Curiosities

Week 15-25 - Curiosities

Greetings from the Mesa Wow, 7 weeks since the last update, A LOT has happened. I think winter is fully over and we have gone straight to summer - 80 yesterday, creeping in the upper 70s today. Our taxes are done, and the hummer feeders are up. Hummer migration is

Week 08-25 - Curiosities

Greetings from the Mesa We set out for a mini adventure to southern Colorado to cross the Rio Grande at the one-lane historic Los Lobatos bridge in S. San Luis Valley. We arrived at the bridge to find a bald eagle fishing (successfully). The bridge is 'out there'

Week 05-25 - Curiosities

Greetings from the Mesa Wow, America is devolving more rapidly than I ever even expected. Checks and balances have gone the way of the Dodo. Wheee! Meanwhile we are carrying on. Winter is gone again, and we are delighting in some 60+ degree weather. Bring out the shorts! Curiosities of

Week 04-25 - Curiosities

Greetings from the Mesa Well here we are in a new dystopian reality. Buckle up. In other news we have been waiting to get a wood stove insert installed in the fireplace. That happened. It's wonderfully cozy and toasty. It's been a slow January so far,

Week 02-25 - Curiosities

Greetings from the Mesa Winter has finally returned and with it some seriously cold nights. The fireplace is scheduled for a glow-up next week in the form of a new wood stove insert. I'm looking forward to some cozy nights around a fire again. How's your

Week 01-25 - Curiosities

Greetings from the Mesa Finally back into the groove of the blog thang after taking a bit of an unexpected break the second half of 2024. I don't have any overarching goals for 2025 - let's see what kind of ride it takes us on for

Week 38-24 - Curiosities

Greetings from the Mesa It's finally happened, we are un-stalled. It feels transformative. Things are moving forward again. And more. The garden is go-grow-going big time, a complete 180 from last year. There is at least one resident gopher snake, possibly two, that have been taking care of

Week 19-24 - Curiosities

Greetings from the Mesa This was the week of not moving forward again because the "rules" keep changing. While we missed the best day of aurora viewing because of clouds, I think we managed to see them on Saturday night (at least through the phone cam). It has

Week 18-24 - Curiosities

Greetings from the Mesa We've been enjoying warm mornings drinking coffee on the front patio watching the hummers and all the other birds do their spring dance. Flop tan on my feet is for real. Finally some things are progressing, albeit slowly (of course). April winds have been

Week 17-24 - Curiosities

Greetings from the Mesa This spring has been wonderful - warm for the most part, not too windy, and not too dusty. Lovely, i'll take it. Regular moisture is setting us up for a hopefully productive garden season. Our outside overwintering plants are coming back in full force:

Week 14-24 - Curiosities

Greetings from the Mesa Winter is lingering. Moods are improving. We've soaked and binge watched TV and built more shed stairs. Garlic, rhubarb, and horseradish are coming up in the garden. Inside we have onion starts and trays of fresh sprouts to eat under a grow light. The

Week 09-24 - Curiosities

Greetings from the Mesa We had to say farewell to our beloved Squidgey Biscuit last Friday. It's been a rough week. We are all heartbroken. Curiosities of the Week F.T.C. Sues to Block Kroger-Albertsons Grocery Store Deal (NYT) The best news I've heard all

Week 07-24 - Curiosities

Greetings from the Mesa It's been a week - or a little over a week now. Dealing with sick kitty, continued bureaucracy, some really fraked up news. It's agitated anxiety and grief non-stop. It'll all work itself out. But it's been a

Week 06-24 - Curiosities

Greetings from the Mesa Happy Lunar New Year! We made dumplings - red bean paste, and chicken green chile. We don't have a yéye, or nǎinai to watch over our dumpling making so we did our best. And they were delicious. Still bogged down in bureaucratic crap, hopefully

Week 05-24 - Curiosities

Greetings from the Mesa Winter has returned. The atmospheric rivers hitting the west coast are sending the moisture goods our way. Thankfully none of the snow is sticking (so far!). This week did not go as planned when an intense round of pain in the form of hamstring cramping took

Week 04-24 - Curiosities

Greetings from the Mesa The week of tangled in bureaucracy. In better news with one day left in January I have successfully navigated my first month sans Amazon or Instagram. Don't miss a thing. Curiosities of the Week The Secret Language of Ships (Hakai Magazine) Signs and symbols

Week 03-24 - Curiosities

Greetings from the Mesa We are alternating between clouds and sunshine so the animals take advantage of the solar gain whenever they can. This week was a bit of a catch-up work wise after last weeks well snafu. We finally got our dump card so we could take garbage in

Week 02-24 - Curiosities

Greetings from the Mesa It's been a cold and snowy week on the mesa. In between storms we've been having some pretty spectacular sunsets. Our well was out from T-F so it felt like we were camping in the house. Thankfully it ended up being a

Week 01-24 - Curiosities

Greetings from the Mesa Welcome back to the Curiosities newsletter. It's been a hot minute. Where did 2023 go? Happy to say byeeeee to a year of utter exhaustion. I'm ready to ignite 2024. Let's go! No resolutions here this year. No point... what

Week 31-23 - Curiosities

🗞️Greetings from The Mesa It's been ten weeks since the last Curiosities. Time flies... I didn't intend on taking a summer break from the site, but here we are. It's been a busy and hot summer. We've been stuck under the SW

Week 21-23 - Curiosities

Rest in Power Queen. I have been a huge Tina Turner fan for a very long time. I saw her perform once on her Twenty Four Seven tour on June 9, 2000 at the Fleet Center in Boston. She was 60 at the time, and danced up and down the

Week 19-23 - Curiosities

🗞️Greetings from The Mesa It's been a gimpy past couple of weeks with some irritating and immobilizing bilateral ITBS. Starting to feel better, so I'm back to my regular posting schedule. Besides the lack of general mobility to get things done in a timely fashion, it&

Week 17-23 - Curiosities

🗞️Greetings from The Mesa We are all garden all the time. We created a fenced in 24' x 18' outdoor area where we have a bunch of different beds. So far we have raspberry bed, blackberry bed, strawberry and rhubarb bed, a goji berry mound, and a horseradish

Week 16-23 - Curiosities

🗞️Greetings from The Mesa We love coffee. We have started down a path to discover new coffees that we roast ourselves. There is a an economic and somewhat environmental twist to this story - we save money, we don't have to buy almond milk in large plastic jugs

Week 15-23 - Curiosities

🗞️Greetings from The Mesa Winter will not stop. Over it. It does give me lots of time to art, write, and bake new things (check out the recipe at the bottom). Do you feel productive, or not so much, in Spring? 👉Curiosities 1. Your devices are listening. Your devices are

Week 14-23 - Curiosities

🗞️Greetings from The Mesa At the end of week 14, and beginning of Week 15 we did a whirlwind trip to Kansas City, MO to see one of my favorite musicians perform a show for a dear old friend. Combined with a frenetic race to get the greenhouse and garden

Week 13-23 - Curiosities

🗞️News from the Mesa: Lift-driven ski season is coming to a close. I put in 14 days of morning laps, and ~241,081' vertical. The mountain opens to uphill traffic next week. I may try to do some 'earn your turns' days. We'll see how

Week 12-23 - Curiosities

🗞️Greetings from The Mesa I received a newsletter from an artist I follow this week, and I loved the format, so I'm trying something new this week. I have a few more ideas for tweaks ahead in future newsletters. That being said, we are seeing some signs that

Week 11-23 - Curiosities

This week on Hargie: Week 10-23 - Haibuno Week 11-23 - Photos This week elsewhere: 1. The art/importance of having a Practice. Two of my longest practices are keeping a journal of some form (currently on book #116 - mostly regularly since 1986), and having a web presence in

Week 10-23 - Curiosities

This week on Hargie: Week 10-23 - Photos This week elsewhere: 1. Premiumization & enshittification of all things. Spontaneity is dead? This whole piece reads like a fresh version of hell ("a boring blob on the horizon...an attention-deficit kingdom of perpetual experience and consumption"). Barf. What it

Week 9-23 - Curiosities

This week on Hargie: Week 9-23 - Photos Week 7-23 - Haibuno Week 8-23 - Haibuno Week 9-23 - Haibuno Wooo have I fallen behind, and absolutely no good reason for it. Well except maybe that it was my birfday week. I'm a solid Gen-Xer so that should

Week 8-23 - Curiosities

This week on Hargie: Will I ever catch-up with Haibuno? There is something not working in my workflow right now... Week 8-23- Photos This week elsewhere: 1. Jill Hess continues her deep dive into Octavia Butler's collection at the Huntington Library. I also just finished A Handful of

Week 7-23 - Curiosities

This week on Hargie: Week 6-23 - Haibuno Week 7-23 - Photos This week throwing out support for some wonderful friends first: 1. My friend Bethany is posting some lovely mixes at her mixcloud My Resonant Frequencies. https://www.mixcloud.com/myresonantfrequencies/ This is a sound experiment. I wanted to

Week 6-23 - Curiosities

This week on Hargie: Lots of updates this week on the site as I catch-up after our road trip last week... Week 6-23 - Photos Week 5-23- Curiosities Week 5-23 - Haibuno 1 Month in Winter - Animation Week 5-23 - Photos This week elsewhere: 1. Erik Hoel chimes in

Week 5-23 - Curiosities

This week elsewhere: 1. The Saguaro Cactus poop sheet - https://www.nps.gov/sagu/planyourvisit/upload/The%20Saguaro%20Cactus.pdf - I had no idea there were entire hillsides full of them in AZ until we drove this week. I love them! They are really impressive organisms. 2. The

Week 4-23 - Curiosities

This Week on Hargie: Week 3-23 - Haibuno Week 4-23 - Haibuno Week 4-23 - Photos This Week Elsewhere: Media Consumption TV Doing some TV watching this week of Poker Face, and The Last of Us. Love me some quality mystery and post-apocalyptic. They are both well acted and have

Week 3-23 - Curiosities

Starting today I'll post the newsletter once a week on Fridays. Have any thoughts on this? Would you rather receive Photos, Curiosities, or Haibuno? Would you rather have multiple emails per week? Different day for the one newsletter? I'm open to any/all suggestions, just leave

Week 2-23 - Curiosities

1. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/harvard-happiness-study-relationships/672753/     “Good relationships lead to health and happiness. The trick is that those relationships must be nurtured.”  See also: https://www.adultdevelopmentstudy.org/ 2. On a related path:  this lovely piece by Chris La Tray https://chrislatray.substack.com/p/

Week 1-23 - Curiosities

1. I’m trying a new web browser from The Browser Company called Arc. This post was written within the browser using Arc’s Spaces & Notes features. It might be a game changer for getting posts started, and writing/browsing on the fly. I’m not ready to commit

Happy New Year

2023 is here, and it's been a whirlwind already. 6 days feels like 6 months. OWW will get back to regularly scheduled posting next week. Mondays: Haibuno, daily haiku/haibun, experimenting with doing drawings for the daily haibuns instead of photos this year. Will see if it is

Week 52-22 - Curiosities

2022 Favorites (in no particular order) Books It was a good reading year - I'm closing in on finishing my 36th book of the year. It was hard to choose just five favorites. Rereading all of Octavia Butler's books was one highlight, discovering R. A. Lafferty

Week 51-22 - Curiosities

Happy Holidays! Switching things up this week with only five favorites from the past week! SHORT STORY Isabel Greenberg pens a super fun little graphic short about what happens when Charon falls in love and shirks his duty in The River of Lost Souls. https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/

Week 50-22 - Curiosities

ESSAY “Why is Everything So Ugly? by N+1 Editors discuss the omnipresence of griege or whatever the heck that ubiquitous gray blah is called. It’s not modern, it’s boring. https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-44/the-intellectual-situation/why-is-everything-so-ugly/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email In “The Sweet and

Week 49-22 - Curiosities

It’s been a week! Links are a little sparser than usual. I blame it on holiday madness, even though it has nothing to do with the holiday season. ESSAYS "Essays in Idleness" 1-10 Yoshida Kenko https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-timeless-wisdom-of-kenko-159972347/ "On Going a Journey"

Week 48-22 - Curiosities

Music "Racine Carrée Live" Stromae - Full Concert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOZLDQm9c2E "The Sea" by HAEVN https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaDGW96tl3c "Windhorse" by Of the Trees https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkTIrTkrupc "Mescaline" by Robert Francis

Week 47-22 - Curiosities

SHORT STORIES "Tenth of December" by George Saunders https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/31/tenth-of-december "He was a father. That’s what a father does. Eases the burdens of those he loves. Saves the ones he loves from painful last images that might endure for

Week 46-22 - Curiosities

ESSAY "Total Eclipse" by Annie Dillard https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/annie-dillards-total-eclipse/536148/ "Some tasteless fate presses it upon you; it becomes part of the complex interior junk you carry with you wherever you go." "The Fourth State of Matter" by

Week 45-22 - Curiosities

ESSAYS "What Hurricanes Taught Puerto Ricans About Feeding Themselves" By Moises Velasquez-Manoff https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/08/magazine/puerto-rico-farms-hurricanes.html "As practiced in Puerto Rico, agroecology often involves polyculture, or growing different crops together; composting; limiting or eschewing synthetic fertilizers and pesticides; and an emphasis

Week 44-22 - Curiosities

Making Radiance #4 - AI Generated (2022) Art Mariette van Erp - Mixed Media - Netherlands https://www.mariettevanerp.com/index.php Ousmane Sow - Figurative sculpture (Senegal) http://ousmanesow.com/mac/index.htm "Just us Three" by Brea'n Thompson "The Princess" by Bisa

Week 43-22 - Curiosities

Making Radiance #3 - AI Generated (2022) On Being by Krista Tippett featuring adrienne maree brown "We Are in a Time of New Suns" https://onbeing.org/programs/adrienne-maree-brown-we-are-in-a-time-of-new-suns/ Also check out adrienne maree brown's book Emergent Strategy https://bookshop.org/a/87154/9781849352604 Only 30%

Week 42-22 - Curiosities

Making Radiance #2 - AI Generated Artwork (2022) I title this "The Apocalypse Issue", you can interpret that however you wish. This is What Happens When Republicans Take Off Their Masks by Jamelle Bouie https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/04/opinion/paul-pelosi-youngkin-lake.html What if Every Moment

Week 41-22 - Curiosities

Making Radiance - AI Generated Artwork (2022) Haruki Murakami: On Where My Characters Come From - I don't choose them; they choose me. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/12/haruki-murakami-book-novelist-as-a-vocation/671845/ "I unconsciously pull information from various fragments of my brain and then weave them

Week 40-22 - Curiosities

Do you have a bookmarks graveyard? For this Curiosities post I'm mining the graveyard of my Feedly's "Read Later" to see what I considered book(re)markable, but then never managed to actually read later... until now! What surprised me was how far back

Week 39-22 - Curiosities

What I've Been Reading The Testaments by Margaret Atwood https://bookshop.org/a/87154/9780525562627 The Testaments tells the story of three women living different lives that converge fifteen years after Haidmaid's Tale. Thankfully not nearly as creepy as the first book, but no less engrossing.

Week 38-22 - Curiosities

What I've been Reading The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez - https://bookshop.org/books/the-gilda-stories/9780872866744?aid=87154&listref=what-i-ve-been-reading-a08f4b90-2355-48ff-98e4-09be0ce90946 A romping sensual tale of queer vampires. Pairs well with Octavia Butler's Fledgling. A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore - https://bookshop.org/books/

Week 37-22 - Curiosities

Tool of the Week Fall is here, everything is going crispy fast. All those glorious sunflowers everywhere now need to come down. Loppers to the rescue. Love these things. Some of the sunflowers stalks are 2" thick. No problem i'll cut you down to a giant stalk

Week 36-22 - Curiosities

Currently Reading: The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu - https://amzn.to/3qzpsiv translated by Ken Liu Tool of the Week: 48" wood handled digging shovel I've been clearing some land and digging out sage brush. Save yourself a backache and get a proper long wood handled

Week 35-22 - Curiosities

Art of the Week: Rick Barton's Sketchbooks - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/arts/design/rick-barton-drawings-morgan-library.html - illustrating that the most simple is the most beautiful - pen and ink observations on paper. "a workaday recluse who sought self-knowledge by way of a monastic

Week 34-22 - Curiosities

Currently Reading: I'm on my last novel (Fledgling) and Collected stories in my OEB (re)reading marathon. Such an incredible artist and thinker. Tool of the Week: Zebra Sarasa Clip 0.5 (Vintage Colors) Gloriously smooth and the vintage colors are understated and lovely to use. This is

Week 33-22 - Curiosities

Solanum rostratum (Buffalo Bur) - a noxious Nightshade, highly toxic and pokey - plucked and bagged for disposal. They can distribute vast quantities of seed. APP of the Week iNaturalist - https://www.inaturalist.org/ Since we've been getting a deluge of rain this monsoon season (love it!

Week 32-22 - Curiosities

The Rise of the Worker Productivity Score is a fascinating and disturbing read: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/14/business/worker-productivity-tracking.html Which brings me to thinking about...Choosing what to do with your life? Because being tracked by your workplace is grotesque. Aquinas suggests If we want