A Cluttered Life: Middle-Class Abundance

August 17, 2018

...nits? The book is worth reading (ironically, I just sold my copy to reduce book clutter). While I no longer own the book I was happy to discover the short, three part video series on the project which I’ve embedded for your weekend enjoyment. Part II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyHS_-Umv4E Part III https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJWOWksT1x4&t=11s What was especially interesting for me about these videos is that they address the complex inters...

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On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

Mr. Homegrown

January 7, 2019

Reviews, Thoughtstylings

23 Comments

...took the most time was managing another receptionist’s Avon sales. In the book Graeber develops a taxonomy of Bullshit jobs and estimates that at least 50% of jobs could vanish and no one would notice. And, no, we’re not just talking about government jobs. It turns out that capitalism produces prodigious amounts of useless jobs despite those who claim that the alleged efficiency of markets makes this impossible. While many of the examples in the...

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The New Homemade Kitchen

Mr. Homegrown

June 26, 2020

Fermentation, Food, Food Preservation, Recipes, Reviews

3 Comments

...sses of wine, we would review the classes we taught and figure out ways to make information clearer. Joseph was a team player with a thoughtful leadership style. I can still hear his laugh and miss him greatly. This book, for me, is a kind of time capsule of those happy days teaching at the IDT that felt more like attending a lively party than work. And I have this book to remember Joseph’s joyous spirit and knowledge....

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Of Mushrooms and Capitalist Ruins

Mr. Homegrown

December 8, 2021

Gardening, Mushrooms, Reviews

1 Comment

...ed both the biology and our complex social relationship to fungi. The last book we read was one of the best non-fiction books I’ve ever read, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. The book begins with the stories of matsutake pickers in the Pacific Northwest, a heterogeneous group of recent Southeast Asian immigrants, middle class Japanese Americans and white survivalists. Beg...

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The Man Who Exorcised the Bermuda Triangle

Mr. Homegrown

November 19, 2024

Reviews

1 Comment

...um exorcism opus, the entirety of the Bermuda Triangle. I had expected the book to be more absurd and unbelievable than it actually was. By the end of the book, Omand’s project seemed sensible as a purging of the psychogeographical bad juju that we all intuitively feel in our desecrated landscape of parking lots and freeways. Omand comes off as careful, kindly and sincere, a man with a sense of humor and not the attention seeker you might expect a...

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