LATEST BLOG POSTS

Who doesn’t love knowing about something big before everyone else? EJ Perry is something big, a very talented quarterback being scouted by the NFL, coming from the Ivy League. Rarely do people reach pinnacles in multiple areas of life so young. (I’m posting early so you can know to see him play in the Shrine Bowl next week, February 3 at 8pm eastern on the NFL network.) Regular listeners know[…] Keep reading →

I just finished reading Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court. His coaching tells more how to live sustainably as individuals and a culture than anything else I remember reading or hearing. For those who don’t know, from Wikipedia: John Wooden (1910 – 2010) was an American basketball coach and player. He won ten NCAA national championships in a 12-year period as head coach for[…] Keep reading →

I was scared of fermentation when I first learned of it, and that people fermented things in their kitchens. I thought it was rare, required specialized knowledge or skills, and could go wrong. I thought breeding organisms could easily lead to breeding the wrong ones so could be dangerous. I was ignorant. The first time I made sauerkraut, which means fermenting cabbage, I learned it was easy. Each time since[…] Keep reading →

Major cultural touchstones and motivators for many people to growing material production, sales, and population are the words “be fruitful and multiply” and “have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” People nearly universally misunderstand both parts. You can be fruitful by living a sweet life and you can multiply by multiplying happiness.[…] Keep reading →

When farmers grow for CSAs (where buyers like me pick up a weekly drop-off direct from the farm), they grow for specific people. They’re motivated to grow for flavor and quantity most, it seems, as a customer who keeps buying from his CSA because the flavor is out of this world and the quantity for the price is high. When farmers grow for a farmers market, they grow for the[…] Keep reading →

My notes that I read from for this episode: Sea wall for Manhattan, like Holland: expensive, huge, likely won’t work Controversial already. Natural solutions might work better. Let’s say they worked. On Staten Island, Fresh Kills Also everywhere, all coasts unprotected Now think of Cancer Alley Gulf coast, oil refineries and global toxic dumps All that pollution will be dispersed to seas and biosphere I’d guess hundreds of thousands of[…] Keep reading →

I mop as part of my six-day exercise cycle. Part of my ritual before my lifting days is to mop the floors, so every six days I mop the whole apartment. More accurately, I shifted from mopping to getting on my hands and knees and cleaning with a sponge. The ritual reminds me of monks, who seem to take on tasks with a measure of quality that focus the mind[…] Keep reading →