Hmm, I update this blog nearly as often as my website! I blog slightly more often here: Livin' La Vida Suburbia and here: Homefront for E-The Environmental Magazine.

I'm editing more than writing these days, but have a couple articles being published soon that I might remember to post here...

And speaking of writing, when's the last time you wrote a letter by hand? Or wrote anything by hand, for that matter? I realized that, aside from the grocery list, I barely do these days. So I started this page ode to the handwritten letter with my dear college pal, Kevilyn. My daughter and I spent the morning practicing what I'm preaching.

Serendipity

...is both the title of the new magazine for which I am now the Copy Editor and also the means by which I got the gig. I had a sit-down with the Powers that Be, however you want to define them -- God, Higher Power, the Universe, Power of Attraction, Dumb Luck, Angels, Anyone Who Might Be Listening -- and ordered up a new, ongoing freelance writing or editing position. The requirements: flexible hours at my going rate, often from home, within CT, preferably for a magazine. At this point in publishing, that seemed as unlikely a scenario as a part-time editing job where I could bring my baby when she was 6 months old and I was in need of work...which I was able to do at E Magazine for months, private office included. So never hesitate to ask for exactly what you need! My hours at E were decreased so I asked again for the impossible. Two days later I received an e-mail from my lovely editor at E, Brita Belli, pointing me toward a new publication in Greenwich, CT, in search of a part-time copy editor. Soon after, I met with the founder and executive editor of Serendipity magazine, and began reading copy for them a couple days after that. And it couldn't be a better fit. It is a regional magazine about a region with which I'm quite familiar; the office environment, when I need be in the office, is dynamic and friendly and chock full o' smart people. The content is interesting and the standards are high. Serendipitous, indeed.

The Only One You Need

A truly all-in-one cleaner, and the best "Green Tips" book to date, reviewed here for E-The Environmental Magazine

recycle love

New book reviews and ideas for your Valentine, including the cutest shirt from mom-and-mom biz Tiny Revolutionary, from the Jan/Feb issue of E Magazine...

virtues of a messy lawn!

(Review from the September/October 2009 issue of E Magazine)

WEEDING OUT THE TRUTH
The technical definition of a weed is “a plant out of place.” But who determines the place and what belongs there? Why is a cacophony of color welcome when cultivated but otherwise considered unsightly? In A Weed by Any Other Name (Beacon Press, $23.95), author Nancy Gift offers a season-by-season meditation on the plants we call weeds, sharing her professional knowledge as a weed specialist, her fond memories of wild flora on her childhood playgrounds, and her sometimes contradictory approaches to them on her own suburban property.

Gift is the acting director of the Rachel Carson Institute at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and refers often to Carson’s teachings—and to the campaigns waged by chemical companies to disparage the famous naturalist’s ideas. Gift writes, “though I am deeply skeptical of pesticides in general, I believe Rachel Carson advocated limiting—not eliminating—pesticide use.” Gift reluctantly uses Roundup to eradicate a patch of poison ivy, seeing no other means of its removal that won’t subject someone to its rashy wrath. But she also goes into detail about the dangers of this common herbicide, calling to task its maker, Monsanto, and the government, for not requiring companies to reveal the contents and dangers of their products’ “inert” ingredients, one of which is deadly to amphibians.

Gift doesn’t rally for everyone to transform their lawns into vegetable gardens or let them sprout into mini-prairies. But she does urge homeowners, gardeners and anyone with land to scape to view weeds in light of all the ecological services they provide—soaking up storm water, reducing greenhouse gases, preventing soil erosion, absorbing ground contaminants, as messengers about soil quality, and as a food source for wildlife, honeybees and even ourselves—recipes for rose hip tea, dandelion wine and wild garlic pesto included. —Jessica Rae Patton

Back to School

In my house, we're a couple weeks away from that annual before-school blitz at Staples. My stepson is going into 7th grade, and though we usually try to keep the purchase of breakable plastic crap to a minimum anyway, we'll go shopping with an especially green awareness this year, with a particular focus on Reuse. An article here about not only the threat to the environment but also childrens' health posed by the school-supply aisle.

The Big, Green Day

An interview I did for E with the lovely Kate Harrison of The Green Bride Guide.