We have one of those all-in-one turntables that plays vinyl, CDs, Bluetooth, and the radio. One day my wife started putting on our local jazz station, WDCB 90.9 FM (âChicagoâs Home for Jazzâ) and it’s been a nice burst of smooth vibes when we want a change from our usual rotation of kids music. I could always find something to play from my digital or vinyl collection of jazz records, but sometimes itâs nice to let serendipity take the wheel.
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More photography here.
We did a gymnastics party for our now 6 year oldâs birthday, which his little brother definitely also enjoyed:
2025 America in one star-spangled shot at our local library â gloomy and fractured, with stark contrasts and a cloudy forecast:
Happened to catch this sunsetting light casting shadows from two different windows into our entryway:
Love how Mr. 1 Year Old looks like a gunslinger strolling into a sidewalk showdown with his brother:
Taking in an amphibious view at Shedd Aquarium:
Admiring the Sheddâs dolphins with my own little water lover:
Warming up for soccer class:
Media of the moment
Black Bag. Felt great to see an honest-to-god movie in the theater with a delightfully twisty plot and inspired casting that made me feel as warm and fuzzy as the filmâs lighting. Wouldnât be surprised to find this on my best-of-2025 list.
The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson. Turns out there was a lot of drama leading up to the Civil WarâŚ
Lincoln. Rewatched this after finishing The Demon of Unrest as a kind of Civil War bookend. Daniel Day-Lewisâs win for Best Actor might be the most deserving Oscar ever awarded.
The Pitt. Been watching this Max series thatâs an unofficial ER reboot and my hat is off to anyone who chooses to become and remain an emergency nurse.
A Complete Unknown. Iâm not a dyed-in-the-wool Dylan fan like many white dudes around my age and above, so perhaps thatâs why I didnât fall for this as hard as others, Chalametâs excellent performance aside.
Parasite. Yes this is dramatic and tragic and twisted and all that, but itâs also so damn funny. âLeave itâfree fumigation.â đđđ
Mary Poppins Returns. No one can touch Julie Andrewsâ singing voice, but Emily Blunt really nails the other Poppins vibes.
Tyrannies and typewriters
Richard Polt typecasting about why we need typewriters in our age of AI and authoritarianism:
When you choose to write with a typewriter, you are quixotically, nobly flying in the face of the assumption that good = fast, efficient, perfect, and productive. Type your gloriously imperfect, expending ineffiencient time and energy — and declare that you still care about human work, and that the process of creation and understanding still matters more to you than the slick products of the machines. âŚ
As for authoritarianism, it is happy to use digital technology to watch us, punish us, and entice us. A soft totalitarianism, with hard pain for those who aren’t pacified by easy consumption and pointless posturing, is becoming the new model of political control. âŚ
Again, typewriters offer one humble but real form of resistance. As in the days of samizdat behind the Iron Curtain, even in “the land of the free” there is a need to find words without compromising with the digital systems that are increasingly under tyrannical control.
Tyrannies have always failed to contain lovers and writers. We must love to write, and write what we love — with the writing tools that we love.
Read his whole piece, read the Typewriter Manifesto, then get typing.
The Demon of Unrest
I just finished reading Erik Larsonâs latest book The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War. Itâs about the military and diplomatic machinations surrounding the Fort Sumter crisis, including South Carolinaâs role in fomenting secession and Lincolnâs journey to Washington D.C. and the presidency.
I saved a couple passages that I enjoyed for various reasons. Hereâs one featuring General Winfield Scott, who was in charge of defending D.C. and the Capitol building during the contested electoral count process in February 1861:
The throng outside grew annoyed at being barred from entry and began firing off obscenities like grapeshot. If words could kill, one observer wrote, âthe amount of profanity launched forth against the guards would have completely annihilated them.â Much of this tirade was aimed at General Scott. It had no effect. He vowed that anyone who obstructed the count would be âlashed to the muzzle of a twelve-pounder and fired out of the window of the Capitol.â Scott would then âmanure the hills of Arlington with the fragments of his body.â
Love that FAFO energy from Scott. There was also this bit about President Buchananâs Secretary of War John Floyd:
By now the war secretary had become a deeply controversial figure and an embarrassment to President Buchanan, which was saying something, since the administration itself was widely considered to be an embarrassment. Floyd was deemed by many to be a paragon of corruption, and a traitor to boot.
He had become embroiled in a financial scandal dating to 1858 that resulted in $870,000 in federal fundsâequivalent to over thirty-two million in twenty-first-century dollarsâbeing looted from the U.S. Treasury and the Department of Interior.
An embarrassing, corrupt administration with a controversial cabinet member looting federal funds? History doesn’t repeat itself at all…
And this exchange between General Beauregard and Major Whiting, who was scrambling to prepare the Confederate contingent surrounding Fort Sumter:
The island’s batteries had been ordered to be “in readiness,” Whiting wrote, but all he saw was confusion. “We are ready, perhaps, to open fire, but we are not ready to support it,” he told Beauregard on Thursday, April 11. “For God’s sake have this post inspected by yourself, or some one else competent, before you open fire. I am alone here, as you know, and heretofore have been exclusively occupied with the construction of batteries.” One newly arrived contingent of men was “helter-skelter,” he complained; all were volunteers. “There are no regulars here at all.” Beauregard tried to calm him. “Things always appear worst at first sight when not perfect,” he wrote. “We cannot delay now.”
Some mindful leadership from Beauregard right there. Too bad he was a traitor!
Also wanted to shoutout this quote from Captain Abner Doubleday, who was part of the Union garrison defending Fort Sumter:
Doubleday led the first group to the guns in the casemates that faced the Iron Battery at Cummings Point on Morris Island, due south. “In aiming the first gun fired against the rebellion I had no feeling of self-reproach,” he wrote, “for I fully believed that the contest was inevitable, and was not of our seeking.” As Doubleday saw it, he was fighting for the survival of the United States. “The only alternative was to submit to a powerful oligarchy who were determined to make freedom forever subordinate to slavery.”
Kudos to Doubleday for not obeying in advance.
My kid did Paint that
While working from home the other day I had my work laptop out at the dining table with my six year old nearby. Since Iâm usually hidden away in my home office, this quickly piqued his curiosity. I let him type out a short email I had to send, then opened up Paint and showed him how to use the mouse to select a color and draw.
The result is below. If you squint you can make out his attempt at a smiley face in the lower left corner:
Glad to see MS Paint live on in the next generationâŚ
(Hat-tip to this documentary for the title idea.)
Blogging now and then
According to research by Neil Patel, 59.2% of traffic to blogs is driven by SEO. Itâs the biggest single driver of traffic by far.
Neil found that if your site is 10 or more years old, 44% percentage of the pages on your site could be considered âirrelevantâ by search engines. The more irrelevant pages your site has, the more it suffers in search ranking.
In other words, Google doesnât understand what makes for good publishing on the web.
My question is: irrelevant how, and according to whom? Googleâs almighty black box of an algorithm that has already changed in the time it took to write this sentence?
Imagine if your photo library was subjected to the same treatment. âGoogle thinks this cool photo I took is irrelevant, so I guess Iâll delete it even though it captures a meaningful moment in my life.â
Iâve been blogging for 18 years and not once in that time have I considered the SEO implications of my writing. I donât even look at view stats. I suppose that could be considered a luxury since my blog is not a business and I donât have a large enough readership to capitalize on. Iâm also fully aware that my full archive of 1,200+ posts to date are important to no one but me.
Google is about now now now. Thatâs its business, but itâs none of mine. Blogging is about now and then. The experience of capturing whatâs on your mind now and making connections with whatâs come before.
I echo CJâs advice:
Donât worry about what Google wants. Itâll change tomorrow. As will Googleâs dominance.
Post as much or as little as you want. Itâs your place.
Post whatever keeps you interested and publishing for the long term.
Post whatever helps you build a stronger connection with your audience.
Looking back at your archives helps you re-discover connections youâve forgotten. It helps your readers do the same.
The Only Plane in the Sky
I canât remember where I saw the recommendation, but I decided to try The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett Graff and found it a riveting read. Heavy, of course, but also very illuminating about how quickly and widely the September 11 attacks rippled beyond downtown Manhattan, affecting a lot of people in different ways and different places almost all at once.
I was about to turn 14 at the time. I saw the footage like everyone else and understood it to be a significant event, but I couldnât have known all the details of the day that the book brings to life all these decades later.
For that reason Iâm very grateful to Graff for this monumental work of oral history, which captures the kaleidoscopic nature of the crisis by weaving testimonies from the myriad people affected by the attacks, including:
- people in the World Trade Center and Pentagon who managed to evacuate after the planes crashed (and even some who somehow survived the subsequent collapses)
- firefighters and first responders at Ground Zero
- people desperately waiting to find out whether their loved ones had survived
- transcripts of calls and voicemails from passengers of the hijacked planes
- air traffic controllers managing the unprecedented grounding of all aircraft across the United States
- fighter pilots ordered to intercept Flight 93 and take it down by any means necessary, including crashing into it midair
- Dick Cheney and White House staffers managing the crisis from an underground bunker
- Congressional representatives and staffers scrambling away from the Capitol with reports of more hijacked airplanes on the way
- Staffers with President Bush in Florida when they got news of the attacks, then on Air Force One as they flew between military bases before heading back to D.C.
One recurring motif that really stuck out to me was how often life or death came down to sheer luck, both good and bad.
One man had to leave his desk high up in the World Trade Center to retrieve a guest in the lobby, which allowed him to escape after the crash and avoid certain death. Another woman was standing at the copier instead of her desk when a plane struck and thus survived when all her other office mates nearby perished. And one firefighter fleeing one of the collapsing Twin Towers alongside a colleague turned one way and lived, while his colleague turned the other way and didnât.
Call it luck or something elseâweâre all a split-second away from death, often without knowing it. The Only Plane in the Sky honors those who were unlucky that day, and serves as a sobering reminder for the rest of us about the fragility of life and the extraordinary bravery of ordinary people.
The seven year etch, or why am I paper resistant?
In what amounts to a positively glacial pace, I finally managed to fill up the small pocket Moleskine notebook Iâve been carrying around for seven years:
It was given to me by my friend Jason, an artist who founded Geocommunetrics and gave it this unique cover design:
It was tucked in my backpack for most of that time and proved useful here and there for personal and professional notes, checklists, and all the other miscellany these small yet mighty tools are good for.
Why so long though? As much as Iâd love to be a dedicated notebook person, Iâm just more prone to using Apple Notes and other digital notetaking methods because my phone is always with me or nearby. Plus the ability to keyword search. Keeping a notebook and pencil within the same vicinity, accessibility, and consistency feels like a heavier liftânot to mention handwriting being a more time-consuming than quickly tapping things out.
I say this as someone who deeply believes in analog tech and the preservation of tangibility, whether through typewriters or vinyl or indeed paper. I also understand all the psychological benefits of journaling and handwriting, and every time I look back at what I do manage to get down on paper Iâm grateful for having that in my own historical record. But that hasnât been quite enough for me to get over the cognitive hump of making it a daily practice.
People who use paper consistently while also having a digital job: how do you do it? What methods have you found useful and why?
Drop a digital comment with your thoughts!
Links of the moment
This Lonely Island musical medley is a thing of deranged beauty.
Another winner from Beautiful Public Data: Cold War military slides.
Didnât realize the âjunk journalingâ I do was a thing.
A gorgeous longread on the âhardest working font in Manhattan.â
This was my washing machine
Part of the This Is My series.
This week we said goodbye to our washing machine, which according to its serial number was manufactured nearly 35 years ago in September 1990. For context: Goodfellas had just released in theaters, Saddam Hussein had just invaded Kuwait, and I’d just turned three years old. Time flies.
Its sudden demise has made for a challenging five days without being able to do laundry, but I can’t be mad given how it chugged along far past its expected lifespan. Like its matching dryer (which knock on wood continues to chug along), the washer was the oldest of our home’s old-guard appliances that we’ve been replacing since moving in nearly six years ago. No doubt the new appliances are more energy efficient and all that, but they’re not built to last like these beastly machines of old.
Farewell, you wonderful old Building & Loan Maytag.
Favorite Films of 2024
Though I usually do a Top 10 with some honorable mentions, once this yearâs list of honorable mentions creeped past 10 movies I figured why not just do a full top 20? The more movies the merrier.
Here are the 2024 dramas, documentaries, dystopias, debuts, and other delights I dug.
(Check JustWatch to see if and where they are available to stream, or your local library for the DVD/Blu-ray. See this list on Letterboxd.)
20. Molli and Max in the Future
A funny and sometimes wistful sci-fi remix of When Harry Met Sally that doesnât overstay its welcome. Zosia Mamet and Aristotle Athari are a winning pair and fun hang as the will-they-wonât-they leads.
19. Peacock
Echoing the deliciously deadpan humor of Force Majeure, this debut feature from German filmmaker Bernhard Wenger follows a man so talented at blending into the fictions of his work that when his personal life begins to suffer, his ensuing existential crisis has him questioning his entire reality. Itâs a darkly absurd and deliberately paced dramedy that serves as a wake-up call to people pleasers everywhere.
18. Mom & Dadâs Nipple Factory
A really nice discovery thanks to the chance to interview the director Justin Johnson. Spotlighting Johnsonâs parents and the secretive prosthetic nipple business they started after his momâs breast cancer diagnosis, this documentary also reckons with his conservative Christian upbringing in Wisconsin and subsequent religious deconstruction in a wholesome and humane way. Really nice portrait of family, faith, and lifeâs contradictions.
17. The Greatest Night in Pop
Iâd heard âWe Are the Worldâ like everyone else, and knew vaguely that it was sung by famous musicians. But until watching this documentary I had no idea about its background or the logistics of making it happen, let alone the insane star wattage it harnessed in one room. Fascinating to watch the dynamics play out among these very different artists and personalities during an all-nighter for the ages.
16. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
We told our six year old we were going to watch the new Wallace & Gromit movie. âI donât want to,â he said, âthey are far too silly.â We still watched it, and guess who was laughing and totally locked in the whole time? Me, thatâs who. And also our six year old. Anyway, any Aardman joint should automatically win Best Picture given how insanely difficult it is to make any stop-motion animated feature film, let alone a great one.
15. Conclave
How Edward Berger turned ecclesiastical proceedings into a pulpy, beautifully shot mystery thriller better than it has rights to be shows just how powerful cinema is as an art form. And watching Ralph Fiennes play a character whoâs basically the opposite of his role as Gustave in The Grand Budapest Hotel shows just how compelling powerful actors can be.
14. Rebel Ridge
Jeremy Saulnier knows how to make a damn thriller. In this latest pot-boiler, a former Marine has his bag of cash unjustly seized by local police, instigating his one-man revenge plot where with every slight escalation and provocation the stakes get higher and your heart beats faster. Civil asset forfeiture reform now!
13. DĂŹdi
I like the Google summary of this: âan impressionable 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy learns what his family canât teach him: how to skate, how to flirt, and how to love his mom.â As someone who was only a few years older than DĂŹdi was in the movie, I found much of this both very relatable (hello AIM and MySpace Top 8 and Motion City Soundtrack needle-drops) and also painful to realize how much I saw my own 13-year-old self in DĂŹdiâs adolescent angst.
12. September 5
A worthy ancestor of Spotlight in how it dramatizes a real-life moment of media ethics and production colliding with a dark chapter in history, in this case the hostage crisis at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. For me the tactility of the period technologyâanalog phones, walkie-talkies, film cameras, buttons and knobs, typewriters, hand-lettered TV chyronsâmade this even better and more thrilling than it would have been if set during our current digital era.
11. Challengers
I rather flippantly called this âyour typical sports movie featuring a throuple of sweaty, smirking scumbags swirling into a sadomasochistic, psychosexual spiral.â Which I think is accurate but also doesnât make clear how fun and funny this movie is in spite of (or rather because of) that. If tennis is a relationship, as Zendayaâs Tashi claims in the movie, then this tennis/relationship movie is worth the commitment.
10. My Old Ass
How many boxes did this check for me? Let me count:
â Earnest, bittersweet coming-of-age dramedy
â Light magical realism
â Frequency and Arrival homage
â Includes Little Women motif
â Birkenstocks-wearing character named Chad
Canât wait to see what star Maisy Stella and writer-director Megan Park do next.
9. Here
To paraphrase Doc Brown, the critics crapping on this Robert Zemeckis adaptation of Richard McGuireâs 2014 graphic novel (one of the best books of the 2010s) just werenât thinking fourth-dimensionally. We live in time, people! You canât fathom how much has happened throughout human history and prehistory on the very patch of earth youâre standing on now because itâs awesomely unknowable! The movie lovingly portrays the bookâs intra-panel time-jumping, its timeless themes of life and death and love and loss, and its deft intertwining of the everyday and eternalâall while rocking an Alan Silvestri score that goes right for the jugular. And Iâm here for that.
8. Dune: Part Two
I couldnât see Dune in theaters so I was happy to be able to see this one on a big screen. Itâs a sequel that very much stands on its own as a stunningly rendered experience while simultaneously bearing structural burdens that middle sequels often have. Still, anytime I can see big, weird, tactile, religion-infused spectacle like this is a good time for me.
7. Good One
In stark contrast to the bombast of Dune: Part Two, India Donaldsonâs debut feature about a teenaged girl on a hiking trip with her dad and his friend thrives in the smallest gestures and pauses and looksâin whatâs said and left unsaid. Itâs Reichardt-core to the core: quietly portentous, nature-drenched, and oh so gently damning of parental obtusity.
6. Saturday Night
Itâs hard not to be impressed by how Jason Reitman pulled off depicting in real time the 90 minutes before the first episode of SNL in 1975, complete with spot-on portrayals of the original cast and other figures. In that way itâs like the groovy â70s love child of Steve Jobs and Birdman. (Itâs also a fascinating double feature with September 5, the other 2024 film set backstage of a seismic mid-â70s television event.) More fables about the beautifully chaotic process of making art, please and thank you!
5. Civil War
One criterion for making my best-of lists is being something I just couldnât shake. Thatâs definitely true for Alex Garlandâs latest, which depicts a United States embroiled in a violent civil war and a crew of journalists trying to interview the embattled president. I find the criticism about the ideological vagueness of the different political factions to be beside the pointâwhat matters is how different individuals choose to engage with the turmoil, from a young photojournalist compelled to capture frontline combat to a store employee blithely dismissing the conflict altogether. Letâs hope this doesnât become more prescient than it already is.
4. Nickel Boys
Sure-handed, tough-minded, clear-eyed, and full-hearted, RaMell Rossâs adaptation of Colson Whiteheadâs novel takes cinemaâs power as an empathy machine to the extreme with its first-person POV perspective, strapping us along for a turbulent yet touching ride along with two friends weathering life at a Florida boarding school. I found this to be in accidental conversation with the next movie on this list, both being searing 2024 films that dramatize the triumphs and travails of mid-20th century Black life.
3. Soundtrack to a Coup dâĂtat
As a lover of history and jazz, this documentary spotlighting famous â50s jazz musicians and their role in the Cold War geopolitics surrounding Congoâs push for independence bebopped me right on the nose. It plays out much like a jazz track, with different people trading solos and the frequent context-setting intertitles like punchy drum riffs and an ensemble of colorful characters making the whole thing sing. As sharp and smooth as a Miles Davis solo, and a revelation for the documentary form.
2. Anora
From Tangerine (a favorite of 2015) to The Florida Project (my #1 of 2017) to Red Rocket (a favorite of 2022) and now this Palme dâOr-winning tale of a Brooklyn sex workerâs misadventures with a Russian oligarchâs son, Sean Baker has become American cinemaâs most reliable anthropologist of the restless strivers and scrappy survivors at societyâs margins. How this turns from high-flying Cinderella story to shambolic chase movie to gut-wrenching character study feels like a crossover of Scorsese with the Dardenne brothers, but also a continuation of Baker’s characteristically compassionate yet clear-eyed treatment of even his most challenging characters.
1. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
If Fury Road was the New Testament of George Millerâs Mad Max saga, bringing redemption to both the storyâs characters and the action genre itself, then Furiosa is its Old Testament: brutal, beguiling, mercurial, and thrillingly epic. Call it a Pentateuch for a new (post-apocalyptic) age. Also really interesting to rewatch this right before another Fury Road rewatch as it provided the backstory to Furiosaâs journey and the events of Fury Road that I didnât have the first (several) times watching it. In that way Fury Road felt more like the sequel/conclusion to Furiosa than vice versa, and made me appreciate both even more. This whole saga is a really rich text on gender, power, politics, and what we do to survive.
Still havenât seen: Nosferatu, A Complete Unknown, The Brutalist, All We Imagine As Light, Wicked
Non-2024 movies I watched and enjoyed: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Populaire, Little Children, Green Room, The Thing
The Birthday Bowl
Happy 6th birthday to our firstborn! We celebrated by going out to breakfast and then bringing him bowling for the first time. He got second place with a bumper-assisted 85, while I snuck into first place with a well-timed strike at 95. While it had been about a decade since Iâve played, I also have just never been a good bowler. But thatâs OK because itâs still a great thing to do for a date of any kind.
Iâm happy to report that the state of one of Americaâs longtime third places was strong, with a bunch of retirees and families at the bowling alley on a weekday morning. Also happy to report the style and amenities were firmly stuck in 1993, including an Addams Family pinball machine:
Maple trees and moles
During a recent songwriting session with my five year old (i.e. in the six minutes before he got distracted by something else), he improvised these lyrics while I strummed my guitar and took notes:
Thereâs a maple tree in the meadow
And every winter itâs not making progressÂ
But in the spring, the tree starts growing away
And once you know
Itâs taking so
Long to grow
Then you know
Thereâs a maple tree closeTwigs in the grass
And down below
You might know
Something slow
Itâs a mole. Yes itâs a mole, ohhhh
What do you see under the snow?
Why itâs a mole!
So give it a dole
Itâs hard to be a mole
Grammy Award when?
Guarding Beauty in the Dark: On âCustodians of Wonderâ and âThe Man in the High Castleâ
There are two powerful moments in Amazon Primeâs alternate-history âwhat if Germany and Japan won World War IIâ show The Man in the High Castle that I think about a lot, especially in relation to current events.
The first is in the sixth episode of season one (âThree Monkeysâ). Frank, a laborer who also creates replicas of antique guns for wealthy buyers, is wracked with guilt and resentment after his sister and her kids were murdered by Japanâs secret police while he was being interrogated due to his girlfriend Juliana’s connection with the underground resistance. In distress, he goes to the home of a man named Mark, his sisterâs former boss and a fellow closeted Jew who practices in secret with his kids despite Judaism being outlawed.
Mark asks Frank if heâd be OK with them doing a prayer for his sister and her kids. âLosing people is one thing,â Mark says. âNot being allowed to grieve for them, well, thatâs another.â He then performs the kaddish, a Jewish mournerâs prayer for the dead, which is intercut with scenes of Julianaâs covert resistance work. In a ramshackle, candlelit apartment, hearing words he doesn’t understand but feels deep in his bones, Frank is finally able mourn his immense loss.
The other moment happens in the following episode (âTruthâ), when Frank asks Mark why he chose to have kids despite the danger of being Jewish and continues to risk their lives practicing their faith. Their exchange:
MARK: I don’t plan on dying, Frank. But you can’t live your life in fear. I was back east at the end of the war, in Boston. You had to see it to believe it. Overnight, lynch mobs were murdering Jews because suddenly we were less than human. Those of us who came out in one piece, we buried service weapons underground, well-wrapped in oil, and we vowed revenge. I got a life to lead, got kids to raise. And Hitler and the NazisâI don’t care how it looks, they won’t last. One thing I realized about my people is we got a different sense of time. These may be dark years, but we’ll survive. We always do. You’ve just got to find something to hold on to.
FRANK: Faith, you mean.
MARK: Yeah, faith.
FRANK: I don’t have any of that.
MARK: Well, what about art? You’re supposed to be an artist. Why are you making fake guns?
FRANK: Because no one wants to buy my art.
MARK: So do it for yourself. Beauty is important, Frank. It gives us hope.
FRANK: I don’t know. I don’t know where it would get me.
MARK: Yeah. Right. You don’t need anybody to keep you down because you got your own little inner fascist right there telling you what you can and cannot do. That’s how you let them win.
I wrote about The Man in the High Castle more generally after it debuted. Though I stopped watching after two seasons, these and other moments stuck with me ever since and resurfaced in my mind recently when I read Eliot Steinâs new book Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive. It’s a travelogue that spotlights artisans and specialists all over the world who have continued practicing their often incredibly arduous crafts, often with great sacrifice, even as modern life has rendered them obsolete.
From the worldâs last nightwatchman in Sweden to an Incan rope bridge master in Peru to a rare pasta maker in Sardinia to the makers of first-surface mirrors in India, these dedicated folks have upheld traditions passed down often within a single family for centuries or even longer. How? And why? According to Paola Abraini, the Sardinian grand master of su filindeu pasta:
Itâs a matter of principle, of tradition. What I have always said is that as a custodian of this tradition that has been passed down from mother to daughter, I will respect that. My daughters know how much of an undertaking this is for me, but they know how much I love it, so as long as the good Lord gives me health and life, I will continue to make it. I remain hopeful that one of them will one day take it on, but if they canât, then I will be sad. So many things in this world that once were no longer are.
Stein writes that Abrainiâs parting message âfelt like a prophecy, a pressing reminder to cherish the beautiful, gentle customs that make the world glimmer while warning us not to blink.â
Guardians in the darkness
Perhaps you can see why learning about these remarkable people brought to mind Mark in The Man in the High Castle, who continued the practices he considered meaningful despite the societal forces allayed against him. He continued to cherish the customs that made his world glimmer and lived out his assertion that beauty is important. Though the traditions documented in the book arenât outlawed like Judaism in The Man in the High Castle, they require the same dedication to upholdâto hold fast against the entropy of modernity and relentless advance of technology that would try to make them disappear.
The book also helped me reckon with what being a custodian means, which is much more meaningful than my reductive view of it as something akin to a school janitor. Knowing the word custodian comes from the Latin for guardian gives it the weight and nobility it deserves. And hereâs the thing: custodians of all kinds keep the world going. Where would we beâwhat would we beâwithout the people who handcraft pasta, take out the garbage, clean up messes, build vital bridges, and routinely perform so many more acts of preservation and maintenance and care?
We are all custodians of something or someone, whether in our families, communities, or just our own minds. We must not let the fascists in our government or our inner voice dictate whatâs important. Or make us forget that art matters, and that thereâs good in this world thatâs worth fighting for. (Cue Samwise Gamgeeâs speech in Osgiliath.)
Tend to your garden. Make your art. Do not obey in advance. Find something to hold on to and be its custodian in the darkness.
Links of the moment
What the next Beatles album could have looked like if they hadnât broken up.
Title design of Best Picture winners and 20th century sci-fi.
Behind the scenes of Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.
Behold the sight and sound of a meteorite strike.
These videos of a landscaper mowing overgrown lawns are extremely satisfying.
Wikenigma is dedicated to documenting fundamental gaps in human knowledge.
Hometown discovery news: indigenous dugout canoes as old as the Egyptian pyramids.
Of or relating to
Thatâs one of my favorite phrases in the English language. Why? It means youâre most likely looking at the definition of a really cool adjective, and as a writer and certified word nerd I live for really cool adjectives.
A quick perusal of my Cool Words list shows 13 instances of this phenomenal phrase, including:
- Brumal: of or relating to winter
- Chthonic: of or relating to the underworld
- Palustrine: of or relating to marshes or fen; marshy
- Venatic: of or relating to hunting
I mean, come on.
You can try this with basically any word related to nature, medicine, or other topics of interest during the Scientific Revolution, when many of these words were first coined or derived from Latin/Greek.
Why write âsnake-likeâ when you could say anguine? Or âskin-likeâ when cutaneous is sitting right there? And arenaceous sounds a lot cooler than âsandyâ.
Most of the adjectives on my list Iâve found in the wild while reading something, but it can also work in the reverse. While writing the post about our window prism, I initially thought to describe the rainbow light as lightning-shaped but then wondered if there was a dedicated adjective for that. I searched âof or relating to lightningâ and boom: fulminous (âof, relating to, or resembling thunder and lightningâ) or fulgurous (âcharacteristic of or resembling lightningâ). I didnât end up using them but damned if I didnât add fulgurous to the Cool Words list.