As part of a forest land tax reduction, I had to mark the property boundaries and create a 10-year plan for my land. I hired a consulting forester to help assemble the plan and learned a hell of a lot in the process. While I was out doing that, I also planted ramp bulbs and […]
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Snow Day …
Leaf Litter: Sydney gets in the spirit
Leaf Litter: Sunny Sunday Sycamores
Leaf Litter: Turkeys on the wing
Walking with Sunny in the pre-dawn hours yesterday morning, we both stopped dead in our tracks at the sound of frantic flapping in the trees above us. Barely discernible, a blob lumbers out of the branches and glides down the hill. Then several other trees start rustling with similar results. Sunny doesn’t get excited over […]
Memes vs. genes
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (1976) I’m disappointed it took me so long to stumble across this book. And that happened only because we ordered it for a friend who was visiting from Mexico City. She hoped to take it with her when she returned, but the book didn’t arrive until after she’d departed, […]
‘But when war come, Hunkie good enough to fight’
Men and Steel, Mary Heaton Vorse, (1920). This is a fascinating, in-the-trenches look at the 1919 national steel strike, with particular emphasis on Braddock and the pastor of the Slovak Catholic church there who stood by his congregation in the face of threats and intimidation from the steel bosses. Mary Heaton Vorse is a wonderful […]
Why journalism matters …
Ten Days in a Mad-House, Nellie Bly (1887) Well, I don’t care about that. You are in a public institution now, and you can’t expect to get anything. This is charity, and you should be thankful for what you get. — Miss Grupe, one of several “Nurse Ratcheds” in “Ten Days in a Mad-House” After […]
Leaf Litter: An occasional nature note
While reading The Practice of the Wild, a book of essays by Gary Snyder, I came across his ode to leaf litter: Living activity goes right down to and under the ‘ground’ – the litter, the duff. There are termites, larvae, millipedes, mites, earthworms, springtails, pillbugs, and the fine threads of fungus woven through. ‘There […]
Jane Swisshelm was a total badass
I’ve been tinkering again with The Book, and one of the rabbit holes that research dropped me into prompted the discovery that Swissvale (where I attended high school) and nearby Swisshelm Park were named after Jane Swisshelm, journalist, abolitionist, and all-around bad-ass. The Wikipedia entry on her notes she wrote an autobiography called “Half a […]