These were painted by my MIL on the basis of photographs taken last summer. Aren’t they absolutely gorgeous! Oh, I just had an Insight! Maybe this is the year when we start sending out New Year’s cards? LOL. All images (c) 2012, Sudakshina Ghosh
Author Archives: kaat
Adding Rooms to Our House
We have always used our basement for three things: laundry, storage (aka dumping) and, seasonally, seedlings. There are two large rooms and a spacious corridor. One room holds the furnace and the two big oil tanks that the previous owner needed so her 50-year-old furnace could overheat her uninsulated house (we fixed all of that …
Hens Don’t Like Snow, but They Love Hen-Sitters
Yesterday we had our first real snowfall of the season. Just an inch, if that. In the morning I opened the coop hatch and, unlike on other days, the chickens didn’t rush out, scolding, hurrying down the plank to their food under the coop. They poked their heads out, looked around, questioned, hesitated. Two ventured …
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Powerful Householding, or How to Stop Flicking Switches
I am part of a group that seeks to “green”  our church (UU). At the last meeting only women came, five of us. One of our discussions revolved around single-use paper cups during coffee hour and Sunday school. We have many mugs and we figured out how to put them back to use. The major obstacle …
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The Approximate Shape of You
Well, things are picking up. With Sandy and then the election I am galvanized into action again. Plans, ideas are revived. I see new ways of making them possible. We need to start doing more climate change outreach, right now when it is fresh on people’s minds and even the politicians are talking about it. …
What Makes an Ordinary Day Extraordinary?
A couple of days ago as I was walking to the elementary school to pick up Amie I was suddenly struck by what a fine day it was. Then I stopped in my tracks – we walk to and from school through “the woods”, that’s the neighbors’  wooded backyards, so they were, literally, tracks – and …
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Riot for Austerity – October 2012 – Month 48
FOUR YEARS OF RIOT! Four year summary coming soon This is the Riot for the month of October 2012 for the three of us. My summary of our first three years is here. Edson fixed the calculator: all go tither to crunch those numbers! We did well in October. The somewhat lower numbers are because I recorded …
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Disaster Preparedness, Resilience, Treading Water and Dangerous Assumptions
Amie reads Calvin and Hobbes during Hurricane Sandy (13h) power outage, 29 October 2012 So we weathered yet another storm. Or rather, we didn’t. Sandy went around us. We got some of her peripheral gusts of wind and some rain, but none of it very severe.  Half of my town was out of power.  School was …
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A Study of Honey Frames
In order: comb that the bees drew out, filled with honey, and capped with a thin cap of wax, comb after uncapping, oozing with honey (here’s a video of uncapping), comb after extraction (see video). Extraction is never total: there is always lots of honey left, more or less depending on the viscosity of the honey and the determination …
Poem by a Friend
My friend Janine, fellow Transition worker and fellow blogger, has written a gripping poem. It haunts till the end. This is the beginning:                      I dreamt a sword fight broke out in the cornfield   …