Searching for contentment
In the fragrance of freshly worked wood⩘
The soft glow cast by shoji lamps⩘
The inspiration of good reads⩘
My heart is with the people of Ukraine
My contemplations about Ukraine⩘
Broken heart: Palestine, Gaza, the West Bank, Israel⩘
Abolish ICE! Restore Sanity!
Living in the Rockies
A beautiful moment of serenity during a summer morning walk.
Larger version of this photo⩘
More recent photos⩘
Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World
Well narrated by the authors
A really good deep-dive into the causes of the current rise of what the authors call end times fascism—messianic dreams, the greedy delusions of the big tech bros, and for-profit prepperism—as well as the forms of resistance to this ugly fascism that have been and can be successful at creating a better world for all of us.
Most people have the capacity for awe, to gasp at the jeweled beauty of a songbird or the otherworldliness of a whale's exhalation or the intricate latticework of an ancient holy site. Children have the capacity for pure awe; so do ninety-year-old actors in space. To experience awe is to dissolve into the swirl of the universe, to feel small in the best way. This sense of connection is also why we grieve when we witness strangers suffering, and feel the great sorrow of extinction. The fact that this capacity seems to be missing from the men who hold our collective fate in their hands is a personal loss for them—and an existential crisis for the rest of us.
The inability to appreciate this planet and its marvelous cast of characters helps explain why they are so prepared to sacrifice it. Indeed, the tech right's willingness to eliminate our life-sustaining labor and replace human relationships with synthetic ones cannot be separated from their indifference to what little remains of the planet's fast-vanishing wildlife and plant diversity. They don't know how to love this place, to savor the pleasure of other people's company, or to marvel at the mysteries presented by other species.
In short, we are up against an ideology that has given up not only on the premise and promise of liberal democracy but on the livability of our shared world—on its beauty, on its people, on our children, on other species. There is something treasonous in this. Treasonous not to an abstraction like a flag or a nation, for we are not nationalists. But treasonous to the unspoken pact made with the web of life that sustains us.
They are traitors to creation, to the wonders of here.
See also: The rise of end times fascism⩘ by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, The Guardian, Apr 13, 2025.
This is a belief system that is genocidal at its core and treasonous to the wonder and beauty of this world.
…
Our task is to build a wide and deep movement, as spiritual as it is political, strong enough to stop these unhinged traitors. A movement rooted in a steadfast commitment to one another, across our many differences and divides, and to this miraculous, singular planet.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026; Bookshop.org⩘ ; audiobook: Macmillan Audio, 2026; Libro.fm⩘ .
Related: Naomi Klein: 'Extreme wealth has a deranging effect. It turns you into a supremacist'⩘ by Zoe Williams, The Guardian, Sep 12, 2026.
In End Times Fascism, Klein and Taylor raise Walter Benjamin's concept "jetztzeit", literally "now time", a moment so pregnant with the spirit, the urgency of revolution that it marshals the energy of all movements that went before it. Again, it's poetic, but it's also literal, observable. If we want to oppose this new fascist strain, we really have to get a move on. "I don't tend to use this language, I try to be measured, but I think I've earned the right to escalate," she says. "The moment we're in, people are really mad and however mad you are, it's not enough. Because there is something so profound about no longer believing in the future, about seeing no value in our shared home, in the natural world. They're traitors to creation."
Klein doesn't want for reasons to fight. "I've made a choice to live very close to nature in a pretty wild part of British Columbia," she says. "On a dark night, it's a blanket of stars. And now we see so many of what I call Elon's space bugs [Starlink satellites] just crawling through the sky. He wants to increase that a hundredfold. Who said he could? Who gave him that right? That's a place where I find my anger. I get really angry about the stars. I get really angry about the orcas. I get really angry about Gaza. Other people will find their anger somewhere else. We have to find our places of deepest love and fight like hell."
More recent reading⩘
Contemplating
The Lion's Head Nebula
I don't like many of the images produced to the James Webb Space Telescope, mainly because of lot of them are, I think, in the infrared spectrum, so everything looks reddish. I much prefer the visible-light images produced by the Hubble telescope. But I really like this one (I've cropped it a bit to focus on the nebula). To me, it looks like a rough-cut diamond floating in deep space.
From a NASA explanation⩘ of the image:
At first glance the nebula's overall structure in Webb's infrared images, with both the NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid Infrared Instrument) instruments, may look quite similar to Hubble's earlier visible-light view. However, Webb's infrared vision highlights features like compact clumps of dust and a haze of ionized gas.
What an amazing universe we live in.
Astronomy Picture of the Day, Aug 26, 2026⩘ .
More recent contemplations⩘
Fighting for American democracy
We must use our time and our space
on this little planet that we call Earth
to make a lasting contribution,
to leave it a little better than we found it,
and now that need is greater than ever before.– John Lewis, 2020
———
"If to belive in freedom and equality is to be a radical,
then I am a radical."– Patsy Mink, the first Woman of Color and first Asian-American woman elected to Congress, served in the United States House of Representatives from the state of Hawaii, 1965 - 1977 and 1990 - 2002.
———
"So what do those of us who love American democracy do? Make noise. Take up oxygen…. Defend what is great about this nation: its people, and their willingness to innovate, work, and protect each other. Making America great has never been about hatred or destruction or the aggregation of wealth at the very top; it has always been about building good lives for everyone on the principle of self-determination. While we have never been perfect, our democracy is a far better option than the autocratic oligarchy Trump is imposing on us."…
I write these letters because I love America. I am staunchly committed to the principle of human self-determination for people of all races, genders, abilities, and ethnicities: the idea that we all have the right to work to become whatever we wish. I believe that American democracy has the potential to be the form of government that comes closest to bringing that principle to reality. And I know that achieving that equality depends on a government shaped by fact-based debate rather than by extremist ideology and false narratives.
– Professor Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American⩘ , Sep 15, 2025.
———
Swearing an oath to our constitution
United States Constitution with its preamble "We the People"
Government of the United States of America
Photo⩘ by Joseph Sohm⩘ ; licensed via Shutterstock
I admire the leadership of retired Maj Gen Paul Eaton who is speaking up in defense of our constitution and against the ongoing effort to politicize our armed forces.
Maj Gen Paul Eaton has sounded the alarm, saying in an interview with the Guardian that the effort to bend the higher echelons of the military to the US president's will was unparalleled in recent history and could have long-term dire consequences. He warned that both the reputation and efficiency of the world's most powerful fighting force was in the balance.
"There is an active effort to politicise the armed forces," Eaton said. "Once you infect the body, the cure may be very difficult and painful for presidents downstream."
I'm hoping that many people, both military and civilians, listen to his message.
Trump push to politicize US military 'reminiscent of Stalin', top general warns⩘ by Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, Jan 5, 2025.
More recent contemplations⩘
Woodworking
A note about the image at the top of this page
The Windtraveler—a shoji lamp I created in the shape of a deltoidal hexecontahedron—is made of 60 deltoid-shaped faces (like kites) framed in maple. Each five deltoids meeting at the more pointed bottom tips form a pentagon, creating a total of 12 pentagons, which is a dodecahedron. Each three deltoids meeting at the broader top tips form a triangle, creating a total of 20 triangles, which is an icosahedron. Within each deltoid frame are thinner 1/4 inch inner frames made of mahogany, with additional strips that run from the top tip to the bottom tip of each deltoid forming 120 right angle triangles, which reveal a hexakis icosahedron. The inner mahogany frames are backed by washi, a traditional Japanese paper, which creates a gentle shade for the light cast by the light bulbs within to pass through.
More about this project⩘
More woodworking⩘
My journey
Love nature. As a kid, I just wanted to be out playing in the woods that surrounded our small town home. When younger, I lived a few places around the world and visited several others … then found a place in the foothills of the Rockies and my heart was home. When I'm out walking, I snap photos and post the better ones on this site to preserve the opportunity to revisit some of these exquisite experiences. Photos⩘
Love reading. Growing up, I carried armloads of books home each week from the library. Now tend to carry around a virtual stack of audiobooks. I deeply appreciate authors, narrators, and translators. Since 1999, I've been posting reviews on this site, in the more recent years focused on just those books I appreciate the most. I listen to or read a lot of genres, fiction and nonfiction, and particularly appreciate well done speculative fiction. Reading⩘
Love woodworking. A passionate amateur, I revere wood. My main focus has been shoji lamps in the shape of polyhedra. I love the light that glows through washi and deeply appreciate the folks who make these papers. I'm entranced by the dance of polyhedra patterns, and keep notes on my website about the experience of making some of the lamps. I've also made a fair bit of our furniture, and have done some woodworking to fix up our old home. Woodworking⩘
Love our beautiful, fragile planet. I'm deeply concerned about our climate and all the life we are carelessly and rapidly degrading and destroying.
Photo credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring
Awed by space and astronomy. Photos of spiral galaxies melt my heart and also inspire me to wonder whether I'm originally from another planet in another galaxy far far away. See also: Our home in this wondrous universe⩘
Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Value privacy. I think online privacy should be the default state. Because it's not, I try to protect at least some of my privacy online, especially against greedy corporations.
See also:
Why I dislike artificial intelligence⩘
Privacy Is Power by Carissa Véliz⩘
Keystones: Respect, compassion, empathy, acceptance. We're all in this together.
