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Woodworking · Reading · Living





SEARCHING FOR CONTENTMENT

In the fragrance of freshly worked wood

The soft glow cast by shoji lamps

The inspiration of good reads

The wonder of daily living


She hadn't exactly feared the word contentment, but had always associated it
with a vague sense of failure. To be discontented had always seemed much richer
a thing. To be restless, striving.

Louise Erdrich
The Master Butchers Singing Club


GLOBAL TEMPERATURE CHANGE (1850-2023)


See your own area: Show Your Stripes⩘ 


MY HEART IS WITH THE PEOPLE OF UKRAINE



#StandWithUkraine⩘ 


MY CONTEMPLATIONS ABOUT UKRAINE >


READING


ANNE APPLEBAUM, AUTOCRACY, INC.: THE DICTATORS WHO WANT TO RUN THE WORLD

Narrated by the author

Anne Applebaum's short book is a bit grim as she spends most of it revealing how
autocracy works in countries around our modern world, and it's really
unsettling, even nauseating. But it's also vitally essential to understand this
if we have any hope of avoiding it ourselves.

In the (very) end, her message does contain just a glimmer of hope to share,
which I think is best summed up by her response in an interview about the book:

> Looking forward, Applebaum says she hopes her book helps re-engage people who
> may have become cynical by the political process. "What the autocrats –
> whether they're in American politics or in Russian politics or in Chinese
> politics – what they want is for you to be disengaged. They want you to drop
> out," she says. "I want people to be convinced that ideas matter, that we're
> going to have to defend and protect our political system if we want to keep
> it."
> – Expert on dictators warns: Don't lose hope – that's what they want⩘  by
> Tonya Mosley, NPR Fresh Air, Jul 23, 2024.

Doubleday Books, 2024; audiobook: Penguin Random House Audio, 2024.

Related:

 * Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne
   Applebaum⩘ 
 * Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social
   Control by Josh Chin and Liza Lin⩘ 
 * Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen ⩘ 
 * How I Survived a Chinese "Reeducation" Camp: A Uyghur Woman's Story by
   Gulbahar Haitiwaji⩘ 
 * The Backstreets: A Novel from Xinjiang by Perhat Tursun⩘ 
 * Strongmen: Mussolini To The Present by Ruth Ben-Ghiat⩘ 
 * How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them by Barbara F. Walter⩘ 
 * The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History by Serhii Plokhy⩘ 
 * A Stone Is Most Precious Where it Belongs: A Memoir of Uyghur Exile, Hope,
   and Survival by Gulchehra Hoja⩘ 
 * How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future by Maria Ressa⩘ 
 * Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality by Renée DiResta⩘ 
 * On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder⩘ 


MORE RECENT READING >


CONTEMPLATING


HUBBLE IS BACK!


Credits: Image – NASA⩘ , ESA⩘ , STScI⩘ , David Thilker (JHU)⩘ 
Image Processing – Joseph DePasquale (STScI)⩘ 

I really appreciate Hubble images (much more than the infrared images produced
by the newer James Webb Space Telescope). I'm really glad Hubble is back online.

> NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken its first new image since changing to
> an alternate operating mode that uses one gyro.
> 
> The spacecraft returned to science operations June 14 after being offline for
> several weeks due to an issue with one of its gyroscopes (gyros), which help
> control and orient the telescope.
> 
> This new image features NGC 1546, a nearby galaxy in the constellation Dorado.
> The galaxy's orientation gives us a good view of dust lanes from slightly
> above and backlit by the galaxy's core. This dust absorbs light from the core,
> reddening it and making the dust appear rusty-brown. The core itself glows
> brightly in a yellowish light indicating an older population of stars.
> Brilliant-blue regions of active star formation sparkle through the dust.
> Several background galaxies are also visible, including an edge-on spiral just
> to the left of NGC 1546.

As I've said before … we live here. Wow!

NASA Releases Hubble Image Taken in New Pointing Mode⩘ , Hubblesite⩘ , Jun 18,
2024.


MORE RECENT CONTEMPLATIONS >


LIVING IN THE ROCKIES

There were a lot of gifts on my walk today, like these clusters of peach-tinged
boxelder seeds that are forming in preparation for taking flight later in the
year.



There are a fair number of wild roses growing along the way, though most have
only one or a couple flowers. These wild roses are growing in a protected place
at the base of a rocky cliff where they get some sun, but not too much, and
therefore are in soil that is slower to dry out during the sometimes long
stretches between rainfalls that we have here. So they are big, vibrant, and
full of fragrant flowers.



It looks like we're going to have a year rich in wild grapes. Soon, the air is
going to be full of their most wonderful fragrance wafting on the breeze.




LARGER VERSION OF THESE PHOTOS >
MORE RECENT PHOTOS >


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 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 a spiral galaxies melt my heart and also
inspire me to wonder whether I'm originally from another planet in another
galaxy. 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. I deeply appreciate the work that folks like Cory
Doctorow⩘  and organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)⩘  are
doing on our behalf.

See also: Privacy Is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your
Data by Carissa Véliz⩘  and McLuhan lecture on enshittification by Cory
Doctorow⩘ .

Some helpful online privacy tools:
     
Also: DuckDuckGo App Tracking Protection⩘ 

Keystones: Respect, compassion, empathy, acceptance. We're all in this together.



Home · Woodworking · Reading · Living

 
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Since 1999

A note on the fonts used:
My logo uses Jill Bell's Bruno JB,
"an enigma wrapped within a riddle,"
which I enjoy for its playful flair.
The rest of my website uses
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Background image:
Fern Lake
Rocky Mountain National Park