My son and his girlfriend. Turns out she was telling him about a book she was reading by Walter J. Ong, which is why we also love her.

I started reading the Pope's AI encyclical today, and so far the mood is that he has folded up his glasses and handed them to a cardinal before diving off the stage into the crowd.

Joni Michell's HEJIRA is transcendent. Every time.

It's a windy, listening-to-the-Jayhawks afternoon.

All this interminable Bluesky-is-a-bubble talk is a just bunch of thirsty vampires trying to get reasonable folks to let them in.

Today I found out I have one family line on my mother's side that goes back to Plymouth. Normally, genealogy isn't my thing, but this kind of floored me.

What is a trowel but a dagger for the soil?

Red yucca doing its thing.

One of the high school janitors just told me he often sees my my kid listening to music and dancing with his friends in the hallway. I know this is forbidden knowledge.

Listen, my dude. This is some bullshit parking indeed. (I am on the left and was there first.)

I remembered to shut the windows of my Jeep before it rains, ensuring that it will not rain. I'm the problem.

Maybe it's okay to cheer for what you like and boo for what you don't. I mean, that is essentially sports, right?

Had an Ansel Adamsy moment on way home from the hardware store.

Last year I ate like a crazy person. But I've been back on the clean-eating wagon for almost a week, and, my friends, I have devastating news: I feel so much better.

I'm late to the party, but I kind of love Band of Horses.

Any fool who connects an AI tool to their credit card is asking for this at the very least.

My wife asked for avocado toast for Mother's Day. So I baked her this. Full brunch TK, as they say in the publishing biz.

Well, for me it's been yelling at "the cloud." But yeah, that's me, Luddite Grandpa.

Caught a cold, and this dude checked in on me a lot today.

My kid and I are writing an insufferably twee Broadway-style jazz tune about falling in love during the apocalypse. It's called "We'll Outlast Them All." It starts: "I get so glum, dear, scrolling the news/about data centers and the Straight of Hormuz"

We've got good things going on up here at the house.

I don't buy things like this so much anymore, but I had to.

Because the internets are buzzing with people saying that taste is THE new durable skill, I'm re-reading Bourdieu's DISTINCTION.

My college friends have me listening to Herbie Mann this morning, and yeah.

Flea's new jazz record is gorgeous. A full, spirit-lifting, kind of music, lush, melodic. I'm going to get this one on vinyl.

I just learned that I can have my Chaco sandals fixed, and I am so unbelievably happy. I mean, with things like they are, I like a small victory now and then.

Kid Rock?

I graded 28 assignments today. I'm going to stand up now, unkink my back, and go home. I have 33 more to do by Wednesday at 5pm.

100%

I went to the gas station for pebble ice and also bought a sleeve of those little donuts, because the whole world is upside down.

It really is.

I am so into the band Lettuce right now. Their music (and too much caffeine) is my grading engine for finals week. So funky.

We have batard. Repeat: we have batard. And great oven spring.

Get in losers, we're baking batards.

I've got some data visualization on the status of The Strait of Hormuz.

This is a good take.

Last night, my son, recovering from food poisoning, was playing bass in a jazz concert, when his fixed glasses broke again during a very difficult piece. He put the two halves on his music stand and played from memory, brilliantly, including a solo for the final Pat Metheny song, which he nailed.

Today, I'm playing The Replacements Let It Be because I'm am old enough to know that this is where so much of the music of the last 30 years has come from—actually, 40 years. Damn.

Maybe I write a coming of age novel about a person in their mid-40s.

Because of a group text with my old college friends, I am now listening to Firehose this morning as I prep for classes.

The correct response, I believe, to all this I-thought-I-was-a-doctor stuff is "physician heal thyself."

Vatican City is the setting for that new Frank Miller noir graphic novel, right?

Working on a new song and put Artemis II into the fourth verse.

My wife says the splashdown has the aesthetic feels of the 60s Batman. She is right, and I love it.

Houston, can you hear me now?

Filling up the gas tank

My kid is officially a rock star. Last night he and his band played to a crowd of 1500+ in another town at another university, and they tore it up. What a parent gets to see is this lead guitar playing man and the tiny baby he once was in the same glance.

I am a Jesuit-educated person, descended from Jesuit-educated people, and I know Pope Leo is Augustinian, but my Jesuit self is nodding almost constantly these days.

Today, I saw the daytime moon hovering in the blue sky above a donut shop, and I realized that the Artemis II crew was also out there, in the vicinity. It gave me the most wonderful feeling.

My son is scoring a student film, and...he's really good at it. His storytelling sense is strong.