sastyk
Posts by this author
October 10, 2011
As the seasons change towards chilly days, a young (kinda, if you look at her sideways) woman's fancy turns to thoughts of thrumming. Coziness abounds.
What the heck is a thrum? Well, it is knitting technique that mixes little bits of cozy warm fleece into your knitting to create the warmest…
October 6, 2011
A few months ago, in practice for his first standardized testing (my three younger sons are homeschooled), Simon, my 9 year old (then in his last few months of fourth grade) took the New York State Regents 5th grade science exam from the previous year. He aced it. Actually, as long as Simon was…
October 6, 2011
I don't live on a mountainside, but my town isn't called one of the "Hilltowns" for nothing, and Sepp Holzer's permaculture designs, set in a cold, steep place with stripped soil (my soil was literally stripped when the farm was a sod farm in the 1980s) comes closer to what my farm requires than…
October 6, 2011
Kate at "Living the Frugal Life" has a great post on the merits and techniques of sheet mulching in the garden. Since this has been the key to soil improvement (and we have dreadful soil) in our garden, I wanted to highlight it.
Significant soil improvement is one of them. This isn't exactly…
October 5, 2011
From the UN FAO, we can see that world food prices remain extremely high. We also, I think, when we conjoin this with oil prices can see that there is at least a significant correlation.
So much of what has been done in agriculture over the last 75 years has served to tie oil and food prices…
October 5, 2011
Right before each Rosh Hashana, I make a list that has two parts. The first one is a list of everything I wanted to accomplish that I have accomplished this past year. It includes small things and large. Small things like tuning the piano, regasketing the stove doors, expanding goat fence,…
October 4, 2011
My friend Alice hosted an urban permaculture class at her house a few years ago. She lives in an brownstone in a downtown neighborhood of Albany with her husband and two young kids, and the occasional housemate. Two permaculture design teachers and a host of enthusiastic students came together to…
October 3, 2011
A number of readers have asked me what I think about the Wall Street protests. In general I think public protest is usually a good thing, and I'm pleased to see demonstrations in favor of good things like corporate accountability and against bad things like climate change. I think there are…
October 3, 2011
Lesley Porcelli has an article in this month's _Saveur_, "The Soft Approach" that raises an issue that I've been thinking about for a long time - that perhaps we've gone overboard in our resistance to long-cooking vegetables.
Don't get me wrong - I grew up with grey, mushy broccoli and am…
September 28, 2011
Headed offline for Rosh Hashana, but leaving you with hopes for a happy, healthy, bright New Year.
Happy New Year to all!
Sharon
September 28, 2011
There are ten children in my house, but six of them are phantoms. No, we haven't gotten a foster placement or heard anything new since the two weeks in August when we were asked to take two separate groups of five kids each. Both of those placements fell through, and there has been nothing since…
September 28, 2011
As our first beekeeping summer winds down, Eric (the neurotic beekeeper) harvested a very small amount of comb honey to eat with our own apples for the new year. There's a victory there - the bees have done very well, building up to a healthy population with plenty of honey for them and us. The…
September 26, 2011
Dr. Wangari Maathai died on Sunday at 71, of ovarian cancer. It is interesting to me that so many of the obituaries get her work wrong - consider what the New York Times says:
Dr. Maathai, one of the most widely respected women on the continent, wore many hats -- environmentalist, feminist,…
September 26, 2011
It won't be news to most of my readership, but it is worth noting that the one thing that seems to be certain about climate change is that the 2007 IPCC report understated things. Sigh.
Sharon
September 23, 2011
1. To hang out with me, of course ;-).
2. To make your voice heard in Washington about this issue - because we don't have much time to begin to act, and every person here who says 'I care deeply about this' helps reinforce our message of the centrality of this issue.
3, To hear Wes Jackson talk…
September 20, 2011
Aaron Newton and I are starting out our first-ever Advanced Adapting-in-Place class, for people who have taken our previous course or who have been on the adaptation journey for a while. If you'd like to join us there are still spots available and world enough and time to join, so please email me…
September 19, 2011
A Thought Experiment: Due to a combination of crises - maybe a volcano explosion, the penetration of Ug99 into the main of the world wheat crop, drought in many of the world's grain growing regions, zombie invasion etc... (it doesn't really matter), the Global North experiences a catastrophic…
September 19, 2011
Daniel Yergin in the Wall Street Journal:
Since the beginning of the 21st century, a fear has come to pervade the prospects for oil, fueling anxieties about the stability of global energy supplies. It has been stoked by rising prices and growing demand, especially as the people of China and other…
September 15, 2011
A few readers have asked me to comment on Goldman Sachs' prediction that the US will be the world's largest Oil producer in 2017. I am delighted to do so. Several possible comments come to mind.
1. Apparently Crystal Meth has become the trendy drug at Goldman.
2. How did the Yes Men get this…
September 15, 2011
The only travel I'm doing this fall is for the November 2-5 ASPO-USA conference. Among the speakers will be:
Me ;-)
Wes Jackson
Dmitry Orlov
Richard Heinberg
Jeffrey Brown
John Michael Greer
Jeff Rubin
Aaron Newton
Bob Hirsch
Chris Martenson
Michael Klare
William Catton
Charley Maxwell
Lester…
September 14, 2011
The USDA indicates that in 2010 there were above 17 million households in the US (out of about 115 million households total) that were food insecure, and had trouble getting enough food on a regular basis. Only 59% of those households, however, received Food Stamps, WIC or School lunches, the…
September 14, 2011
Just watch, and understand why the death of what passed for culture in our youth is probably something we can bear with equanimity. Plus, the hair gave us a taste for the apocalyptic - the bangs are exactly what your hair will look like during a zombie attack.
Sharon
September 12, 2011
As I begin the final push on _Making Home_ my book on Adapting in Place (out next spring), Aaron and I will be offering the first ever "Advanced AIP Class" running from Tuesday, September 20 to October 25th. The class will build on the basic Adapting-In-Place skills that we've been talking about…
September 12, 2011
A number of you have requested information about where to donate to in order to help folks in the northeast who are recovering from the floods. Please do donate if you can - there's a lot of need out here, some of which is evolving as it finally dries up and the sun comes out! There's a long…
September 12, 2011
Ben Bernanke has the answer. It is all your fault.
Then he said something new: Consumers are depressed beyond reason or expectation.
Oh, sure, there are reasons to be depressed, and the Fed chairman rattled them off: "The persistently high level of unemployment, slow gains in wages for those who…
September 9, 2011
The first thing you need to know is that no one ever complains. I've seen a few people cry, mostly about lost pets, but what they say is "we're so lucky."
They say "We're so lucky" as elders in their 80s and 90s put all the possessions of a lifetime out on the street to be hauled away as trash.…
September 8, 2011
When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.
But when I came to man's estate,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,
For the rain it raineth every day.
But…
September 6, 2011
Mark Notaras has a great review of the UN's World Food Program on the links between food insecurity and conflict:
Brinkman and Hendrix point out that the relationship between food insecurity and violent conflict is not one way. High food prices are both exacerbated by and exacerbate the chance of…
September 5, 2011
As the steam bath of summer abates and cool air moves in, as labor day weekend marks the end of swimming and time to start thinking about things like firewood and school, I find I regain enthusiasm about really cooking again.
During the summer, I'm often a tepidly enthusiastic cook - it is so easy…
August 31, 2011
Yesterday afternoon we put our work aside and drove down into the Schoharie Valley, at least as far as we could go. We wanted to check on friends in the area, and we had called down to Schoharie Valley Farms to see how they were doing and also ask about the status of the flowers I had ordered for…