We are all gardeners

...them. Second, remember that we are all influencers. As I said above, every time we vote, every time we buy something, each time we take a trip or choose a place to live, we are influencing the landscape and we are influencing people who have more power over the land than we do. (An aside: At this point I suspect permaculture folks are going to say what I’m talking about when I say gardening is permaculture, and I won’t disagree. But I’ll also say...

Read…

Digital Götterdämmerung

...spring shut. He’s also realistic that we might all need to carve out some time for low-quality web surfing but that this time needs to be contained rather than sprinkled throughout the day. During the one month fast Newport suggests developing a long term plan with what to do with our spare hours. In addition to my quixotic furniture building mission I’ve vowed to improve my drawing skills and finish reading a few long books on my literary bucket...

Read…

That Time I Got Deplatformed

...denly, without warning and with no recourse. I didn’t blog about it at the time, but back in September of 2017 a Meetup group I ran, The Los Angeles Bread Bakers got booted off its payment system, a Paypal competitor called WePay (as of October 2017, owned by JPMorgan Chase). Mike of WePay’s Orwelian “Customer Delight” department sent me this astonishingly rude email: Mike (WePay Support) Sep 1, 2017 1:56 PM PDT Hi there, We apologize for the inco...

Read…

Gourmet Foraging and Advanced Acorn Processing

...is. You should be aware that acorn weevil larvae will likely emerge, from time to time, from any collection of acorns., especially the fresher ones. (Older acorns may have acorn moths in them, though. These moths move into the holes left behind by the weevils. Nature is beautiful that way.) They are harmless to you, pets, carpets and furniture. They are edible, even tasty, I hear. If they end up in your house they’ll probably dehydrating to death...

Read…

Make Your Own Damn Cheese

...to make it work. We’ve tried using regular milk and it’s a crap shoot–sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t even with the calcium chloride. Milk labeled “ultra-pasteurized” will definitely not work. Now pasteurization is for wimps and worry warts. All of the tainted milk scares in the past few years have been with pasteurized milk. Those factory farm dairy cow concentration camps out there that produce most of the milk in this country figur...

Read…