The Rag and Bone Man

...the bicycle chains clean. 4. Paper making–one traditional method of paper making begins with fermenting cotton rags in water for a few weeks and then beating them to a pulp with hammers. The rag and bone man pictured above is collecting rags for paper making (the bones went to make glue and other things). The contemporary version of the rag and bone man are the thift stores that ship our old clothes to the third world putting local garment makers...

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Interview With Apartment Gardener Helen Kim

...onions whenever I make hot soup with noodles. And, for awhile there, I was making pasta with Swiss chard and mushrooms (with garlic and a bit of butter) just about every day! The mustard greens I like to have with my scrambled eggs… or, of course, for some pizzazz in any salad. I pounded the heck out of some dried stevia yesterday morning and added it to my coffee… and was surprised at how sweet it was. The mint is great to slice up and just throw...

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A NSFW Mushroom

...e edible or not. Now I just enjoy looking at them (and occasionally eating chicken of the woods, the only one I feel confident enough to identity). This weekend in Pomona I spotted the notoriously NSFW stinkhorn mushroom which I’m pretty sure is Phallus hadriani. It fruits quickly with the tip oozing a slimy substance attractive to insects. I witnessed a pill bug and some gnats circling the morel-like tip. Stinkhorns use these insects to distribut...

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Allegedly Squirrel Proof Bird Feeder Not Rat Proof

...t companions. I have taken steps elsewhere in the yard to reduce rats. The chicken feed gets locked up at night (the critter cam showed the rats are active between 11pm and 4am) and I try, not always successfully, to keep things neat. Back in the 90s I worked at a mouse infested TV station. We had a scale model of a set that was being built for a talk show. One of my coworkers had the bright idea to put a camera on the little set and smear it with...

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Excuses, Excuses

...I’ve been absent for awhile due to a mountain of volunteer responsibility that devolved upon me in recent weeks. Everything is okay and I’ll be back to thoughtstyling here soon. In the meantime, please enjoy this inexplicable chicken nugget intervention I spotted on a recent dog walk....

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