A Brief History of Cat Art

July 15, 2019

...60-1849) painted a lot more than just cats. His work reached the West at a time when there was an interest in all things Japanese. Cornelius Visscher 1629-1658 was a Dutch Golden Age engraver. His 1657 print Cat Sleeping has a bit of an Albrecht Dürer vibe. Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) is the most famous of this short list of cat artists. He liked to fill the margins of his sketchbooks with cats and, as you can see from the examples above, his wor...

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Sad foot sign, the end is comin’

Mr. Homegrown

June 28, 2019

Design

2 Comments

...all seriousness, our corrupt city government does a very poor job of placemaking. The best they can do is name intersections after people with pathetic little signs posted high up on a signal. You know you’re in trouble when a podiatrist sign is a better placemaking option. Paris LA ain’t. I think we’re going to have to take things into our own hands and build our own Happy Foot Sad Foot Arc de Triomphe. One we do that the People’s Parliament of...

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Baker Creek Invites and Un-invites Cliven Bundy to Speak

Mr. Homegrown

May 1, 2019

Gardening

15 Comments

...etting people be heard, even if we disagree with their ideals. But at this time, due to security and other issues raised by many of you, all parties think it would be better to research the situation, read the information that has been sent to us by customers.[sic]” Given that an interview of Bundy, posted on Baker Creek’s blog and posted to YouTube, took place at the Nevada Southern Detention Center and noted a “nationally publicized dispute,” it...

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The Virtues of Gerard’s Herbal

Mr. Homegrown

March 29, 2019

Food, Foraging

...Queen Elizabeth. Gerard was one of the most respected plant experts of his time, but, strangely, he was not the primary author of the famous herbal that bears his name. Except for the additions of several plants from his own garden and from North America, Gerard’s herbal is simply an English translation of Dutch scholar Rembert Dodoen’s highly popular herbal of 1554. I appreciate Gerard’s (Dodoen’s?) Herbal for two reasons, first the beautiful ill...

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Rain: A Journal of Appropriate Technology

Mr. Homegrown

February 4, 2019

Appropriate Technology, Water and Power

9 Comments

...tury. Hell, we even made a stab at this when we wrote our books around the time of the 2008 economic meltdown. But somehow the allure of shiny consumer objects sends us all back into destructive spasms of consumption and waste and publications like RAIN get forgotten. Rain featured a lot of articles by E. F. Schumacher, as well as covering such topics as energy efficiency, permaculture and alternative schools. One topic I’d never thought much abou...

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