Weekend Linkages: Happiness is $5.99

August 29, 2021

...How to have a Great-Looking Native Plant Garden There’s a run on horse pills and it ain’t about horses Looking back on #Jamgate The art of dump picking Riotlandia: Why Portland has become an epicenter for far right violence The Carbon Footprint Sham The strange world of grammar conspiracies A very groovy 1972 art history lesson from John Berger...

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A William Morris Pilgrimage

Mr. Homegrown

November 9, 2022

Design

12 Comments

...e influence of Morris’ ideas about building preservation. In 1880 Morris started a campaign to oppose a major remodeling that was proposed for this church. That campaign was a part of his Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings which still exists. SPAB’s philosophy is “to stave off decay by daily care … and otherwise to resist all tampering with either the fabric or ornament of the building as it stands”. St. John the Baptist church has 60...

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Block Party Weekend

Mr. Homegrown

September 11, 2006

Thoughtstylings

...verview SurviveLA dropped in this weekend on a block party thrown by the apartment homesteading pioneers at the Los Angeles Eco-Village. Founded in 1993, the Los Angeles Eco-Village is a so called “intentional community” of folks who, basically, give a damn and are interested in improving our forlorn, polluted, and abused city. The block party featured ecologically savvy and self-reliant touches such as solar ovens to cook the vegetarian buffet an...

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Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Gardening Wisdom

Mr. Homegrown

August 18, 2015

Garden Design, Gardening

2 Comments

...s garden became a literal battle ground for his disputes with the Scottish Arts Council and with local town council bureaucrats. At various times his art was seized by the police and he became embroiled in a tax dispute with local officials. In the early 1980s his friends, dubbed the “Saint-Just Vigilantes” after the French revolutionary leader, successfully repelled a raid by the police in an action Finlay dubbed the “First Battle of Little Spart...

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Picture Sundays: Do You Believe In Magic?

Mr. Homegrown

June 23, 2013

Picture Sundays

14 Comments

...I really like this mural that just appeared in our neighborhood near the corner of Sunset and Coronado. Bunnies tumble out of a magic hat and there’s a silhouette of a coyote and crow (common urban wildlife here). The text, “do you beleav [sic] in magic” brought a smile to my face as I waited for the bus. My day had been re-enchanted by this symbolic bit of street art....

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