Archives are worthless
And other winter thoughts
Not the driveway (it’s actually in worse shape being mostly ice)
It is -10F outside this morning and feels only slightly warmer inside. The world slows down at this temperature. Everything except my mind, that is, which continues to pump out terse observations that are simultaneously self-evident and revelatory. These include:
Hell is frozen. How could Christianity get that so wrong?
The great thing about a frigid house is you can stare into the refrigerator for as long as you want without worrying about all the cold escaping.
Frozen turds are easier to shovel than thawed ones.
The fact that archives are worthless popped into my head while carrying buckets of chicken manure from barn to frozen compost pile. The quality and quantity of past newsletters (going back to 2019 in my case) doesn't matter much because when potential new subscribers check out the archive, they usually read the latest post, or perhaps a very recent one with a catchy title. It’s what I do, and I’m guessing you do too. We don’t live in an archive world anymore: There is so much new stuff and we’re already overwhelmed, so we choose the newest as the best and most representative. It’s called novelty bias and it’s hard to resist.
I’ve had a sprinkle of new subscribers in the last few months (welcome!) and decided to curate a few older posts for new readers. For anyone genuinely interested in the archives, I’ve picked out a few pieces that received unusually high likes and comments, or are just personal favorites. Now I need to get back to work shoveling turds effortlessly and staring into the fridge guiltlessly. Happy reading!
For anyone fed up with the post-modern project of behavior modification through changing language:
A pretty good piece on permaculture which I don’t write about very much any more:
All the tools in the kit
It feels strange and almost wrong to be plugging away on the mundane topic of home food production while the world is increasingly being reduced to bloody rubble. It takes determination to avoid feeling like mine is a worthless pursuit, and I need to remind myself it's part and parcel of meaningful resistance to the Machine. As I wrote on my ‘About’ pag…
A bit of memoir to explain why I’m so weird:
Getting and spending
It's a late winter morning and I am donning the barn suit, an old set of coveralls possibly dating from the seventies that I inherited from my father. I'm heading to the barn to feed horses. The nights are still long, and I don't like to make them wait until daylight for their breakfast. Life is simple in this dark, quiet time before the sunrise and its…
Title says it all:
Shifting Baseline Syndrome
In my father's 100th year of life we spent lots of time driving around on local back roads. It was one of the few activities he could enjoy, Alzheimer's and a life of physical labor having taken their toll. As we traveled the hills and hollers he would often ask where all the people were, remembering earlier times when farming was the main economic acti…
And finally, some farm history:
Farm History in Brief
In 1955 my paternal grandparents moved from the northern portion of the state to the rolling hills of southeastern Ohio, where both had been born and raised. My grandfather wished to fulfill his dream of retiring to a farm and purchased 23 acres of a mixture of bottomland and terrace on a tributary of the great Ohio River.
“Hell is frozen. How could Christianity get that so wrong?” 😂 totally felt this
Yeah. You're probably right about the Archive header, especially about there being so much new stuff all of the time. Still, I always hope someone will check out the old stuff on my site. I usually read your posts in email and then I go to the comments so I really hadn't noticed how you organized things; "most popular." Maybe I should try that. I love the observation that in a cold climate it doesn't matter how long you stare into an open refrigerator! Thank goodness for small blessings! I promise I will look at the posts you highlighted today. Can't do it at the moment though. You know how it is.