What happens when an economist understands ecology?

Dick Norgaard, being well versed in both economics and ecology, is one of those rare people who straddles the fault-lines of the disciplines. This means that - instead of believing that economic theory is immovable truth, or that the findings of the natural sciences are immutable - he can see how gracelessly these great tectonic plates rend at each other. From his vantage point, the faith that the invisible hand will solve our problems, and the belief that scientific progress is inexorably leading us to a bright future, look like especially primitive forms of superstition. If you want to know more, you might read this profile that Patrick Joseph had me write. Or look at his book, parts of which I found revelatory.

 (Patrick Joseph is one of those editors who is not only intelligent but also civil, kind even, who must be blessed and treasured.)

The adventures of yeastman: Part 2

Here's what you do if you want to make bread like this, bread with just enough spring against your teeth as you bite into it, just enough tension before it tears. Bread that is soft and elastic, which upon leaving the oven smells the way I imagine heaven should smell, if heaven were a small farm-house early on a December morning when you have awoken to find the kitchen already warm and the first snowfall of the season smoothing the earth's hard angles into curves. Here's what you do: You meet Laizu outside the bakery a little before 3:30 am. I was there before her, having hauled myself out of bed after a few hours of sleep and walking up through the sleeping houses. She pulled up moments later and shook her head at me as she got out of the car. "You really are interested in baking," she said. "you're early."

The adventures of yeastman: Part 1

I’ve been meaning to write about my initiation into the select novitiate of the dark arts of bread-making, but I was particularly busy in the days leading up to the holidays and then particularly lazy during. Now that they are ending I feel a stirring of the communal sap—now that other people are girding up for a real working Monday, it is much easier to brush off the feeling that there might be some richer form of amusement out there for me to capture. Amazing how persuasive is that sense that other people are working – or playing – in convincing me that I should be doing the same.
All that is to say that this happened more than a month ago. It started when Beth and I went to the Liberty Café Bakery one morning for coffee and pastries. I love this bakery. It’s on top of the hill, in the “downtown” of our neighborhood, but tucked back behind the row of shops on the street so that you have to slip down a three-foot wide passageway between the buildings to find it. The bakery’s existence in this secret garden would not be enough, on its own to secure a permanent right of tenancy in one of the chambers of my heart—that guarantee was ensured by the cinnamon rolls. And then by the custard-like quiche whose essence is infinitely rich yet light – ephemeral on the tongue and on the plate.