Daily Archives: June 29, 2008

Family, Garden, Writing

Garlic Harvest

Leave a comment

77 bar steady 29.93 5mph N dew-point 49  Summer, hot and sunny

                      Waning Crescent of the Flower Moon

Wrote this AM.  Appended chapter 3 of Superior Wolf to its page on this website.  Next week I’ll take down chapter 1 and put chapter 4 and so it will go until I have written myself to the end.  We’ll see where it goes.

Moved mulch, created by renting the super chipper from Home Depot and grinding up branches, tree trunks and chunks of shrubs.  The mulch goes on the perennial bed first, keeping the weeds down as we move into high summer and also cooling the soil just a bit.  This involves a wheel-barrow, a pitchfork and a lot of moving from one place to another.

After a nap I unburdened the kitchen table of a couple of months of magazines, catalogues and desparate fund-raising pleas.  This involved a paper-sack, a lot of sorting and moving from one place to another.

Now I’m gonna cook supper, red beans and rice with some prime rib left overs thrown to make it interesting.  The now standard fare of lettuce, onions and cilantro from our gardens inside and out will join store purchased tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers for a colorful salad.  Later in the season we will have all of these ingredients. 

I also learned from a piece of paper recovered from the literary overburden of the table that I can  harvest the garlic now.  Somehow garlic has become my favorite crop.  Don’t know why.

Cinema and Television, GeekWorld

A New Creature under the Small Screen Sun

Leave a comment

75  bar rises 29.89 10mph NNW dew-point 51  Summer, sunny and hot

Waning Crescent of the Flower Moon

The finest TV show I can recall has only ten episodes more.  Battlestar Galactica will end.  I mentioned this in another post, but its significance is big.  With the closure of a plot and its disparate story lines the writers and actors and producers of Battlestar Galactica invite comparison to the novel.  In this instance Battlestar Galactica can be considered as a work of art, that is, it can be seen whole and assessed as a complete aesthetic endeavor.  Did its plot lines make sense?  Was there a believable, but profound developmental arc for the major characters?  Did the whole break any new ground it is medium?  Was it entertaining?  Did it have a sub-text that added depth?  In my opinion the answer to all these questions is yes.

If the mini-series is a novella, then Battlestar Galactica is a multi-volume epic.  It will repay those who return to it, who decide to see it in sequence without commercial interruptions.

Is it an instant classic?  See last night’s post.  Who knows?  In my opinion it is a new creature under the small screen sun and as such I hope it breeds more like it.  If that happens, then the first may pale in comparison to others who use the same canvas for a different aesthetic purpose.  I hope this happens.  It will require courage, patience and above all imagination.  As does all good art.

Great Work

Optimal Sustainablity in Suburbs and Exurbs

Leave a comment

A new posting in Permaculture.

Introducing Permaculture to our property, to the Woollies and to whomever else may find it interesting.

6/29/08  Coda to this project

The last few months have given me a different perspective on this project.  Optimal sustainability rather than permaculture per se is my goal.  What is that?

Optimal sustainability occupies a position between permaculture on the one hand and the normative American lifestyle on the other.  In particular I will focus on the kind of environment I inhabit, the suburban and exurban ring.  How can persons living in suburbs and exurbs across America, indeed, across the world, think of their residential choice in terms of global sustainability?  That is, how can we recognize that the vast bulk of persons so situated will not become back-to-the-landers with the requisite chicken coop, bee-hives, orchard and bountiful garden?

How can we find a mix of things to do, choices to make that can reduce energy expenditures and increase the amount of food produced at home or in nearby (neighborhood or cul-de-sac) locations?  How, in other words, can we create a menu of achievable actions that will change the normative American suburban/exurban lifestyle as much as possible without creating resistance?  What values need examination and careful, positive critique?  How can we make optimal sustainability sexy, fun, normative?

This is the project I want to engage.  It will require that I learn the permaculture work, that I learn more about the suburban/exurban situation in which I live.  It will require that I recruit allies from across the political spectrum.  Sounds like fun to me.