Three Hymenoptera.

They don’t seem to mind sharing the same flowers, the same source of food.

Today’s sketch, from my garden.

A photo from my research in the Brooks Range 11 years ago. I took this after my pilot said “if the weather is good, I’ll be back in three days.” And then he took off. And one more photo of the bear tracks outside my tent the next morning.

That was a good trip.

A filmmaker friend just sent me this Vimeo film about Roman Dial. Dial worked in the Brooks Range for almost half a century; I did research there one summer, and my son was there doing research another summer.

It’s a film about a very tangible and visible effect of a warming planet. It’s also a film about Alaska, and about being a father to a son, and the joy of introducing our kids and our students to wild places.

And it’s also about the very real dangers that come with those places, which is something I’ve often thought about when, after bringing him along with me on my work in Alaska and Central America, my own son went off on adventures of his own—many of them far greater than mine!

There’s pride in knowing he’s off climbing a hard summit, or rafting down a distant river, or helping a medical team in Ghana. And there’s also the fear that something might happen to him while he’s doing the thing he loves and that I encouraged him to do.

Anyway, watch it if this interests you, and take a deep breath before you dive in, because there’s a tragic turn that has my heart aching. There’s also some beautiful scenery, and a beautiful story of a teacher and father, and his son and his students.

Thanks to @jthingelstad for inspiring this: indiewebispunk.net

Another kind of sketch a day.

Tinkering with Arduino, because I can.

Each day I try to do at least one sketch of something around me. Some days it’s done live, plein air. Other days I’m moving quickly so I snap a photo and sketch in the evening, as I did tonight. Here I offer the photo, the rough sketch, and the finished product. I used to worry about every line, every fine detail. The more I do this, the faster I get, and the more pleased I am with both process and product. The photo took me about five minutes of standing still in my garden. The pen sketch took 2 minutes, and the watercolors took another five. Time well spent.

And i am happy to report that when i took the photo of the watercolor my phone identified the species correctly.

A sketch from a photo I took in the woods today.

Why your email still isn’t finding me.

Paying attention to some of the little things here at the lake before I return to paying attention to the big questions, the great books, the important people in my classrooms (“students” as we call them), and the tiny things that demand great attention and merit little of what they demand (“bureaucracy” in the common parlance).

Two chipmunks, painted a month apart and half a continent away from one another. Neotamias minimus in the Paha Sapa / Black Hills of South Dakota, and Tamias striatus in Ontario.

Sketching and painting these have helped me to see the differences between them. Slow observation with a paintbrush.

Here, for your delight, is a link to the etymology of “chipmunk.”

The work in progress. Probably should have posted this one first. I was distracted by the beauty of nature around me, I guess.

My sketchbook and I greet you from Lake Muskoka. This is how your email finds me today, if it finds me at all.

Nature journaling as a way of feeding my curiosity. I keep wondering about the relationship between a little insect and a plant I like in my garden. Looking closely at both of them helps me focus my questions. When I have time I dig into the science journals. In between I take photos, sketch, make detailed observations, write down my questions. The journal doesn‘t replace the scientific inquiry; it boosts the signal.

More wasps on the rattlesnake master in my garden. So far these flowers have only been visited by wasps while I am watching them, never by bees. Bees are nearby on the monarda, silphium, and coneflower plants. I’ll need to watch some more to find out if this is a pattern or a fluke. Interesting to see how many kinds of hymenoptera are drawn to the native plants

Bodies thinking. Two sketches from a philosophy conference earlier this year.

Watching people think and talk, and trying to capture the ways their bodies showed what they were thinking, was a good exercise in semiotics and in art. And in psychology.

And so it was a good philosophical practice

I’ve blanked out names to protect people from being associated with my sketches.

Sometimes people see me sketching and say things like “I could never do that.” I disagree with them all. At some point when we are young something makes many of us ashamed of our art. Here is one of my daily sketches (I made this during coffee hour after church today) that I do so I can get better at my art. It’s not great but it’s WAY better than what I’d have made if I had decided I’m too old to learn how to sketch or if I thought I simply can’t do it. I can. And so can you.

Scolia bicincta wasp on rattlesnake master in my garden this afternoon.

I want to make a robot that eats invasive species to power itself. That’s all.

Well, it’s not all. I have a number of other wild ideas in robotics and in environmental tech.

Just felt like putting one of them out there because the last time I did so I wound up making some new friends who shared my interest in robotics, sustainability, and innovation with environmental ends in mind.

Images from a prairie run this morning.

School starts up again soon, so while I have some autonomy over my schedule I decided to go for a run along the river. Several state parks border the river, giving me some good places to run without much traffic. We have not had much rain this year, so all the plants are short and the blossoms are fewer and leSs vibrant than usual. But they are still lovely, and they made for a wonderful place to run in a light, misting rain.

Each morning when I read the news I see in my feed a few items that are plainly targeting me because of how some algo perceives my age and needs. Lots of ads for cleaning gutters (I’m still quite young, thanks, and happy to clean my own gutters). Lots of them based on presumptions about my declining physical fitness (I’d read those if I had time and interest, but I would rather go for a run). And of course ads to sell me things that I really have no need for.

I also see a lot of news stories that try to play into my presumed fears about retirement. “Is $X enough to retire on?” That’s a common theme. And they ask me to compare myself to others in my generation to see how I measure up.

There are times that I am a bit envious of my parents’ generation, since they retired with pensions, and college was something you could pay for with a summer job when they were young.

But I got good scholarships, and managed to pay for grad school by buying and selling homes at what turns out to have been just the right moment. All along, my wife and I have had good fortune, and we have had some support from our family that has made a big difference.

And when it comes to retirement, this is probably how it will be as well. Most folks I know in my generation either have some kind of 401K or other self-directed and self-funded retirement savings. Most of us have a little socked away in there, and most don’t have very much. We’ve contributed to Social Security of course, but most of us have done so with the suspicion that we were mostly doing so to help our elders, and that little would remain for us when it came time to draw out our own share. Oh well.

I’ve spent my whole adult life working for small non-profits. Mostly that has meant church-related non-profits, which means low pay and poor benefits. Despite what you may have heard about rich churches or overpaid university faculty, most of us who work for church-related colleges, especially in the humanities, don’t earn much. That’s not why we do it. Many of us humanities folks have wagered on tenure, hoping that we could remain in the saddle late into our lives, continuing to teach until we were close to the end of our time of drawing breath. Foolish? Probably. But teaching is such a delight, our best classes are like leisure time—until we have to do the grading, of course. And the assessment, and the administrative work, etc. But still.

So while some will measure their readiness for retirement in terms of savings (I do that sometimes), I generally measure my wealth in terms of friendships. My wealth is in the number of people I can call up, invite for a cup of coffee, and they’ll say yes. Recently two friends drove four hours each way to share an evening of food and wine and talking about an ancient book nobody needs to read. What riches! Their company and their insight and the laughter we shared? Golden treasure.

Of course as I read news of universities shutting down, or cutting jobs, or closing departments, I worry a little. I am not rich in that other way, where we count money. But even that is not something that lasts forever, and one never knows what wealth of that kind will remain. For now, I have a home, and books, and a family I love, and a garden that gives me food. I feel pretty rich.