Revenge of the Sun
It’s funny that partially because we are no longer harnessing the power of the sun to its full extent, as we used to, now the sun is going to destroy us. Like a vengeful Greek god!
Home economies
Managing our households spins the wheels of nearly all economic activity. Our homes are the building blocks that construct the economy and we’ve forgotten that mainly I think because most households have been run by women who are unpaid and otherwise not considered part of the workforce and this traditional women’s work is nearly invisible to economists... Flooding through every home are innumerable streams of goods and people that all must be selected, cared for, kept in tune and made the best use of."
-- The Permaculture City by Toby Hemenway
America
"The very idea of America makes me shake and tremble and gives me nightmares." -- Josephine Baker
How do we hold a potentially infinite number of stories about a place or concept like America? The story of a prosperous immigrant family, the story of a poor-to-rich white family from the midlands, the story of a struggling black family in Georgia.
How do we hold all of these stories at the same time? None more or less real than the next, but all incomplete. In describing America, we are all grasping different parts of the whole elephant.
America is the patchwork of all of these stories, but they are messier than independent but adjacent squares. Some overlap, covering pieces of the one that lies partially below. Learning and exploring America and American history is a process of peeling back layers to discover the fullness of the stories beneath. Uncovering stories long-buried, long-ignored.
Free dirt
I can't begin to convey the feeling of simple joy I felt at going to the local garden this Saturday, dropping off the scraps of food I didn't/couldn't/wouldn't eat into a big garbage can, topping it with a mix of wood chips, dirt, and twigs, then filling up a little plastic sack with the finished product, the result of this effort: completed compost. Free dirt!
I lugged my earnings of this free exchange (one of the most delightful and encouraging parts) homeward and the next day successfully repotted my tiny kitchen plants into a new home of nutrient-rich soil. All free! All within a five-block radius of my house. What joy!