I’ve been blogging for a whole year

Just thought I’d point that out. Some people have been blogging for like ten years. I am not one of those people. I’m more of a ‘late adopter.’ But I see no reason why I don’t deserve a beer for my 13 months of undisciplined ranting. Cheers.

Image from here. I love Oregon breweries.

10cm on Effective Microorganisms(TM)

There’s a kind, sweet woman in Austin named Katsumi, and she knows her stuff. I missed the bulk of her explanation of EM, but the 10cm notebook managed to capture these two intriguing words, vaguely Engrishy and ripe for googling. (With quotes, please…)

So, I’m not usually one to review/promote products, and it really made me cringe to put that (TM) up there, but this one just hits so many of my cultural/biological/ecological g-spots that I simply couldn’t help it.

In brief, you’ve got a guy, Dr. Teruo Higa from Japan, who somehow magically realized that bacterias and fungi and other tiny things are really good for, well, everything. So he gathers a bunch of them together, sticks ‘em in a bottle, and sells the mix as EM-1. People use it on stuff and are amazed to find that cool things happen. Snake oil? Well, yeah, if snake oil had live cultures of lactobacteria in it and, you know, actually had some scientific basis for working.

Let’s break it down. Three major groups:

In Which the Author Refuses to Apologize for the Delay

You know, because everyone loves a navel-gazing blogger. I’m not sure how many of us this planet can safely support. I suppose the correct answer is that I’ve been out there in the world (the living, breathing one) trying to figure out a new place, a new people, and precisely what my umwelt is going to be here.

And yet, somehow, the writing remains important … so I’m back like a heroin addict. Thanks for reading.