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Monthly Archives: November 2014

Review: John Twelve Hawks’ Spark

One of these books is a hot read. John Twelve Hawks’ newest novel Spark was released on Oct. 7, and I actually bought it that week. But I was slammed with election duties during the month of October, so I put the book aside until quiet times returned. This is because I knew that Spark […]

Review: Interstellar

A good test of a movie, I think, is to let it digest for a few days and then ask yourself: Having digested this movie, was it nutritious enough that anything stuck to my bones? With “Interstellar,” the answer for me turns out to be no. “Interstellar” is highly entertaining. It’s fast-paced, very smart, and […]

Abbey photography update

The abbey’s venerable Nikon D1X was starting to have occasional shutter malfunctions, so I went on eBay and bought a D2X, the model of professional camera that succeeded the D1X in 2004. The pros have moved on to D3’s and D4’s, so the D2X is now an affordable camera. I found a practically new one […]

Sprouting season has arrived

When the garden is kaput and stuff in the grocery store starts looking like it’s traveled a long way, it’s time to start sprouting. It’s an old hippy skill that I’ve never abandoned, though often I just forget about the possibility of sprouts. The best place I know to get sprouting seeds is from the […]

Autographed copies of Fugue in Ursa Major

“Intelligent, mysterious, a perfect book for a movie; loved it!” In time for the holidays and winter reading, I’m offering autographed copies of Fugue in Ursa Major. The cost is $15. If you’d like to order a copy, please send an email to fugue@acornabbey.com and include this information: 1. Your name and mailing address 2. […]

Real apples, and the sorrows of orcharding

November apples at Century Farm Orchards Fatalities in the orchard during the last year include fig trees killed (above ground, at least) by brutally cold weather last winter, and another pear tree lost to the Black Death. Ken also found room for a couple more apple trees. Today I picked up some replacement trees. I […]

Cornish pasties

I love reading novels set in another time, another place, in which the author describes what the characters are eating. I’ve been reading Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe. In it, a monk (seemingly a monk, at least) and a knight are sharing a pasty in the monk’s hermitage deep in the forest. That really stuck in […]