I am not shy about using the saltshaker, and neither I nor anyone else in my family has any sort of problem with blood pressure. That’s because we mostly don’t eat things that come out of packages or from fast-food places (where someone else takes them out of packages) and the salt that is a problem in the North American diet doesn’t come from the saltshaker but from the extreme levels of sodium in packaged foods. But you will never... Read more
1. The premise feels phony and staged: Pollan has said that he is “more at home in the garden than the kitchen” (In Defense of Food), but this modesty about his cooking skills is less than convincing to those who read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, in which he prepared a highly local meal of wild pork cooked two ways, bread leavened with wild yeasts he captured himself, and a sour cherry galette with fruit from Pollan’s own trees. This same odd... Read more
{see also: 5 Timeless Books of Insight on Fear and the Creative Process The Paris Review “Art of Fiction” Interview with Marilynne Robinson} Read more
My friend Karen Swallow Prior has an award-winning essay up at Christianity Today’s This is Our City project called “How I Learned to Love my Literal Neighbor.” I told her it reminded me of this old Peanuts strip: Here’s just a taste of Karen’s essay: “Both of us had been raised in the country, in fact. So living on a lot the size of a postage stamp in a sea of mass-produced buildings stacked up against each other—even the small... Read more
Get it while the deal is still on! Read more
I don’t like goodbyes. For years, when my mother and I are about to say goodbye–when the visit is drawing to a close, say, or one of us (why is it always me?) is about to take off on a new adventure–we have picked inane fights with one another. We are quite expert at inane arguments. My dad once happened upon us in the kitchen, debating passionately, even Talmudically about seltzer. Yes. Sparkling water. Seltzer. Fighting about it. With religious... Read more
My dad used to tell a joke from the pulpit, back when “damn” was a much stronger word in evangelical/fundamentalist circles than it is now. It went roughly like this: “Millions of people die every day from preventable causes without ever having heard about Jesus’ love, and most of you don’t give a damn, and most of you are probably more worried about the fact that I said ‘damn’ than about the fact that millions of people die daily from... Read more
I think this image really is worth at least a thousand words, which is the maximum recommended length for blog posts anyway–don’t you? (Yes–I am trying to get in some unplugged time of my own. Welcome to the magic of pre-scheduled blog posts. Here’s hoping you get some time and space and peace in your day.) As always, image courtesy My Awesome Dad. Read more
Imagine: you have been waiting a long time for a surprise. You know that it is coming, but not what, exactly, it will be. But you have a lot of time to think about it, so you have started to imagine just what it will be. A expensive gift, a lavish vacation, or even a promotion at work. Or maybe just a really great party, thrown in your honor. But when the day of the surprise comes, it is not... Read more
Rachel Marie Stone
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