Over the weekend I completed one side of the trellis on the grape arbor. I’ll put up another on the opposite side. The rabbet is exposed on the ends at the top and bottom; I’ll put some wood putty there before Rachel paints it. Another thing: if you’re going to put up trellis like this and you have a table saw, don’t buy the frame pieces they sell with the trellis.
It’s letter writing day! I’ve just emailed my second letter for @jsonbecker’s Letters project. I also have three pieces of personal correspondence to type and mail today. Join in the fun by sending a letter to PO Box 110 Oolitic, IN 47451 USA.
A fantastic essay from Paul Kingsnorth that captures so much of my own feeling. It even turns on a poem by blessed Robinson Jeffers. I’ll warn you: it’s a bit gloomy, so if you’re feeling pretty good about the state of the world then you might not want to read it.
I reserve the right to celebrate holidays in my own way, and today is no exception. Candlemas appears to be another of those holidays that is a mix of traditions. (In my mind, there’s no need for this to be a controversial statement. Blending and adapting traditions is just what humans do. To be clear, this is different from the colonial impulse, which is about force and monocultures.) In the Christian tradition, Candlemas is a remembrance of the presentation of Jesus in the Temple as well as the ritual purification of the Virgin Mary.
Now playing. It’s a good album, but I love the cover.
A couple of months ago, Jason Becker created the Letters project in which he and a volunteer correspond for a month via email. I volunteered and was given the month of February. We will be cross-posting these between our blogs. Here is the link to his post containing these letters. Dear Jason, I was immediately interested when I saw your post about a letters project for 2023 and grateful that you accepted me when I volunteered.
Early on in At Work in the Ruins, Dougald Hine discusses the overall response to climate change. He says we have entered a new phase of the process in which the dominant institutions have accepted the reality of climate change and are at least talking about acting accordingly. (I take him to mean that the era of climate change denialism is substantially over. I do not take him to mean that our institutions are acting in suitably radical ways.
I don’t recall what brought it back to mind but today I’m listening to Hem’s album “Eveningland”. I haven’t listened to this one in years. Lovely.
Bookshop.org has zero information about changing your password. How is this possible? I had to send a support request about this most basic of account functions!
Dana O’Driscoll writes about “The Way of Wood”—about humanity’s interaction with wood, the loss of that interaction, and ways to find our way back to it.