Monthly Archives: April 2011
FREE RANGE: FOOD, NATURE, PLACE, AND MORE
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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The Trans-Pecos: fried chicken and freshwater sharks
West Texas has been much on my mind recently, in part because Heather and I drove down to San Marcos a couple of weeks ago for a panel discussion marking the opening of an exhibition entitled Big Bend: Land of … Continue reading
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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