If you live upstairs with no elevator, how will you bring home heavy stuff if your body won't tolerate carrying extra weight as you climb the stairs? Here's a solution using ordinary household items.
How to Make Grapes and Berries Last Longer
This simple method makes a whole batch of berries or grapes ready to eat when you bring them home and keeps them fresh a few days longer.
Reading My Way into 2021
A Trick of the Light. No More Dying Then. Ask Again, Yes. A Circle of Quiet. The Trouble with Goats and Sheep.
Looking Back at 2020 with The Earthling’s Handbook
This year's 4 most popular articles offer practical guidance for people trying to use resources wisely and keep their sanity while staying home. I also wrote a series of articles about the pandemic, discovered some new recipes, and reviewed a lot of books.
Homemade Stuffing with Roasted Apples, Mushrooms, and Onions (Vegan)
Use up your stale bread and less-appealing apples in this festive side dish for your holiday feast or to add a spirit of thanksgiving to any meal.
Catching Up on Book Reviews
Small Animals. The Marvelous Land of Oz. Started Early, Took My Dog. The Trespasser. Kind of Kin.
A Robot’s Cookbook, Chapter 5
This dish, and some slices of skirt of vanilla sugar, are going to two hard-boiled eggs sprinkled with the size of flour; cook it all over to get cold. Beat the jelly with some chopped orange-peel, rub it strongly, plunge it in a good fire, and when it is cold, break into squares cut into a purée.
Say Goodbye to Plastic book review
This room-by-room guide gives great tips for noticing plastic in your lifestyle and finding alternatives. Even busy families can make choices that cut 3/4 of their plastic garbage!
Kitchen Shoes: Stay on Your Feet While Cutting Down Dirt!
We've always been a "shoes off at the door" household. Not tracking outdoor dirt into our home reduces our exposure to germs, allergens, and environmental toxins--and it saves time on sweeping, mopping, and vacuuming! The downside is that standing for long periods on bare feet or sock feet can cause aching in the feet, legs, … Continue reading Kitchen Shoes: Stay on Your Feet While Cutting Down Dirt!
Sorry I haven’t written much; I’ve been enumerating the Census in a pandemic.
After years of working with data from the United States Census to help study the effect of growing up in a high-crime neighborhood on young men's criminal careers, now I have the honor of collecting Census data in the field! For the past six weeks, I've been an enumerator, one of those people who knocks … Continue reading Sorry I haven’t written much; I’ve been enumerating the Census in a pandemic.
School Lunches for Distance Learning
You might think kids doing distance learning don't need "school lunches"--but our kids showed us in the spring that they need more structure.
Calculating the Midpoint of Time
Games are great for practicing our ability to follow rules and compete fairly--but sometimes, we learn by breaking the rules. Join my 6-year-old, dinosaurs, Time Repair Agents, and Christmas carolers on board a ship in the year 345....
Get Out of the Car! Pandemic Edition
Nowhere to go these days? Take a walk for exercise and enjoy all the things you can't see from your windows! Photos from an evening stroll in Pittsburgh.
What to Read During a Pandemic
This is hardly a comprehensive list of what's best to read while staying home and staying safe--but some of these books turned out to be applicable to our current situation! Now that we've been enduring locked-down life for four months, I'm thinking that the next book to read now has one or more of these … Continue reading What to Read During a Pandemic
Bricks and Balloons
Food Fix is a book published at the right time: It went to press before coronavirus hit the United States, yet without mentioning the pandemic at all, it explains very clearly how the problems with our global food system addressed in this book are worsening the spread of the virus and its deadly effects! Read … Continue reading Bricks and Balloons
Spring Flowers and Ex-Boyfriends
This is something I've been thinking about all through this strange springtime when, despite being home so much more than normal, we are in fact allowed to go outside, to walk all over everywhere, to enjoy the flowers in everyone else's yards as well as our own gardens. Twenty-one years ago, when Daniel and I … Continue reading Spring Flowers and Ex-Boyfriends
Black Lives Matter…but what can YOU do about it?
This is a guest post by Anaïs Peterson, a Pittsburgh-area social-justice advocate. She wrote this on Facebook on June 3, and I am reposting it here to spread this information to people who choose not to use Facebook. I have not looked into all these resources personally. This post is aimed at people who want … Continue reading Black Lives Matter…but what can YOU do about it?
Finding the Right Herbal Tea for This Moment
Oh, here we are in the middle of a pandemic and frantic efforts to end racial injustice and police brutality--and I'm talking about what kind of tea to drink?! Yes, I am. This is not my first round of lifestyle disruption and suddenly being stuck at home with a lot to worry about--and over the … Continue reading Finding the Right Herbal Tea for This Moment
Pandemic Perspective: A Pail of Air
About ten days ago, I read my newly six-year-old Lydia a science fiction short story that she's since asked her father, older brother, and me to read again and again. It's available free to read online: "A Pail of Air" by Fritz Leiber. My father read this story to me many times, beginning one night … Continue reading Pandemic Perspective: A Pail of Air
Sweet Potato Soup with Beans, Kale, and Garlic
This wasn't my recipe originally, but it's been one of my favorite soup recipes for more than a decade! Now that the "365 Days of Kale" blog where I found it is gone, I'm sharing the recipe here, with a few tweaks I've made over the years. This hearty soup makes a full meal--maybe you'll … Continue reading Sweet Potato Soup with Beans, Kale, and Garlic
The Earthling's Handbook 