What’s Buried in Your Backyard?

...e’s a handy page for dating bottles, scans of antique bottle catalogs, and page after page of bottle types. My unintended archaeological efforts have yielded no Spanish doubloons, viking graves or Anasazi ruins, but I have found lots of glassware, mostly broken milk bottles. I’ve also discovered what I think are cheap perfume bottles like the one above. If you know what this bottle contained please leave a comment. I suspect perfume, because this...

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Free Egg Testing for California Backyard Chicken Keepers

...various contaminants such as Pb, PCBs, and PBDEs. I know that our soil has lead in it and have always been curious to see if our chickens are passing any of this lead into their eggs. I sent off eggs for testing last Friday and will report back on the test results. The New York Times reported on the issue of contaminants in eggs from backyard flocks back in 2012. If you’re a California resident and would like to send in some eggs for testing, chec...

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Connect with Nature Project #2: Rediscover Your Feet

...h Skills. Fox walking is a kind of mindful walking where you let your toes lead your foot and your foot leads your body. I’m going to teach it to you. Fox walking allows you to walk quietly and smoothly though natural settings. It’s primary purpose is stalking animals, because the gait you assume, ideally, does not startle them. Basically, they do not recognize it as human. It also allows you to walk while scanning the environment, instead of worr...

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Is Facebook Useful?

...book wants me to pay to promote posts. So instead I mostly use my personal page to promote stuff with limited success. But, worst of all, Facebook has distracted me from responding to comments on this blog and, instead, focusing on comment threads on Facebook. It may be futile, but it’s time to fight back. What I’ve resolved to do I’m not going to give up on Facebook just yet. I can’t really. As authors we have to use it to promote our work and ev...

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