Saturday Linkages: DIY Coffee Roasting and That Crazy Rhubarb Lady

...kateboard-can-go-down-stairs.html … Life in the city Urban Healers: http://urbanhealers.tumblr.com Clotheslines vs. HOAs: “Right to Dry” States http://bit.ly/13nMrPL The Ten Most Ambitious Failed Utopian Mass Transit Systems http://jalopnik.com/the-ten-most-ambitious-failed-utopian-mass-transit-syst-1135019271 … Making a Case to Phase Out “Beg Buttons” in Santa Monica’s Pedestrian Action Plan http://disq.us/8elfzy Meet Streetmix, the Website Where...

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Lost from the cradle of connection: the high price of driving

...he way from the Santa Monica Mountains to Pyramid Lake. Cameras caught him making four freeway crossings in the past, and certainly he made more He had to cross highways. An adult mountain lion needs about 200 miles of home range to make a living. State officials call his death “Sad, but not surprising.” On August 10th, P32 became “roadkill.” Roadkill is an odd term, isn’t it? The road didn’t kill P32, a driver did. There’s some odd blameshifting...

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2014, a Year in Comments: Plant Thievery, Loquats, Breakfast Cerial and the Apocalypse

...we write about attracts thoughtful and compassionate people interested in making the world a better place. And I appreciate discussion and constructive criticism (We’re thankful too, that no trolls live under the Root Simple bridge). As an only child prone to ex cathedra statements, it’s good to have accountability in the form of reader feedback. With this in mind, I thought I’d review the most commented upon posts in 2015. One curious phenomenon...

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Everything Must Go: Tidying Up at the Root Simple Compound

...oint we remembered a book one of our readers mentioned, and which has been making the publicity rounds of late, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by the tidying consultant Marie Kondo (aka KonMari–her method is called the KonMari Method). She’s from Japan, where people have the same hearty consumerist impulses as we do here in the U.S., but considerably less space for storage. When I first read about the book, I understood the gist of it, but...

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Earth Building Classes!

...e looking to reprise our popular adobe basics class which will cover brick making, codes and basic adobe wall masonry. We are also looking at having an horno workshop in Los Angeles sometime this summer. Events October 2-4 – EarthUSA 2015, Santa Fe, NM: A reminder that EarthUSA, the premier North American earthbuilding community event is coming up this October. The event brings together expert practitioners, historians and conservation specialists...

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