About

There can be no doubt but that many of the articles which follow in this work will appear to men who have devoted their lives to the arts and those sciences which are immediately connected with them, as trite and little worthy of notice. But what might seem to such persons as merely commonplace information may, perhaps, prove valuable to others, whose time many have been devoted to pursuits of a different nature.
–Thomas Green Fessenden, The Register of Arts, 1808

I spend most of my life a few stories above ground or a few stories below, but I’m still trying to plant my feet on solid earth. I pine for reality, authenticity, and control of a type that is fugitive at best in our urban dominions. The best way to do this, as far as I can tell, is to zealously learn the lessons my grandparents fought so hard to forget as they fled coal mine and countryside. And so this blog becomes the record of me learning to lead a different life, one stitch and song and blade of grass at a time.