Who are your favorite authors? - Page 4

Frank Daignault · #46 08-05-2010, 08:31 AM

I agree and feel that I am learning from everything above. Just to add, there is also a return to basics where many people feel overwhelmed by technology. The paper is talking a lot about farmer's markets and people growing their own stuff. Our son, Dick, grows or shoots all his food. All the buggah buys is tooth paste and toilet paper. I have a friend who had to install a pump in his kitchen sink so his wife could abandon her faucet as "too modern." (Maybe she needs something more old fashioned.)

JoeLyons · #47 08-05-2010, 08:46 AM

Talk about working for cheap.....my brother spends hours gardening to save $10 a week in veggies. Why? You could chug an Activia and be done with it.

There's a host of agrarian theorists and books on the subject - but watch out, they are skipping arm-in-arm down the trail with the liberals who were inspired by the rabble buried up in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, MA.

Chris Garrity · #48 08-05-2010, 09:03 AM

Here's a very good small illustration about what's happened to advertising revenue. My neighbor found this out when she had a garage sale a while ago:

- the cost to run a three-page classified ad in my local neighborhood weekly newspaper: $45 for one week.
- the cost to put a listing on Craigslist: free

And the funny thing is, Craigslist is better! More people see it there. If you were having a yard sale, what would you do?

It's easy to understand why newspapers are hurting: classifieds used to be a big revenue source for them, and now they get squat from them.

I don't grow tomatoes to save money, or for hippie-dippie reasons, to reconnect with the earth or anything like that. I grow 'em because I want stuff I can't buy anywhere - a really good backyard heirloom tomato is impossible to buy, even at farmers markets. If I could buy them I wouldn't bother.

RobS · #49 08-05-2010, 09:06 AM

It's a catch 22 for them though. They used to give out garage sale ads for almost nothing... was very cheap to put them in, a couple of $$. Then the local paper sold out to a corporation that couldn't care squat about the locals. The classified ad prices went up tenfold over night!

Guess what, they shrunk to 1/10th (or less) the number of listings and the number of folks buying the paper before the weekend to get the garage sale listings disappeared.

JoeLyons · #50 08-05-2010, 09:13 AM

I read this book about 15 years ago - it's very good - but not a lifestyle I could embrace. The guy, Scott Nearing, was an economics prof who got fired for his socialist beliefs and chucked it and started the modern back-to-the-land movement. He lived to be 100 - so he must have done something right.

RobS · #51 08-05-2010, 10:59 AM

ah, the inspiration for "THE WHOLE EARTH CATALOG"

I guess he couldn't be too bad, getting kicked out of the Communist party and all.

Have some friends who are part of The Church of God, whose church embraces much of this philosophy, though not to the extent that the Nearing's apparently took it as a whole.

JoeLyons · #52 08-05-2010, 11:44 PM

That's why the industrial revolution took hold so well in New England and people were so quick to embrace it and leave farm life - short growing season. The Nearings ate a lot of root crops and made their house out of stone. I've never read the Whole Earth Catalog. The greener the meaner is what I've noticed. You'd be pissed off too if you farted that much.
Some people don't care about the political movement, they've just raised cheapness to a high art.

Frank Daignault · #53 08-06-2010, 11:25 AM

My wife and I are always fighting with cheapness, trying to save a buck so we can waste it somewhere else. For instance, we go down to the bay on nights to fish because we want to put up a couple of keepers in the foodsaver for winter eating. Our son, Dick, says, "Dad, buy a flounder fillet in the store and stay in bed like the cardiologist says." But that would cost me six bucks. If I go for free fish I can burn $12 worth of gas and risk my life with the Providence drunks crawling out of the gin mills. One year I also got a roadkill six-pointer.

Montauk Surf · #54 08-06-2010, 06:21 PM

As fishermen our standards are very high regarding eating seafood. "Fresh" to a fish monger is up to two weeks old. And that is after the fish were baking in the sun the day they were caught. A offshore dragger told me once that "fresh" swordfish is up to a month old!

I'm not saying that all fish markets are bad. I do have one that is very good. I don't think it is a coincidence that he was once a dragger himself..and knows the meaning of quality fresh fish.

JoeLyons · #55 08-06-2010, 07:42 PM

There's an old Hebrew expression: Once poor, never rich.
People feel secure, but never really enjoy their money. I'm not interested in travel or a rich social life, but I would like to have enough to act on more ideas.

Frank Daignault · #56 08-07-2010, 02:50 PM

I'm enjoying this digression as much as anybody and it is probably me who caused it. Anyway ......

John Waldman has written a number of good books that pertain to our life style and interests. Among them is his collection of short stories from around 25 different authors -- Stripers: An Angler's Anthology. The collection of article length features is a virtual who is who in authorship in the striper fishing world going back to striper writers whom I had previously never heard.