly enjoyed. Richard Preston’s The Wild Trees is a thrilling story of biologists and giant tree hunters who develop crazy new rope techniques that allow them to fly around in the forest canopy. Spoiler alert: Craziness.
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