Plague Times

March 6, 2020

There are two images that keep floating around in my head in this time when we genuinely seem to have a worrisome contagion at the door. One is of the 17th century beak masks worn by plague doctors. The other is the plague infected ship in Werner Herzog’s version of Nosferatu. Thanks to a fascinating website called Vessel Finder, you can track the real life COVID-19 infected plague ship Grand Princess, which is just off the coast of San Francisco...

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Let’s Win This

Mr. Homegrown

March 2, 2020

Thoughtstylings

11 Comments

...iest February on record. In some places there was no rain at all. The last time I phone banked (reaching out to other supporters and volunteers around the country) I became overwhelmed, choked up with emotion and had to stop. What got me was the level of commitment of working people and students to this campaign–people with a lot fewer resources and time than I have. No other candidate has a ground force as committed as Senator Sanders. No other c...

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I’m Fed Up With Amazon

Mr. Homegrown

December 6, 2019

Thoughtstylings

11 Comments

...ans that I can no longer use their affiliate program on this blog. For the time being I’ve stopped adding new links to Amazon products. For years Amazon provided an ever decreasing affiliate income that, partly, pays the hosting bills for this blog and podcast. I’ve written about my ambivalence about Amazon before back in 2015 and many of you said, at the time, that you didn’t mind. I suspect, in the years since, many of you may have changed your...

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Starbucks Moderne

Mr. Homegrown

December 4, 2019

Design

2 Comments

...n and ignored, Generation X. We’re the last generation that can remember a time of lounging in curlycued, overstuffed post-modern furniture, a time before the gig-slave economy. Now we’re hunched over in misery contemplating eking by on Fiverr and Mechanical Turk while the fat-cat masked billionaires enjoy slices of pie and a cup of coffee on the way to their Eyes Wide Shut parties. Further evidence of the age of the artist or, more likely, that t...

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A Brief History of Cat Art

Mr. Homegrown

July 15, 2019

Animals, Cats

3 Comments

...oot Simple reader Annie tracked down Burbank for me. She says, I believe “Burbank” is J. M. Burbank: “A Favourite Cat” “The Gourmand” There is a bit about “A Favourite Cat” here: And this book has a section on Burbank Thanks Annie! Beyond the cat-centricness of this post, if you’re looking for a few hours to kill I can’t recommend The Studio enough. You can find the whole shebang here. Notable is how seriously the editors considered the art of cas...

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