ROOST

modern homesteading for everyone

After discussing all the possible magazine titles with Philip while lounging in bed (not naked, you dirty minded people!) drinking beer, it was immediately clear that his favorite title was "Roost" (a contribution from Danielle). I happen to love this one too but worry that it isn't direct enough. However, that's what tag lines are for: clarification. I really liked the tag line "civil disobedience you can eat" but I'm not sure it goes with this title.

The next task was to plan the departments. This can change if I ever manage to do a second issue, but knowing what departments you'll have helps to organize content and direct it. It sets the tone and firms up the driving purpose of a publication. Like a chapter index it allows you to quickly asses the contents and decide how interesting or pertinent it sounds to your interests. Truly, any time I see that the main theme of a book or magazine is:

"How to develop leather-skin under the hot sun of Cabo San Lucas."

I pretty much feel alienated right away.

Here are my departments:

Into the pot- cooking, recipes, tips, methods, food prep, and interesting articles about food and eating.

Kitchen Garden- growing your own food and herbs, vegetables, mini orchards, planning, getting the most out of small spaces, raised beds, garden methods, function vs. form, choosing varieties, winter gardening, tips, features of people's gardens.

The Pantry Shelf- food preserving, using your pantry food in menu planning, menu planning, storing food, root cellaring, brewing beverages, How tos on all these things, shelf life of food.

On The Work Bench- how to use power tools, wood projects, fixing household things, making what you need, building, projects, techniques.

The Stitch Box- sewing projects, crafts, making household things that don't require power tools, techniques for more professional sewing, textiles, gluing, cutting, decorating, useful crafts.

Home Ec- organizing, budgeting, saving, reusing, recycling, cleaning, anything that helps you run a house more efficiently, greening up your house, household management.

DIY Apothecary- making your own body products, medicine from the garden, salves, salts, herbs, tinctures, herb features, herb lore, teas, stress management, recipes and How Tos.

Hutch and Coop- how to raise small animals, chickens, rabbits, sometimes goats and pigs, coop plans, raising tips, breed highlights, keeping them safe, butchering, healthy animal husbandry.

Are you excited? I am!! This is exactly what I keep looking for on the magazine racks. I never see it. Mary Jane's Farm is pretty cool, but way too soft/fuzzy to truly satisfy my hunger for more homesteading matter. Remember that magazine called "Victoria"? I loved that magazine but after I had bought maybe my seventh copy of it I started experiencing a nasty case of N.O. (nostalgia overload). Everything is so gentle, so soft focus, people are all pretty with long wavy hair, delicate skin, and having precious tea parties every day. Mary Jane's Farm is threatening to be just as preciously nostalgic for "the good old days when life was simple and we all shat in holes in the ground".

A lot of people were really glad for indoor plumbing. And vacuums. Television was like a miracle of entertainment. Kids were not all that sad to stop playing with wooden tops and instead take up playing with Barbies and Legos. Our grandparents may have lived in a simpler time but I've listened to a lot of old people in my time (because I have always loved and related to them) and I've got to tell you that while all of them like to look back, the main thing they long for is the price of everything as they knew it in their youth. Inflation of cost of living is their number one gripe.

Those of us who are tired of gang killings, violent movies, the apathy of modern youth, corrupted governments, and who look back to a "simpler" time forget that back when our grandmothers were canning all their own food and baking their own bread, they were also really poor and they didn't have a whole lot of choice. The governments were just as corrupted then as they are now. People were robbing banks and going on killing sprees, committing suicide rather than face starvation, living on dust and hope alone. Our grandparents did a lot of what they did because they had to.

I still recognize the value of the things they did for themselves and I emulate their life skills and I want to get to a place where I don't need Lowe's to do everything for me. I want to do for myself. But I don't have blinders on about the past. It wasn't a gentle life for most people. My grandfather was one of thirteen children in a fairly poor family. Before he died, if you asked him about the "gentler" past you will hear of child abuse, poverty, harsh winters, and setting off at fourteen to go work.

So when I look at the past I don't idealize it and I don't want other people to do it either. I think it robs our history of its truth. Paris is a city with a lot less disease since it got plumbing. Most of us are living much higher quality lives because of our harsher more industrialized world. That doesn't mean we shouldn't get back our independence- we need to strike a balance between our modern convenient lives and the blessings of running water, and our ability to feed ourselves and care for ourselves without the grocery store.

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I've already begun fleshing out what articles I would like to have in my first issue. I have many wonderful friends who happen to be craft and urban homesteading genius' and many of them are excellent writers and photographers. You know, I almost cried last night in a rare fit of emotional gratitude for the kind of support I've received in so many ways on my blog. (Don't worry, I choked all the tears down. I don't even like to cry in private. I'm tough that way.) I'm not actually sure what I've done to inspire it- but I definitely don't take it for granted.

I was thinking how cool it will be to open a magazine and see some of my favorite blog people featured in it. I won't be using up all my friends' genius at once, just in case I manage to get a second issue out, I'll need to be able to drag invite others into my project later.

The Name Of A Thing

This is my all time favorite magazine. It was well made, well written, had some ads but not intrusive, useful information, wonderfully inspiring (but not annoying) pictures, and it covered both growing and cooking food. I have every copy they ever printed of it. Sadly, they stopped publishing it. Perhaps it was just a year before it's time?

Cook's Illustrated uses almost identical format and paper and also has very high quality content. I always wish for more photographs though. Everything is tested out very well (their trademark, practically) and it treats the reader like an intelligent and curious being who loves cooking not just because home cooking is better for you but because it's fun, it's science, and it's gorgeous.

What neither of those magazines have is a more thorough coverage of the topics that generally interest people who cook and garden. They are often also interested in canning, preserving, sewing, household management, politics, the environment, family, community, and levity. "Household" magazine also lacked levity. Sadly, most publications don't take irreverence as seriously as they take Paris Hilton. However, this ad came from a magazine I love from the early thirties (and it was published all the way through the forties as well) and it had recipes, household hints which featured the constant theme of how to make things last, how to make food and money go further, and how to be more efficient.

It also included a very embarrassing racist cartoon series that it shocks me to see. Not something I tolerate at all in my life.

If you take these three magazines and give it an edgy urban sensibility and some irreverence, you will get the essence of what I want to publish.

Coming up with a name is quite a process. What's in a name? I'm not going to trot out Shakespeare. I promise. Names are important. Anyone in marketing can tell you that. It's a miracle that I, a marketing flop, also know it. I always have. Names are the essence of a thing. It's not always easy to catch that in a phrase, in a breath, in a word.

My publication will be about Urban Homesteading. I can't seem to come up with a better word for what it will encompass. Here's what urban homesteading means to me in plain words:

growing
building
fixing
cooking
preserving
making
learning
thinking
changing
brewing

I have come up with a list of possible names:

Urban Homesteading
Journal of Urban Homesteading
Urban Homesteader's Companion
Modern Homestead

Of course, I could use "Dustpan Alley" as the title. But, on a newsstand that will mean nothing to almost all people.

I've looked up variations of "Urban Homesteading" in the United States copyright library and it seems fine but I don't know how deep a search I need to do. Any ideas on how to make sure a name isn't taken?

Everyone knows about Path To Freedom, right?

And Homegrown Evolution, the writers that recently released a book called "The Urban Homestead"

Interesting that their book title didn't show up in the copyright library search.

Name ideas? I'm going to brainstorm some more and will hopefully return with more ideas. This is one of the hardest parts of the project.

I like this: "Urban Homesteading...civil disobedience you can eat"

All My Eggs

and no basket to put them in

I found out today that my book proposal did not get accepted by Lark Books. To say that I don't give a damn would be a lie. Just like it would be a flaming lie if I said it didn't hurt that I got passed over for the library job- even though I had some pretty great endorsements from people whose opinion means something to the person doing the hiring- yeah, it was a fresh crush in the chest. On both counts.

You know what's really nice? It's nice that I don't have to worry about getting pregnant. Because my eggs are starting to do the New York Times crossword while I drink coffee in the morning and I could swear I heard one of them say "Yo bitch! Gimme some sugar!" today.

You can count on me to see the sunny side of the street.*

You know how sometimes you have an itch to read something, though you're not sure what exactly, so you look on the library shelves for it and only find Oprah looking back from every book spine? So then you go to your local book store hoping to find that book you're in the mood to read, the book you know will lift your spirits and raise the bar on the status quo, and you don't find anything but the memoirs of people who are filthy rich already, vapid, and wearing the most stupid clothes you've ever seen?

I know how that is.

Sometimes you have the write the damn book yourself.

And publish it yourself because no one will ever believe in you enough to hire you to do it for them. Maybe because your tongue gets tied when you try to explain your ideas.

So, here I am. Point blank. The empty page.

Writing will almost certainly never make me a living. So thank god for the wonderfulness of my boss at Hopscotch, for hiring me to work for her in the toy store. It really does help us that I'm working there. Then there's my Etsy shop. I've been working much harder at keeping it stocked and I've been getting more orders. Those orders have been so incredibly helpful! I want to demure and say I don't need them, but every time it looks like the power might have to be turned off here, I get enough orders to get us through the tight spot. So maybe, just maybe, I can do what I'm doing right now and we'll be able to stop using the credit cards and start paying them down. It feels like an awful lot to ask the Universe to keep up this more hopeful trend.

So, about that empty page.

It's time to make that magazine I was talking about. Tonight I will write my outline. I flesh out the real details. I aim to get the first issue ready by November first. I don't intend to share the content of it here because if I did that there would be no reason to produce this mythical beast. However, I intend to share the whole process of producing it. I intend to invite you to participate and try not to be offended when you don't. I intend to elicit the help of my friends to get this thing made (you know who you are!!) for trade. I have lots of great stuff with no where to sell it. I can't pay a dime. Even if I had one I am not allowed to embark on any ventures which require capital investments. I fail at those kind of ventures.

This one's for me.

Because I know I can do it.

Because I know what I have to offer is worth page space.

Because no one has done it yet.

Because I'll never be able to explain to Lark, Chronicle, or Quirk books why they need me and unless I can convince them myself they will never pick me.

Because I talked to Capello this week-end on the actual phone and she is such a ROCK STAR! (OK, that's not really a reason why I'm going to publish my own magazine, but I have been dying to say that and have had a hell of a time finding the appropriate moment to slip that in.)

Basically what I'm doing is starting my own team and picking myself first.

For me that's profound.

Sometimes it's the only way to show other people what they're missing. Sometimes it's the only way to get others to listen and to see your vision: to set them free of any obligation to recognize it until everyone else does. By then you don't need anyone.

I promise not to put myself on every cover.

I promise not to preach.

I promise never to stare you down from the front of every cracker and cereal box in the grocery store.

I promise not to coin every clever phrase I can come up with (this one's easy because I don't come up with clever phrases like "It's a good thing." because they make me want to shave my ass and roll in salt afterwards.**)

I promise to continue to seek the light while never running from the dark.

That's it. That's all my eggs.




*(And run like hell.)
**Oh, excuse me for that little coarse outburst.

This Cute Could Kill You

The vet says TWO MORE WEEKS OF QUARANTINE. The ring worm is almost gone but almost isn't good enough to set these babies free in the house. He did say, however, that on a warm sunny day like this we could let them play outside for a little while. He just doesn't think it's wise to risk infected hairs dropping all over inside where we are most likely going to come into contact with them with our skin. So, they got to romp out in our back yard for a little while.

Their cuteness very nearly killed me. What kept me hanging on was the arrival of my "North and South" DVD. I finally got to see the proposal scene and I have to say that the train scene is still the best of all time. However...back to the cuteness factor...

The vet says they are doing way better than when they first came in two weeks ago. They do have a trace of the round worm left so obviously they still have a couple of issues. But their big bellies are just good old fashioned fat baby bellies and not distended at all. Their eyes are clear (no conjunctivitis) and they are spunky and did I mention the cute.

You know what's not cute though? Full grown women who wear candy scented perfume. I don't think it's cute when women try to smell like bubble gum or icing. Now, I am sure that there are some of you out there who like to wear food type scents and while I think that's just fine (because who the hell am I anyway?!) I just needed to say that it isn't cute and it kind of weirds me out. Especially when women wear a perfume called "Child".

So, yes, I'm talking about both the Simpson sisters now. What's up with them and their little girl obsession? I wonder if either of them have ever thought of growing some vegetables? Or some herbs? Do you think they grow tomatoes every summer?

Now I have to add that their father, Joe Simpson, gives me the ever-lovin-creeps and I wouldn't let him near a daughter of mine if I had one. Especially not if she had some boobage and was teen-aged. The man is a total pimp to his own daughters and it really freaks me out.

OK. You know what's sad? This is all old news. I didn't just read a gossip magazine. I did, however, just flip through the first fashion magazine I've looked at in two months. I have a bunch of them stacked up, waiting. I haven't wanted to look. Normally, no matter how unfashionable and frumpy I am I still love to look at fashion. I suppose I had the Simpsons on my mind because there was something about Ashlee's favorite things. One of them being a perfume called "Child" that she wears when she goes out and wants to feel sassy. Dudes: that's SICK.

My In Style is coming up for a subscription renewal and I kind of think I'm not going to renew. I love that magazine but my heart's not in it right now. I wanted to reduce the number of magazines I get anyway. I have been subscribing to four. I only want to renew Elle because it has the most relevant and interesting fashion coverage (more indie designers featured, more ecological talk, better writing, plus the good horoscopes.)

I don't really know what's going on but I guess it's a new chapter in more ways than I realized. I am much more interested in having great garden and herb books. I'd much rather bury my nose in books about roses and cooking. I'm sure if there was a magazine devoted to what celebrities are making meaningful ecological choices and which ones are growing their own (I mean- and getting their own hands dirty doing it) then I'd be pretty interested in reading about it.

It's gorgeous outside but I need to rest my back and do a small amount of cooking. So I'm not going to garden out there. I would like to start some lettuce and cilantro seeds. I'm dying for cilantro. As it turns out, it doesn't freeze all that well. It's OK. There's nothing like a big lush fresh bunch of cilantro to perk up almost anything. Yum. Wow, this post has become incredibly random. I was just going to post about the cuteness that is killing me over here. Here I am wanting to tell you all (because I know you want to know) that I want to try pressure canning some corn this year.

I kind of wish I had something scintillating to say.

Well, I hope you all have a great Saturday and if it's sunny for you? Good God! Get off the damn computer and go enjoy it!!!

If only I had my own magazine...

Philip gave me these books for my birthday/anniversary presents. The MaryJane's Idea Book is very cool. It's like her magazine times ten. I will admit that I feel a little inferior when I read about her life and projects. I mean, here's a middle aged woman who is not chubby, completely lovely, has created an amazing little lucrative empire for herself, and is not a beer-swilling weak-backed crazy person who can barely ever remember to order new checks before she runs out. Everything she does seems so frugal, so wise, so moderate, and annoyingly healthy.

The Re-creative book is pretty cool. I am inspired lately by all the recycled crafts going on out there. In some ways it's silly to have a book with fifty projects that completely depend on you finding the same throw-away items as the designers did, they're making things out of trash and repurposing things that most people will not have, like New York metro cards. On the other hand, what all these books are doing is inspiring (or trying to inspire) people to think differently about things they might throw away, or things that others might throw away. This is valuable to us all. It is so lazy to look at everything as fulfilling one purpose when it might find new life as a whole new useful object. I am trying to think like that myself.

I have been doing that for years to a certain extent. I never seemed to have a ready stock of wrapping paper in my house so I have wrapped presents in some very interesting ways using newspaper and construction paper. I remember wrapping one wedding present with Newspaper and then covering it in three dimensional spirals I cut out of construction paper. It wasn't the tiniest bit elegant, but it made me laugh and you can bet that no other present looked like that. The present was a pair of pot holders I'd made the couple. One in black because the bride was a very fashionable gal who was into black and white. It was the single most personal wedding gift I have ever made and wrapped. I wish I'd taken photos of it.

We've had this lamp for a long time and the shade is now in a very sad state. I was thinking of buying a new shade but now I am inspired to either use fabric I already have or use some other material. I won't get to it any time soon because of that super long list I have hanging over my head (from which things are actually getting ticked off, in spite of the back incident). But I'm thinking that this lamp will be an exercise for me in using only things I already have. When I finally come up with a new shade, I'll post the results.

I have now completely gone through all of my magazines and sent them to the recycling bin having ripped out all the pages that had inspiring images on them. I have a HUGE binder full of pages I've saved from magazines for the past eighteen years. In truth, I have enough now to fill two giant binders. While I was going through the last of them this week-end while propped up in bed with a heating pad under my back, I couldn't help but indulge in one of my many fantasies that my head has been filled with since I was a small girl. I would love to publish my own glossy magazine.

What could I possibly publish that would improve on the million magazines that are already out there, enough variety to appeal to every lifestyle, every subject, every region, and every religion? I would pull together elements from many of them into one place. A magazine where good writing on important domestic subjects like "Why safety locks don't make you a better mother" and good design come together in one place.

Here's the thing: I read Elle magazine because it's the only fashion magazine that dedicates a lot of space to "Indie" designers, I read Vogue because even though it's kissing the big designers' tired asses, Vogue actually prints really intelligent articles on all kinds of subjects, I like Jane magazine because it doesn't take itself too seriously and is fun to read (even though it's so completely aimed at the nineteen to twenty five year old crowd), and I read ReadyMade for the innovative projects, and I want to read BrainChild because its not afraid to go against the current mothering trends (but I don't often read it because there's no shiny pictures and because I think it could use a bigger dose of irreverence. See what a pop-culture whore I really am?)

If I had my own magazine I would not give an inch of space to fashion designers like Dior, Versace, Balenciaga, or any other stuffy old mogul fashion conglomerates who do the same thing over and over and mostly are designed for really boring socialites to wear. I would only feature Indie deisigners or designers who have some innovative risk taking spirit like Alexander McQueen, Marc Jacobs, and Vivien Westwood.

If I had my own magazine there would be no uber skinny models ever. I would probably end up being labeled a "plus size" magazine for using models that are at least a size 8. Well, go suck lemons on the catwalk people! When I went to design school, the fitting model dress size was eight. That was in 1987. It's not completely a case of models and people getting more and more insanely skinny, a little vanity sizing has been slowly applied to clothes. A size 8 in 1987 is probably the equivalent of a size 4 today. People sure are emotional about numbers, and kind of stupid to buy the whole vanity sizing thing. Anyway, I would not allow models in my magazine whose knees are larger in circumferance to their thighs. That's just sick and gross.

If I had my own magazine I would have articles in it that questioned everything. Such as the current trends in parenting that have parents thinking they've signed a contract with the devil if they don't spend every second of every day with their child and protect their child from every unpretty fact of life until they're eighteen years old. (At which point they will enter the "real" world where they will not be equipped to deal with anything at all and will probably end up overdosing on heroine.) I would have articles about keeping house that are inspiring without pandering to the notion that all of our homes should be free of dust or else people will think bad things about us. In my magazine, readers would be invited to have fun cleaning their homes without worrying that they are filthy monsters if they only do it twice a month.

If I had my own magazine I would feature artists and craftspeople who are making truly equisite things. No precious moments style paintings of alien-eyed children with impossibly big heads covered in suger sweetness. There would be interviews that examined the creative process of different artists, crafts people, musicians, and writers, because don't all of us want to know what other people do to keep in the creative groove? You don't? Well then you better not read my damn magazine! I would have a featured project in every issue too. A pattern or instructions for something really cool.

So watch out, when I finish my never ending huge list of things to do to get people shopping on my web store, coming into my retail store, and stocking their own stores with the things I design myself, I will kick the publishing world's ass!

Do you think I'll beat Beyonce to the magazine stands? You know, she probably has her own magazine in the works too. Mine will be better.


*Either the spell check feature isn't working, like in the old Blogger days, or I didn't make any errors, which is impossible. So don't hold this against me please.