Plant a garden. Dig up soil that previously hosted grass. Get dirt under fingernails and a pleasant ache in the back and fingers. Feel the sun. Drink the water. Share both with your baby vegetables. Forget, if only for a few hours, what a cruel place this world can be.
Of all the vegetables a gentleman farmer cultivates, tomatoes may be the easiest to grow organically. Aside from onions, indestructible optimists who require virtually no care whatsoever, tomatoes seem to provide the organic gardener with the highest success rate, the best fruit-to-labor ratio. They’re vines, and, like most vines, if they’re left to their own...
Consume less. Less oil. Less water. Less electricity. In 2007, our family managed to switch from a traditional water heater to a tankless one. We’re exploring solar panels for our roof in 2008. We went from the traditional two-car arrangement to one, augmented by increased bicyle use and forays on public transportation. We intend on...
The trees, they are tired. They’ve borne too much fruit — so says the song. In Southern California, Autumn is different than, say Wisconsin, where October and November bring with them a massive denuding of foliage, turning magisterial maples into plaintive skeletons. The leaves drop, everywhere, covering driveways and lawns, and the mood is generally...
On a recent scorching day, I was riding my bike to an appointment, feeling parched. I had an urge to drink one of those semi-frozen concoctions known on “The Simpsons” as a “squishy.” I’ve heard them called “slurpees” and “icees,” and I recall my notoriously strict anti-sugar parents allowing my brother and I to have...
When I was a child, once a year my family would conduct what my uncle the Marxist called “the great purge.” We would cull from our closets old clothes and other unwanted stuff, and make a giant charitable donation to Goodwill Industries, a local organization aiding the developmentally disabled. There was a sense of cleansing...
Spending a week in the Welsh countryside is like a drinking a nepenthe that scours away all memory of air pollution, terrorist attacks, and venal corporations. The real world feels far, far away. Although it was the first country to become industrialized (to exploit the coal, copper, and tin in its ground), Wales today is...
Hope RekindledThis past week has given us more hope for our diseased republic than any other time in 50+ years of paying attention. Observing and participating in a long-overdue peaceful uprising, occupying the streets, feeling the righteous energy of people of all ages, colors, faiths, and wealth (or lack thereof), has…
Alien invasion! Earth occupied by creatures far smarter than humans! Thousands of years of civilization rendered irrelevant! Cory Finley’s movie adaptation of M.T. Anderson’s novel Landscape with Invisible Hand accomplishes the impressive feat of being simultaneously incisive/critical/instructive and entertaining/funny/touching. While the film is ultimately a scathing indictment of colonialism, capitalism, and artificial intelligence, the action...
