I keep thinking of a comment Joel Salatin made in Yes Magazine once, about how Americans have become used to thinking of our homes as centers of consumption, but how once, thinking of your home as a center of production...was the norm.I particularly like this definition of productivity: the willingness to substitute patience, skill, and thrift for consumption.
Saturdays at home have become very productive days. And that productivity--the willingness to substitute patience, skill, and thrift for consumption--I've come to think of as a species of farming.
Take a look.Note from the amanuensis: This story was originally published eleven years ago via email to The Crone Thread listserv, back in January of 2000, when the amanuensis was still in library school, before the move to Florida. A lot of water has flowed over the bridge—or under the dam, or something—since then.
At the time, the story began with the following Disclaimer:
Walhydra is a crone of unspeakable age, who, in her own cantakerous way, does her best to deal with her present incarnation as me: a 49-year-old, gay male would-be writer. She insists that I explain this, because she doesn't like sharing the blame—though she doesn't have much choice, being, as she is, my muse.
The first day of autumn came and went as decreed by the cosmos, but around here summer didn’t get the memo. The heat wave that began some two months ago is still enjoying itself thoroughly, lolling on the beach, gleaming on the Alpine peaks, bringing joy to the daring hoteliers who risked staying open and not unconsiderable damage to the farmers.Erla's I am not Making This Up: My Life in Real Venice, and More is always entertaining and visually beautiful. This latest post is—despite the complaints about the heat—full of stories and pictures of luscious food.
It was the hottest September on record; on average, nearly 3 degrees above the norm. In Piemonte, Torino registered 30 degrees C (86 degrees F), a September temperature it hasn’t felt since 1753. Rainfall has become a distant memory.
The farmers are not amused.
October's Bright Blue Weather
Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885)
O SUNS and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather;
When loud the bumblebee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless vagrant,
And goldenrod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;
When gentians roll their fingers tight
To save them for the morning,
And chestnuts fall from satin burrs
Without a sound of warning;
When on the ground red apples lie
In piles like jewels shining,
And redder still on old stone walls
Are leaves of woodbine twining;
When all the lovely wayside things
Their white-winged seeds are sowing,
And in the fields still green and fair,
Late aftermaths are growing;
When springs run low, and on the brooks,
In idle golden freighting,
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush
Of woods, for winter waiting;
When comrades seek sweet country haunts,
By twos and twos together,
And count like misers, hour by hour,
October's bright blue weather.
O sun and skies and flowers of June,
Count all your boasts together,
Love loveth best of all the year
October's bright blue weather.
