1. From Mojourner Truth, a dern good blog post about how own of our town’s earliest settlers fought the same fight that some of us still fight today:

Replace “groceries” with “CostCo,” or for that matter, jsut keep “groceries,” and you have one of the most recent election’s main issues encapsulated. It makes me want to start a Bigelow Community Garden, where we can grow food free of the impure grocery influence. Not that I’m against liquor, mind you, but more the influence of a particular capitalist enterprise putting itself above the public good of, for example, having state store which employed a thousand or so people at a living wage, and which did not sell liquor late in the evening, when people are more likely to get in trouble with it, and which had no accounting tricks to keep the state revenue from flowing to other public goods.

2.  Coolerman4u made a home made forge. Cooler, indeed.

3. Stevenl starts up a new contest on Olyblog. Where are these places?

4. Mathias (thank goodness) is back doing RSVP, the podcast. I love podcasts. Love them a lot. I also like local things. So, listen to Mathias’ podcast, especially because he’s going to be down for the next few days. This one is especially good, featuring Faith Trimble.