I have a memory of an event that seems so bizarre, I sometimes wonder whether I've gotten it wrong. It happened while I was in England on a study-abroad program in my late teens. I walked past a workman who was standing chest deep in a hole in
"Two ancient peoples. A modern-day connection. Nothing divides the Choctaw people from the Irish except for the ocean." "Both the Choctaw Nation and Ireland were, in effect, colonized by outside powers. Their ancient tongues almost became extinct, and have been rescued from oblivion and made into working
"He carried the black cast-iron kettle that contained stew. Above us, I could feel the life returning to the trees. Tommy said, 'Think of how many people have carried this kettle.' I did. I thought of it. It was iron that had probably been mined from our
This week I'm writing early, then taking a short break to attend a family wedding in Northern Ireland. Today's post is a gathering of a different kind—of letters, maps, and memorials—documenting a contested past that lives on in the present. In the spring of
What common threads link Route 66; a recently-constructed airport exit; a nature preserve near an industrialized port; and a quaint village in the Berkshires? Read on to find out! I'm pulling on several strands this week, hoping to weave them together here into a tableau of sorts. My
Picture a classroom at a Big Ten university in the early 1980s. It's Spanish class, and the professor has just asked a question about Native Americans. The exact question is lost to my memory, but a student's response is not: "They're all gone.
"I'm not asking you to bear the weight of all your ancestors' indiscretions and negative occurrences. What I am asking is that you advocate for those truths to be brought to the surface, and for you to share that we recognize that these occurrences have happened.
"Today we're just operating in what must be a smidgen of all of the time that ever existed." Dr. Kyle Powys White Unless we're in a bubble or in deep denial, most of us are aware that we're being subjected to an
Have you heard someone say, or perhaps said yourself, lately, "I'm struggling to read books or longer articles anymore"? Often followed by, "I'm distracted . . . I'm just scrolling . . . I'm having trouble concentrating." There are many possible reasons for this.
Two weeks ago, I promised to put together a directory of topics for my Throughlines essays. But life happened, the red hat called to me, other deadlines intervened. Last week's post about the Norwegian resistance hats did serve as a chance to offer a roundup of all the
Unless, of course, we do so in order to create something entirely new. I meant (and failed) to keep it short and sweet this week so I could get back to finishing up the Norwegian resistance hat I'm knitting. Maybe you've heard about them? Traditionally associated
The big dipper and Orion's belt are the only two constellations I can reliably locate without help. I'm also pretty directionally-challenged. In pre-smartphone times in unfamiliar cities I have more than once headed off in the exact opposite direction of my destination. I'll admit
"Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is most important that you do it" attributed to Gandhi This was not the essay I'd planned to write today. But it demanded that I sit down and work it out. It's runs long, because I
The devastation seems to intensify with each succeeding week. From the streets of U.S. cities to the leadership of other countries, people are rushing to put out the fires started by this president and the other arsonists responsible for Project 2025. The decision about what to focus on for
"The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out." James Baldwin, Nothing Personal I've been slow-reading Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care ever since I
"I think, that we should have the luxury of observing one object slowly. I hope, that my sculptures could be such soul-resting objects." Kinga Földi, fiber artist Last week, I shared an essay by L.M. Sacasas, entitled "Lonely Surfaces: On AI-generated Images." I also described
"I suppose, then, that these are the sorts of questions I have for us just now as we navigate the flood of machine-generated media: How will AI-generated images train our vision? What habit of attention does it encourage? What modes of engagement do they sustain?" L.M. Sacasas,
How much does AI training move in two directions, with the models using our output for their training, while AI's output is, in turn, also training our perceptions? Can we act to create results that are not simply superficial? I agree with AI ethicist and philosopher Shannon Vallor
"Still, AI doesn't have to help us save the world to be a socially legitimate technology. As long as the objectives and outputs of AI models are transparent and contestable, their benefits, costs, and risks justly distributed, and their environmental footprints justifiable, AI systems have a place
In my last post about avoiding technologic overreach, I introduced ethics and philosophy professor Shannon Vallor's 2024 book, The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking. I also added to some lines of questioning I'd broached in my November 7
I need to go outside. To remind myself of the sky. To admire clouds and trees, their shapes and surfaces, and to think about how they come to be. I need to walk. To feel my muscles moving in relation to earth and air, and to sense the rhythms of
Well, we're in month eleven now, and it doesn't get easier, does it? How are you coping? What's helping you get through your week? What do you need help with? These essays have been helping me structure and track my experience of this time.
"I know that I will always be haunted by the larger, vaguely remembered reality of the circumstances surrounding my childhood" George Takei In How the State Creates Enemies (Post #13, June 13) I discussed They Called Us Enemy, George Takei's graphic memoir as I wrote about
"The concentration of wealth in ever fewer hands is arguably the single greatest threat to social and personal well-being. And the most effective remedy to this is the equalization of wealth and power by extending democracy in our economies. Not by a top down process of government command and