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June 25, 2006
It Died for Us
The debate over the quality of a lobster's life (or a chicken's) is getting hotter and stranger.
CrustaStun - the World's first humane electronic crustacean stunner
It Died for Us
Frank Bruni
NYTimes
June 25, 2006
PDF version
The Way We Live Now: Mass Natural
Michael Pollan
NYTimes
June 4, 2006
PDF version
See also Relationship Farming
David Foster Wallace Considers the Lobster > Being Bolied Hurts
Boiling Point
NYTimes Magazine
July 2, 2006
Our World Cup Edge
Going into today’s World Cup match against Ghana, no American player has managed to put a ball into the back of the net, but the U.S. team does lead the world in one vital category: college degrees.
David Brooks
NYTimes
June 22, 2006
John Updike on the end of authorship
The End of Authorship
By John Updike
NYTimes Book Review
June 25, 2006
In imagining a huge, virtually infinite wordstream accessed by search engines and populated by teeming, promiscuous word snippets stripped of credited authorship, are we not depriving the written word of its old-fashioned function of, through such inventions as the written alphabet and the printing press, communication from one person to another — of, in short, accountability and intimacy? Yes, there is a ton of information on the Web, but much of it is egregiously inaccurate, unedited, unattributed and juvenile. The electronic marvels that abound around us serve, surprisingly, to inflame what is most informally and noncritically human about us — our computer screens stare back at us with a kind of giant, instant "Aw, shucks," disarming in its modesty, disquieting in its diffidence.
PDF version
See also: Scan this book!
June 24, 2006
New Poet Laureate
Donald Hall was appointed the Library of Congress's fourteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.
At Home with U.S. poet laureate Donald Hall at Eagle Pond Farm
By JEN BANBURY
NYTimes
July 6, 2006
PDF file
Affirmation
By Donald Hall
To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.
June 19, 2006
Motorcycle Hall of Fame Class of '06
Motorcycle Hall of Fame Class of '06
Nine new members, including such notables as land-speed record holder Burt Munro, racing champion Doug Chandler and Cycle magazine editor Cook Neilson, will be inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame on Saturday, October 7, 2006.
Check out The World's Fastest Indian
Reminds me of hillclimber Earl Bowlby from Logan, Ohio.
June 17, 2006
On Malcolm Gladwell
"PEOPLE are experience rich and theory poor," the writer Malcolm Gladwell said recently. "People who are busy doing things — as opposed to people who are busy sitting around, like me, reading and having coffee in coffee shops — don't have opportunities to kind of collect and organize their experiences and make sense of them."
Malcolm Gladwell - A Profile of the Author of 'Blink' and 'The Tipping Point' - New York Times
By RACHEL DONADIO
February 5, 2006
Books are not shopping
The Art of the Deal
NYTimes Editorial
June 17, 2006
Groundbreaking Team Extends the Storytelling of Groundbreaking Novel - "Cathy's Book" . . . captures the weird coalescence of the shape-shifting culture adolescent girls live in, where the borders between advertising and literature, podcast and sitcom, novel and lipstick go unpatrolled.
Publisher Inks Product Placement Deal for Young Adult Book
Book Review Editors Asked Not to Review 'Cathy's Book'
Running Press Book Publishers :: 'Cathy's Book' Publisher Supports Authors', Reviewers' and Readers' Rights
Product Placement Deals Make Leap From Film to Books
By MOTOKO RICH
NYTimes
June 12, 2006
I hate to be a genderist, but maybe this is connected to why boys leave school not reading.
The Gender Gap at School
David Brooks
NYTimes
June 11, 2006
June 15, 2006
A Prairie Home Companion - the movie
A Prairie Home Companion
New York Times Review
June 9, 2006
NPR : Garrison Keillor: A Voice for the Movies
Radio End-of-Days
The sweet, sweet sadness of Robert Altman’s Prairie Home Companion.
By David Edelstein
New York Magazine Movie Review
Toward the end of the movie the first few lines of this poem show up:
To the Virgins, to make much of Time
GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he 's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he 's to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.
Robert Herrick. 1591–1674
Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee
By Charles J. Shields
Review by Garrison Keillor
New York Times Book Review
June 11, 2006
Video of Keillor talking about Kite-flying on the Mississippi River
A Prairie Home Companion
From American Public Media
Harvard Gazette: Garrison Keillor brings his brand of humor to PBK
June 7, 2001
June 13, 2006
Sustainability and Appropriate Technology
Journey to Forever: Hong Kong to Cape Town Overland - An adventure in environment and development, join us on the Internet, all welcome, participation, online education, school projects, free of charge
Journey to Forever is a pioneering expedition by a small, mobile NGO (Non-Government Organization) involved in environment and rural development work, starting from Hong Kong and travelling 40,000 kilometres through 26 countries in Asia and Africa to Cape Town, South Africa.
Appropriate technology - technology that fits, small is beautiful, blacksmiths, wood fires that fit, improved wood stoves, charcoal making, houses that fit, straw bale, adobe house, ramp pump, water supply
June 12, 2006
Farmer John Peterson
June 06, 2006
Strongsville Baseball #1
Strongsville rallies, wins state crown
Tim Warsinskey
Plain Dealer
June 5, 2005
Mustangs get a high five
Tim Rogers
Plain Dealer
June 6, 2006
Collapse in fifth sinks Olentangy
STRONGSVILLE 12 OLENTANGY 7
Strongsville roars back to win state final
Mark Znidar
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
June 06, 2006
June 03, 2006
Relationship Farming
The reformation of our food economy begins with people going to the trouble and expense of buying directly from farmers they know - relationship marketing - the approach Joel Salatin urges in his recent book, Holy Cows and Hog Heaven: The Food Buyer's Guide to Farm Friendly Food. Joel believes that the only meaningful guarantee of integrity is when buyers and sellers can look one another in the eye, something few of us ever take the trouble to do. Don't you find it odd that people will put more work into choosing their mechanic or house contractor than they will into choosing the person who grows their food?
Excerpted from The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
No Bar Code
By Michael Pollan
MotherJones May/June 2006
Official Website of Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm
Interview with Michael Pollan
See also: ecological footprint
Check out Michael Pollan's Writing House
June 01, 2006
SHS '86 Grad Joe Cowley
Sox rousing a sleeping giant
The plan was to tiptoe into Cleveland, let the overhyped Indians continue to sleepwalk through the season, then get out without disturbing a thing. Much to the White Sox' disappointment, however, guess who suddenly is waking up?
BY JOE COWLEY Staff Reporter
June 1, 2006
Chicago Sun-Times Sports