I’ve been pretty okay with this whole high school graduation thing but then Rachel sent me this pair of pictures and whew boy.
I’ve been pretty okay with this whole high school graduation thing but then Rachel sent me this pair of pictures and whew boy.
I’m planning a post on my pet theory about the origins of the religious tradition in which I was raised. In preparation for that, I searched my archives to see how much I’d actually written here about those churches. Passing references, mostly. I gave a bit more detail here.
I still believe the main point of that linked post: purity is a fool’s errand. But I’d like to resurrect another point I made there, especially given the American political situation:
This is not an argument in favor of moderation. The truth does not inevitably reside in the middle. I have opinions that people in the so-called moderate middle would call extreme. What I hope to avoid, though, are opinions that are driven solely by opposition to an “other”, in pursuit of purity.
So often I see people in the political middle, the “moderates”–the rationalists, as they would have it–seemingly adopting the belief that the truth always lies in the middle. They are often rightly disturbed by the extremes they see around them; they then make the mistaken leap to the idea that the fault lies in the existence of the extremes.
For me, however, the problem is that the two main “sides” in American politics are mirror images of each other. The exist in perpetual reaction to and dependence on each other. This weird psychological relationship between the sides only heightens the conflict.
So, despite the protestations of the moderates, the problem we have is not that there are people with ideas outside the mainstream. That’s just part of a healthy society. The problem is that the main sides are in a relationship rotten to its core.
My lovely wife Rachel made a video of our garden this morning. (Yours truly is the cameraman.) I hope she continues doing these. She knows more about what’s happening than I do and—let’s be honest—who wouldn’t rather listen to her talk instead of me?
This, from Freddie deBoer (via @ayjay), is true. I picked up the opinions habit early on because I thought it was what intelligent people were supposed to do. I’m now trying to unlearn it, in part because (as Freddie says) arguing over opinions is deeply unpleasant to me.
For a very large swath of the human population, probably the majority, constantly forming and expressing and fighting over opinions on contentious topics is an unusual and unpleasant activity. It’s not that many people out there just don’t naturally form opinions, on art and culture and politics, the way anyone does. But to think of those opinions as something to constantly bring into a state of contention with others, to argue all the time as a matter of day-to-day life, is intimidating even for many smart and principled people. It’s hard to recall now, but there was a very recent period in which most people had no greater opportunity to share their opinions than to say them out loud at work or a bar or during the fellowship service after church. The truly motivated might stand on the street with a bullhorn or start a paper newsletter or write letters to the editor. Most people never bothered. The cacophony of opinion we live in is very new.
The pileated woodpecker seems to be a regular at our feeders now. She has a distinctive, sharp call as she flies into the yard. Also, we do believe she is a “she”, because she does not appear to have the red cheek stripe that males have.
Rachel’s dad was cleaning out his garage and offered me this rickety workbench. I took it home and built a new top for it out of some salvaged studs from a hundred year old house. I fastened it to the wall and now it’s solid and serviceable.
The honeybees are loving the lavender right now.
Another good one from Cory Doctorow: Red Lobster was killed by private equity, not Endless Shrimp
We have a gooseberry!
Today was launch day for an endowment management system that a group of us have been working on for 18 months—and so far, so good. This is the third such system we’ve built over 20 years because there’s nothing on the market quite like it. Great system, well-managed project, but I’m glad it’s over!
It’s been a frustrating few days trying to get the finish right on this leaf of my in-laws’ table—and I still don’t have it right. But I’ve learned a lot more about finishes and techniques so 🤷♂️
A clarification on what I posted earlier: I am not saying that everyone is right about the object of their anger or anxiety. Obviously there are a lot of crazy ideas out there. But that anger and anxiety has its source in a correct evaluation that too many things are too consequential right now.
The stakes are too high for everything now. This is a direct consequence of centralization, efficiency, economies of scale–all terms describing the same phenomenon. Why are so many people so angry? Is it because they’re irrational and emotional? No. It’s because they rightly perceive the stakes.
Adam Savage’s lathe display (source)
Rachel just harvested this huge pile of lettuce from one end of our raised beds and it didn’t even make a dent. It’s salad season!
It all started with a post from Alan Jacobs about that Apple ad, which pointed me to this post by L.M. Sacasas, which led me to his post on Albert Borgmann, which led me to this pdf chapter from Borgmann’s book. This is a rich vein. I don’t recall why I unsubscribed to Sacasas, but error corrected.
Recently my in-laws asked me to refinish their dining room table and chairs. They’ve brought it over and now the project has begun. I have a plan, which I’m testing on one of the leaves. If you hear nothing further about the project, that means it failed and I’m too embarrassed to admit it. 😄
Starlings…sheesh. Not only are they:
their chicks are noisy and needy, despite being as big as the adults. We don’t harm them, but we don’t love them either.
Cory Doctorow: “AIs and self-driving cars are the new jetpacks”
I don’t know if this will prove to be true but it’s an interesting provocation.
Pileated woodpecker at the feeder on our back porch. These are our celebrity sightings.
Last day of high school for Darcy! It’s a bit sad, of course, but honestly we’re all three ready for this phase of her life to be over. She had a tough senior year and she’s ready for the next phase to begin. Now just to figure out what that looks like…
For a brief time in the spring here in the White River watershed, the redbuds fairly glow with their pale purple blooms. It’s one of the signs of the shifting seasons. You suddenly notice how widespread the trees are: all over the hillsides, along the roads. Who knew that those small trees–unnoticed for the rest of the year–were capable of such beauty?
As I write this, our neighbor is having his healthy redbud cut down. Something about it making a mess on his roof. Suffice it to say we have very different ideas about trees.
During that spring bloomtime, I can walk up my stairs and see the redbud framed in our bedroom window. It’s astonishing, every time.
One day I had been changing clothes in our bedroom with the door shut. As I turned to leave, I was caught up by the light playing on the door. Later, I wrote the following:
I reach to open–
pause–the redbud behind me
glorifies the door.
Rachel and I went out to the nightmarescape that is our backyard in the dark after the rain. Slugs and snails everywhere, even eating each other. Enormous nightcrawlers that dive lightning-quick into the soil. Pill bugs everywhere. All doing good work, but goodness it was a bit of a horror show. 😄
A crow has showed up in our backyard a few times now to eat seed. We’re that much closer to our goal of making friends with a corvid…