Category Archives: Uncategorized
Black vessel for a saint
I recently wrote about a pedestrian bridge at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden that caught my attention. Another installation in the park that has stuck with me is Black Vessel for a Saint by Theaster Gates. The piece consists of a statue of St. Anthony, the patron saint of libraries, inside of a black brick cylindrical…
To Hell with Hitler
I work regularly out of an old warehouse building in the Seaport district of Boston. My company is storing some hardware in an adjacent building and I got into an interesting conversation with the longshoreman who was helping us out. It turns out he was very proud of the building and, of course, new of…
A memory-shaping, time shifting medium
I’ve been hesitant to re-read The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman for years. It was the first Gaiman book I’d ever read and it led to me to become a big fan of the author. My fear was that it would never live up to that initial reading, but I’m…
Natural Stupidity
A number of years ago I came across the phrase, “I’m much more worried about natural stupidity than about artificial intelligence.” At the time I thought it rang true, and I still do today even after the entry of ChatGPT into the world. ChatGPT is a powerful, transformational technology and someday may rival the smart…
The Mappist
I recently read Light Action in the Caribbean, a short story collection by Barry Lopez, because (a) I really like the title and (b) I was curious what Lopez’s fiction writing was like since he is largely known for non-fiction. Honestly, I think I’ll stick to the non-fiction. The stories in this collection leaned towards…
Air travel
I recently flew round trip from Los Angeles to Boston, the width of an entire continent. On the outbound flight I had a middle seat and absolutely no one near me opened a window for the entire flight. Air travel is a modern miracle. For thousands of years, humans locked to the sky and surely…
Borders and boundaries
We all learn about shifting, borders in elementary school. Greece, Rome, Byzantium, the Holy Roman Empire (neither very holy nor Roman as it turns out), Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, they have all come and gone in different ways. I intellectually know that national borders are not permanent, but things have been relativity stable in my lifetime…
Sky and Telescope
Way back in July of 2020 I shared some writing with my friends at the Los Angeles Astronomical Society, and one of the members encouraged me to submit an essay to Sky and Telescope. While camping in Anza Borrego State Park that Thanksgiving I finally came up with a good idea. I had it written…
Localize Me
Anyone who has read a few entries on this site will know that I am keen on maps and navigation. My brain is good at spatial thinking and I’m generally good at remembering where things happened in a geographic sense. I also have fifteen years’ worth of photos saved on my computers that I never…