Embroidering the World

...its. Both Kelly and I have done some embroidery before but now we have the time to go a little deeper. Beyond being a useful skill, embroidery has something to teach us about life. What if we took back the time that we spend on our devices to make the world a more beautiful place, to “embroiderer” our cities and suburbs? Let’s extend that metaphor beyond a physical sort of embroidery and imagine embroidering this world with a little more love and...

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A Love Supreme

...s. Be wary of the mainstream media’s treatment of Sanders. The Los Angeles Times did not even bother to show up to the Sanders rally. When Joe Biden came and spoke to less than 100 people at LA Trade Tech back in November the LA Times deemed it worthy of attention. I struggled to find any wide shots of the Biden LA rally but couldn’t find any. It’s an exercise in how photographs lie. Frame a candidate tightly and it looks like there’s a lot of peo...

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In Praise of Beaters

...d. I fantasize about finding another 1994 Nissan Sentra as a sort of 1990s time travel machine to recall the days before pandemics and Instagram influencers. I imagine getting behind the wheel, spraying myself down with CK1, downing a Zima and shoving a Pearl Jam cassette in the car stereo. Except, of course, there’s no car stereo. Just your cheap, existential little self and the sound of the not at all empty road. But why buy just one 1994 Nissan...

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Random Covid Thoughts

...eaning of the word) is a symptom of the type of person who spends too much time speaking and writing and not enough time working with their hands. Find some balance brother Charles. An opera fan friend of mine let me know that the Metropolitan Opera has dropped (as the kids say) free Wagner all week. Last year I watched the Ring Cycle on YouTube in its entirety (the amazing Boulez version) and worked it into so many conversations that Kelly begged...

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New Sill Plate and Joists

...ts which took up another day that I could have spent doing the things that normally take up the time of glamorous urban homesteading bloggers in the big city such as pondering avocado toast recipes or dehydrating loquats. After much all caps thinking, I came to the conclusion that we need a kind of time traveling Dr. Who character whose sold mission would be to stop misguided remodeling projects in the past. He’d spend a lot of time in the 1960s a...

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