Our Phoebe is gone

...think, even possible for four years. She went to the hospital a couple of times, and bounced back like a champ, even though we were sure each time that it had to be the end. We suspected she’d been given three times nine lives, or perhaps she’d stolen a bunch of extra lives from kitty heaven. Her quality of life was very good until the the last couple of weeks, despite the severity of her condition. For most of her life, to look at her you’d have...

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News From Nowhere

...for everybody; so that no man is sacrificed to the wants of another. From time to time, when we have found out that some piece of work was too disagreeable or troublesome, we have given it up and done altogether without the thing produced by it. Now, surely you can see that under these circumstances all the work that we do is an exercise of the mind and body more or less pleasant to be done; so that instead of avoiding work everybody seeks it: an...

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Changing the World One Party at a Time

Artist’s depiction of Jennie’s monthly neighborhood party. Extra points for finding our new dog in the painting. Once a month, our neighbor Jennie Cook (our guest on episode 50 of the Root Simple Podcast) hosts a cocktail party for neighbors. She started the party ball rolling by sticking handwritten invites in mailboxes up the block. Usually, around twenty people show up. I’ve come to believe that the most revolutionary acts in our lives are tho...

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From the Archives: That Time Kelly Accidentally Ate Hemlock

...be wise to avoid this family entirely. That said, Pascal tells a story of running into a group of older Armenian woman gathering hemlock. When he questioned them they explained that they boil the hemlock and change out the water multiple times to make the leaves edible. I suspect they were using the plant medicinally. Neither Pascal nor Root Simple endorse this. Happy summer foraging and watch out for the hemlock! Let us know in the comments if y...

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