Category Archives: Agriculture

Exclusive! Now Revealed-The Secret Struggle to Create National Guacamole Day

Happy Monday!

It’s true: for decades (well, at least since 2013), Guacamole only gained national recognition indirectly, via National Avocado Day, which was set for July 31 by the self-anointed authority of the National Day Calendar.

The Calendar’s tireless band of curators hovers above the rest of the nation from their headquarters in the cultural center of Mandan, North Dakota (the jewel of Bismarck’s storied suburban west side), and continually updates their roster. Continue reading Exclusive! Now Revealed-The Secret Struggle to Create National Guacamole Day

Coming Tomorrow from “Tell It Slant”: Fighting for a Future

Wednesday June 12, I’ll post the first in a series of excerpts from Tell It Slant, the new biography of Chuck Fager by Emma Lapsansky-Werner.

It’s a story of life in “interesting times,” and begins with two of its main motifs — religion and war — shaping lives and events.

Watch  for  it  on this page.

(An initial post from June 10 is here.)

“CHUCK: It had been several years. When I arrived, my grandfather Fager was sitting in a simple rocking chair, on the small lawn in front of their tiny post-farm retirement cottage, in St. Paul, Kansas.

Lanky and taciturn, he wore much-faded overalls and a white straw fedora pushed back from his forehead. He rose to greet me, and said, “Hello Charles. Haven’t seen you in a day or two.”

Then he sat back down, began to rock slowly, and pulled out a pocketknife.

Unfolding the blade, he plucked a small dark stick from beside the chair and began to whittle it into curled fragments that skittered across his overalls down into the green grass. Sereta bustled back and forth from the house, and often made comments, but usually referred my queries to him.

It was not a productive conversation. To almost every question, his answer was the same, like a mantra, and this is it in full . . . .”

We Interrupt Your Jury Vigil for An Urgent Bulletin on — Canadian Tulips!

Prince Edward Island, Atlantic Canada

The  Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has reported that the end is near —

Tulips-purple-PEI

—for the annual crop of tulips in this small but historic province:

“For full bloom and perfect photos, visit around May 25th or later. Tulip season typically lasts about 21 days and is projected to end by June 10th. Bloom percentages are 25-40% from May 18-24, 50-80% from May 25-31, and full bloom from June 1-10, though the season’s end is nearing. Continue reading We Interrupt Your Jury Vigil for An Urgent Bulletin on — Canadian Tulips!

Two Views: Canada, India & An “Inconvenient” Assassination?

Nicholas Kristof
Nicholas Ktistof

Father’s Day this year, two heavyset men were loitering near a Sikh temple in British Columbia. Then the president of the temple, a Canadian citizen and an activist named Hardeep Singh Nijjar, stepped out and climbed into his pickup truck to drive home for dinner with his family.

The two waiting men, wearing masks, fired through Nijjar’s window about a dozen times. Temple members bravely ran after the gunmen, who escaped in a getaway car driven by a third man.

Continue reading Two Views: Canada, India & An “Inconvenient” Assassination?

Quotes of the Day: Chickens, Boomers & the Python, and an Astronomer who Sees the End of Our Universe

Quotes (Today, all from The Washington Post)

On Backyard chickens:

“Which reminds me: Everything imaginable will try to eat your chickens. Depending on where you live, you’ll have to protect your flock from hawks, raccoons, weasels, coyotes, wolves, dogs, foxes and even hungry bears. . . . Continue reading Quotes of the Day: Chickens, Boomers & the Python, and an Astronomer who Sees the End of Our Universe