News From Nowhere

...d we can form meaningful communities. We can reject the utilitarianism and bean counting that define contemporary life. As former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams put it in his moving introduction to the Victoria and Albert Museum edition of this book, “to make a beautiful object is not to ice an otherwise dull and tasteless cake but to do something that is in its way as straightforwardly necessary to human beings as any machine-made conven...

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Saturday Linkages: #quarantinecats

...An overflowing pot of bean recipes Some guidelines for dealing with coronavirus in your home and community The Cloistered Garden Nassim Taleb on BBC4 on why this is not a “black swan” Some magazines I read: The Idler, The Baffler, Jacobin, Mortise and Tenon, Fine Woodworking, Fine Homebuilding ‘Honest Labour’ – the Column that Named the Book The Mystic And The Warrior Slavoj Zizek, Jordan Peterson and the Toilet Paper Candidate...

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Supper for a buck?

...cheap. Dried beans run about $1.50 a pound where we shop. One pound of dry beans makes about 6 cups of cooked beans. That’s a lot of food. I’m not going to try to do the math and add up the costs of the onion and herbs and olive oil I add to the beans. And I surely don’t have the patience to figure out the cost of the salad from our garden (do I have to figure in the mortgage?), but I do know that around this time of year I could forage a salad fo...

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A Mystery Philippine Vegetable

...your carrots come from. I harvested for the camera, an unimpressive string bean and two small cucumbers. On a whim, I suggested that we visit the parkway garden that inspired us to plant our own. Just two blocks away, this parkway garden is the handiwork of a retired couple from the Philippines. As luck would have it, the couple pulled up during our interview. Julie (I’m afraid I can’t spell her last name) stepped out of her car and proceeded to g...

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Ramshackled!

...f these days. In the meantime, due to the wonders of the internets, we can all take a tour via the blog. Make sure to check out their whimsical rebar bean poles, pictured above, complete with instructions on how to make one....

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