Countertop Culture

Something Is Fermenting In Sandor Katz’s Kitchen

The revolution I would like to see is a devolution of agriculture. We have to let go of the notion of mass-producing food. It just doesn’t work. Cars and computers may lend themselves to mass production, but with food it has been a disaster. We have to revive small-scale food production and relearn the art of food processing, including fermentation, so we can stop relying on these huge and vulnerable food infrastructures.

Eat Your Dreams

The next day, while recounting the dream to my wife, I realized I had discovered the perfect diet, one that allows the dieter to feast on any food and never gain weight. The secret is to eat in your dreams.

No Sweat

Standing at the entrance to the aerobics room, I think, All I have to do is get through the next forty-five minutes. I tell myself that kickboxing sounds like fun, not dreadful or boring. I chose kickboxing because it resembles martial arts — something I studied briefly in the past.

Beekeeper’s Boy

I recently started keeping bees, and already I’ve been amazed just watching how they cluster and move, then suddenly flow in a line like a rivulet of water just a few bees wide — many small minds following some higher thought known to them only in common and to none alone.

The Mere Mortal

Carla happened to be kneeling outside the poultry enclosure when she heard her daughter Amanda in the milking barn telling the new boyfriend, “My father is a beatnik. He hates life up here. He calls us ‘montagnards.’ He really loves North Beach. And he’s in the right place, too, in North Beach. Because he’s into porn — something I approve of.

Ten Thousand Years

When I told Thomas about my experience — “transcendental,” I called it — he was skeptical. I had only been studying yoga for three weeks. Thomas, on the other hand, had been practicing yoga and meditation for eight years. In all that time he hadn’t felt anything even close to what I was describing.

After A Dream

In the night I spoke of my father again / how he vanished suddenly

Three Days Before My Mother’s Birthday

I run into a young woman almost staggering across / the street. I’m surprised to see it’s someone I / know. She seems pale.