Missing Day One, and my newfound compassion for myself

I signed up for the WordCount Blogathon again this year. Then promptly missed day one. Officially I lose. That will make the rest of the month sooo much more manageable. Why did I sign up, knowing how many things I have going on? Because last year I loved the camaraderie and the satisfaction of writing [...]

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Facebook “Year In Status Updates” graphic

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Hands full

As part of the Reverb10 writing project, I answer, sort-of,  today’s prompt: What (or whom) did you let go of this year? With both my hands full, I let fall what cannot fit. I will come back soon.   This has been such a year of picking up new things. There is so much I [...]

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Food encounters of the third (or second, or first) kind

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (the school at the top of my list for future ag-econ studies) wrote up this little piece on “food tiers” describing in easily understandable terms the various sources of foodstuffs in terms of the relationship of consumer to producer. Tier Zero is me and my balcony tomatoes; Tier One [...]

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I am weary of commemorating this day.

I am weary of commemorating this day. I am sickened by the exploitation of it by those pandering to constituents (religious or political). I am sad for the ghosts of the dead, who are lumped into a single grim spectre by the media (“those who lost their lives”) and their families, each different and affected [...]

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Complications

I will need to take the ACT. I thought I could get out of it  – Evergreen State College did not require test scores for it’s adult student applicants. I never took it, so I don’t have any scores. But now that I’ve revised some of my goals and am aiming a little higher in [...]

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“Closing the Food Gap”: why policy matters and voting with your fork is not enough

If you think choosing the best food for yourself and your family is tough, try being poor. Put aside any thoughts you might have in your head about why the poor are poor and all the things you think they should be doing to better their situation, and just think for a minute about the [...]

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Good food vs. Katie’s wallet: July summary

Progress at last! My last post on good food vs. wallet I set a goal of spending $100 less in July than in June on groceries. Here’s the breakdown on 2010 grocery expenses, including farmers market: Jan: $707 Feb: $818 Mar: $621 Apr: $793 May: $551 Jun: $724 July: $573

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Your (Un)Happy Place

A few months ago I posted a link to a blog that cracks me up: Unhappy Hipsters. The writer captions images from Dwell Magazine with emotionally bleak expositions of the underlying mental states of the inhabitants of these artful homes. I’ve been searching (so far mostly fruitlessly) for real research on the impact of your [...]

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Beautiful short film

(Reposted from The Improvised Life) Joaquin Baldwin‘s beautiful little animated film is a reminder of how the creative process often works – in completely unexpected ways. We also love Baldwin’s story about how the film came to be: This film was inspired while driving back from a trip to Palm Springs, when my partner said [...]

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