I had a crazy idea for next Thanksgiving: I want to raise everything at the table, including the turkey.  Looking into that now . . . where there’s a will, there’s a way.

We need a comprehensive national post office system even if it requires government subsidies and can’t be operated at a profit.  Not everything can be operated profitably.  We need to upgrade our national rail system and develop an extensive network of high-speed ‘bullet train’ passenger routes even if this can’t be accomplished solely by the private sector.

Went to the Farmers’ Market early Saturday morning looking for an outdoor project on a beautiful day, came home with a morel mushroom kit.  By 11:00 a.m. had the spot picked out, built a 4’ x 4’ cedar bed, filled the bed with homemade compost and distributed the morel spore.

Morel Mushrooms: growing in our backyard next year?

Christmas present for my father-in-law: a homemade country ham.  He’s been bemoaning the paucity of good ham for years so I decided we should make our own.  He’s coming over for pizza and ham curing tomorrow night.  Procedure described here: http://extension.missouri.edu/p/G2526 .

Country Hams: coming to my garage soon.

One of the criterion I will employ when deciding where to move next is whether a new location has an old-fashioned local newspaper, printed on real paper.  Our local high school football team made a good run into the state playoffs this year but I didn’t know about it because there’s no local newspaper.  I can no longer name my City Councilperson because there’s no local newspaper. Some things are essential to civilization.

This whole ‘Black Friday’ thing needs to be abolished.  How ridiculous has this become?  Somehow stores were profitable when I was a kid without resorting to Black Friday.  No one could create a system to better showcase corporate and consumer greed and crassness.  What must the rest of the world think of us?  It’s downright embarrassing.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPub7bb0mzs&feature=player_embedded

Watch out, Granny! She's old enough to know better.