If you’re looking for American-made jeans, I’m happy with a pair from Dearborn Denim. I buy secondhand clothes where I can and then pay a bit more for items that are durable and/or repairable, e.g., jeans, boots. American made is a plus, since it’s generally better for workers and the environment.
The Mortise and Tenon folks have signed onto Writers Against AI: “The Prompt is not the Craft.” They’ve also created a site in support of the effort. I found a couple new writers to follow via the Voices section of the site.
Doing some work in the garden today, topping up raised beds with fresh soil. We pulled the last of the overwintered carrots, plus a close-up of those beautiful early crocuses.
Finished reading Radiance of the Ordinary: Essays on Life, Death, and the Sinews that Bind by Tara Couture. Wonderful, wonderful. One of the best books I’ve read in a while. 📚
I’m really looking forward to summer this year. At the old job, I was consumed with audit work from July through September. At the new job, however, the audit is much smaller, and I have very few tasks related to it. I’ll be able to help Rachel more with the garden!
Experience and argument
Tara Couture, writing about a place near her farm: There’s something mysterious there, attractive to animals of every ilk, but unknowable, too. The feeling of the ridge transcends the logical ‘glacier dropped it off’ explanation. If someone told me it was a stone dropped from a dragon’s mouth many eons ago, I would be more likely to believe them. When I was young, a Holiness preacher said, “A man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument.
In negotiations with the US military, Anthropic is attempting to limit the uses of its technology. Too late. Genies cannot be put back into bottles and yet these tech bros keep rubbing every damn lamp they can get their hands on.
The more I listen to Cat Clyde the more I like her. 🎵 Her album with Jeremie Albino has been on repeat for days. Today I’ve started listening to her album “Down Rounder.”
Tara Couture: “We always lived in a peaceful home, something I think of as the most important element in a home.”
As someone who has lived in both a contentious home as a child and a peaceful home as an adult, I can tell you it is very important. I’m so grateful for what Rachel and I have built.
Wiped away
Tara Couture, Radiance of the Ordinary: We douse the meat in chemicals to make it look vibrant and fresh, then wrap it in cellophane. We wash the eggs and dip them in chlorine to ride them of the gift of a feather from the soft underbelly of the mother hen. We remove all trace of connection—a leaf, hair, bones, hide, crumbs of soil. And in every little thing wiped away, so too the wiping of our awareness.