Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
An informal letter of resignation which nobody will ever read. And a general polemical complaint which nobody will ever care about. I’m not a miracle worker. And they want a miracle. No. It’s worse than that. They need, we need, a miracle. We need a spontaneous and very specific genetic mutation. Now. Yesterday. Twenty years… Continue reading Corn Futures
Every religion needs its mythos. I wrote this one a while ago and posted it last year. It seems a good day to share it again. Eve Eve woke up with the birds each morning. The piping and burbling of thousands of little brown birds in the reeds, so numerous in kind they’d not even… Continue reading An EarthCraft Origin Story
I’ve been an armchair archeologist/anthropologist for most of my life. I’ve always had a fascination with deep history. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to tease out the Story of Us not mediated through the words of the privileged few; and deep history, pre-history, is where you find the story before it was broken. Further, when… Continue reading Gatherers
An informal letter of resignation which nobody will ever read. And a general polemical complaint which nobody will ever care about. I’m not a miracle worker. And they want a miracle. No. It’s worse than that. They need, we need, a miracle. We need a spontaneous and very specific genetic mutation. Now. Yesterday. Twenty years… Continue reading Corn Futures
I am engaged in building a future for my kids out of this mess of a present, largely created by my parents' generation. One of the most wearing aspects of this project is not giving in to despair. Merely seeing what might be good — or even survivable — is difficult. So from time to… Continue reading Lughnasadh 2041
My grandmother was born over a century ago in Ireland. We don’t know where. She would never say. She and her twin sister were adopted by the Daleys of Chicago. She changed from foundling to heiress as she crossed the Atlantic. Her name and her ancestors were abandoned on the quay — and she was… Continue reading My Grandmother’s Hands
It’s the Strawberry Moon. Strawberries ripen around the summer solstice. So with just a modestly sized strawberry patch, you can pick a pint or two a day this time of year. Strawberries are so easy to grow, so productive, so magical. And there is nothing for sale in the supermarket that comes close to a… Continue reading Strawberry Shortcake
(Or Eat the Damn Deer) Deer droppings This week the garden finally thawed out. I can see the grass and soil and the lower trunks of trees again for the first time in months. And right along with that, I see enough deer droppings to cover an acre in an inch-thick layer. I know this… Continue reading New England Ecology
Eve woke up with the birds each morning. The piping and burbling of thousands of little brown birds in the reeds, so numerous in kind they’d not even managed to name them all. The deep thrum of the lake birds rising in unison, swirling around Eve’s camp on the edge of the marshland in vast… Continue reading Eve
It's time to make some healthy and warm ballast for the belly — Winter Chile Stew.
By My Solitary Hearth 