Category Archives: More
FREE RANGE: FOOD, NATURE, PLACE, AND MORE
Learning to listen, and love
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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Tagged Adam Gopnik, cedar, Charles Darwin, compassion, earthworms, H. L. Mencken, Karen Armstrong, Texas Hill Country
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Bivalves and F-bombs: happy birthday, Dad!
My father, Franz Kohout, turns eighty-six tomorrow. He is, I believe, a world-class eccentric—an opinion, I should add, shared by many. He still lives on Nob Hill in San Francisco, a half block down California Street from Grace Cathedral, in … Continue reading
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Tagged bivalves, F-bombs, Le Pétomane, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, Santiago de Compostela
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The power of poetry: peace, demons, sonnets, and resurrection
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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Tagged Ed Hirsch, Holy Week, Naomi Shihab Nye, poetry, Round Top, violence, war, William Stafford
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Dorothea Brooke, Big Ag, and Betty Friedan
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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Tagged agribusiness, farming, feminism, George Eliot, Harper's, Wendell Berry
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Lenten reflections: dead trees, bafflement, and submission
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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Tagged bafflement, Dai Due, feral hogs, hunting, Lent, limits, submission, Texas Hill Country, Wendell Berry
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"If you got a field that don’t yield": writer’s block and the language of community
Isa Catto Shaw’s show at the Doug Casebeer, with whom she shared the show, each spoke movingly about the impetus behind their individual efforts. Knowing that she had been working like a madman for several months, I was glad (and … Continue reading
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Tagged community, Isa Catto Shaw, Jessica Hobby Catto, Rainer Maria Rilke, Wendell Berry, writing
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Shooting holes in the Constitution: some thoughts on guns and violence
Recently, like many Americans, I’ve been thinking about the issue of guns in civil society. The tragic shooting in Tucson certainly focused attention on the topic, as did a story on National Public Radio that identified the United States as … Continue reading
Singing in the dark
The relentless sunshine of the current weather here in Austin might make those in the Midwest or on the East Coast sigh with envy. A photo on the front page of Tuesday’s New York Times shows an Ohio man ineffectually … Continue reading
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Tagged Advent, chupacabra, darkness, Joy Howard, Lent, tohu-bohu, Wendell Berry
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