What a resource on making and growing things by hand is Martha Stewart! She’s a goddess of DIY and recycling, two of the cures for the linear consumption outlined in The Story of Stuff.
Look at her. She even makes it look cool to keep chickens.
Yes, she is a billionaire media mogul with a reputed nasty temper who served time for insider trading. I personally that think she, of all the billionaires with nasty tempers who have done illegal things, was prosecuted was because over 98% of her corporation’s political campaign contributions went to the Democratic Party. I mean, compare her transgressions to those of, say, Dick Cheney. Nobody died. Nobody even got an ingrown toenail.
I gotta love a writer who reports that an unwanted square scarf, with four mismatched earrings or charms sewn to the corners becomes the perfect cover for a punch bowl on a hot buggy day. I made one immediately.
On March 9, 2003, the New York Times wrote about me:
“As the Martha Stewart of the hippie age, Alicia Bay Laurel wrote the book on living in do-it-yourself harmony with Mother Nature.”
That was not the first, nor the last time I’ve been compared to Martha Stewart, and that’s all right with me. Whatever else you may say about her, Martha Stewart brought self-reliance, organic gardening, up-cycling (craft-making from recycled stuff), folk art, goat cheese and wabi-sabi into the national conversation of a society drowning in its addiction to cheap and poisonous consumer goods.
Alicia Bay Laurel 