Joseph F. Radosevich

We've had a really good onion year. We've got some softball-size Spanish Sweet yellow onions. This is a red onion that I picked for dinner. I'm not sure I planted enough to store through Dec. but we have plenty to pick and eat now. We will let most of them continue growing and then dry out. That is mesclun in the basket below that I picked to go with lettuce for salads. I tried a different method of planting mesclun mix this year. This is a sweet mix that I planted in three rows. I've planted spicy mix before, but it isn't as good. This way helps me harvest them easier. I harvested the first row in this picture below before harvesting the second. They should regrow.  This is a red okra called "Candle Fire" that I planted as part of a grow-along with the University of Illinois Extension Good Growing podcast. They sent me these seeds. The pods are supposed to be smooth and red which is different than the other six we planted. This is my hot pepper bed. It ha...

I've been a Bret Lott fan since college. That means I've been reading his books for 20 years. With the release of his new book, I thought it would be the time to make an annotated list of his books. There are four that I haven't read. I plan to fix that this year, and I will update this post when I do.  Lott writes in lots of different categories. I'm going to list them according to categories and then rank them and give notes. One of my favorite things about Lott's writing is that he takes chances and doesn't just repeat the same things over and over. You can see that when you put the books into categories. I am listing them by how I rank them.  Novels A Song I Knew by Heart . This is my favorite of his novels. It doesn't do it justice to describe it as a modern retelling of the story Ruth. It is a lovely, slow story of brokenness, redemption, and healing where the places that the two women live become a part of the story.  Dead Low Tide . This is actually ...

 We celebrated our 16th anniversary last week with a date to get coffee and tea and flowers for the front porch.

 Here's a collection of things I've been thinking and doing. It is hard to trust sports podcasts that start with gambling ads. I don't understand why they accept those advertisers. I'm making sauerkraut which means that the active work is done, and then I wait. It takes about 3 weeks to ferment to our liking. I use glass weights and a one-way valve on top to keep them clean while they ferment. I like sauerkraut with more texture and sourness. I had some commercial sauerkraut for the first time in years. It is much softer and has less of the great bite that homemade has. You don't have to use the equipment that I use to get good, cheap sauerkraut. It's a neat miracle that cabbage, salt, and time make a great food--I realize that it takes bacteria in the air that collects on the cabbage somewhere along the way to make the sauerkraut. I finished All the King's Men , and am starting an abridged version of War and Peace . I actually read War and Peace  years ago ...

 I'm reading Grant Wahl's posthumously published collection of his magazine writing, and I am reminiscing about how much I used to enjoy reading magazines.  I grew up reading all sorts of magazines and newspapers. We subscribed to some, I read others at the library, and we were given old issues of magazines too. I remember enjoying Time , Newsweek , US News & World Report , Sports Illustrated , Taste of Home , World , and Popular Mechanics . There was a monthly magazine that we got at church that I enjoyed.  In college, I would take some evenings and grab a stack of magazines and journals in the college library and read for an hour or two at a time. I remember reading the TIME cover article about Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code book and movie and the society that features in the story. I was in the airport at the end of my senior of college on my way back to school When we got married, we had subscriptions to Wired , ESPN the Magazine , Food Network , and Kipl...

I was so sad 2 years ago at the death of Grant Wahl during the World Cup. He was one of my favorite sports writers. I'm excited to read this new collection of his sports writing.  Days before his death, I commented on his newsletter how much I appreciated his writing and wanted him to keep writing magazine-style sports writing. He responded back that he planned on doing it for the rest of his life.

The most useful thing that I learned in college and seminary is Greek and Hebrew. I think about it often because I use it so much. There are theological reasons that I love biblical languages, but this is about the practical reason. I took 8 semesters of Greek and 4 of Hebrew. I had many other amazing classes. No other class, subject, or skill shortens my workload every week like languages, though. I preach 90+ times per year in a church that had 70 today. Knowing Greek and Hebrew helps me get to the heart and meaning of a passage quickly. It cuts out time needed to read commentaries because they often just tell me what I already read in the text. I read one language professor who said that knowing the languages cuts out 10 hours of study per week. Imagine getting 10 extra hours a week for the rest of your career. There is nothing else you can learn that will save you 500 hours a year.   I can use commentaries instead to answer questions that I have. I use them to check that m...

Every year on vacation I make a playlist so that we forever associate those songs with the place. It's really fun to be reminded of places through songs. I also use the playlist to introduce the kids to pop music history. If we are being honest, I am learning pop music history too. We usually have things from the 1950's-1990's.  This year's top song was probably Tom Petty's "Free Fallin.'" Other tops songs were "Take Me Home, Country Roads," "Purple Rain," and "Knowing Me, Knowing You." Check it out here .

 A late 30's dad asked me last week what I do for my workouts. Here is what I do 3 days each week: 5:00 warm-up 2 rounds of 5 goblet squats/11 push-ups/2:00 on an exercise bike 10:00 I pick 4 cards from my exercise playing cards. I do them as many times through as I can before the timer goes off. This satisfies my desire for variety. 10:00 I start a timer that beeps every minute. When the timer beeps, I do the assigned exercise and then rest until the timer beeps again.  Monday-4-5 kettlebell snatches with each hand Thursday-double kettlebell 2 cleans/1 press/3 front squats. This is called the Armor Building Complex by Dan John. Saturday-5 double kettlebell clean and presses Test my heart rate and blood pressure. 5:00 stretching I use a stretching plan that I learned in middle school from The Navy SEAL Workout  book. I'm not sure it if is psychological or physical but I don't feel right if I haven't stretched. I do bike sprints on Wednesday too. I did different programs...

  We just got back from our third vacation to Williamsburg, VA and Colonial Williamsburg. I feel like I should write a post on Colonial Williamsburg or Williamsburg and what to do and where to stay. I'll leave that for another time. I learned before this trip that George Whitefield preached his first sermon in America there. The picture above is right outside the church where he preached. Since he usually had to preach outdoors because of the crowds, he probably preached 50 feet in front of where I was standing to crowds on the palace green. I found the sermon that he preached (he only had 18 individual sermons that he preached thousands of times) and read it slowly over the week in the mornings before the rest of my family got up. Here is my favorite passage: However lightly you may esteem your Souls, I know our Lord has set an unspeakable Value on them. He thought them worthy of his most precious Blood.—I beseech you therefore, O Sinners, be ye reconciled to God. I hope you do no...

This is my recipe for making one large cup of coffee in French press. I use an insulated press and prefer it because I've broken two glass presses. My French press has two screens, but a cleaner cup comes from pressing the plunger very slowly. I learned that trick from James Hoffman. Grind coffee coarsely. Boil Water Preheat French press and then pour out the water. Weigh 27 grams of coffee into press. Keep it on scale but tare the scale. Wet the coffee to let it bloom. Start the timer for 4 minutes. At 3:30, stir the grounds. Then finish pouring water in to reach 405 grams. Preheat the cup. Put the lid on and wait. When the timer goes off, press the plunger down very slowly (30 seconds or so). If I'm being honest, the measurements have a little wiggle room. If you are really a coffee person, then you might hate this. Percolating coffee is pretty forgiving, so I don't worry if I overpour by a few grams. The coffee still turns out well. The 405 grams of water comes out to ha...

What I planted today Blue Lake green beans (Gurney) Fernleaf dill (Park) Dark Opal basil seedlings (Ferry Morse) Calypso basil seedlings (Park) Profusion zinnias AAS Mix (Park) Apricot Profusion zinnias (Park) Whirlybird nasturtiums  Fordhook nasturtiums Easter lily Jet Star tomato seedling (gifted) I love planting purple things in the garden. The Dark Opal Basil looks amazing next to all the greens. We also have red lettuce that gives a nice purple contrast. It makes a really pretty picture in the garden. Two other colors I like in plants to go along with the greens are yellow-green chartreuse plants, and burnt orange plants like a certain coleus we've grown in our porch pots.

  "It is an apple like ours in Myrtle." "But you said it was magical," Benny said, biting into a golden piece. Mr. Wheeler chewed his bite and swallowed. "It is." Jack Zulu and the Waylander's Key S.D. Smith and J.C. Smith

I am translating (transposing) a book of Cherokee phrases from English and phonetic Cherokee to the Cherokee syllabary.  I'm a member of the Cherokee Nation, and I've been wanting to learn the Cherokee language. The Cherokee language is written in a 81 character syllabary which means that each symbol is a syllable rather than in an alphabet where each symbol is one sound. In Cherokee, you have different symbols for the sounds "ga" Ꭶ and "gi" Ꭹ and so on. My first project was to learn it. There are 81 characters that often look alike and sound alike, so it was difficult. Once I did that, I needed to continue practicing it. That's what I do now.  I wanted to learn more Cherokee phrases, and I bought a book of Cherokee phrases called Osiyo Tohitsu  by Prentice Robinson. This has a ton of common phrases that you might use. There are also YouTube videos that the Cherokee Nation language office posts of common words and phrases. The problem with Osiyo was tha...

I deleted Facebook this week.  I'm off of most social media now. I had been on Facebook for 18 years. I remember when Facebook became available for my college during the fall of my senior year. We were all pretty excited about it. I've got pictures and posts about my life ever since, but it was time to delete it.  Here's why I deleted most social media: Facebook: I left this site because I couldn't use it the way that I wanted to. I felt like I was having to constantly tell them to hide sections of Facebook. I realized this week that I kind of spent the last year leaving it. I went 6 months last year without posting at all. I put time limits on using it. I even unfollowed almost every page. Facebook was constantly changing how it worked. Instead of showing me friends and family that I wanted to see, they were showing me posts and people that I didn't sign up to see. Sometimes it was inappropriate things. I decided it was time.  Twitter: I left this site when things ...