OK - I Get It. You Miss Me.
Ever-humbled by the number of emails I receive when my posts go on a hiatus, a feeling compounded by the inexplicable number of hits to the site over the last week-or-so via google searches related to topics of editorial explication, I post to let you know I am still kicking and screaming, albeit quietly and perhaps without much bodily motion.
Yes, I'm still here. And no, I haven't forgotten about you, gentle readers, or the food crisis globally or the so-called Farm Bill or the Presidential election or any of the other stuff going on around us.
And I would like to say that I've been hard at work putting out the garden, that I've been busy installing solar panels on the roof, or even that I've been distracted by work on my new book, Propelled to the Local Market. Unfortunately, none of that is even remotely true, with the only sliver of fact being that while my contributions have been almost nonexistent, we do have a garden growing, exclusively the result of Mrs. Deliberately's hard work.
No, nothing so important as that. Just busy with many things, smaller things. But things that will grow into items for the blog. So in lieu of a punch-list of current affairs, short of an all-and-out tirade on the state of our society, a simple to-do list will give you a sense of what I've been up to:
1. I'm learning to make wine. Something I've always wanted to do, and a way of linking another part of our household consumption to the community. With all the strawberries coming in right now I'm excited at the prospect of being able to bottle some of that spring essence and enjoy it later in the year.
2. I'm supporting my local farmers market. While we're fans of markets of all makes and models, we specifically support the Memphis Farmers Market as our primary weekly shopping-trip. Not only that, but we partner financially to support the market's growth. One change coming this year is the addition of monthly market-inspired restaurant dinners where local chefs create stunning meals from their Saturday visits.
3. I'm reading. Currently Mrs. Deliberately and I are going through Richard T. Wright's textbook Environmental Science together in an effort to better school ourselves on the bigger picture of the environmental picture on the globe today. Like so many others we watched An Inconvenient Truth a couple of years back and were aghast that so much scientific fact was unfamiliar to us. So we're going back and making sure we can not only espouse our beliefs, but argue them effectively.
4. I'm reading more. In parallel to the above, I'm also immersed in James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency. His new novel, A World Made By Hand was a good, quick read, even granted the mixed reviews it's gotten on the sexual roles it envisions in a post-Peak Oil future. But the book I'm reading now is not fiction, but rather the true story of a oil-drunk world and the likely demise of that position, and the book is absolutely fascinating (and terrifying). Much like our approach to the Environmental Science text, this is one I will be spending more time with as I work to make sure I not only fully understand the argument, but can actually vocalize it myself.
5. I'm disinvesting. Like so many Americans, I grew up in an environment where success was defined, in many cases, by the amount of stuff acquired. But now I've gotten to the point where success, for us, is about the quality and durability of the things we need to live a good, honest life. So we're going through our stuff and disinvesting where it's not consistent with our goals. And that means converting some of that stuff to more important items, like the supplies we need for our home canning adventure that begins later in the summer.
And there's more, of course, because I'm incorrigible. But it does mean that I haven't been writing lately, for this blog or for future potential contributions to The Ethicurean or Edible Memphis Magazine. The good news? Pretty soon I'll wake up brutally early one morning and have a lot to say on these and other topics, and if you keep stopping by you'll get an earful!
In the meantime, check the archives, and if in doubt, click on "books" in the categories list and read a review. Or go pick up any Wendell Berry book you haven't yet read, then read it.
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