When I was first teaching myself to play the autoharp, I got to feeling pretty cocky about my ability to play by ear. I brought it along to a church youth conference I was chaparoning and asked a teenage boy to pick a tune so I could demonstrate. I was expecting him to choose a rock song, I guess, but hearing a rock song butchered on the autoharp was not his priority: much better to make himself look smart and take me down a notch! He asked for "Greensleeves," and I was stumped... it took me about 5 years to work out this arrangement, and I don't ask teenagers for requests anymore.

Jessie and I are both sick with a cold right now.  The last time this happened was over six months ago, just at the time we moved to Emporia.  In the intervening six months I didn't get sick even once, even though Jessie brought home a variety of ailments from the University, especially in January... but back to last August.  It was a cold of truly marvelous speed and severity and contagiousness, and it hit us at a pivotal time in our lives, and the story has not yet been properly told.  So here it is, based on the notes I took at the time.

Planning an economical/simple/green wedding is easier said that done.  Some parts of that have been easier than others. We are by no means experts at this but we are giving it our best!

Here is what we have accomplished so far:

Last Thursday we got a home energy audit from a service called IAQ Solutions, part of Blue Dot Kansas.  It would have been good to get the audit last fall, but the waiting list was quite long.  The fees were also quite reasonable: the cost of the audit itself is paid by a grant, so we just have to pay for the auditor's transportation from Topeka, which will be about $125, but we haven't got the bill yet.  In any case, the recommendations he made should pay for themselves in a year or two.

What my sister calls the "marital industrial complex" has been rightly criticized for its environmental impact.  When you're planning a wedding, there are simply too many things to think about without worrying about ecology as well.  I'm sure my college friends would be shocked to find that Jessie and I will be using disposable dishes, for example.

People keep asking for this recipe, so I'm going to post it here...

I used to really love "monster cookies" -- that is, oatmeal-M&M-peanut butter cookies -- but then peanuts stopped agreeing with me, and I learned that most chocolate is made by child slaves, and I was living around a bunch of health-food enthusiasts, so I needed a wholesome substitute.  I started from this basic oatmeal cookie recipe, which I found online somewhere:

My landlady in Fairfield had an old rusty reel mower in the garage, and I tried using it once before giving up -- it just wouldn't cut worth a darn, so I assumed it was dull, and I asked around to see if anyone would sharpen it, but no one would.  But then just before I left Fairfield, a friend told me that he used a reel mower, and he was the first person I'd ever met who did, so I asked him how he sharpened it.  He said, "You don't need to sharpen it.  You just adjust it right, and it sharpens itself."  Well, that got me intrigued, so I tinkered with the thing until I fig

Jessie and I just returned from spending 10 days at her parents' house in Manley, NE.  We had a great time, but we're both glad to be home!  Here are some reflections on our home life, inspired by the time away:

Here's our annual newsletter and accompanying photo collage from January 2009.