Author Archives: Heather

FREE RANGE: FOOD, NATURE, PLACE, AND MORE

Food science: Mark Bittman, Michael Pollan, and the Old Testament

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Heather

When I was in seminary, my Old Testament professor Michael Floyd spent some considerable time and effort trying to disabuse us students of the thought that we were somehow more spiritually advanced than our ancient Israelite ancestors who codified the … Continue reading →

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Silos: my beef with Freeman Dyson

Posted on July 15, 2011 by Heather

I have a bone to pick with Freeman Dyson, professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and generally acknowledged scientific genius. I bet he’s really nervous. On a recent trip to Aspen, I picked up The Best … Continue reading →

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Field notes from Madroño Ranch: bison and birds

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Heather

This is a bird-and-bison-intensive kitchen sink of a blog post; even Martin’s most focused editorial ministrations will be of no avail in trying to flush out some kind of narrative thread. To lend it at least an illusion of coherence, … Continue reading →

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Signs of the times: billboards, property rights, and the Enlightenment

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Heather

I’ve noticed on the highways between Austin and Medina a creeping excrescence of billboards. They pop up even in and near Johnson City, so close to the LBJ Ranch, which was the home of Lady Bird Johnson, the force behind … Continue reading →

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Gratuitous beauty

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Heather

Our friend John Burnett recently returned from a trip to Japan, one of a handful of places he’d never been in a long career as a reporter for NPR. As a specialist in the American Southwest and Latin America, he … Continue reading →

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Learning to listen, and love

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Heather

I have a new role model: Steve Nelle, a wildlife biologist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, an arm of the USDA, in San Angelo. Martin and Madroño Ranch’s redoubtable manager Robert and I went to hear him speak about … Continue reading →

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The power of poetry: peace, demons, sonnets, and resurrection

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Heather

Something that might seem fragile—a group of words arranged on a page—turns out to be indestructible. (Ed Hirsch) Sometimes—maybe even often—I wonder why in heaven’s name it ever seemed like a good idea to open a residency for environmental writers … Continue reading →

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Dorothea Brooke, Big Ag, and Betty Friedan

Posted on April 8, 2011 by Heather

I’m a lousy housewife, which, in my initial phase of housewifery, is exactly what I aspired to be. Not for me the bourgeois passion for clean baseboards and orderly closets, especially after graduate school in literature in the mid-1980s, in … Continue reading →

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Tragic waste: some thoughts on the s-word

Posted on March 25, 2011 by Heather

Michael Pollan notes in The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Mealsthat industrial agriculture has taken an elegant solution—crops feed animals, whose manure in turn fertilizes crops—and “divide[d] it into two new problems: a fertility problem on the farm… … Continue reading →

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Lenten reflections: dead trees, bafflement, and submission

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Heather

Fittingly, this Ash Wednesday began with a vigorous north wind, the kind that knocks dead branches out of trees and can make you a little leery about walking outdoors. It blew me back to the moment that I first got … Continue reading →

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