Here are the local puzzle pieces that we somehow need to fit together: great farms; committed, hard working farmers; a university of world class researchers; a highly participatory local political system; obesity; unemployment; lack of food processing capacity; plentiful fresh food that doesn’t reach our plates; farmers going out of business; and fundraisers to buy farmland that people can’t farm.

I kick her out of doors with an amorous foot applied to a splendid bottom. What a lucky foot!

I know what Jesus would do: hate the car, love the car driver.

Their language is hopeful and would be recognizable to any tobacco farmer of the last hundred years. But now they are talking about food.

Raise a glass of dandelion wine to the dreamy kid from Waukegan, Illinois, who today becomes a nonagenarian. Herewith my appreciation of Bradbury from a while back: http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2009/06/ray-bradbury-of-illinois/

Maybe the real question is whether we careerists are content to put our own personal “gains” ahead of the losses of many others, including our children’s.

Do you ever long for the place of your childhood? Does it still exist?

Gossip, under the right circumstances, acts as a virtue which demonstrates concern and thickens social ties.

My review of Howard Mansfield’s Turn & Jump is in today’s Wall Street Journal.

It is a great loss that so many people—and they are usually considered very “successful”—raise their children in the absence of their extended families.

Economics has become a totalizing system claiming the power to explain all things. It is as much a religious system—by another name—as is Berry’s Great Economy.

It is generally the case, near as I can tell, that women were created mainly to keep men from enjoying themselves too much over the cigars.

But should the storm clouds of summer move in suddenly, as they are sometimes wont to do, an inky red wine will answer to this simple meal of bread, tomatoes, garlic, basil, cheese, salt, pepper, and olive oil.

We do love our abstractions. That much is sure. They come fully equipped with the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air.

I’m curious. Would you sleep with me for a million bucks?

The prevailing model of local voting has deep defects, which often work against strong communities. The modern standard is one person, one vote, one place. While this standard is simple, it leads to outcomes that run against common sense.

I prefer the waiter at Galatoire’s who told us to avoid the trout because it wasn’t very good that day. That’s useful information. But it’s simply impossible to imagine a waiter at this other place telling you to avoid the Tasmanian King Salmon.

Burgers and fries and sun dresses and pale ale and summer reading on the brain and the buzz of human life!