Projects Projects

I’ll let you know what I’m working on. I’m researching how best to teach reading. Fascinating that whole Whole Word – Phonics war. So much of the history and psychology of writing is involved, and then throw your own toddler and her talents and interests into the mix. I love a complex challenge! In advance …

Wendell Berry is my hero

Thanks to Moonmeadow Farm, this is Wendell Berry’s poem “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” from his book The Country of Marriage (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973). I hope it’s ok to reproduce it here…  Oh but be fearless!  So: Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry (my hero) Love the quick profit, the annual …

Home Ground, edited by Barry Lopez

A while ago I was given a review copy of Home Ground, Language for an American Landscape. Barry Lopez, the editor, set 45 writers to writing over 850 new definitions for the terms Americans use to describe their land. What a book! It has revived my love-affair – lately somewhat neglected -with America and American nature writers, …

Lucia Perillo review on Suite101.com

  It’s rare that one comes across a book of essays that grips you so tightly that, even though you’re a WAHM running after a toddler, you can’t put it down – or at least, you reach for it immediately once the toddler is asleep. I had never heard of the poet, Lucia Perillo, though she …

Progress on the Novel

As you may know, I am writing a novel (in English), by the preliminary and rather misleading title of “The Potboiler”. I gave up my PhD studies in Philosophy – I had only the dissertation to go – and started writing an adventure novel! Sounds crazy, what? But (fiction) writing was something I had wanted to …

No One Local Summer meal this week – and why

DH is away to give a talk and I’m alone with Amie, who caught a stomach bug on Thursday and is still not recovered – the hot and humid weather isn’t helping much. When she’s not sleeping she is glued to me, so I haven’t managed and probably won’t manage to prepare a OLS meal …

Silk Road Cooking in Massachusetts

  I just published a review of Najmieh Batmanglij’s wonderful cookbook, Silk Road Cooking. A Vegetarian Journey on Suite101.com. You can read it here. It did occur to me that the Silk Road and many of the other ancient trade routes that Batmanglij travels in this book are about as non-local as you can get! How …

Suite101 article on Bill Coperthwaite’s *Handmade Life*

I published a review of A Handmade Life, by William Coperthwaite, on Suite101.com.    It took me a long time to write this review, simply because I wanted to do the book justice. And 700 words are not enough to do it justice. There was, for instance, no space to treat Coperthwaite’s fascinating views on education …

Toby Hemenway’s book “Gaia’s Garden”

  Just published a review on Suite101.com of Gaia’s Garden, the book that led me to Holmgren’s Permaculture. I  tremendously enjoyed reading Hemenway’s book and I hope the review does it justice. I also hope that, once we have some land, I can put the permaculture way of gardening into practice. I might have to revisit …