A Brief History of Cat Art

July 15, 2019

...60-1849) painted a lot more than just cats. His work reached the West at a time when there was an interest in all things Japanese. Cornelius Visscher 1629-1658 was a Dutch Golden Age engraver. His 1657 print Cat Sleeping has a bit of an Albrecht Dürer vibe. Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) is the most famous of this short list of cat artists. He liked to fill the margins of his sketchbooks with cats and, as you can see from the examples above, his wor...

Read…

I Ate 100 Power Bars

Mr. Homegrown

March 12, 2018

Thoughtstylings

4 Comments

...make the Stasi blush, one company I met promised to provide me with, “real-time shopper behavior intelligence” with a database that goes back, “35+ years of every UPC scanned in store.” (1) When I asked if this information is tied to me personally, the rep said that it’s all connected to my credit card information before abruptly cutting off the conversation when, I think, he noticed that I was wearing a media badge. Speaking of that media badge m...

Read…

I Made a Bee Vacuum

Mr. Homegrown

June 2, 2023

Animals, Bees

2 Comments

...to some out of the way spot. This last part, scooping up the bees, can be time consuming, frustrating and potentially dangerous if the bees are in a cranky mood. For years I’ve resisted making a bee vacuum with the idea that it’s a crutch, somehow an excuse for bad technique. You can use a smoker to herd bees off the comb and, if you’re careful, once the queen is in the bee box the workers will follow. But if a tool makes things go more smoothly,...

Read…

Timing Sourdough Feeding

Mr. Homegrown

April 6, 2020

Bread, Food

12 Comments

...or is important if you want to get a decent sourdough bread: the amount of time between feeding your starter and making your dough. I keep a small amount of starter on hand since I bake, at most, twice a week under normal circumstances (Under quarantine I’m baking a lot more but the reasons for that would be the subject of another blog post). Just before I go to bed, the night before I’m going to make bread, I take a tablespoon of starer and add i...

Read…

The Frog Notices It Is Getting Boiled

Mr. Homegrown

June 2, 2020

Thoughtstylings

5 Comments

Oops. It’s been a week of conflicting curfew alerts. Each time my phone buzzes with these alerts my already simmering anger boils over, mainly because I think that this mess we’re in could have been easily avoided. Rather than simply stew in my own anger this morning, I thought I’d sit through the Los Angeles Police Commission’s emergency Zoom meeting held, ostensibly, to address the unrest that’s taken place over past few days. The meeting remin...

Read…