June 12, 2008
So, I’ve been contemplating doing some landscape work on the backyard. The grass is dying (grubs, I think), the deck is too small for the table and the grill we have on it, and the random plantings (my fault) and the bi-level deck and backyard (inherited from the previous owners) feels like there’s too much [...]
November 29, 2007
Tis the season to purchase gifts. It’s also the season for carrying a pound of catalogs to the recycling bin each day. Those catalog folks do have my number - they know I purchase clothing, and shoes, they know I like wine, like outdoorsy stuff, yoga, and workout gear. I get pounds of catalogs [...]
October 21, 2007
Every so often, I get into a fit about how much stuff we have. I just purchased another set of shelves for our basement (buying stuff to hold stuff), just dropped off a bunch of cast-off stuff to charity, and of course there is all the stuff we just bought ourselves (renovated bathroom, new TV).
I [...]
August 23, 2007
Guy invited us to his house tonight for an ice cream social. He had all the usual trimmings: chocolate sprinkles, almonds, various ice cream flavors (strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate), chocolate syrup, neighborhood kids, and raptors.
Ummm…raptors?
Yup, raptors.
AÂ woman from the Leslie Science Center brought a kestrel, a barred owl, and a juvenile bald eagle. All the birds were injured [...]
August 12, 2007
Funny, the books I’m reading this weekend are affirming each other. I suppose this means nothing more than I have consistent taste. I’m now reading The Sound of Mountain Water by Wallace Stegner. He writes about the value of wilderness as more than just a place to hike, ski, photograph, raft, or play. He writes [...]
August 10, 2007
I just finished The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, which details how we are running off of “startup capital” in a resource-draining, non-integrated way. The beginning echoed many environmental books - a depressing litany of all of the ways we are living unsustainably. When I read that sort of thing I get to feeling hopeless, [...]
May 6, 2007
We are what we eat, and the choices we make about food matter in terms of our personal health, the health of the soil, and energy consumption. So, to act on our good environmental intentions, and to connect ourselves more deeply with our local community, we joined with another couple to purchase a Community Supported [...]
December 9, 2006
Ever since we lived in England in 1996-7, we have maintained a subscription to the Economist magazine. We appreciate its international coverage and clever sense of humor. Its photo editors/photo caption writers get me laughing quite often–I still chuckle over the “Greetings, earthlings” cover of Kim Jong Il.
Anyway, I typically disagree with their political and [...]
October 9, 2006
Been dipping back into ecology recently, reading two pop-sci books: Jared Diamond’s Collapse and E.O. Wilson’s The Future of Life. In response, I wrote a much longer post that was basically a bunch of whining about it all. Feel grateful there is a delete button.
I am looking for something more constructive to do instead of [...]
not particularly objective musings on odds and ends - Dunrie Greiling, Ann Arbor, MI 48103