Saturday January 8 was the first indoor Dane County Farmers’ Market of 2011, and more excitingly, the first Taste of the Market Breakfast of the New Year. As per usual, the serving line threatened to spill out into the 20 degree morning air.
A dishwasher insinuated itself into our lives when we bought a house that came with one in 1986. With a family of four, a job and grad school, I was grateful for every minute of kitchen work saved. Our next house had one too, and it was again a great […]
The US Federal Trade Commission estimates that there are 9 million cases of identity theft per year in the USA and recommends that individuals defend themselves by shredding financial documents before disposal. Whipped up into worrying about important papers falling into the wrong hands, we got caught up in the […]
We’ve celebrated Winter Solstice. The religious holidays have been commemorated. Tonight we get to tear 2010 off the calendar and start fresh! But we still won’t be quite done celebrating. There is one more celestial event to honor. Perihelion. I just learned about this from an article a few days […]
Look up into the sky and see some amazing constellations. We’ve been trying to make sense of those stars for a long time, and science has been expanding our understanding as we see farther and more minutely. Now you can look into the heart of the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus […]
Lately, as part of my duties as co-editor of the Wisconsin Garden Journal, I have been spending time in the Wisconsin State Historical Society carefully perusing the very fragile pages of almanacs over a century old. Evidently, early Americans struggled with imported and often unreliable seed till a young Englishman, […]
Everyone who takes care of land from square foot gardeners to those of us trying to manage multiple acres has their most wanted list of invasives plants. The lists are getting longer. According to James Reinartz of the Southeastern Wisconsin Invasive Species Consortium , the cost to the U.S. economy […]
After a few frosty days and our first meaningful snow, seems like a good time to think about global warming.. Working with information from Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change (WICCI) , I’ve published a couple of articles (check them out here and here) this past year on what we can […]
Greetings, dear readers. As is my wont, when I publish something I’m proud of, I like to share it with you. Here is a cover story I wrote for the current Isthmus , Madison’s alternative weekly newspaper, about the very active sleep research programs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The […]
Digging in the Driftless 