From the Mullenix homestead on the Georgia side of the Chattahoochee River, about half way up the state’s western border, Happy Independence Day to all. We’ve got four generations milling about today, all eating hotdogs, hogging the pool and chasing the borzoi around to make him drop the sunscreen. I hope everyone is spending the …
Author: Matt Mullenix
Steampunk?
Could this be the new counterculture? Someone born before 1970, help me out, here. I’m too young to have known the last one. They call it steampunk, an aesthetic and a subculture “that simultaneously embraces burlap and iPhones.” Whatever it is, I kind of like it. This more-than-retro computer keyboard first caught my eye. Then …
No-so-undiscovered tribe
The news we passed along a couple weeks ago regarding the “discovery” of an unknown rainforest tribespeople turns out to have been fabricated, somewhat. In fact, the people are real, but their existence and location have been known for 100 years. Evidently, the photographer felt it was time to give rainforest protection another PR shot …
HSUS Targets Tiny Non-research Universities in Pushover Campaign
At least, that’s the idea. Today’s Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the Humane Society of the United States has shifted the focus of its ongoing campaign to eliminate the use of animals in the nation’s research institutions by encouraging smaller, teaching-based universities to sign pledges “not to subject any research animals to ‘severe’ unrelieved …
New book, blog
Read any books written by your neighbors? I just finished “A Year Without ‘Made in China’: One Family’s True Life Adventure in the Global Economy” by Sara Bongiorni, a freelance journalist who also lives in Baton Rouge. The book was a gift from another neighbor, who I believe bought it from the author in a …
Summer Reading for Presidential Hopefuls
Tip o’ the hat to Annie Hocker (world traveller, photographer, falconer, writer) for this link to a list of books other writers suggest for each of the presidential candidates. How many have you read? Not many by me, but some, and I’m happy to say my main man Wendell Berry is suggested twice (once by …
Stuffing the Stovepipe
I’ve always loved the expression “Idaho Stovepipers.” These are the half-mad, wild men and women who don Army surplus gear and horde canned goods in the badlands of extreme northwest Idaho. They’re waiting for the Apocalypse. Too bad for you, if you’re not prepared. I have no idea how many Idaho natives or immigrants may …
More Backyard Birds
In this case, a very relaxed Harris’ hawk, fat and sassy in summer mode. I was sitting on the back porch last night reading Dan Manix’s wonderful, self-indulgent A Sporting Chance: Unusual Methods of Hunting. I’ve read the book numerous times; it was one of my early influences, neatly containing short treatises on several interests …
Fast Times
(Update: why tomatoes go quickly once they turn…) Maybe it’s me, swamped at the office and ferrying the kids around to uncounted activities, or maybe it’s life in the warm South, but hasn’t the spring sprung past us in a hurry? My “new” Harris hawk is about a year old; and just two months after …
Pursuits of Happiness
Wicken FenHelen finally came back online Monday with a revealing post in signature Pluvian style. For everyone in search of the naked self—your truest incarnation—and the way to be where it belongs, Helen’s discovery suggests it may not be so far away. Pursuit of happiness is one of our stated missions at Querencia. How many …