Jacob’s stepmother is from Thailand, and grows a truly astonishing amount of (primarily Thai) vegetables in a beautiful upland garden here in Hawaii. Here is one part of the green papaya forest, with Thai chile plants in the foreground. One morning we volunteered to help harvest chilies.
Just a few links for this lazy holiday week:
Blogreader Orlande pointed these out months before, but MY GOD! SO ADORABLE! Handmade vegan shoes. I’ll take one pair of each, please!
There is something beautiful and calming about a three-star New York Times review (beware: intense non-veganism at that link) even of a restaurant I will never, ever go to. Maybe this means that I’m a bad anarchist because deep down I value standards and being judged. Luckily, I am on vacation and am not going to think about it that deeply.
The chilies are HOT.
Oh dear this little French girl is cute. Just ludicrous.
Sometimes, as a subversive sort of “fuck you” to health food freakers, and because it looks so fun, I tell myself I want to get into intense sugar work like this or this or this. The desire always passes…but I hope that one day it doesn’t. In ten years, I’d love to have given myself over to the world of refined, refined sugar in all its glory.
Here’s a fascinating read about the real-life world of a non-supermodel model (since my favorite secret guilty pleasure blog, Elyse Sewell’s brilliant Livejournal, is apparently defunct, I apparently have a vacant spot for jaded ex-model stories).
This is her last batch, being sun-dried to a toasty crisp. She cooks with a LOT of chilies.
Two bits of local outrage to end with:
First, what is UP with this freaking New Paltz Middle School MADNESS? How can people who are against the renovation not understand that a) it has to be done, for the safety of “the children! the CHILDREN!!” and that b) it will cost much more down the line, if we don’t do it now? I’m so confused. Is it the same old boys network freaks who wanted to build a completely new school? Do they even understand the math at all, or are they just 100% corrupt? Either way, they certainly have a lot of cash—$800 ads in the NPT every week, really? I’m not very coherent on the whole thing, obviously, but School Board member KT Tobin Flusser is, so go read what she has to say.
Second, our blogreader pal Dan recently pointed out, in a well-written letter to our erstwhile local rag the New Paltz Times, that this whole natural gas drilling thing is a giant fiasco that threatens the very survival of our beloved Catskills.
This appears to be the next big battle in my neck of the woods between capitalism and the continuation of our local ecosystem, and I’ve been steadily ignoring the horribleness that is looming ever closer. The worst aspect of the war to come, it seems to me, is that it really pits us (mostly middle-class, let’s admit it) environmentalists against mostly working-class (if such a thing was permitted to exist anymore, which it’s really not) people who see the quick cashy allure of letting the very land under their feet be drilled (by such upstanding companies as….Halliburton!). This pollutes drinking water (and it’s not like all of NYC depends on upstate for their drinking water or anything…) and puts their houses at risk for fun things like exploding—but it does give some cash-strapped homeowners some desperately-needed dollars.
It’s a mess from top to bottom, and the very thought of stopping it is so daunting it makes me want to breathe into a paper bag. But stop it we must. And so we shall.
Dan points out CatskillMountainKeeper.org as the place to go for outrage/info/action.
Also, Dan? We’ve never met, but someone just told me you’re David Porter’s son? The David Porter who almost single-handedly defeated Wal-Mart in NP? I’m so in love with your dad!!! This makes me want to have a little New Paltz-Resistance is Fertile blog meet up thingie! Just you and me and Brittany and KT. And ol’ what’s-his-name! Um….maybe not.





















You know what’s crazy??