2025-01-18 Callum Robinson and the Ethics of Elmland
2025-01-16 If I were more heady and conversational on here, I would pin this line from Augustine to the top of …
2025-01-16 Sunita Narain: I’ve always been a critic of [EVs], because, for me, electrifying the cars of rich …
2025-01-15 Imagine Simone Weil listening to Spotify. Can’t do it? Me either. 🤓
2025-01-14 Over the past four months, I’ve been asked a lot about why I’m so happy at work. While I certainly …
2025-01-14 “Your love surrounds them/ like armored tanks.”
2025-01-13 Early morning visit with Poppa/Santa Claus/Paul Bunyan
2025-01-13 Everyone needs a favorite chair.
2025-01-13 Finished reading: Shield the Joyous by Chad Holley 📚 I loved this little book so much! Brief …
2025-01-11 I’m hijacking this line from Mary Harrington: “Your strategy should be ordered not to making it pay, …
2025-01-05 Finished reading: Ingrained by Callum Robinson 📚 Excellent. Because to my great shame, the coasting …
2025-01-05 If it’s okay to say, I really like the banner that I made for my Buttondown newsletter. The photo …
2025-01-04 Callum Robinson, on the look of a shocked customer who, holding the price tag of a hand-crafted …
2025-01-04 “The Archtypes and the Splendors” — 11 months behind schedule, but another newsletter is in the …
2025-01-02 This 2009 post from Dave Winer is good. “It’s so incredibly complicated. Mostly because there …
2024-12-30 …people are curiously soluble in starlight. Bathed in its absence of insistence their substance …
2024-12-30 Kelly Corrigan: Connection favors ragged edges where you can connect on a bigger surface. If you’re …
2024-12-30 “My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and …
2024-12-30 Callum Robinson: Opening my eyes and crouching with one knee in the damp earth, I place the flat of …
2024-12-29 This is what you call an awsome gift from a sibling who knows you well.
2024-12-29 Kitchen Chalk Talk • This is Ursula Le Guin’s translation. The last two lines in this chapter read, …
2024-12-28 Cynthia Wallace: And so [Weil’s] vision of God is different, her imagination of God is different, …
2024-12-28 “Refusing abstraction”
2024-12-27 Reason versus The Bulwark has to be the most hollow, vacuous debate I have ever listened to.
2024-12-24 Forgiving: A glimpse of a farther world. It helps me to see that forgiveness isn’t so much a …
2024-12-24 Patchwork Quilt • Flying into Bozeman, Montana. A throwback to June 2023, when this little guy was …
2024-12-22 Diaper change
2024-12-21 Callum Robinson: But my father’s is an artist’s eye as much as a craftsman’s, and …
2024-12-21 My most commonly used dopamine habit comes from an entirely self-curated algorithm: Kindle. …
2024-12-20 A message from Jeffrey Foucault: Friends, Last summer while I was waiting around for The Universal …
2024-12-19 We grew up watching a lot of Don Knotts films, and I simply cannot listen to House of the Rising Sun …
2024-12-19 One of the benefits of reading speradically — er, I mean widely and diversely — is that you can …
2024-12-18 The subconscious weight of truth and power.
2024-12-18 Induction
2024-12-12 Heavens to Betsy — lovelily is an actual word! I haven’t been just making up an adverb all these …
2024-12-12 Dougald Hine: We are dealing with something that implies a transformation we have hardly begun to …
2024-12-11 I’ve been thinking of the line from James Lawson (via David Dark), “You have to keep in your mind an …
2024-12-11 With this proliferation of know-how, technology, and weaponry, warfare is changing. A cheap …
2024-12-09 Currently Reading: Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman by Callum Robinson 📚
2024-12-09 A couple zings and a lot of nonsense.
2024-12-08 Paul D. Miller’s analogy in the opening of his piece at The Dispatch this morning is good. In one …
2024-12-08 Fleeing the conformity of what I viewed as an arbitrarily oppressive world, I’d flung myself into …
2024-12-08 “…and I’ll try to take the winning side.”
2024-12-07 Two really nice conversations • Last week, I was thinking about Holcomb’s song “Live Forever” …
2024-12-06 David Dark: “Individuals within large robots speak of individuals within smaller robots freaking out …
2024-12-05 So, this is what a diaper change currently always looks like around here:
2024-12-05 Michael Oakeshott: To ask the poet and the artist to provide a programme for political or other …
2024-12-04 Alan Jacobs: So it’s possible that The Green Bible is actually poised between two audiences: one …
2024-12-04 Jonah Goldberg: If you can selectively curate clips to prove that “corporate media” is …
2024-12-04 Jonathan Lear: We live at a time of a heightened sense that civilizations are themselves …
2024-12-03 “When’s mom getting home? Maybe she’ll take us for a walk…”
2024-12-03 Lewis Hyde: The problem with this dichotomy [between goodwill and bad] is that it omits another …
2024-12-03 Season 9 of Poetry Unbound began with Kinsale Drake’s poem “Put on that KTNN.” Just lovely. […] All …
2024-12-03 Richard Yates: And where are the windows? Where does the light come in? Bernie, old friend, forgive …
2024-12-02 So, there’s Noah Millman’s post Biden Gives Up On America: The emotional subtext of the president’s …
2024-12-02 Just yesterday I was asking the bookstore clerk if they had this in stock. (They didnt.) Today, it …
2024-12-01 Aaron Horvath’s piece in the fall issue of The Hedgehog Review is excellent. And it comes full …
2024-12-01 Caveman cartoons are truly one of my deepest little joys. A couple goods ones lately.
2024-12-01 Justin Chang: Even so, we are not not entertained.…The arena battles have an agreeably batshit, …
2024-11-30 On Abraham, Agamemnon, and the Greek word sumpneō.
2024-11-29 Elias Crim’s recent essay in The Hedgehog Review is excellent, but it’s also a treasure trove. …
2024-11-27 The Land of Immigrants
2024-11-26 “Two normative conceptions of human practical rationality”: “My argument,” says Martha Nussbaum, …
2024-11-26 The Ballad of Marshall McLuhan
2024-11-25 Martha Nussbaum: The vine-tree image, standing near the poem’s end… confronts us with a deep …
2024-11-25 “Is the crowd merely a vulgus, the unlettered raving, or is it the populus—the community speaking?”
2024-11-21 So much in Elizabeth Oldfield’s latest post that I want to sit with, add to, qualify, and think a …
2024-11-20 Ivan Illich, via L. M. Sacasas’s amulets: Learned and leisurely hospitality is the only antidote to …
2024-11-19 The most high-end account, the most highly mathematical and theoretical account of the cosmos, still …
2024-11-19 Kathryn Gin Lum, on whether she sees her book Heathen as being consistent with or in tension with …
2024-11-17 Currently Reading: The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy by …
2024-11-17 Alan Jacobs: I find myself remembering early 2016, when in my neighborhood — which is somewhat …
2024-11-17 Finished reading: At Work in the Ruins by Dougald Hine 📚 The resonance overflows. I will be …
2024-11-16 Don’t let the rhetoric hide the reality:
2024-11-16 Hine again: Some of this was little more than the playacting of the privileged: long before Covid, …
2024-11-14 Dougald Hine: Two possibilities arise from this newfound sense of vulnerability. It can be a …
2024-11-14 Douglad Hine: In its attention to whatever is missing or taken for granted, art can lead us …
2024-11-14 “The power of art to reveal the dominant consciousness and challenge it.” — This subtitle done gimme …
2024-11-13 One of Dougald Hine’s more hilariously good lines is when he admits not having any idea how to …
2024-11-13 Light Phone asks, “How much is you time worth?”. Refreshing. Excited for January
2024-11-13 Headline o’ the Day
2024-11-12 I confess I have never gotten around to reading Jedediah Jenkins’s books. But Meghan has loved them, …
2024-11-12 Eli Lake’s short dive into Democratic Party history is a decent start on the kind of thing I meant …
2024-11-11 Kevin Williamson: And so, from the point of view of Adams, our republic is both upside down and out …
2024-11-11 Currently Reading: At Work in the Ruins by Dougald Hine 📚 People are going to have to stop setting …
2024-11-11 Watch out for leaf weasels
2024-11-10 We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact. It is better to say ‘I am suffering’ …
2024-11-10 It’s been years. And I thought perhaps that I had changed. But alas, it still takes me three licks …
2024-11-09 “At least some of these things will (to put it mildly) place a strain on fundamental social …
2024-11-08 The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already …
2024-11-08 I’m not saying I agree with all of it, but at the risk of some offense, and as someone who thinks …
2024-11-07 “Socrates has scored! The Greeks are going mad! The Germans are disputing it. Hegel is arguing that …
2024-11-07 Dingo daydreams
2024-11-07 Finished reading: Love’s Braided Dance by Norman Wirzba 📚 The introductory essay was …
2024-11-07 Martin Bucer: [Every child] should be encouraged to enter the best profession, and the best …
2024-11-06 Best friends
2024-11-06 Reading the last line of Dispatch Politics, I get some seriously ominous chills down my spine: But …
2024-11-06 “Dont worry, I’ll keep your chair warm for me.”
2024-11-06 “As silly and as wise” — My first exhortation for the coming years is pretty well summed up by my …
2024-11-05 “The Doing of Sorry” Our minds are endlessly engaged in the business of tidying up the landscape of …
2024-11-05 Thousands of bits of paper are falling into ballot-boxes today, all over the country. It is a …
2024-11-05 Back in the fall of 2016, I was taking a creative writing class just for fun. This was my election …
2024-11-04 Drive-by sunset, where the Sheepscot branches into Back River
2024-11-04 Nick Catoggio: We deserve what we get now. And I do mean “we.” I deserve it too.… I regret, and …
2024-11-03 Wendell Berry: [That the ends justify the means] is a vicious illusion. For the discipline of ends …
2024-11-03 I’m fine with hyperlinks — I use them, I find it useful when others use them. (I am an addicted …
2024-11-02 Currently Reading: Love’s Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of Crisis by Norman Wirzba 📚 A logic …
2024-11-02 An excellent book haul this week 📚
2024-11-01 When I see animals successfully cross the road, I cheer them on. Literally.
2024-11-01 While Tolkien certainly had a category for complex moral problems and possessed a deep understanding …
2024-10-31 Skyler Adlata’s version of the American dream is pitch perfect. When fear is used to stoke a spirit …
2024-10-30 You are not acknowledging the role that these guard rails played in the first Trump presidency – and …
2024-10-25 A joke, from Alexei Novalny’s prison diaries.
2024-10-22 Someday I hope to finally get around to writing an account of the events — and the life — that spun …
2024-10-22 This lovely post reminded me again of Richard Wilbur’s “Elsewhere”:
2024-10-21 This weekend I got to attend a local Braver Angels event, as part of the Building Bridges Maine …
2024-10-21 David Frum: “I’m not voting with enthusiasm, but I am voting with conviction.”
2024-10-18 Is there an environmental argument for, if not getting off the internet, curtailing photo uploads …
2024-10-18 I have not picked this book up, but the title gives me a smile every time I see it at the bookstore.
2024-10-18 They probably average 1.3 articles/week that catch my eye. But 4 is a treat. Though of course, I …
2024-10-17 Currently waiting to dive into: The Uses of Idolatry by William T. Cavanaugh 📚 I’m waiting because …
2024-10-17 Liz Cheney: Or will we be so blinded by political partisanship that we throw away the miracle of …
2024-10-15 Damned if I know.
2024-10-14 ”It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy…”
2024-10-13 Yet another Richard Wilbur poem I simply cannot move past. Must have read it 50 times now.
2024-10-12 The reconstructed Virginia on the Kennebec River in Bath, ME, sitting about seven miles north of her …
2024-10-12 Finished reading: The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality …
2024-10-11 I think I can relate to yesterday’s piece from Charlie Warzel — and I also find it remarkably …
2024-10-06 I think of sursum corda every time…
2024-10-05 The Bath Swing Band, playing the 1939 song “Undecided”
2024-10-05 This makes me think that Doorley and Carter’s Assembling Tomorrow would make a great companion book …
2024-10-03 Happy Birthday month (we think)!
2024-09-30 What if climate change is a hoax? Well, even granting the hypothetical, it’s entirely possible that …
2024-09-29 Meanwhile… ~Wendell Berry~
2024-09-28 Yup.
2024-09-27 I love Chesterton’s line, “For we have grown old and our father is younger than we are.” But I …
2024-09-26 This really makes me want my own VHS shrine in our house
2024-09-26 A message and a link from my friend Luke: “A four hour and forty minute treatise by the three …
2024-09-26 The magic of the revolving door. Not settling for moral outrage but instead holding out for moral …
2024-09-25 Scenes from Gardiner, ME
2024-09-25 My daily life always feels like a riddle that I haven’t cracked. … The simple fact is that I …
2024-09-24 Obviously a contender for the best book title in the history of book titles
2024-09-23 Some mixed signals today…
2024-09-23 Biscay Orchards
2024-09-23 Kitchen Chalk Talk • I do love a good quote juxtaposition
2024-09-21 After some enjoyably heated beer-debate this afternoon, a friend reminded me of one of the simplest …
2024-09-20 The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer • • • “Vermeer” by Wisława Szymborska: So long as that woman from …
2024-09-20 Currently Reading: The Rigor of Angels by William Egginton 📚 Splendid, so far! I’m not sure how well …
2024-09-19 Though I’m hesitant to use this analogy, sometimes Substack subscriptions are like those surprise …
2024-09-18 Finished reading: Being Consumed by William T. Cavanaugh 📚 So straight-forward and insightful. I …
2024-09-16 Kevin Williamson was spot-on this morning. As of this writing, Springfield’s schools had been …
2024-09-15 Our theory of change takes its cues from the garden, less the machine. We are personalists, not …
2024-09-10 Oliver Burkeman: It’s not that systems for getting things done are bad, exactly. It’s just that …
2024-09-10 Emily Elizabeth Dickinson on this fine morning:
2024-09-09 Nice timing from Alan Jacobs on “the specificity of your enchantment” for a couple …
2024-09-08 Hammock skepticism
2024-09-08 Taking a walk at Clark Cove Farm
2024-09-07 The happier the dog, the stinkier the breath
2024-09-06 Finished reading: The Best of It by Kay Ryan 📚 I’ve been reading this without an ounce of haste for …
2024-09-06 Leah Libresco Sargeant: If parents are increasingly relying on professionals to guide them in …
2024-09-05 “Shield the joyous” — A short piece that is definitely more than the sum of its parts. And it …
2024-09-04 “Lab diamonds are a testament to the principle that what nature can do, man is capable of doing …
2024-09-04 Also finished reading: The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann 📚 Some thoughts (and a poem …
2024-09-04 Finished reading: Silence by Shusaku Endo 📚 Not a book that is easy to write about, which is why …
2024-09-03 Lately we’ve been watching Raising Hope for our highbrow entertainment needs. With this show, it’s …
2024-09-01 Naomi Shihab Nye:
2024-09-01 I have not succeeded this week in having a genuine day of Shabbat. But I did get a good reminder …
2024-08-31 Quick stop at Broad Arrow Farm • Naturally, their motto “Do you know where your food comes from?” …
2024-08-31 Meghan’s random book grab today. I figure the subtitle could just as well have been “A Brief Jaunt …
2024-08-31 “Mournful punditry” — Some thoughts from this week.
2024-08-29 📚Happy New Book in the Mail Day! Celebrate accordingly
2024-08-29 “This dual commitment to a single origin and a pluralized manifestation of moral living …
2024-08-29 I love Jennifer Roberts’ phrase “the formative powers of delay”. …Patience comes to the bones …
2024-08-29 John Adams: Power always sincerely, conscientiously, de tres bon Foi, believes itself Right. Power …
2024-08-28 Photo by Kosti Ruohomaa in his and Lew Dietz’s 1977 essay-photo collection Night Train at Wiscasset …
2024-08-26 For over a week, whenever I open Richard Wilbur I have been unable or unwilling to turn the page …
2024-08-25 Kay Ryan:
2024-08-25 We Could All Use More Sabbath Fundamentalism: The key is to lean into Heschel’s “realm of endless …
2024-08-23 Define laziness impatience haste:
2024-08-18 Damn good Bull Moose haul! • Especially when you consider the content that I (frankly, only sort of) …
2024-08-15 A father and his grandson
2024-08-14 Jonah Goldberg: When it comes to national politics… it’s all a moveable feast where crap sandwiches …
2024-08-11 And now to the bookshelf for one of the best parts. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, Catch a tiger by the …
2024-08-11 Finished reading: Walter Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination by Conrad L. Kanagy 📚 Not quite …
2024-08-11 Kitchen Chalk Talk
2024-08-10 I showed this to three different people tonight — while still chuckling. Not only did no one laugh, …
2024-08-10 Thomas J. Balcerski, on the lasting, and almost universally scorned, friendship of Franklin Pierce …
2024-08-09 He had a camera-shy friend with him 5 seconds ago
2024-08-08 Kay Ryan:
2024-08-08 Current mood — and inability to understand how the world works — has Michael Budde ringing in my …
2024-08-07 James Wood: Simon notes the enormous popularity of Faustian fables in the nineteenth century, …
2024-08-07 Currently Reading: Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching by Ursula K. Le Guin 📚; and also: Walter …
2024-08-06 The sacrificial Joker
2024-08-06 Image from Steve Robinson Also this: This hand learned to print, color inside the lines, bathe a …
2024-08-05 Flipping through Berry’s A Timbered Choir. I do think you can see the love and even the cheerfulness …
2024-08-05 Russel Moore’s tribute to Wendell Berry here is lovely. I was at a medical conference at some mega …
2024-08-05 Conversations stopper of the day: “Have you seen that trend on TickTock…?”
2024-08-05 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Even in soporific Canada, which always lagged behind, a leading television …
2024-08-05 Anne Fadiman: In San Diego, the manager of an electronics plant was so enthusiastic about one Hmong …
2024-08-04 Life is not the Olympics… David Whyte: I often think that one of the great qualities that’s …
2024-08-03 Jack and Jerry • This had all the makings of a great slapstick comedy routine. And this is after …
2024-08-03 David Whyte, on Goethe’s poem “Holy Longings” (which you should click-n-read): So Goethe is looking …
2024-07-31 David Whyte, on Patrick Kavanagh’s wonderful poem “The Self-Slaved”: It’s one of the truisms of …
2024-07-31 The Hmong language is, uh, more blunt, and arguably more accurate: The Hmong have a phase, yuav …
2024-07-31 Christian Wiman: The casual way that American Christians have of talking about God is not simply …
2024-07-29 Coworker 1: “I haven’t been watching the olympics much, but I just think Snoop Dogg such an American …
2024-07-28 Stanley Hauerwas, still fighting the good fight: The disavowal of violence is to create a world in …
2024-07-28 Not solutions to a problem, but responses to a predicament
2024-07-27 Mary Catherine Bateson: Learning is perhaps the only pleasure that might replace increasing …
2024-07-27 Laura M. Fabrycky: While they may never properly iron linen table napkins, children and adults …
2024-07-27 To be resigned or hopeful, calculated or surprised — Jürgen Moltmann
2024-07-25 Pure Joy
2024-07-25 Phil Klay: When I see people who have never set foot in Russia or Ukraine or Gaza or Israel, with …
2024-07-25 Erin Plunkett’s essay “Temporal Houses, Eternal Mysteries: Leaving the Faith, Seeking Faith” is a …
2024-07-24 Hard to say for sure that this isn’t a common tern, but signs point to an arctic tern. This guy was …
2024-07-22 Major Milestones • Monday, July 22nd 2024, 5:24 pm — Will’s first laughter at his own farts. Good …
2024-07-16 Currently Reading: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman 📚 The Hmong have a …
2024-07-16 And then what? — Moving from narrow to wide-boundary lenses.
2024-07-16 Started and stopped reading: All Things Are Too Small by Becca Rothfeld 📚 Doubt I’ll pick it back …
2024-07-15 Finished reading: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff 📚 Because, ya know, I needed …
2024-07-13 Layers of old-fashionedness • A person on a bicycle stopped to ask another human being (me) where …
2024-07-12 Philip Ball: There’s virtue in that picture [of the genome as a ‘highly sensitive organ of the …
2024-07-12 Anna Badkhen, “In praise of magical thinking”: Because what is the world? A thaumatrope turning …
2024-07-12 Ah yes, the imfamous Euproctis chrysorrhoea. In their larva stage, these are better known by their …
2024-07-11 Random Bookshelf Quote of the Day Václav Havel, in 1986: IBM certainly works better than the Škoda …
2024-07-10 To speak from experience is to be understood everywhere. To speak in abstract terms is to find no …
2024-07-09 A friend reminded me that the Kenyan Prayer posted this morning is much like this line from Mary …
2024-07-09 From the cowardice that dare not face new truth From the laziness that is contented with half truth …
2024-07-08 Let life be enough
2024-07-07 A video from our sunrise “elk ride” at Harriman State Park in eastern Idaho three years ago. Crank …
2024-07-07 When I get the chance to sit quietly in a café with a book, I feel like Kevin feels with hotdogs on …
2024-07-06 I’ve sometimes thought of doing a post series after things Meghan says called That’s Not A …
2024-07-04 Failure to call shotgun
2024-07-03 Joseph Weizenbaum (1987): I don’t quite know whether it is especially computer science or its …
2024-07-03 “I can reach it.”
2024-06-29 In the final analysis [history] can be understood and illuminated only by sympathetic insight. – …
2024-06-28 Nacho breath … and smile
2024-06-28 Neil Postman, on “image politics” as a form of therapy: In the shift from party politics to …
2024-06-28 Thomas L. Friedman: I watched the Biden-Trump debate alone in a Lisbon hotel room, and it made me …
2024-06-27 Oh boy am I excited!
2024-06-26 I’m going to have to start doubling down on what has been my lackadaisical use of Instapaper if I’m …
2024-06-24 I am literally never not pleasantly surprised by joy when I pick up Richard Wilbur. Here’s his …
2024-06-23 “Find more ways to be an ‘ist, ‘ian, or ‘er.”
2024-06-23 John Milton: He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and …
2024-06-22 Il Grillo Parlante, aka Jiminy
2024-06-21 Time for the annual Wall Street Journal Subscription Cancellation Dance. I usually accept the lower …
2024-06-21 I believe my watch just told me, “Your ego is writing checks that your body can’t cash.”
2024-06-20 This is AI’s most transformative promise: longer, healthier lives unbounded by the scarcity and …
2024-06-19 Clearly Meghan does not share my enthusiasm for printed magazines, especially this one. Otherwise …
2024-06-19 While I was reading JD Hunter’s recent book, the routine was to take 5-month-old Will and before …
2024-06-19 Jürgen Moltmann: Hope alone is to be called “realistic,” because it alone takes seriously the …
2024-06-18 I’ve been talking about the Jevons effect for years, but without knowing it had a name: the Jevons …
2024-06-17 Kierkegaard, describing “the whole of modern philosophy” as a wholly immanent, telos-less genius: …
2024-06-16 Car(e) Free 🤓
2024-06-16 Finally Reading: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff 📚 I’ve put this off because …
2024-06-15 From spit-up rag to mysterious descending cloud of happiness
2024-06-15 Kierkegaard’s diatribe on “the public” is priceless: In order that everything should be reduced to …
2024-06-14 The Courageous Middle — A little comically rambling, but Shirley Mullen had a lot of very good …
2024-06-14 Happy cousins
2024-06-13 Currently Reading: The Present Age by Soren Kierkegaard 📚 Inspired by Matthew Crawford’s recent bit …
2024-06-13 Finished reading: Democracy and Solidarity by James Davison Hunter 📚 Really, very, and quite …
2024-06-11 📚Happy New Book in the Mail Day! Celebrate accordingly — by putting it on the shelf behind all the …
2024-06-11 Oh boy! A letter from across the pond and something from Robin Sloan that I don’t even remember …
2024-06-10 Sanctuary of the Lord of Tula, Mexico (Photographed by Rafael Gamo) Amanda Iglesias: How does one …
2024-06-10 From a 2012 interview with Jürgen Moltmann: Were you not then [after the war] obliged to do …
2024-06-10 “Something to do with dignity, something to do with luck, something to do with grace.”
2024-06-08 “I only drive when I want to.”
2024-06-06 Roger Scruton: For consider what has not been destroyed: music, poetry and art; the sacred texts …
2024-06-05 I’m fine, this is fine
2024-06-04 Valuing seeks to dominate the material world. The entire stuff of being becomes a mere resource to …
2024-06-03 This perfectly complements the Rembrandt painting this morning
2024-06-03 “No wonder,” says Anne Kim, “that poverty sticks around. There’s simply too much demand for it.” …
2024-06-03 Rembrandt’s The Prodigal Son among the Swine, c.1650 With the greatest economy and delicacy, …
2024-05-31 The allure of a window the calling to show up get up and go outside
2024-05-30 David Dark: I’m involved in a lonely war against the deployment of particular abstractions. I call …
2024-05-30 Boys day out in Brunswick today and Will and I had two goals: acquisition of plumbing hardware ☑️ …
2024-05-29 “Just lemme suck on your chin”
2024-05-29 Will and I are really enjoying JD Hunter’s Democracy and Solidarity, which I read to him every …
2024-05-29 📚 💬James Davison Hunter: Like Schlesinger, [Walter] Lippmann recognized the instability of liberal …
2024-05-28 Brickland
2024-05-23 Vincent van Gogh to Emile Bernard: Science — scientific reasoning — strikes me as being an …
2024-05-22 The steeples of Bath
2024-05-21 “Memories were not made to be beaten.” ~Kai Cheng Thom~
2024-05-21 Ivo Andríc: I listen carefully to all these discussions, both those between you two and other …
2024-05-20 🍿Movie night last night. Finally found some time to sit down and watch All Illusions Must Be Broken. …
2024-05-19 I purchase books in such a way that I can walk up to my own bookshelf and say, “Ooo, I should read …
2024-05-19 Kim Hew-Low: There is a certain permeability between art and life, and pleasure in perceiving it: …
2024-05-17 The sparrow and oriole stopping by for breakfast
2024-05-14 Finished reading: The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andríc 📚 A fascinating tale of the long life of a …
2024-05-14 Waste Not even waste is inviolate. The day misspent, the love misplaced, has inside it the seed of …
2024-05-12 The Crew • Happy Mama’s Day to all those mamas out there. But especially to this one.
2024-05-09 L. M. Sacasas The way of the tourist is to consume; the way of the pilgrim is to be consumed. To …
2024-05-08 A friend recently posted a quote from Matthew Crawford’s book Why We Drive, which sparked a little …
2024-05-07 Holy shit. We’ve been doing Easter so wrong!
2024-05-02 Oliver Burkeman: I agree with the AI boosters that there’s no reason to assume AI won’t match the …
2024-04-30 Timber drift at Fairy Lake
2024-04-29 Happy New Book in the Mail Day! Celebrate accordingly. 📚
2024-04-28 Best advice you’ll find on the back of a car
2024-04-28 Spring gonna spring
2024-04-27 Grammie, meet Willington. Willington, meet your namesake’s daughter. 🙂
2024-04-26 “Hi, Jack … Hi, Jack … Hi, Jack”
2024-04-26 hysteron proteron:
2024-04-26 Critter
2024-04-25 “The conditions we now endure, I want to argue, are the fruit of a false and failed conservatism, as …
2024-04-25 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to Eberhard Bethge, Tuesday, November 30, 1943: In the past few months I have …
2024-04-24 Matthew Crawford, in his introduction to the 50th anniversary edition of Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the …
2024-04-24 First light
2024-04-23 Miri Rubin: We can only understand anti-Judaism when we appreciate that it [is] not universal, and …
2024-04-21 Goat on a mountain
2024-04-21 Open 🙂
2024-04-21 Bonhoeffer, joy, and “being for others”
2024-04-17 “He wishes he were back in his country, praying in person with Haitians who have nothing to eat, …
2024-04-16 Andrew J. Newell: At the heart of this moment, and of many such moments in Buechner’s writing, is a …
2024-04-13 Early-rising blue heron enjoying a misty morning sunrise after the storm on the southern tip of …
2024-04-10 “The practice of nepsis is counter-cultural. Social media, politics, culture wars, pop culture, …
2024-04-09 Ask and you shall receive! This was great, and it could not have worked out better even if I had …
2024-04-09 Pictures and video often, if not always, fall short of the reality of any experience. But this was …
2024-04-08 That. Was. Cool.
2024-04-07 Ice cream = well-being
2024-04-06 As part of my print-to-read effort, I may have geeked out a little over this “print as pamphlet” …
2024-04-05 “His architecture clearly expresses his beliefs through the modular structure and the simplicity of …
2024-04-05 Serene on Mount Chocorua (2019)
2024-04-04 Beautiful foliage in Maine today. The signs of spring are here!
2024-04-03 A note on repetition in the film Paterson — and something of an elaboration on this post.
2024-04-02 Iain McGilchrist: The problem is that the very brain mechanisms which succeed in simplifying the …
2024-03-31 “Another sunny day?!”
2024-03-30 “Can you believe it?! The sun is out!”
2024-03-30 Finished reading: Upstream by Mary Oliver 📚 “I would write praise poems that might serve as …
2024-03-29 I love idea of “moral odysseys” (taken from Ryan S. Olsen). I’ve written bits and pieces here and …
2024-03-28 Nick Cotaggio: I always assumed that if the American right were to embrace an authoritarian …
2024-03-28 Christopher Yates: The polish applied in adjectival designation inclines one to believe that a …
2024-03-26 It’s all in the ears
2024-03-25 “Fear and vigilance are not the bedrock of healthy communities.”
2024-03-24 Portland cityscape, post ice storm
2024-03-24 He he. Locals…
2024-03-24 In Maine whether it rains or it snows, or any time the wind blows, there can be little doubt the …
2024-03-22 I dreamed a dream in time gone by, When hope was high and life, worth sniffing.
2024-03-21 Peter W. Walker: The “golden legend” and the “black legend” are mirror opposites, but they …
2024-03-21 Mary Oliver: That his methods are endlessly suggestive rather than demonstrative, and that their …
2024-03-20 Nick Cotaggio Finding dignity in politics is like finding jewelry in a sewer system. There’s some …
2024-03-18 “Everyone is now chasing power. They are willing to look everywhere for it.” Call me an …
2024-03-18 Kitchen Chalk Talk
2024-03-17 Finished reading: Iron John by Robert Bly 📚 What a very, very weird book. And weirdly rich. Some …
2024-03-17 Patient puppy dog
2024-03-16 Official Backyard Overseer
2024-03-14 Happy New Book in the Mail Day! Celebrate accordingly.
2024-03-08 Alexei Navalny: “If your convictions are worth anything, you should be ready to stand up for them, …
2024-03-05 This one always gets me
2024-03-03 Instant friends • A very low tide at Higgins Beach yesterday
2024-03-02 Kitchen Chalk Talk
2024-03-02 There’s a fern in the frost
2024-02-28 “I see many squirrels, and treats, and belly rubs in my… I mean your future.”
2024-02-28 “Patient Trust,” a prayer from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: Above all, trust in the slow work of …
2024-02-27 Looking out from Bunker Hill onto Damariscotta Lake
2024-02-26 I recently stumbled on a quote/clip from Austin Kleon, one of those grand simplicities that …
2024-02-25 Rockland Harbor
2024-02-25 On passivity: The average American child by eighteen has seen four thousand hours of commercials, …
2024-02-12 “What? You guys sit like this.”
2024-02-09 Currently Reading: The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram 📚 Caught up in a mass of abstractions, …
2024-02-08 “What do you mean this is not my spot?”
2024-02-07 Fun to think of how much playful, generative space there is in Leah Libresco Sargeant’s phrase …
2024-02-07 Titles can be so much a part of a poem. I love this from Billy Collins for instance: Just as the …
2024-02-06 Getcha Bean boots on
2024-02-04 Kitchen Chalk Talk • “…and this something makes demands on us.”
2024-01-31 [W]hile beauty is something whose event can be remarked upon, and in a way that seems to convey a …
2024-01-24 It snows because the wind wants to be water, because water wants to be powder and powder wants to …
2024-01-23 “Most so-called innovations are now anti-progress by any honest definition.”
2024-01-14 Kitchen Chalk Talk • I think this is a pretty damn good epigraph for this year
2024-01-13 Finished reading: The Character of Virtue by Stanley Hauerwas 📚 If I have any advice, it is simply …
2024-01-12 A brief New Year’s in-lieu-of-newsletter newsletter — nothing, nothing, nothing will ever be the …
2024-01-08 Tyrannus T. Twostroke • A simple job for a simple engine
2024-01-08 Matthew B. Crawford: Superficially, litter and the rusting carcasses of salvaged cars are both an …
2024-01-07 Snow day activities
2024-01-07 “Gotta stretch for these snow zooms.”
2024-01-07 Justin Giboney: If our public witness votes and lobbies but doesn’t testify, if it debates and …
2024-01-06 D-Day + 9
2024-01-05 Well this is a first. Is there a name in rummy when the deck is out and all the cards have been …
2024-01-02 My dad wrote riddles and poetry for any number of annual events growing up. And I see he has not …
2024-01-01 January’s kitchen table clutter • Part of an attempt to read fewer things online. I’ve been …
2023-12-30 Life is complicated. It is simplifying but dangerous to have one overriding concern that makes …
2023-12-29 Oh Stink/Screw the Dealer — some close scores this year!
2023-12-28 The time for excuses is over • Gearing up for a very new year. There are a lot of dumb phone options …
2023-12-28 Signs and symptoms of a Euchre deck
2023-12-27 Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, Bethlehem, West Bank (Source) Frederick Buechner: As you …
2023-12-26 Dietrich Bonhoeffer: If only during this time bitterness and envy have not corroded the heart; that …
2023-12-24 Shear coastal madness
2023-12-24 Bacon-wrapped dates — also known as, just another excuse to eat bacon
2023-12-22 David Bosworth: But should you be tempted to purchase in advance a ticket-to-ride on Musk’s …
2023-12-21 “Conversation at its best is the encounter of difference, not as a contest, but as an act of loving …
2023-12-20 Tweedledum and Tweedledee
2023-12-19 Photo from a friend in Hallowell. That’s the highest level in 25 years. The flood standard for the …
2023-12-19 “We seem only happy enough to be partners in the abolition of the body.” — This is one of the …
2023-12-17 Mary Oliver: The second world—the world of literature—offered me, besides the pleasures of form, …
2023-12-17 The “comforts” of home.
2023-12-10 Rangifer Canis familiaris
2023-12-09 Christian Wiman: I want to write a book true to the storm of forms and needs, the intuitions and …
2023-12-09 !!!!!!!
2023-12-07 Group polarization (/every public conversation) in 15 seconds.
2023-12-05 Currently Reading: The Life You Save May Be Your Own by Paul Elie 📚 At its best, it is writing that …
2023-12-04 Lights are up, our single ornament and improvised tree topper placed with précision. But I’ll always …
2023-12-03 Last week I finally got around to christening the kitchen chalkboard. After quickly flipping through …
2023-12-02 The soft consonance of a waterfowl floating in the foggy, feather-calm final minutes of low tide on …
2023-11-30 Happy pup at Pemaquid
2023-11-29 Finished Reading (2023): Culture Care by Makoto Fujimura 📚 Simple and elegant, pointing clearly …
2023-11-24 Post-Thanksgiving reminder:
2023-11-23 … When the power is restored, transfer the roast to oven, resume normal cooking activities, play …
2023-11-23 And when the power is not returned to thee at the appointed time, light thine charcoals in order to …
2023-11-23 The second rule is to continue to relax. Light some candles and play a couple games of cribbage.
2023-11-23 When the power goes out just before cooking Thanksgiving dinner, the first rule is not to panic. …
2023-11-23 I have had four jobs today: Read books ✔️ Go for a walk ✔️ Make whippy cream ✔️ Read more books ✔️ …
2023-11-21 Sometimes, you just can’t finish the chapter
2023-11-21 Alan Jacobs: “Even as we try to keep the humanities-in-the-university afloat, I think we need to …
2023-11-21 If only it were that simple.
2023-11-18 Rainy day shenanigans
2023-11-18 Kay Ryan: It is common to suppose that anyone whom one is not is predisposed to like her lot— that …
2023-11-18 October (s)newsletter/Better-late-than-never letter! I’ve wondered if I’ll keep writing …
2023-11-18 Jack’s “I had to go pee in the rain” face. “Why? They know I don’t like the rain. And I …
2023-11-17 “This is my dirt pile. There are many like it, but this one is mine.”
2023-11-06 Halfway there
2023-11-06 It ain’t ya house till you’ve had to get up on the roof for somethin’.
2023-11-05 Late fall rose bloom
2023-11-05 Forecast: leaves
2023-11-04 A faithful man who’s never let me down • Dad, working on our first cord for the winter 🪵🔥
2023-11-04 UFO landing
2023-11-03 Yet another (unsurprising) reason why I love Billy Collins. Over the poem is a quote from a book …
2023-11-03 Nice view from the public house
2023-11-01 “I’m Jack Sonville, and I approve of—what’s that smell?”
2023-10-31 A thought while reading Billy Collins in a hotel in Juba.
2023-10-31 A rippled, peaceful pause between the tides
2023-10-30 Paging @ablerism Sarah Hendron!! Below is a newspaper clipping my grandmother saved from, we think, …
2023-10-29 Some photos from Popham Beach. It’s good to be home
2023-10-28 Happy place
2023-10-27 Apparently Jack has a green thumb
2023-10-26 8-year-old me. This expression still pretty much covers how I feel most of the time
2023-10-25 Digging out the storage at my parents’ house and found some evidence of a 5th grade science …
2023-10-24 Just another morning in New Harbor
2023-10-23 First Second clear night over the river
2023-10-19 Now I’m home
2023-10-18 Damariscotta tide, going out
2023-10-17 Some photos from Meghan last week. Jack’s fitting right in to Coastal Maine
2023-10-16 Final approach home
2023-10-15 Other worlds, other lives, even though so different from our own, have the power of arousing the …
2023-10-15 Headed back to the states from South Sudan and catching up on the news — ie, spending time behind …
2023-10-15 Me: I need help setting up reminders on the phone. Meghan: You don’t know how to set up reminders?? …
2023-10-14 … clack-clack, and something that never was before comes into being … F. Buechner
2023-10-11 View of the White Nile out the window of the DC-3
2023-10-11 A Three for a taxi • From yesterday’s ride-along in the 1945 Douglas DC-3 to pick up patients in …
2023-10-09 Walking with
2023-10-07 OSHA-certified signage • These little M7s have pulled their weight. There’s four of them that have …
2023-10-05 September (s)newsletter!
2023-10-03 Nashville is taller than I remembered her
2023-10-03 These lands are bad
2023-10-02 The Moon illusion, Rushmore edition. In the second photo, I’m standing about a football field’s …
2023-10-01 Heat lighting and sprites, going south on 29 toward Omaha on 09/29. Once we turned a little more …
2023-10-01 Sleepy dog
2023-09-30 Number 23, chillin with number 6 and number 7
2023-09-30 We made a quick stop at Gutzon Borglum‘s “Shrine of Democracy” yesterday — or “Shrine of Hypocrisy,” …
2023-09-29 Contrast • The near black and white sunrise before sunrise over eastern Montana
2023-09-27 “This was an era of shivering jemmy on the high fly munging for a bit of cagmag, when pure finders …
2023-09-26 “A counter-reality in the scales” — my now favorite way to think about thinking
2023-09-25 Action shot • A brilliant header, or a goofy dog who can’t catch? When in doubt, go with brilliance
2023-09-25 Donations to the walking-path library. I thought I’d be lightening the book bin a lot more for the …
2023-09-24 Olivia Sokolowski: Our national obsession with certain smells is returning alongside autumn. …
2023-09-22 Going-to-the-Sun Road • A snapshot Meghan took out of the sunroof two years ago
2023-09-21 Back-sleeper
2023-09-20 Geoff Dyer: It is possible, as you don’t need me to tell you, to buy almost any book on the …
2023-09-20 This is a very good and concise and important critique of Airbnb, Inc. But it’s also an old one! I’m …
2023-09-19 Wild dog, untamable beast, living life on the edge
2023-09-18 Fabric • The one pair of jeans I’ve had with me for the last 8 months. You don’t know how little you …
2023-09-17 Sunny Sunday stroll
2023-09-17 Miso Oatmeal • Zero points for presentation, but finally got around to trying one of Audrey Waters’s …
2023-09-16 📚 💬 Kay Ryan:
2023-09-15 Drinking dog on Drinking Horse • Jack Dog is not generally interested in drinking out of plastic …
2023-09-15 Please, Ted, there has to be another way. Anything but that. 🤓
2023-09-14 Statue of Florence Martus, the Waving Girl, in Morrell Park, overlooking the Marsh Island Channel in …
2023-09-13 Glowing in the dark — naturally and manually
2023-09-11 Meghan: Why does my stance look so weird? Me: I used the wide angle. Meghan: You can’t put a …
2023-09-10 Winter cycles in Baxter State Park • From 2019, sundown at Abol, gearing up sleds and “fatbikes” for …
2023-09-10 Currently Reading: Aimless Love by Billy Collins 📚 I think this is my favorite piece of cover art …
2023-09-09 August (s)newsletter!
2023-09-07 Panorama atop Storm Castle
2023-09-06 Well, it appears we have a standoff (Jack won; the gopher got bored after 3 minutes and moved on)
2023-09-04 A very orange sunset • A shot Meghan took in September 2020, off the Western Promenade in Portland, …
2023-09-03 Precious — by every definition
2023-09-02 Swimmy dog • A lot of buildup to the this moment
2023-09-01 It can be difficult to interpret canine facial expressions, but me thinks Jack was not looking …
2023-09-01 Abstract Ort 🤓
2023-08-30 Seamus Heaney: [W]hatever the possibilities of achieving political harmony at an institutional …
2023-08-27 📚 Felice Benuzzi: To be perfectly honest, there were occasions when the thought of our impending …
2023-08-27 📚 Felice Benuzzi: Forced to endure the milieu we seemed almost afraid of losing our individuality. …
2023-08-27 📚 Felice Benuzzi: Time was no longer considered by the average prisoner as something of value to be …
2023-08-27 Currently Reading: No Picnic on Mount Kenya by Felice Benuzzi 📚 The night sky was clear. There was …
2023-08-27 Laaazy morning
2023-08-26 Kay Ryan: It’s such an interesting paradox: we can see a voice; we hear through the eyes. But …
2023-08-26 There is no learning; only doing. ~ Jack Sonville ~
2023-08-25 Some related things on the significance of “ideals."
2023-08-25 Kay Ryan: But here’s the thing: the thing that’s exactly right may be a tiny part of a …
2023-08-22 Some really impressing views watching a storm move through the Canyon today. This first one was on …
2023-08-22 Let’s go north, and leave this Phoenix heat behind
2023-08-22 The Toasted Owl in Flagstaff • A side-menu worthy of Jack’s refined tastes
2023-08-21 The sign of a good “a.m. eatery”
2023-08-19 Apostrophe: the addressing of a usually absent person or a usually personified thing rhetorically …
2023-08-19 Currently Reading: Synthesizing Gravity by Kay Ryan 📚 I have loved a few of Kay Ryan’s poems for a …
2023-08-17 Lots of murals in Phoenix. Like this one, on the old Channel 5 building on 1st Ave, with interesting …
2023-08-15 Somewhere south of Salt Lake
2023-08-13 Goat-a love a good sunrise, eh?
2023-08-09 A law of the universe, as true as any other: “If I make this face, you have to scratch my head.”
2023-08-07 Somebody wants to be friends
2023-08-07 July (s)newsletter!
2023-08-06 Highfalutin fido
2023-08-05 Finished Reading (2023): Natality: Toward a Philosophy of Birth by Jennifer Banks 📚 An excellent …
2023-07-31 Marilynne Robinson: It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray …
2023-07-30 Simple things
2023-07-30 Mornings are the best
2023-07-29 Pioneer Falls
2023-07-29 Finished Reading: Neither Beast Nor God: The Dignity of the Human Person by Gilbert Meilaender 📚 …
2023-07-28 This is how much Jack enjoys TV
2023-07-27 Finished Reading: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson 📚 Third time in this book, and I love it equally each …
2023-07-25 I love biking to and from work every day. Every time, it reminds me of my home state slogan, “The …
2023-07-22 One of my favorite things about weekends/days off is the tempo: the no-rush sips of coffee over a …
2023-07-16 <3
2023-07-14 Puppy dog
2023-07-10 Before the downpour and wind started, there was a good 10, maybe even 15, minutes of nonstop …
2023-07-09 Bitchin’ book day 🤓
2023-07-09 “I think I’ll lay right . . . here.”
2023-07-06 The essentials
2023-07-04 David Dark: To the extent that we aspire to bear witness to beloved community, our hopes for …
2023-07-01 Everyone gets ice cream this weekend
2023-06-30 Oreamnos americanus: the true mountaineer
2023-06-30 Sacagawea Peak
2023-06-26 Currently Reading: Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times by Jonathan Sacks 📚
2023-06-25 Finished Reading: Balkan Contextual Theology by Stipe Odak 📚 Tremendous. Refreshingly complex and …
2023-06-25 Looking down on Big Sky
2023-06-24 Goofball
2023-06-23 Andrew H. Miller: Reading stories is one way we explore attitudes of attachment to ourselves. . . . …
2023-06-23 Fairy Lake
2023-06-19 Balloons • These guys fly (float?) around Bozeman a lot
2023-06-18 I’m rereading Gilead for a little bookclub with friends and really enjoying it. One of Robinson’s …
2023-06-16 Sometimes the simplest juxtapositions do an immense amount of work. Bonhoeffer, for example: “bear …
2023-06-13 Montana morning
2023-06-13 True North Cafe, Livingston, MT
2023-06-12 Jack’s gopher-scented breathing excercises are getting out of control.
2023-06-11 Pals
2023-06-10 Lady Bug
2023-06-10 Finished Reading: On Lying and Politics by Hannah Arendt 📚 I have only ever dabbled in my reading of …
2023-06-09 “Arrogance of mind” (as defined by Hannah Arendt): an utterly irrational confidence in the …
2023-06-09 Trying to buy a house in today’s market feels… dirty. When every house bid has to be 30–100k over …
2023-06-09 Daydreaming
2023-06-04 Wendell Berry:
2023-06-02 Honey bee
2023-05-30 DB: Quantities compete for space; qualities complement one another.
2023-05-29 Walter Russell Mead: “I don’t think America’s biggest problem is that we are divided between two …
2023-05-29 Winter-Spring contrast at Lava Lake
2023-05-28 Emerald green at the M trail
2023-05-28 Afternoon anti-inflation project (with instructions) • I’m close enough to work here in Bozeman to …
2023-05-25 Storms over Belgrade
2023-05-25 Throwback Thursday: The air band episode of Scrubs, which was absolutely iconic and hands down the …
2023-05-24 Finished Reading: American Journal by Tracy K. Smith 📚 I loved carrying this little anthology around …
2023-05-23 Scenes from our favorite Bozeman after-work walk, Drinking Horse Trail
2023-05-21 The narrative repeated by officialdom got established before the facts were in, and went on to play …
2023-05-21 Fresco Café by Bozeman Creek
2023-05-20 Currently Reading: Why We Drive by Matthew Crawford 📚 I’m a couple chapters in, and so far …
2023-05-19 Outside smiles
2023-05-18 Bonhoeffer: There, where we trust, we have learned to place our lives in the hands of others; …
2023-05-18 Dreaming of walks, of smells, of gopher holes and dog parks—oh, all that unmarked territory, …
2023-05-18 Blood moon? Or smoky sunrise?
2023-05-17 Finished Reading: Repair by C. K. Williams 📚 that something in the rest of us, some doubt about …
2023-05-16 Consider this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer an addendum to my post about Psalm 11: We may not and …
2023-05-15 Stopped by Idaho Falls on the way to Salt Lake over the weekend. The downtown by Snake River is as …
2023-05-14 “The tree is really rooted in the sky.” – Simone Weil
2023-05-14 Finished Reading: The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy 📚 I need more fun novels like this in my …
2023-05-12 Oh Tetons, you big, beautiful rocks • Sighting on the road south to Salt Lake
2023-05-11 New banner for the (s)newsletter. Planning to give Buttondown a try going forward
2023-05-11 Keep the rain coming
2023-05-04 Finished Reading (2023): The Redress of Poetry by Seamus Heaney 📚 Ten perfectly and wonderfully …
2023-04-30 Triple Tree Trail, overlooking Gallatin Valley
2023-04-29 Mountains Walking Brewery • The tater tot nachos were placed before me, I blacked out, and now they …
2023-04-29 Fun time last weekend with my parents visiting from Maine during their road-trip vacation. Touring …
2023-04-24 From Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams: The aurora borealis, pale gossamer curtains of light that …
2023-04-24 First personal sighting of an aurora last night. This is unedited, but I think the long exposure …
2023-04-23 Paw pillow
2023-04-19 Put down the pen, please. Less booky, more walky.
2023-04-16 Finished Reading: Atomic Habits by James Clear 📚
2023-04-16 Half ostrich, half dog • Between the pocket gophers, ground squirrels, prairie dogs, and/or …
2023-04-16 Finished Reading (2023): On Getting Out of Bed by Alan Noble 📚
2023-04-16 Finished Reading (2023): Life Worth Living by Miroslav Volf 📚
2023-04-16 Finished Reading (2023): Quiet Power & Quiet The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t …
2023-04-15 Yawning or singing?
2023-04-15 Bunny-ear vigilance
2023-04-14 Northeast strip of the Madison Range, viewed from Lone Mountain
2023-04-12 Waiting for dad
2023-04-12 Waiting for mom
2023-04-11 Monday’s sunrise over Bridger Ridge
2023-04-06 Head scratches are da best
2023-04-02 Out on the sunny Sunday town
2023-04-02 Happy hikers
2023-04-01 Alan Jacobs, Thomas Jefferson, and the liberal arts—a thought.
2023-04-01 Jack has recently decided that he deserves a seat in the front and has claimed the armrest as his …
2023-03-31 Chopstick practice at Dave’s Sushi
2023-03-30 When a prepositional phrase just says it all:
2023-03-27 Support • Picture in a hotel lobby in Jackson, WY (This is how I plan to hike The Grand with Kyle …
2023-03-26 Can you imagine eating snow without the slightest hesitation, without even one cell or synapse …
2023-03-26 A Tale of Two Blogs, or, why I keep two blogs.
2023-03-25 Finished Reading: The Home of God by Miroslav Volf 📚 The New Jerusalem does not compensate for …
2023-03-25 Bridger Bowl • Powderiest pow pow day ever
2023-03-24 “Does this angle make my nose look big?”
2023-03-22 I am a liberal—firmly liberal.
2023-03-19 Jonathan Raban, Richard Wilbur, and Christian Wiman—a thought on what was missing in Raban’s …
2023-03-19 “I’ll be waiting right here by the stairs whenever you decide it’s time to go to …
2023-03-18 Finished Reading: Every Riven Thing by Christian Wiman 📚 For I am come a whirlwind of wasted things …
2023-03-18 Sunrise hike to Lava Lake
2023-03-17 New cataracts under the portico in Maban, South Sudan (January 2020) • You should see them dance …
2023-03-12 Shiny day
2023-03-12 Reread Annie Dillard’s “Living Like Weasels” this afternoon. So good. Living: …
2023-03-12 Finished Reading: Bad Land: An American Romance by Jonathan Raban 📚 “…sketching a …
2023-03-09 Dabbling together • Idaho Falls, August 2021
2023-03-08 Corbet’s Cabin/Top of the World Waffles • Yes, waffles do taste even better at 10,450 feet …
2023-03-08 No lift here. Just take off ya skis ‘n walk, bub.
2023-03-07 Rendezvous Mountain • Can see a whole lot of mountains from up here
2023-03-06 East End, Portland, ME, looking out toward Fort Gorges in 2015 • When it comes to engineering, …
2023-03-06 Skinning up Snow King
2023-03-05 “And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting”
2023-03-05 My dream • Books before boards (skis) in Jackson, WY
2023-03-05 Tile (Eastern Idaho style)
2023-03-04 A little Saturday afternoon anti-inflation sewing
2023-03-03 Call of the Wild
2023-03-03 Weather(ed)
2023-03-03 Solitude
2023-03-02 Buffler Woods
2023-03-02 Back on The Ghee, looking down into Teton Canyon
2023-02-28 Jupiter and Venus, saying hi to each other
2023-02-28 Finished Reading: Thin Places: A Natural History of Healing and Home by Kerri ní Dochartaigh 📚 Thin …
2023-02-27 “Wake we when you guys are done reading”
2023-02-27 Reunited
2023-02-26 A very good Lenten poem
2023-02-25 Every single time that I type “Wednesday,” I say to myself, “wed · nuhz · …
2023-02-22 Chillin
2023-02-20 📚 Finally! I have looked for Richard Wilbur in every bookstore in every city I have visited, …
2023-02-20 “Being torn isn’t such a bad way to be." (2-minute clip, worth your time)
2023-02-19 I wrote something about reading a poem by Wisława Szymborska while I was on the way back from …
2023-02-18 Thin Places on Saturday afternoon
2023-02-18 Apparently this is what happens when your “spicy water” freezes in the car. And, upon …
2023-02-18 Finished Reading (2023): The Ethics of Authenticity by Charles Taylor 📚 A necessary reread. A couple …
2023-02-17 Finished Reading (2023): The Ethics of Authenticity by Charles Taylor 📚 This year’s first …
2023-02-15 Don’t sit on the cactus
2023-02-15 Two sides of the same dog
2023-02-13 Glen Canyon Dam in Page, AZ • Lake Powell above, Colorado River 710 ft. below. (Power vs. Water?)
2023-02-13 “Are we to the place yet?”
2023-02-13 Moonrise
2023-02-12 Sunset through the eye of a Cheez-It
2023-02-12 Finished Reading Road-side Dog by Czesław Miłosz 📚 Quirky and often funny poetic prose from one of …
2023-02-12 Rest stop outside Las Cruces
2023-02-11 Cozy copilot
2023-02-10 What a day! • The Superstitions did not disappoint. Great hike. Photos to follow. Back on the road …
2023-02-10 Superstition Mountains • Think we’ll go for a long walk today
2023-02-09 Looking out at Mt. Lemmon from Picacho Peak
2023-02-09 Sunset at Red Rock • 1850 miles in 36 hours (with dog walks, of course). That pointy one is Picacho …
2023-02-08 Crossing the Mississippi
2023-02-07 Early start • The road trip to Bozeman, Montana has begun! Should be working there through spring. …
2023-02-07 Jack, waiting very patiently, and with laser focus, for his official invite to jump in the car
2023-02-04 Engaging the warp drive • Sometimes I think Jack looks like Scrat, the squirrel from Ice Age
2023-02-03 Best ice cream I have ever had
2023-02-03 Two short quotes against the reign of pragmatic politics.
2023-01-31 Blowing Rock awakes
2023-01-29 Don’t let a rainy forecast tell you there won’t be a sunrise
2023-01-29 Daniel Boone Scout Trail to Calloway Peak
2023-01-28 Getaway driver
2023-01-28 Finished Reading (2023): Hope Abandoned by Nadezhda Mandelstam 📚 I loved reading Nadezhda’s …
2023-01-26 Philip Hoare: “It was only after we had seen the Earth from orbiting spaceships that the first …
2023-01-25 Squirrel’s Pizza on Bull • Yes, the true (read: red sauce) pizzas have their own list and yes …
2023-01-24 W. Perry Lane
2023-01-23 Cable-stayed
2023-01-22 Treylor Park tacos
2023-01-21 Epiphytes at Forsyth Park
2023-01-20 “Grand Lady on the Bay”
2023-01-19 Six Pence Pub
2023-01-18 Happy dog • It’s “walk around town” day. Someone is excited!
2023-01-17 I’m trying out different options for posting some small photo albums online. I may eventually …
2023-01-17 A morning with the Mandelstams is never a bad start to the day 🙂☕️📖
2023-01-16 I’m going to be spending a significant amount of time in the next month or so trying to button …
2023-01-16 Finished Reading: The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice by Wendell Berry 📚 …
2023-01-15 Espresso martini at Ardsley Station
2023-01-13 The Stone Stairs of Death
2023-01-12 Sleepy dog • 7 miles of walking around Savannah, food spots, books, coffee, and watching a mystery …
2023-01-11 I wrote a little something about my goal for this year, which I’m calling The Year of …
2023-01-11 Why do they call it Driftwood Beach?
2023-01-11 Day trip to Jekyll Island
2023-01-10 Late Air
2023-01-09 S’mores night in Port Royal
2023-01-08 The Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist
2023-01-07 The Sands, Port Royal • No shark teeth here
2023-01-06 Happy Place
2023-01-05 Talmadge Memorial Bridge, over the Marsh Island Channel
2023-01-03 Wisława Szymborska:
2023-01-03 Finished reading (2009): The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation by Fanny Howe 📚 A thoughtfull work of …
2023-01-03 South and sunny on Whitaker
2023-01-02 E. 46th and Bull
2023-01-01 Driessen Beach, Hilton Head Island
2022-12-30 Dessert for breakfast at Alexander’s Bistro
2022-12-23 E. Bay St.
2022-12-21 Enjoying a medium-roast gift from my Ukrainian friend
2022-12-18 Out on the sunny Sunday town
2022-12-17 Driving over the Talmadge Memorial Bridge, looking down on the G. Washington container ship, sailing …
2022-12-15 Beer in the nick of time • Getting out of the rain with a Black Butte Porter at The Public in …
2022-12-14 After one month without a phone with or even near me, I can happily conclude that, in spite all my …
2022-12-14 My kind of airport restaurant!
2022-12-14 On my way home again
2022-11-13 False Klamath Cove (28Oct2022) • All my heart lies with these two adventurers
2022-11-08 West of Cheyenne
2022-11-07 On the road again • Left the J-Ville bungalow last week. The west coast was shorter lived than we …
2022-10-26 On Mt. Ashland, looking out toward Shasta, after a nice fall “rain” storm
2022-10-24 No bike or dog left behind
2022-10-22 Friends
2022-10-22 Top of Mt. Ashland • 5,000 ft. of blow-your-shocks-out descent. Two shoulder injuries this summer on …
2022-10-08 Finished reading (2021): Small Wonder: Essays by Barbara Kingsolver 📚 Been picking at this one for …
2022-10-04 Finished reading (2021): Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver by Mary Oliver 📚 I don’t …
2022-10-02 Thoughts from Jack • “Are you guys done playing Euchre card game yet?”
2022-09-29 Little Bear, Wee Bear, and Jack
2022-09-28 Camping at Big Bear Lake, Trinity-Shasta National Forest
2022-09-27 On the way to Bear Lake • “Are we there yet?”
2022-09-27 Mt. Thielsen
2022-09-25 View of Shasta from McLoughlin
2022-09-06 West Coast reunion tour • Best spot in Hood River
2022-08-21 Thoughts from Jack • “You must change your life.”
2022-08-21 Finished reading (2021): Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation by Jonathan Lear 📚 …
2022-08-15 Good weekend
2022-08-10 🍇🥂
2022-08-09 First view of Crater Lake (03Aug22)
2022-08-08 Mt. Joy • Britt Festival, Jacksonville, OR
2022-08-05 The Official…
2022-07-31 <3 • Hobbit Beach—first time on the west coast
2022-07-27 Finished reading (2021): Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine by Alan Lightman 📚 Not as deeply …
2022-07-19 Geneva, NY
2022-07-18 Be seeing this a lot this summer ✈️🌎
2022-07-17 Quick stop at Cobbossee
2022-07-04 Be like Jack: “I just wanna love the world. I wanna sniff it and pee on it (cf. Ricardo Castillo’s …
2022-07-04 Finished reading (2021): Evangelical Anxiety: A Memoir by Charles Marsh 📚 I’m too lazy to …
2022-06-29 Meet the new adoption and the happiest dog in the world. His name is Jack—not only because he looks …
2022-06-22 Dunbar Farms Tasting Room
2022-06-18 Mt. Ashland • It’s not every day you get both of these views within 5 minutes.
2022-06-18 Breadboard in Ashland, OR • I want this painting!
2022-06-17 Spring Point • South Portland, ME (2014)
2022-06-15 Finished reading (2021): The Dangers of Christian Practice by Lauren F. Winner 📚 A depth of honesty …
2022-06-14 Forest Park • Jacksonville, OR
2022-06-14 “Heaven’s Bench” • East Burke, VT (2015)
2022-06-07 Jacksonville • Welcome to the Pacific Northwest
2022-05-30 The difference 5 minutes make on the West Diamond Lake Highway
2022-05-27 Yes, yes, mountain biking is gooder than just fun
2022-05-24 Boise • Sinker Creek
2022-05-17 (Public) Secret Falls
2022-05-17 Kauai, overlooking Wailua River State Park • Now this is the Hawaii I imagined
2022-05-14 Mauna a Wākea Apocalyptica
2022-05-03 Best $6 I’ll spend this week — Island Lava Java in Kona — Bar tender was from Maine, couple …
2022-05-02 A gecko pooped on Mary Oliver this morning. I somehow think she didn’t even mind.
2022-05-02 Finished reading (2021): The Emigrants by W. G. Sebald 📚 A piercing look into carried history. …
2022-04-24 Kīlauea Volcano
2022-04-23 Eucalyptus (regnans?) • Kalōpā State Park
2022-04-22 There are about 13 rainbows a day in Waimea
2022-04-22 “Mere life is interesting enough. . . . I had always vaguely felt facts to be miracles in the …
2022-04-22 Messalonskee Lake - 21April2018 - at the Maine Arts Academy
2022-04-20 Finished reading (2021): Bonhoeffer’s Religionless Christianity in Its Christological Context by …
2022-04-19 A friend joined me for coffee this morning, though I didn’t have an extra chair
2022-04-18 Hawai’i or Ireland?
2022-04-13 Mary Oliver:
2022-04-13 This 2019 essay by Zadie Smith is the best thing I’ve read in a while. More of us need whatever it …
2022-04-12 Last flight for a while, I hope
2022-04-10 Currently returning with the cleft surgery team from Juba, after previously spending a few weeks in …
2022-04-09 Currently Reading: Bonhoeffer’s Religionless Christianity in Its Christological Context by Peter …
2022-04-09 Rynek Główny (09March22)
2022-03-31 Dubai
2022-03-29 It may sound dumb, but after living mostly underground for the last few weeks, I think Dove might be …
2022-03-03 All things worth thinking and knowing need to be retold. And I would say that the central point of …
2022-03-02 Interview with Ukrainian poet Ilya Kaminsky
2022-03-02 Reading a short essay this morning from James Calvin Schaap, I came across something that makes …
2022-03-01 Feldman’s Deli
2022-03-01 Simone Weil:
2022-02-27 Quit reading (2021): The Will to See by Bernard-Henri Levy 📚 Couldn’t make it past the second …
2022-02-27 One last demo day and (maybe) last day to ski the Ghee
2022-02-22 Very sad to hear about Paul Farmer. I remember my biology program professor being one of his biggest …
2022-02-21 Finished reading (2021): Light Perpetual: A Novel by Francis Spufford 📚 In many ways a very simple …
2022-02-10 Afternoon walk to Chapolera Coffee Shop (Idaho Falls) to say hi to Lupe
2022-02-08 Table Mountain (06Feb22)
2022-02-05 Quick stop at Marcellar’s—Can’t say no to a unique cribbage board
2022-02-02 Snapshot off the I-15
2022-02-01 Searching for powder at Snowbird
2022-01-30 Alta
2022-01-26 Teton “QRS complex”
2022-01-25 Finished reading (2002): A Pelican in the Wilderness: Hermits and Solitaries by Isabel Colegate 📚 A …
2022-01-24 Ski Grand Targhee
2022-01-18 “Empathy is a moral imperative but also an epistemological one.” – Anthony Domestico
2022-01-15 Currently Reading: Erratic Facts by Kay Ryan 📚 Snagged a copy at Country Bookshelf in Bozeman. …
2022-01-14 Big Sky, little snow
2022-01-14 Big Sky, hot tub
2022-01-10 Finished reading (2021): The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion 📚 Sobering, resonant, finite.
2022-01-09 Finished reading (2021): Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman 📚 A …
2022-01-08 Finished reading (2021): The Uncontrollability of the World by Hartmut Rosa 📚 “There is …
2022-01-03 Closest cribbage game in the history of cribbage games that’s ever “been happened” …
2022-01-02 Rendezvous Mountain (après waffles)
2022-01-01 Jackson Hole • A statement of fact: It is 2022.
2022-01-01 Finished reading (2021): One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder by Brian Doyle 📚 Simply and purely …
2021-12-27 Finished reading (2021): The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber 📚 About …
2021-12-21 Currently Reading: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber 📚 Gotta love …
2021-12-21 Mary Oliver
2021-12-13 BNSF Railway
2021-12-11 Finished reading (2021): Crossroads: A Novel by Jonathan Franzen 📚 Loved the book. Wonderfully …
2021-12-05 Taylor Mountain, WY (04Dec21) — sans snowshoes . . . again
2021-12-05 Goldbug Hot Springs (25Nov21)
2021-12-05 I-93 is The Way to Salmon, ID
2021-11-27 Sawtooth Lake (26Nov21) — sans snowshoes… again
2021-11-27 Wind Cave/Darby Canyon • Alta, WY (13Nov21)
2021-11-21 South Sudan Cleft Repairs, 2021 https://photo.samaritanspurse.org/stories-of-heartache-hope
2021-11-03 Finally home with a day off, and with the paperback version thanks to a very welcomed bookstore in …
2021-10-20 A 36-hour travel day, kicked off with airline computer glitches, rebooked flights, and delayed …
2021-10-07 Horseshoe loop in Driggs • Finally some good singletrack
2021-10-04 Morning “elk ride” at Harriman State Park
2021-10-01 Walking down sunny A Street, Idaho Falls
2021-09-27 Middle Teton • “Wyoming’s Katahdin”—with bugling elks, the best weather you could …
2021-09-19 Upper Palisade Lake, Palisades Creek
2021-09-13 “It is a fear tied to the knowledge that sudden, cataclysmic events are as much a part of …
2021-09-11 In Swamp Donkey Veritas
2021-09-11 My two favorite views on Go-To-The-Sun Road
2021-09-08 Rising sun over Rising Wolf
2021-09-07 Driving snapshot • Left to right: Go-To-The-Sun, Little Chief, Citadel, Heavy Runner
2021-09-07 Picea engelmannii • A stolid silver spruce, below Go-To-The-Sun Mountain
2021-09-07 radii solis inter Abies lasiocarpa
2021-09-07 Dawson Pass Trail • Standing below Mt. Morgan, Tinkham Mountain on the right, Mt. Pinchot in the …
2021-09-07 Looking north over Pitamakin Lake, surrounded by Red Mountain to the east and McClintock to the west
2021-09-07 Oldham Lake, below and above, from the northeast and the west
2021-09-04 Glacier National Park • “Welcome to Two Medicine Campground. We have 4 black bears and 2 …
2021-08-29 Japanese Friendship Garden • Idaho Falls is the International Sister City to Tokai, Ibaraki, Japan
2021-08-29 Made it
2021-08-28 Mountain bike heaven is also a place called Park City
2021-08-26 Near Grand County, UT • Turn left at the old railway depot, if you’re accidentally avoiding …
2021-08-26 Mill Creek, Moab
2021-08-24 Sunset toward Skyline Arch
2021-08-24 Arches National Park • If you find a cell phone in the mud puddle at site 46, Jane at the main …
2021-08-23 Sunset above San Sophia
2021-08-23 A Timbered Choir
2021-08-23 Mountain bike heaven is a place called Telluride
2021-08-23 Telluride, CO • “Eventually, all things merge into one, and [the San Miguel River] runs …
2021-08-23 Carbondale, CO
2021-08-22 Rocky Mountains • McClure Pass
2021-08-20 “Who are we? Where are we going?"
2021-08-20 Somewhere in middle America
2021-08-19 Iowa City • Bluebird Diner
2021-08-19 Ashtabula, OH • Not quite like the postcard, but W 5th Street is worth swinging through.
2021-08-16 Niagara • Impressive falls, fun gorge trail, interesting town…
2021-08-15 Lovely
2021-08-15 Middleport, NY Never too early for some local, sulfate-free wine—stomped on the old fashioned way.
2021-08-14 View from Jersey City—on an underutilized rooftop terrace
2021-08-14 Stuffed to the rafters, but always room for a little growth
2021-08-14 Didn’t get one in front of the apartment before we left, but life is packed and we’re on the road.