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Garden allies
It's been a dry early summer, and so far - knock on wood - slugs have been scarce. I've seen more toads in the garden than slugs, which could be a contributing factor, of course.Garter snakes and...
View ArticleDurable Mechanics
The other day, I asked my 17 year old son to fix one of our double hung sash windows. Both of the counter-weight ropes had broken. The whole process of taking apart the casing, replacing the rope,...
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Northern Black Widow
Here's a shiny visitor.In the yard, upon a tarp I meant to fold.No belly hourglass, but a tiny row of dorsal hearts upon her.Not a good neighbor, really, when I have cats who might choose to use her...
View ArticleFinding empathy - when abuse victims don't leave
I enjoy following the blog Plowing through Life, as the author, Martha, in her charming, easy and life-affirming way relates her various musings and experiences, shares the photos she takes on her bike...
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Disgorging books
The ceiling of our bedroom slants downward with the pitch of the roof, and creates a triangle of de facto storage space behind the bed's high headboard. I'm clearing out some of the stuff, including...
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A Summer Honey Harvest
One of the girls on butterfly weedI took some summer honey off the high hive today. They'll keep two deep boxes and a medium for their winter lodgings, but that leaves another three boxes on top. One...
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August Travels
August flew.On the second of the month I flew out to Denver. A research question had arisen about how people respond to the idea of raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour. I had wanted to go back...
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Looking back at my predictions for 2015
I'll emerge from my blogging hiatus to revisit last year's predictions to see if I can improve on my 2 out of 9 from last year. In terms of the big picture, my over-arching prediction from the...
View ArticleNine predictions for 2016
In the spirit of making this an annual exercise in humility, here are my 9 predictions for 2016:2016 comes in at the second hottest year on record, just behind 2015.Clinton / O'Malley handily defeats...
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Down to the future
This is an old chart that my father drew up over 30 years ago, around the time I was starting in college, and the global population was 4.7 billion. The brown line at the top represents available...
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Enoughness and the Age of Consumer Capitalism, part 1
trees reflected in a winter poolThere is nothing more destructive to capitalism than the satisfied customer.Lately, much of my work professionally is focused on reviving American practices of...
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Enoughness and the Age of Consumer Capitalism, part 2
This is the continuation of my earlier post on Enoughness . . .Consumerism lies at the heart of our current civilization. I don't mean we like shopping. I mean that buying stuff stands at the very...
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Wintery interlude
Midway through a too-mild February (coaxed-up shoots of daffodil and snowdrop) a pair of snowstorms and arctic blast return us brutally to winter:16 below zero, then to 10 above in breezy daylight, and...
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Democracy within Plutocracy - Plutocracy within a Democracy
The greatest cure for pontificating about human culture is to go out and actually talk to people in their fulsome, maddening complexity. I promised an Enoughness Part 3 - to complement my earlier...
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A bluebird's saurian eye
Cherry leaves unfurl unblemished. A dark-armored bumble rumbles, aground in violets, A saurian eye of bluebird,chill obsidian, tracks it and waits for prey less massy and be-weaponed.
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May 1975 - Diary of a fourth-grader
Mom's poly sci notebook from college, Penn State circa 1960, repurposedI was clearing out some old boxes. Getting rid of stuff whose sentimental value had leached slowly away. Ribbons from the...
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More reminiscing - Tucson to San Diego
Once, when I was living in San Diego, some old friends were gathering in Tucson. This must have been at the beginning of the 90s, because there was a year or so there when I didn’t have a car. I...
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Gypsy moth infestations
a freshly hatched gypsy moth caterpillarGrowing up in Pennsylvania in the 1980s I saw years when the leaves came out on the trees in May and were gone by middle of June. From a distance, the rolling,...
View ArticleMy life experienced as a sequence of cars
In 1981, as soon as I was old enough, I took my driver’s test in a ‘64 sky blue Ford Falcon – a three-speed column shift. The sedan had belonged to my great aunt Ann, who never drove it much. I...
View ArticleLooking back at predictions for 2016
Ah.Let's whisper this blog back to life.I began a tradition of making January predictions - and looking back to see how inaccurate the past year's predictions were (which if nothing else disqualifies...
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Predictions for 2017
After proving on this blog once again that prediction can be a sucker's game, I finished up my wandering around central Florida (where I was interviewing people on their attitudes about voting and...
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Politics: The Bad, Not-So-Bad, and the Almost Good.
Moonstone Beach, Rhode IslandIt's now a month since Donald Trump was inaugurated into office. Yet so far, damage has been limited by the administration's inexperience, incompetence and political...
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Fallow garden
I didn't maintain a garden last year. I was doing a great deal of traveling for work, and so the crown vetch had its way with it. I could claim to be practicing the age old practice of leaving one's...
View ArticleTwo Thousand Seventeen in the rearview mirror.
It is a new(ish) year and it is time for the annual humiliation of seeing how badly I've predicted the future once again. Is prediction futility? Can one get better at it? Does it only work if you...
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Two Thousand Eighteen stretching out before us
At some point I came to realize that most of my life's trajectories had little to do with big, conscious decisions that I made, and much more to do with thousands of little micro-decisions. Choices...
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