New Age vs. Greek Life

Gaia's Garden: A guide to home-scale permaculture, 2nd edition, by Toby Hemenway, is by far the most digestible gardening book I've read. Lots of how to's and why's mixed with a few real life applications make the denser theory bits comprehensible. I think I'll probably buy it for my reference library; unless Edible Forest Gardens is better. [The appendices and bibliography are brilliant] I found at least five other books to borrow from the library.

Warning: Not the Horror film the previews make it out to be

Shutter Island instead falls in the realm of psychothriller. I'm betting that the horror previews are at least part of the reason it took the #1 box office spot, as my gent and I wanted a good horror flick. I did find it a pleasant surprise, however. Quite as good/building from the highnote of The Departed in terms of actor's growth and being a drama that makes you think. And the cinematography kept you invested in the surreal moments. I know it was digital filtering, but the colors were so much more real during the dream sequences than any I've seen recently. Definitely recommended.

Catching up again...

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs - nice for one time through. Seeing five minutes twice over was excruciating.

Running Mycelium - Fungi are sentient stomachs. They can be used to bioengineer ecosystems. However, most of the ways to do so have been patented. Or are otherwise not allowed. Pooh.

Assault on Precinct 13 - Um, why was this movie ever made? Trite. The actors didn't even know how to fire a gun/weren't trusted with blanks! No recoil=unbelievable.

Perennial Vegetables - Gave Up. Epic fail on the part of the author. Needs some serious reorganizing to make any sense. 

Pride and Prejudice - Still working on it. About 1/3 of the way through.

I still feel like I am missing a movie.

In the past two days

I have read Carleen Madigan's The Backyard Homestead [subtitled: Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre!]. I won't be buying this one, but may check it out from the library frequently. This book overviews a whole lot without actually giving you the information you need to complete one project outlined within. 

Seriously, she misses steps egregiously. This is a case of highly specialized education forgetting that the target audience of beginners doesn't know what temperate zones are, nor how to get from roasting ?malted barley? to 'unhopped malt concentrate'. She does, however, provide some handy charts indicating how much common plants will yield in what space and how much is needed to provide all the needs of one average person, so you can figure out how much of things to grow by scale of family. [The reason I may borrow it frequently, or perhaps just see if I can get these pages on googlebooks]

If I were to classify The Backyard Homestead as a reference type, I'd call it a first two weeks of a semester book with followup books for each major section each subsequent week. I figured out what I'm interested in, now I just have to figure out how to implement these forms of self-sufficiency.

Lemonade

I don't know the backstory. Seth Godin directed me to watch Lemonade today. I did. One word: Bootstrap!