This is Part Two of the How To Be Poor introduction. Read Part One and Part Three. In this introduction and in the coming series of How To Be Poor posts, you’ll find that I’m arguing for voluntary poverty, as opposed to voluntary simplicity. This is deliberate. I don’t advocate for voluntary simplicity, at least not [...]
Archive for January 2012
How To Be Poor: An Argument for Voluntary Poverty — Part Two 19 comments
How To Be Poor: An Argument for Voluntary Poverty — Part One 29 comments
This is Part One of the How To Be Poor introduction. Read Part Two and Part Three. We face an uncertain future. I may sound like a broken recording in saying this again and again, but it’s true. We find ourselves having recently passed peak conventional oil, soon to pass peak liquids fuels, and facing down [...]
Small Thoughts 19 comments
This may end up being a recurring series on this blog, or more likely it will be a one off occurrence. I want, simply, to write out a series of small thoughts I’ve had in the last two days and provide them for comment, consideration, or even contempt, should these provoke such a response. (I [...]
A Matter of Responsibility 12 comments
I love snow. It’s something we don’t get very often here in the Northwest. When we do get it, it tends to be of the hit-the-ground-and-melt variety. An inch or two is significant for us—this isn’t the Midwest we’re talking about here. So it’s a special day when we get any sort of decent accumulation. [...]
A Matter of Habit 15 comments
I am very good at avoiding work. I think many of us are. I don’t say that to absolve myself, because this is one of my key challenges and I don’t intend to avoid the responsibility of it. Further, I know people who are very good at diving into work and busting their ass. I [...]
The Antidote to Fear 13 comments
“The only antidote to fear I know is good work. I learned in pregnancy, facing labor (all of my labors were very, very, very long), to simply screw up my nerve, accept that the only way out is through, and to go forward into the pain. We’re in the same situation now—the way out of [...]
A New Year’s Plan: Death, Poverty and the Household Economy 14 comments
Revisiting Old Fermentation Projects 9 comments
Today marked my first day off from working since I returned to the farm. As such, today has been more relaxed. I’ve been puttering around the farm, having a decadent and leisurely breakfast of french toast and bacon, doing some relaxed reading, a bit of cleaning, preparing dough to bake bread later this evening, and [...]
Returning Home 12 comments
Monday evening, I returned home. In literal terms, this only entailed pulling up the farm’s gravel driveway in my car, coming back from about a week and a half spent in Portland celebrating the holidays with family and friends. Yet, it was more than that. Stepping out of the car, I heard the creek from [...]
