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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In Praise of Backward Compatibility

...n’t work in our neighborhood (thanks for not letting me know that ahead of time!). In the end I was forced to switch to Time Warner for slightly better and equally expensive service. Our overseas readers should know this is common in the U.S., that we pay a lot of money for poor telecommunications services. But the electromechanical geek in me had a delightful surprise. Either Time Warner or the folks who designed the modem Time Warner provides ha...

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Our new front yard, part 5: Constructing a meadow community

...w more about spreadsheets, because more functionality would have helped at times–like, being able to arrange the list by bloom time or color or whatnot. But I was content enough just to have it all in one place in standardized columns. Anyway, for the seasonal interest plants, I was keeping my eye out for any native plant which had strong insect or bird appeal, and which was relatively small. My slope is not big, so if I wanted a diversity of spec...

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Root Simple Reader Survey Results

...t on the blog in a positive way. Unfortunately, the podcast takes a lot of time. We have to book guests, conduct the interview and spend, on average, four to five hours editing. It looks like we could step back to one podcast every other week instead of every week. That will give us more time for the blog. It would be a lot easier for the Root Simple PR department if we just stuck to one topic like, say, chicken health or DIY lotion making. That’s...

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On the 100th Birthday of Our House: The Past and Future of Housing in the U.S.

...commodity and convenience has become the oil that lubricates the wheel of time, allowing more activities, to take place either at one time in the same place (i.e. using the cellular car phones while driving), or in a particular time period but in a different place (i.e. doing grocery shopping, while dishes or clothes are machine washed). In the book, The Overworked American, 1991, Juliet Schor suggests that “U.S. employees currently work 320 more...

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