Andrée Collier Zaleska plays guitar and mandolin, speaks Czech, loves camping, hiking, snowshoeing and swimming, and is mom to Kuba and Simon. Andree is the "practical philosopher" for the project; who muses on the bigger questions without losing track of what has to get done this week. more

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Browsing Archive: February, 2009

"The prayers of both could not be answered."

Posted by Ken Ward on Tuesday, February 17, 2009,

As the economy tailspins, President Franklin D. Roosevelt has replaced Abraham Lincoln as the favored Great President of commentators, against whom Obama is most often measured (or illuminated).

President Obama still expresses his "affinity" with Lincoln and, as we are learning about this smart and subtle man, he makes the point with small, deft gestures. Seafood stew was served for lunch on Inauguration Day, just as it was for President Lincoln.

So which is he, another Lincoln or an FDR? And w...

The Winter of Our Discontent

Posted by Ken on Wednesday, February 4, 2009,

originally posted 1/29/09

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lowered about our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

William Shakespeare, King Richard the Third

To complain that President Barack Obama is not serious enough aboutclimate strikes most U.S. environmentalists as strange, almostincomprehensible behavior. This is a time for celebration and newbeginnings and any small doubts we harbor are easily assuaged by ourconfid...

Thoureau's Casseroles

Posted by Kenneth Ward on Wednesday, February 4, 2009,

I’m fond of Thoreau, the original guru of simplicity and self-sufficiency:

“Simplicity,simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, andnot a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen,and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. In the midst of thischopping sea of civilized life, such as the clouds and storms andquicksand and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man hasto live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make hi...
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Boys in a Pasture

Posted by Ken on Wednesday, February 4, 2009,

I have three New Year's resolutions:

1. Encourage more making & doing and less computer play.
2. Have more free time with friends.
3. Homework must be fun.

Obviously,I’m a parent. At some point, resolutions aimed at improving my son Eli’s lifewill be his to decide, but as he is eight going on nine, his list is still my list.

I worry that my resolutions for Eli are defensive. I don’t seem to think in terms of helping him build upon hisnatural excitement and exuberance. Instead, I aim to prot...

The Eco-Curmudgeon Book Report

Posted by on Wednesday, February 4, 2009,

Well, I started with Thoreau, and then decided this might as well be my newhobby: reading and reviewing sustainabilty-projects through the ages,focusing eventually on all the great stuff going on now. But here's an entry that steps back nearly a century, to Helen and Scott Nearing,homesteading in Vermont....

At the heightof the Great Depression, Helen and Scott Nearing, socialists,pacifists, and misfits, left NYC for a farm in the Green Mountains ofVermont to become subsistence farmers. Here�...
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Low Carbon Indulgences

Posted by Andrée on Wednesday, February 4, 2009,

originally posted May 13, 2008

In some ways, the JP Green House is an odd project for Ken and me (that's him in the photo below, along with my two boys, Kuba (10) and Simon(7), on the left, and Ken's boy Eli (8) peeking over his dad's shoulder; I'm the brightly colored one. We're all looking a bit scruffy after a week camping at Ponkapoag in the Blue Hills).

We both strongly oppose the notion that any real progress on global warming can be achieved by individual pledges to change our light b...
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« Back to posts

Browsing Archive: February, 2009

"The prayers of both could not be answered."

Posted by Ken Ward on Tuesday, February 17, 2009,

As the economy tailspins, President Franklin D. Roosevelt has replaced Abraham Lincoln as the favored Great President of commentators, against whom Obama is most often measured (or illuminated).

So which is he, another Lincoln or an FDR? And w...

The Winter of Our Discontent

Posted by Ken on Wednesday, February 4, 2009,

originally posted 1/29/09

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lowered about our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

William Shakespeare, King Richard the Third

Thoureau's Casseroles

Posted by Kenneth Ward on Wednesday, February 4, 2009,

Boys in a Pasture

Posted by Ken on Wednesday, February 4, 2009,

I have three New Year's resolutions:

I worry that my resolutions for Eli are defensive. I don’t seem to think in terms of helping him build upon hisnatural excitement and exuberance. Instead, I aim to prot...