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
After a very dry and overly warm winter and early spring, in May we were overjoyed to experience nicer temperatures and, best of all, several wonderful rainstorms. As a result, the world around us turned green with exuberant life, and my daily walks are much more joyful as my eyes drink in the beauty from the tiniest fresh green plants popping up to entire hillsides of Mountain Mahogany radiating a deep green aura.
Here are two examples basking in the early morning sun: a small salsify flower shining against a deep green Virginia Creeper vine and my favorite old great grandmother cottonwood with her many thousands of fresh green leaves dancing in the gentle morning breeze against a brilliant blue sky. I love this tree, and often pause to lay a gentle hand on her bark to say hello and feel her vibrant energy.
Larger version of these photos⩘
More recent photos⩘
Reading
Eyal Weizman, Ungrounding: The Architecture of Genocide
Very well narrated by Khalid Abdalla
Since October 7, 2023, I've been closely following the events in Palestine (see Broken Heart: Palestine, Gaza, the West Bank, Israel⩘ ). At the same time, I've been doing a great deal of reading about the history of this devastating conflict.
This book, more than anything else I've come across, has greatly expanded my awareness of the horrendous devastation that Israel is perpetrating upon the Palestinians, and has been for many decades. I can say only that I'm horrified and disgusted by the blatant and intentional disregard for human life with which Israel has been and is conducting what can only be described as one of the most grievous instances of brutal settler colonialism as well as among the worst genocides in human history.
Some context is important.
The author, Eyal Weizman, is a British Israeli architect. He is director of the research agency Forensic Architecture, at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he is Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures and founding director of the Centre for Research Architecture at the department of Visual Cultures. In 2019 he was elected Fellow of the British Academy. He was born in Haifa, Israel, studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London, and completed his PhD at the London Consortium.
"Ungrounding" is one of the key findings of the forensic architecture that he and the team he works with have been performing.
Ungrounding is unlike other kinds of destruction in which the surface markings of inhabited areas – plot lines, roads, fields, gardens, walking paths – remain identifiable. In all other wartime destruction that I have studied, even when buildings collapse, one can still tell where they once stood, and understand something of the social reality that the urban surface held together. After a conflict ends, buildings and neighbourhoods can be extruded from their footprints. Ungrounding, on the other hand, aims to remove a society from its place and erase all traces to its previous existence. It extends from buildings down to the soil beneath them. It is a type of violence that is earth-shaping, terra-forming. Ungrounding is not a by-product of military confrontation but rather its aim. It destroys all conditions that sustain life and produces an empty slate, a tabula rasa. The monochrome desert of upturned soil is the material signature of Israel's genocide.
The book is extremely well researched and written, blending scientific findings and explanations, deeply personal stories of what has been and is occurring, and extraordinary insights into what the Israeli military and government have been doing, with the full backing of the U.S. government, over generations.
This was a deeply disturbing book to listen to and read (as I do with books that have complex subject matter, I followed along in the written book as I was listening in order to gain a more in-depth comprehension), but I'm deeply grateful for the insights and understanding that it provided me with.
Re-grounding: the soil's capacity to generate life. Thankfully, this book left me with one final and important insight: to never abandon hope that the future can be better.
Acts of ungrounding connected the expulsions and destructions of 1948 with those of the present-day genocide. The scraping of the surface sought then and now to make impossible the return of Palestinians. However, for those willing and able to look closely, through the vale of the total devastation, faint traces always remain. A close and careful reading of the ground, through a combination of memory and photography, testimony and material traces, as this book has tried to demonstrate, can reveal not only what exists, but also the subtle traces of that which Israel has attempted to erase. These faint markers are anchors for return. When such return will take place, a process of re-grounding must slowly restore the life-giving quality of the damaged soil and its capacity to generate life.
Penguin Press, 2026; Bookshop.org⩘ ; audiobook: Penguin Random House Audio, 2026; Libro.fm⩘ .
See also:
- Israel is building a miles-long earthen barrier inside Gaza, entrenching its division⩘ by Lee Keath and Julia Frankel, The Associated Press, Jul 21, 2026.
- 'Israeli settlers are in partnership with the army,' say Palestinians after two shot dead in West Bank: Residents of Deir Jarir say raids late on Sunday, also involving security forces, are part of pattern of violence⩘ by Andrew Roth and Sufian Taha in Deir Jarir, West Bank, The Guardian, Jul 20, 2026.
More recent reading⩘
Nelson Mandela showed us what solidarity means
Photo: © copyright John Mathew Smith 2001 / CC BY-SA 2.0⩘
Source: John Mathew Smith & www.celebrity-photos.com⩘
Mayor Zohran Mamdani gave an inspiring talk about Nelson Mandela, who is also known by his Thembu clan name, Madiba.
Madiba lives in every protest for justice, every call for democracy, every march with a righteous demand. Madiba lives in every township and slum where dignity remains just out of reach, and he lives in each person who reaches for that dignity, who works all day and then returns home with food for the hungry and medicine for the sick. Madiba lives each time someone bears witness to oppression, or want, or misery, and does not accept it as inevitable, but rather as something that we each can fight. So many of us are only where we are today – can only conceive of the principled as possible – because Madiba showed us the path.
Mayor Mamdani gave his talk to commemorate the launch of the Mandela Foundation Global Leadership Forum.
We are together this evening to launch the Mandela Foundation Global Leadership Forum – to continue the struggle for dignity that guided Madiba for nearly a century. We are together to chart a course through the turbulent waters that lie before us – a global landscape roiled by strongmen and corruption, where rights are stolen away in the dead of night and apartheid, in different forms, endures. We are together, all of us, searching for answers, seeking to make sense of these fractures, straining to lead amidst upheaval.
Nelson Mandela held a mirror to humanity – and showed us what solidarity means⩘ , opinion by Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, The Guardian, Jul 18, 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
———
"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. 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:
Why I dislike artificial intelligence⩘
Privacy Is Power by Carissa Véliz⩘
McLuhan lecture on enshittification by Cory Doctorow⩘
A helpful online privacy tool:
Keystones: Respect, compassion, empathy, acceptance. We're all in this together.
