Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
One of the main thrusts of my thinking and writing is about home. The concept, the application, the economics and management. Recently, I’ve had reason to reconsider my relationship to home, to my home and to my idea of home. I wrote about this, I thought exhaustively, a few weeks ago; but it turns out… Continue reading Homeless
In the last few years I’ve seen a wide variety of people arrive at the conclusion that what we need as a society to avert self-destruction — self and everything else, that is — is a new religion. I’ve encountered sociologists (who might be predisposed), economists (who probably are not), celebrity chefs and actors, personal… Continue reading Gimme That Ol’ Time Religion
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
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
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
It’s time to make Hot Cross Buns! Though there are many conflicting and confounding stories about hot cross buns in the spring, I’ve never found a satisfactory explanation for why these are associated with the middle of spring and specifically with Good Friday. Yes, I know there’s the whole “holy rood” thing. Except the tradition… Continue reading Hot Cross Buns
I’ve been having a bad week. Surprisingly, I do not have a sudden urge to buy guns and use them. It’s rather unsettling that I have no doubt that I could do that. Today. Just walk across the street from my house and buy a gun from the “vintage military” dealer over there and then… Continue reading It’s Not Enough
there is a sacred spring down the lane yea, truly, though abandoned by utility desecrated by profanity there is a tiny bit of the elysian just down the lane a spring bedight in candles, coins, rags, riches scraps of superstition supplication alms and oblation just down the lane and surreptitiously they come seeking lucidity seeking… Continue reading The Clootie Tree
Here is a story that we tell ourselves. From The Good Ancestor: “Consider the immense legacy left by our ancestors: those who sowed the first seeds in Mesopotamia 10,000 years ago, who cleared the land, built the waterways and founded the cities where we now live, who made the scientific discoveries, won the political struggles… Continue reading Is Farming the Problem?
