Anderson Japanese Gardens

Public garden on fourteen acres in Rockford, Illinois. Meticulous. Full of calming streams and a real teahouse.

Willard Van Orman Quine

Dad built himself a small "shack" as he called it to be as far away from the family noise as possible. That way he could work to his heart's content and not interfere with the noisy comings and goings of the likes of my brother and me and our friends. It was not wired for electricity, so when it was late or dark or stormy, he would light his kerosene lanterns and keep pounding away on his typewriter.

Preludi Autunnali

Four piano songs by Gian Francesco Malipiero. Solemn chords evocative of Mompou, with plaintive notes of birdsong. Written in 1914.

Manual coffee grinder

From beans to cup.

Ermita

Sebastian Schutyser photographed abandoned Spanish hermitages (ermita) using a pinhole camera.

Spencerian penmanship

A fine slender hand. Mott Media sells copybooks.

Class: A Guide Through the American Status System

Paul Fussell's book about the way we act is acerbic, revealing, and funny.

Yūgao-tei

A rustic teahouse built on a pond in the Kenroku-en garden in Japan. Image

Minimalist advice

http://mnmlist.com/
Monotonous but respectable.

The Slow Movement

Resists the homogenized, the rushed, and the tasteless.

черный хлеб

Russian black bread.

Grigory Perelman

Proved the Poincaré conjecture, and now keeps to himself and will not stoop to accept prizes.

Lei Cidade Limpa

"In 2007, the world's fourth-largest metropolis and Brazil's most important city, São Paulo, became the first city outside of the communist world to put into effect a radical, near-complete ban on outdoor advertising."

José Gonzalo Zulaika

better known as Aita Donostia was a priest and musicologist who studied Basque folklore. Wrote music extensively, including piano transcriptions of Basque folk songs.

Euclid's Elements

As Littlewood said to me once [of the ancient Greeks], they are not clever school boys or 'scholarship candidates', but 'Fellows of another college.'

— Godfrey Harold Hardy

Frösöblomster

Wilhelm Peterson-Berger wrote these warm, lyrical piano songs in the rustic house he built on the island of Frösö.

The Book of Tea

Kakuzo Okakura describes the history, varieties, and ceremonies of tea.

Cardboard wallet

Easy to make and sturdy. A simple vehicle for plain old cash.

Austere sensibilities

Even when she had to make some one a present of the kind called 'useful,' when she had to give an armchair or some table-silver or a walking stick, she would choose 'antiques,' as though their long desuetude had effaced from them any semblance of utility and fitted them rather to instruct us in the lives of the men of other days than to serve the common requirements of our own.

— Marcel Proust

Pocket address book

The Scully company makes a nice plain one.

Hitsuzendo

Zen calligraphy.

Friggebod

Swedish mini-house.

Minimal dishes

Keep only one type of utensil per person.

Heavy wooden doors

Reassuring.

Microfilm

Unlike digital mass storage, microfilm doesn't suffer file format conflicts or require software management. It is legible with just a magnifying glass and light.

Komponierhäuschen

Mahler wrote music in "composition huts" — single room huts with little more than a piano inside.

Manuel Blancafort

Federico Mompou's friend and fellow composer. Wrote tranquil piano music like Peces de joventut. His music served as a "diary without words" for his nature walks.

Root cellar

Stores your winter food without electricity.

Great Depression cooking

Watch

This is the first in a series.

Raku pottery

Notably hand-molded tea bowls.

Cave Monasteries of Byzantine Cappadocia

Read Lyn Rodley's account of hermitages carved in the 9th and 10th centuries.

Abacus

It's not a circuit; it does its job in full view.

Straight razor

Rather terrifying, but probably manageable if you've grown up using one. Promotes an ethos of quality and maintenance over quantity and disposal. Honing and stropping must feel satisfying.

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

"About ten years ago I took a job as a seasonal park ranger in a place called Arches National Monument near the little town of Moab in southeast Utah. Why I went there no longer matters; what I found there is the subject of this book."

Candle reflector

Perhaps a few mirrored sconces would be enough to see by.

Land

In a world of paper millionaires, true wealth is immovable property.

Patina

A worn library counter, hollowed stairs, darkened chair arms.

Leather shoes note

Salty slush damages leather, causing swelling and lumps. Wipe salt crust off with vinegar and apply shoe cream.

Leather shoes

For those who find brand logos distasteful.

Primary sources

For instance NOAA and C-SPAN in the US.

Chicken stock

Don't waste the chicken carcass. Make your own stock.

Alghe

A gently reflective piano song by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. He wrote it in 1919.

Ecce ancilla Domini

Perhaps the perfect piano song. Written by Jehan Alain.

Posole

One way to prepare tough indian corn is to turn it into hominy, then cook it in a posole.

Whetstone

The best are made of coticule.

Guide to Civilized Leisure

Written by H. A. Overstreet. A refreshing, enthusiastic viewpoint from the 1930s.

Hand Tools: Their Ways and Workings

Use hand tools and feel the quality of wood. No electric cords, no rush. Aldren Watson wrote this excellent book.

Skellig Michael clocháns

Read "The Forgotten Hermitage of Skellig Michael" by Walter Horn.

From a Monastery Kitchen

It's a cookbook written by Victor-Antoine D'Avila-Latourrette (that itself is a mouthful). The recipes are minimalist.

Wool military blanket

Plain gray blankets are available cheap (<$20) from army surplus.

Humble root vegetables

Parsnips, turnips, and rutabagas are cheap and underused.

American indian music

Unadorned singing, with simple drums. Recommended listening: the Turtle Dance Songs of the San Juan Pueblo indians.

Pencil sharpeners

Wall-mounted manual sharpeners are getting rarer.

Sowiesoso

Cluster's 1976 album is music floating from far away down a dirt path through golden haze.

Enduring Seeds

"Native American Agriculture and Wild Plant Conservation." Gary Nabhan writes about seeds' rich genetic information.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring

In this movie, a hut floats in the middle of a placid lake. An old monk raises a boy.

Everett Ruess

A teenager who wandered the deserts of the southwest United States and made woodblock prints of what he saw. He disappeared in 1934 at age 20. His diaries survive.

DJ Krush

Calm, atmospheric trip-hop.

The Way Things Go

A short movie showing levers and flames and pendulums doing their things.

Public mailboxes

Those tough blue metal boxes accept simple hand-addressed letters.

Skillet cornbread

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup flour

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

1 egg

1 cup plain yogurt

3 Tbsp honey

3 Tbsp melted butter

Bake in a skillet at 350° for 20 minutes.

Parthenocissus tricuspidata

Boston Ivy.

Walden

A pond and a book. At least the pond is free of contradictions.

Taiyo Yuden CD-R

CDs are reliable and accurate, but burnables can lose data in a few years. Taiyo Yuden is known for longevity.

White tea

A delicate variety.

Westerly windows facing trees

The sunset dapples through.

Reel mower

Quiet and effective. Hire someone to push it, and it becomes effortless, too.

Brother Nikanor

Used to be Hristo Mishkov, a stock broker at Bulgarian firm Karoll, until he became a monk in the Tsurnogorski Monastery.

"Milk is not produced by computers, bread doesn't come from a good company PR. It is necessary to plow, sow and harvest before that."

Beans

They are cheap, nutritious, and their growth improves the soil.

Vipassana

llinois Vipassana Meditation Center offers ten day donation-supported retreats. It's calm, but is it useful?

Dwelling Portably

An 80s magazine describing how to live without a fixed home. Bert and Holly Davis wrote it on their manual typewriter.

Morton Feldman

A composer whose later works are long, sparse, and quiet. Recommended listening: For Philip Guston (it is over 4½ hours long).

Beeswax candles

They smell good and are easy to make with just a lump of wax and some wicks.

Yeast-risen bread

How relaxing to knead and rise and bake.

Building with stone

The world's madness is fleeting; stones endure. Read Charles McRaven's book.

2700 Kelvin lightbulb

For bulbs Kelvin measures color: lower redder, higher whiter/bluer. 2600-2800 is soft cozy light.

Interest

Money's unskilled labor.

Cast-iron skillet

Heats food evenly. Repays its modest upkeep.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: There Where You Are Not

Wittgenstein was a brilliant uncompromising 20th century philosopher. This book by Michael Nedo provides biographical pictures, including details of W's cabin in Skjolden, Norway.

Cloth cords

Electrical cords wrapped in cloth rather than plastic.

Bakelite phone

Tough old rotary beasts with real mechanical ringers.

Go

A board game with just one type of move.

Nicolas Bourbaki

Not a person, but a group of men who wrote a multi-volume, austere, unified exposition of math.

Toru Takemitsu

Wrote haiku-like music blending Eastern sensibilities with Western instruments.

Swingline 747 stapler

Solid metal. Indestructible.

Pickling food

An easy nutritious process to preserve food without refrigeration. Harsch Fermenting Crock Pots make it even easier.

Mansfield College Library

Old, with portraits and nooks.

The Man Who Planted Trees

"In order for the character of a human being to reveal truly exceptional qualities, we must have the good fortune to observe its action over a long period of years."

Jean Giono wrote this short story about a dedicated man who planted a forest.

Edsger Dijkstra

He designed algorithms, and emphasized patience and exactness. See the video Discipline in Thought.

網師園

The Garden of the Master of Nets is located in Suzhou, China. Placid water, circular windows, ancient calligraphy.

Manual typewriter

Isolation and focus can improve writing. A typewriter removes distractions.

RZA beats

Disjointed atmospheric instrumentals provide urban calm.

Brevity

"I would have written a shorter letter but I did not have the time."
— Blaise Pascal

Grain mill

Try a cast-iron manual grinder. Make cornmeal, etc.

Poem by Frances Shaw

  Who loves the rain
  and loves his home,
and looks on life with quiet eyes,
  him will I follow through the storm;
  and at his hearth-fire keep me warm;
nor hell nor heaven shall that soul surprise,
  who loves the rain
  and loves his home,
and looks on life with quiet eyes.

The Hand-Sculpted House

Ianto Evans wrote this guide to earthen housebuilding. Building with cob requires no forms, no cement, and no machinery of any kind.

Clothing

It is as simple as you choose. Have it tailored to your specification by Janine Giorgenti. Read Alan Flusser for historical guidance.

Three sisters garden

Corn provides a stalk for beans to climb. Beans fix nitrogen. Squash smothers weeds and cools the soil.

Chalkboard

Easy to use, quiet, durable. A piece of slate.

Blank analog watches

E.g. Mario Botta's single-handed watch.