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Monthly Archives: October 2011

Family heirloom bean seeds

My older sister and I have often lamented that the heirloom seeds that were used for so many years on my mother’s family farm have been lost. But my sister recently discovered that a cousin has been growing green beans from family seed for many years. That cousin sent me some of those seeds. They’ll […]

Robin Hood

Some of the cast of Robin of Sherwood, the 1980s TV series The story of Robin Hood is one of the oldest stories in English literature. The references start in the 13th century and never stop, all the way up to our own times. When “Robin of Sherwood” became a cult television item during the […]

Fresh from Liberty Plaza

I believe that today is Day 5 for Ken at Occupy Wall Street. He sent this photo today from Zuccotti Park (which the occupiers call Liberty Plaza). I don’t think Ken has his laptop with him at Liberty Plaza, so not being wired has delayed his ability to post on his blog and process his […]

Anatomy of a boondoggle bailout

The Shearon Harris nuclear plant near Raleigh, North Carolina. It was partly financed with taxpayer debt. When taxpayer money becomes entangled with private, for-profit ventures, there is one thing you can always be sure of: Profits will be privatized, and costs will be socialized. This $3.7 billion boondoggle is a provincial North Carolina tale, but […]

Guess where Ken is?

Photo from the Gothamist. Can you espy Ken? Solution below… Ken called from New York yesterday, from Occupy Wall Street. I could barely hear him for the noise in the background, but he wanted to let me know where he was, because he understands how much I’d like to be there myself. He flew to […]

Resisting Internet snooping

My cellular antenna, pointed at a Verizon tower for Internet service. Apple found my WIFI and its exact location, even though it’s in the boonies, in the darkness of my attic. The dark side of the Internet is that it is a big machine increasingly optimized for the invasion of privacy. For example, my WIFI […]

New plantings

The red maple I’m very lucky to have a garden shop a few miles away owned by the county’s former agricultural extension agent. I bought some bargain trees from him that were planted yesterday. The trees (though I didn’t know it when I picked them out) were all trade-show trees from Monrovia nurseries that Michael […]

A Stokes County promontory

Click on photos for larger version Stokes County pretty much has its own small mountain range, the Sauratown Mountains. These views are from Hanging Rock, the centerpiece of Hanging Rock State Park.

Ah, toast

One of my motivations for wanting to evolve the abbey bread into French loaves was to make it possible to slice it for toast. If one makes bread every day, then it makes sense to have one warm and fresh for supper and one left over for breakfast. The Dualit toaster, by the way, is […]

Fall cookin'

I have a visitor from California, so the abbey kitchen is running at high speed, as it did while Ken was here. This is a green pepper stuffed with rice, cheese, and vegetarian fake sausage; mustard greens; a roasted tomato; turnips seasoned with toasted sesame oil and Greek yogurt; and abbey bread. All the produce […]