Everest Pipkin on NFTs and art is a phenomenally compelling piece of persuasive writing, and worth reading on that level alone, even if you’ve no interest in the blockchain, art, the environment or common sense.

By no means their only conclusion, but the one that stuck for me:

I’ve been working in digital spaces making artwork since well before cryptocurrency was around, and lack of scarcity is the only thing we’ve got.

I drove out to the North Shore on this warm day after realizing I hadn’t been outside in a few weeks.

My friend Chantal sent me and Oliver and lovely, ornately-crafted letter earlier this week, wrapped in an envelope of her own creation. I turned around and turned the envelope into a book and mailed it back to her. It wasn’t a Big Important Project, it was an end of the day “I’ve had too much coffee and have too much unused creativity” project. I loved it.

I read someone a few weeks ago reflecting on their work, and they mentioned taking maximum advantage of the “golden hour.” In photography and film this is the time, around twilight, when you can take photos like this (Boston, MA, 6:35 p.m., April 6, 2019):

In work, and creativity, though, the golden hour doesn’t need to align with the sun: it can be any time of the day when conditions are ripe for maximum creativity. 

Upon finding this hour–I’ve a sneaking suspicion that for me it’s the first hour I’m in the shop every morning–and then using it for something other than catching up on email, prioritizing my ticket queue, and generally entering the QEW of frenetic work life seems key to establishing a healthy creative practice.

So that’s what I’m going to do, for the next while.

Every morning when I arrive at the shop, I’m going to leave the computer off and make a book.

Not a Big Important Book, but an improvisational see-where-the-wind-blows-me book. Like the one I made for Chantal yesterday. I suspect some will be ugly. Some won’t work. Some will be frustrating. And some will be awesome.

Here’s today’s:

The cover is cut out of a cardboard envelope I received in the mail; the inside papers are pink card stock (which, really, was too heavy for this task, but I love the colour); the cord for the binding is Michael’s hemp beading cord; the twine for the button enclosure is baker’s twine from The Bookmark; the yellow buttons are from the shop button jar. The stitch is a simple pamphlet stitch, the sewing of which was so breezily satisfying after the rigours of the coptic stitch experiments of earlier in the year (here, here).

That time 15 years ago when Dr. Chris Lantz removed the “most challenging foreign ear body ever” from my ear. He has yet to redeem any of his three wishes.

Kalinko distributes Burmese-crafted objects around the world from their base in Yangon. They posted today on their blog about the situation on the ground there:

We’ve had team members having to hide behind bins from gunfire as they try and make it home from protesting. We’ve had makers messaging us in total panic not knowing what to do next or where to hide. We’ve had friends separated from their children overnight by military blockades cracking down on entire areas of Yangon. The internet is cut every night, and the electricity is worse than ever, so people are literally in the dark about what’s going on. Our colleagues are having to hide their toddlers in the bathroom in the evening to try and stifle their shouts of excitement while police are passing their doors. They think the gunfire is fireworks and can’t understand why they can’t go and watch.

There’s a section of their website devoted to profiling everyday people in Myanmar that serves as a powerful reminder of who’s being affected by the coup d’état there.

I sought outfit advice from my brother Mike this morning—he has stronger connections to the real world, and tells the truth, both useful qualities.

He branded it “smart casual.”

Which is a huge step up from the, say, “lethargic distracted” or “frugal deluded” style that might describe my stock in trade otherwise.

Having brothers is great, you know.

Photo by Oliver.

My office mate, and the closest thing I have to a spiritual advisor, Archdeacon John Clarke turns 60 on March 10, 2021, and all he’s asked for is healthy mothers and children in Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique and Tanzania, asking well wishers to make a donation to The Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund:

Your gift helps ensure the gains made in maternal and newborn health, food security and nutrition will be sustained in Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique and Tanzania, while these partners work to supply vulnerable communities with PPE (personal protective equipment), information and facilities for handwashing and proper hygiene, and science-based information about prevention and treatment of COVID-19.

You can donate online and gifts are matched 6:1 by Global Affairs Canada.

Lucy Dacus’s Night Shift has been on repeat in my house, my car, and my head for months: while I lack the vocabulary to describe its wonderments, suffice to say that it’s three or four songs packed into one. I love it.

Dacus released Thumbs to Bandcamp today, and it promises similar delights.

My morning so far.

In his New Yorker piece on Mike Nichols, Louis Menaud writes:

Nichols later said that he never had a friend until he went to the University of Chicago. He entered in the fall of 1949, when he was seventeen. Nichols was well read, but academically indifferent, professionally undirected, and highly defended. He had nothing to back up his sense of superiority, which is not a good place to be.

This prompted me to think about the notion of being defended versus being undefended, about which I’d use to describe myself, and about whether one is a healthier state than the other.

What do you think?