Monuments at Beech Grove Cemetery are not quite as impressive as at Green Hill. Still, a few nice ones. Lots of trees and obelisks. A few lambs. The most unusual monument in Beech Grove is the basketball, which I discussed elsewhere.

I found out this week that a high-stress accounting project I had spent months on was unnecessary due to technicalities in the accounting standards. It’s a bit annoying but mostly I’m happy because the pressure is suddenly off. Now the opening weekend of summer is looking more fun!

I may attempt this wall mounted tool chest from the New Yankee Workshop someday–but, of more general interest, it begins with one of the best looks at the famous Studley Tool Chest I’ve seen online. It’s an absolute gem of design and craftsmanship.

It’s not that the world is not our home; it’s that we have forgotten who our family is.

On Top
Gary Snyder

All this new stuff goes on top
turn it over, turn it over
wait and water down
from the dark bottom
turn it inside out
let it spread through
sift down even.
Watch it sprout.

A mind like compost.

My town is the self-proclaimed limestone capital of the world—and despite it being very chamber of commerce, there is some truth to the phrase. At the height of the industry seventy five years ago, there were some truly talented carvers, as you can see from the work in Green Hill Cemetery.

Clive Thompson says there is a biophilia paradox—and I could not disagree more.

The problem is that while we moderns desperately need exposure to nature, it sure doesn’t need exposure to us. … We humans should be living a little more densely, to give nature more space away from us.

It goes without saying that humanity is the single most destructive force on earth. Nevertheless, ideas like this only serve to reify the human-nature divide—the very divide that led us onto the path of destruction. Our current way of relating to the world is not the only way.

Our problem is that we are out of relationship with the world. This problem will only be exacerbated by further separating us from it. Thompson’s vision is a carceral environmentalism. We are not dangerous felons who must be isolated from the natural world. We are children of the same mother.

Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections:

Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away—an ephemeral apparition., When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.

Here’s the question that matters: what would you do if you believed the world around you was alive—alive every bit as much as you are?

This is cool: collage artist turns a corner store into an art experience. Things like this can only happen with local shops. Walmart and Dollar General will never do this.