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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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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Los Angeles: A New Beginning

...ly conjunction of an algorithm and a raccoon. He realized it was well past time to learn to dig not learn to code. It was time to build sea walls instead of apps, bus lanes instead of battery packs, affordable housing instead of Olympic villages. With all the freeways gone he was able to make room for gardens and orchards. It was a new start. The people of LA were no longer consumers in a climate change crisis but, instead, neighbors working hard...

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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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