Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
Recently, I read an essay by a high school teacher, Belle Chesler, describing her plague year. Near the end she writes this: The skills and the knowledge we promote as most valuable are tied to workforce demands — not to what should count as actual life learning or growth. When you narrow achievement to what’s… Continue reading On Education
June! The month of weddings and graduations, strawberries and roses. Lavender and thyme come into bloom and lemonade stands blossom around the neighborhood. But mostly it is a month of slack. This is a between time. Planting time is winding down but harvest is not yet winding up. School is out but summer programs haven’t… Continue reading Summer Reading
I planted apple trees today. They arrived a couple weeks before we were to move. I had ordered them last summer and forgotten about them entirely. However, I had no intention of putting them in the ground that would soon be yet another past garden. Not least because I didn’t have time to do that.… Continue reading How To Start Over
I wrote this in 2017. It is still depressingly relevant. And ever more urgent. Science is not a debate. It is not a conversation between opposing points of view. It is not a balanced discussion of belief systems. Science is the refinement of factual knowledge through the application of reproducible observation and experimentation. Opinion and… Continue reading On the Myth of Debatable Science
As you are reading this, I’m moving into the first home I’ve bought. Consequentially, I’m thinking quite a bit about what home means. What it means to me, what it means in the abstract, what it means for our collective culture. Picket fence and all! Many of the common ideas about home in Euro-western culture… Continue reading Becoming Home
The problem? How do you mark this day? Most years, I don’t. I’m not Hispanic. My best friend growing up was Mayan and there were complicated feelings about Mexico related to that. I never thought there was much to celebrate. We learned in grade school that it’s a commemoration of a 19th century Mexican victory… Continue reading Cinco de Mayo
We don’t like mothers very much in this country. Yes, this Sunday is Mother’s Day, but how do you feel about that? Obligated to make a phone call, a Zoom meeting? Did you slap your head, remembering that you need to get a card and mail it today if it’s to get there in time?… Continue reading Mother’s Day
the hawthorn queen she waxes full in fertile grace queen of quick and fay, she reigns in mantle green and seemly face quelling fear and mortal pains eternal mother, ever maid undying wisdom in her glance deathless wierd is on her laid to spin th' unceasing wheel of chance again, she comes in crown of… Continue reading May Day
A Dual Book Review The Seed Keeper Diane Wilson Milkweed Editions, 2021 Hummingbird Salamander Jeff VanderMeer MCD/Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2021 Two recently released books are centered on how we save some portion of the world from ourselves. They take very different approaches in writing style, in setting and plot, in characterizations and development. But… Continue reading A Tale of Two Saviors
Turns out I had more in the reserve pile than I thought. This one was written in 2019. I am not sure why. Probably had something to do with Patrick Noble. Not to be insensitive, but you folks who are wringing your hands over the impending implosion of the Global North economic monster, quit your… Continue reading Ditch the Car
By My Solitary Hearth 