Category Archives: Nerdhaven South

The meat we eat

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Don’t we kinda already know that factory-farmed animals are not frolicking in the fields by day, slumber partying in the barn at night like the animals in the children’s book The Big Red Barn?

bigredbarnPlenty of films, videos, photos and articles detail the lives of animals in the industrial food supply. Together they don’t tell a happy story. Until recently, I have avoided delving deeply into such information because I wasn’t prepared to stop eating meat. Nor did I want to pay to eat grass-fed meat imported from as far away as New Zealand. I wanted another option, one that started more like the Big Red Barn and ended on my plate. I decided to Continue reading →

Pony up

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It’s time to pony up with a post.Pony up too

My unannounced summer blog break has rolled into fall. Since I last wrote, we road-tripped up the eastern seaboard and back for a month. Vacation: Bedtimes were non-existent. The schedule was not mine to control. I watched the world swirl around me before it swung me into the melee. A delicious square dance full of friends, beach, boats, swimming, islands, food, family and many, many miles. And then, the world left me in Florida and headed off with a new partner.

August in Florida described in a word: sticky. Should be spelled Augh-ust. Continue reading →

A sound life for shells

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Shells, like broken pieces of pottery, hold some fascination for me. When I see either scattered on the ground, I’m compelled to wonder how its previous owner used it. I want to know the back-story of where a shell or pot came from, and how it came to be tossed aside.

Since moving from the Midwest at age 12, I have been fortunate enough to visit many beaches. And from nearly every one, on nearly every visit, I have collected a shell or two, or 10 or 20.  No more do I want these relics from the South Pacific, New York, Mexico, California and Florida gathering dust in baskets or glass jars. So I’ve come up with a very simple way to put them in view. Continue reading →

Love letter to The Lodge

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No sweeping lawn, ancient trees, stone towers, courtyard, or flapping flags decorate my personal Downton Abbey. Rather a wrap-around porch, with a semi-detached kitchen, and a peaked roof define The Lodge, a Cracker-style wooden house that has played a main character in my life.
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Pennsylvania millionaire Thomas Mellon, brother of the former United States Treasury secretary Andrew Mellon, built The Lodge around 1895 as a fishing lodge. The old house is perched on a constantly shifting spit of land jutting into the Atlantic, 15 miles south of St. Augustine, a town celebrating its 500th birthday. Author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings played cards here. Other celebrities visited the family over the years. Now the house’s future is as tenuous as that grand fictitious English estate. Continue reading →