About me . . .


I am a writer and editor currently living in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, the 13th place I’ve called home. In my day job, I am associate editor of Current History, the nation’s oldest foreign affairs journal. In the rest of my work life, I’ve ranged widely. I’ve written and edited for lots of legal publications over the years, putting my Columbia University J.D. to use. I delved into American history with a biography of Charles Fletcher Lummis, a heroic but eccentric  Indian rights gadfly who lived in Los Angeles and the Southwest from the 1880s until his death in the 1920s. I followed that with a couple of self-published culinary histories. Since the 1990s, I’ve had websites about farmers markets, the local food movement and urban agriculture. As a freelance writer, I’ve contributed to dozens of newspapers and magazines, ranging from the Atlantic, the New Republic and the Wall Street Journal to the Los Angeles Times travel section and Sawasdee, the Thai International Airlines inflight magazine.

For more about me, follow the links on this page to my web sites, book blogs, galleries of my photos from hither and yon, and links to an array of other pieces I have published over the years.


My Web Sites

Charles Lummis: A web site about my biography of a crusading journalist, author and editor who lived in Southern California and the Southwest from the 1880s until his death in the 1920s.

Farming Philly: About community gardening and urban agriculture in Philadelphia.

Vintage California Cuisine: A blog where I report on my experiments with early California recipes.

Vintage Vegetarian Cuisine: A blog where I report on my experiments with early vegetarian recipes.

Seasonal Chef: Covering farmers markets, local agriculture and the chefs who favor local suppliers.

Truly Local: Reporting on fraud in farmers markets, and what vigilant farmers, market managers and consumers are doing about it.


Other Activities

Backpacking with my daughters near Cathedral Peak, Yosemite National Park, Aug. 2018 (Trip video on YouTube)

At Lake Branigan, bushwacking in Yosemite

At Branigan Lake off the trail in Yosemite National Park, Aug. 2013 (Trip video on YouTube)

My Books

American CharacterAmerican Character: The Curious Life of Charles Fletcher Lummis and the Rediscovery of the Southwest

Vintage California CuisineVintage California Cuisine: 300 Recipes from the First Cookbooks Published in the Golden State

Vintage Vegetarian CuisineVintage Vegetarian Cuisine: Early Advocates of a Vegetable Diet and Some of Their Recipes, 1699 to 1935


My Email Address

mark@seasonalchef.com

 Follow me on Twitter

Mark  Thompson@Mark_R_Thompson

My author page on Amazon

Mark Thompson



Dancing in Le Super Grand Continental, Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Sept. 2018 [Photos © Jacques-Jean Tiziou]