Homestead of Urban

Participants in the urban homesteading movement are reacting strongly to a move by …[a] family in Pasadena to trademark the term "urban homestead" and related terms and require Facebook to take down pages on the topic.--LA Observed

Ok, first let me say, we appreciate your donations and support, and the loyalty you’ve shown our little tax deductible enterprise over the years.

Gosh, I don’t have to tell you how distressing all this brouhaha has been. This morning, I grew, picked, dried, and brewed a cup of chamomile, sheared a sheep, spun some wool, knit my slippers, wrapped myself in Grandma’s hand stitched quilt, and carried a candle to my Apple iMac 27" 2.8GHz Quad Core Computer MC511LL/A.

I just wanted to reach out to you and say, “Yes, perhaps we sue. But we sue because we care. We sue with great love® and affection, our bonnets held high. My family and family alone are UH's, but you can be something, too. Something far, far less, but better than nothing. Maybe.”

If you say UH, we say UH-UH.

In our defense, you backed us into a corner, and after we offered a number of alternatives. Before we took down the Facebook page “Keewanee Urban Homestead,” we offered them,“Structures and vegetable gardens using compost and no insecticides within the perimeters of incorporated areas of the Midwest,” for example.

All right. Enough. Least said, soonest mended.® (I wasn’t the first to say that, but the first to give it meaning.)

On to some good news.

Your tax deductible contributions have not been wasted. Not only do we drive a biodiesel van, we always take the short cut to our lawyer’s office. And he thinks we’re this close to owning Truth, Justice, and the American Way. As for Mom® and Apple Pie® , let me quote that great American Joan Crawford and say, “Don’t fuck with me, gentlemen.”

Oh, but I’m still sad, even as I throw another log on the woodburning stove. Thank god our next in a series of UH outreach missionary trips to Tuscany is only a week away.

As a scholar of great literature, both English and American ®, in the face of this unjustified adversity, I find solace and comfort in the classics I studied as a child. I’ll never forget Little House on the Prairie when Pa said, “Hard workin' folks only smell bad to some folks who have nothing better to do but stick their noses in the air.”

Michael Landon could always make me cry.