Blog Title

Stairway to Heaven

2026-04-17T00:00:00Z

On the way to school today Linc said, "Dad, look! The clouds are making the sun look like a portal to heaven! It looks like I could climb them like stairs. I wish I could, to see if they really do go to heaven."

He was really taken by the beauty before him in that moment. He kept saying it was so beautiful and insisted that I snap a picture. I worry sometimes that modern media has stunted my kids' ability to be imaginative. While I do my best to limit that impact, I do think it is harder for them than it was for me.

His enthusiasm in the moment gave me comfort and hope, because I believe there is divinity in imagination. It comes from a place inside us that yearns to understand things that exist outside of us. Rather than just seeing a ball of burning plasma, water vapor, and the scatter of light passing through molecules, he saw these things as something beautiful that allowed him to glimpse the possibility of an unseen world.

"It is a portal to Heaven, buddy" I said. "The feeling inside you right now that appreciates this moment? That excitement that made you want to share it with me so that I can see it the way you do? That's Heaven in you."

What an unexpected moment of peace and joy in my morning commute.

Making Stuff

2026-04-03T00:00:00Z

I've been experimenting with leather working and book binding. While I like using technology, I often find myself code-switching between pen and paper and blinking cursors on a screen. Maybe it's a Xennial mindset that comes from a prefrontal cortex that developed in both pre/post internet worlds, but I love a good notebook as much as I love my laptop.

For several years now I've been using a refillable traveler's notebook from September Leather. I fell in love with being able to keep one notebook for both my work and personal life that also allowed separation between the two. The journal holds 3 slim notebooks within the leather cover -- one for work, one for personal notes/journaling, and one for sketching and it's simple to just swap them out as I fill them up.

For a while now the seed has been slowly germinating that I wanted to give the notebook some upgrades. The cover of my original notebook was great, but utilitarian and no more than a slab of leather sandwiching the notebooks in-between. What if I wanted to take my notebook to the bar? Book club? Book club at the bar? So I said to myself, "Self, we should upgrade the notebook with a pocket and some card slots."

Front of my original notebook from September Leather

Interior of my original notebook from September Leather

The Makerspace at my library has leather working tools, so I started small with another side project I've been kicking around in my head. I took some 1 inch belt blank that I had on hand from a cosplay project and made a bookmark with a couple of simple cuts. I punched a hole in the top and threaded a braid of yarn through it for a tassel. Small first steps like this always help to grease the wheels before approaching more intimidating projects.

With the journal I started by gathering and watching a playlist of tutorials about simple leather working projects on YouTube. The shared wisdom was to plan ahead with templates/patterns made with paper to help visualize the cuts and how it all goes together. I learn best by doing, so I dove right in after a few hours of planning and research. I wanted to upgrade to an A5 size, so I had to buy new leather, and some wax thread for the stitching. Everything else: the clips, the bungee cords, the silk ribbons, came from cannibalizing my September Leather journal.

Notebook 2.0

front cover has a couple of slots for pencils and a brush pen. The slender folio pocket can also hold a plastic eraser and an extra pencil.

The back cover has a folder slot and 3 card slots

Because I'm a "break stuff and fix it along the way" kind of learner, this build isn't as clean as it could have been. My stitches aren't always straight. It got disassembled/reconfigured when I decided that it would be better to put the wallet slots in the back instead of the front. I stacked that on top of the folder pocket -- which meant I had to stitch 3 layers of leather together. A bit of an over-design, and not something I would do twice. Despite the flaws I'm pretty happy with it. Handmade things aren't supposed to be perfect, anyway.

Even before it was done, I knew I wasn't finished. My new journal would need new notebooks, and I can be particular about my paper. I ended up making two styles, but only one was actually for the notebook:

This notebook was made out of an old 11X14 Bristol pad.

I bound it using a coptic stitch because it allows the pages to lay completely flat.

Sketchinomicon is born!

This 2nd style is what I will use for my notebooks moving forward. They use a saddle stitch and you can put one together in about 15 minutes from start to finish without any special tools or supplies. It was so easy, I plan on making an instructional zine that I'll have at our craft programs to teach people how to do it.

I wish I could say I was done after the notebooks, but...I had some leather left an an idea of how to use it. I made one more memo-style journal wallet. This one I kept real simple, just punching holes for the elastic cords and gluing the pockets in place (I finally got some leather cement).

This wallet/notebook is just big enough to hold two Field Notes-sized notebooks.

The inner cover has two slots for ID and cards

I had a little bit of leather left and stitched a pencil loop to the back cover.

The set for comparison.

This experience was quite a journey for about a week and a half. I had been thinking about these projects for months, so once I started it all came rushing out of me at once. I couldn't stop -- I was swept up in a wave of manic energy where every free second was in devoted to the project. When I couldn't work on it I was thinking about it. Pursuing creativity of any kind is as hard as it is rewarding. My hands have new calluses from working with unfamiliar tools, along with a few scratches and pokes earned along the way. Creativity is a blessing, but it can sometimes feel like addiction. Success makes you drunk with empowerment, while frustration and failure leave you feeling wrung out and hung over. But success or failure, the effort is worth it. The work is the reward.

So that happened...Passwords

2026-03-13T00:00:00Z

So that happened...

Welcome to “So that happened…” — a series of posts where I recount real conversations/exchanges I have with library patrons in an effort to record the absurdity that I sometimes encounter as a matter of course in my work. Names and details of these interactions are redacted/altered to protect the privacy of those individuals.

These can range from mildly absurd to unhinged and sometimes contain language and situations not suitable for all audiences. Reader discretion is advised.

A lady comes in concerned that the email account she set up yesterday might be compromised because the gentleman next to her "may have written it down." This is the second time she's used a computer.

Like ever.

I get her settled in and ask her to log into the account with the password she used to create the account.

"I want to change the password," she says.

"I know," I say. "But we need to log into the account so we can change it."

She freezes.

I wait patiently.

"I want to change the password," she says again.

"I know," I say. "But we need to log into the account so we can change it." I say this in the same tone as the first time, as though we hadn't just had this exact exchange verbatim.

It clicks. She logs in.

We get her password changed. She's happy and grateful. Now she wants to log into her medical chart portal. I extract myself from the situation and let her know if she needs any more help, I'll be close at the desk.

60 seconds later she calls me over. She can't log into her medical chart portal. This is because she's trying to use the password she just created for her email. I explain that these are two separate platforms and that they don't share passwords.

She freezes.

I immediately see my own misstep. I know what she's done -- that she used the same login information to create both accounts -- and my comment has flipped the table of her technological world. I see this a lot. Folks automatically associate one login they create as somehow connected to all their logins when they use the same information for separate accounts or platforms.

"What I mean," I amend, "is that even though you may have used the same information to make both accounts, they exist on two separate systems; you'll need to change the password for your medical records just like you changed it for your email. So, we will need to log in with your old password first and then change it in your settings."

It clicks. She logs in, and we get her to her settings page so she can change the password. She immediately receives a text on her phone that her password has changed and that she should call customer service if she didn't change it. I tense for a moment, worried that this might send her back to the panic-place. Sometimes when people are as unfamiliar with technology as she is, their brains are firmly locked in fight or flight and see every action/result as a potential threat.

Luckily, I've built enough trust with her at this point to loosen the hold of that fight or flight response; she understands that the message is a direct result of our actions. We're all sorted and she's survived her second engagement with the internet.

This is the kind of heavy lifting I have to do before 10 am and fully caffeinated.

Dumb futurists make dumb futures

2026-02-24T00:00:00Z

Over on Wired I read an excerpt of Michael Pollan's new book, A World Appears.1 It's a great distillation of the argument of why AI will never be conscious and how the already "BIG" concept of consciousness has become even messier when you throw machine learning2 into the mix.

I won't rehash his points, but I agree with Pollan's overall argument. I don't think consciousness is something we can manufacture -- it's something we experience. Can machines experience anything? I don't know, but I'm willing to engage with the thought experiment. Toward the end of the article, he makes the contrast between a more philosophical, humanistic definition of consciousness and the technical, cognitive definition that is often used by AI researchers. He goes on to ask about the moral pitfalls we may someday find should we discover that we have accidentally built a creature of consciousness that was designed for a life of servitude. The last paragraph has me feeling...a way.3

Apart from this sort of highly speculative discussion of feeling (as a troublesome by‑product of making machines conscious), in the AI community, the conversation about consciousness is as relentlessly abstract—as bloodless, bodiless, and utterly oblivious to biology—as one would expect. When I posed the suffering‑computer conundrum to a researcher seeking to build a conscious AI, he waved away the problem, explaining it could be offset with a simple fix to the algorithm: “There’s no reason we couldn’t just turn up the dial on joy.”

Oh, boy. So, the solution to the thought exercise of a what to do about a machine's misery over enslavement is to condition them to enjoy it...?4 There are so many angles we could take to try and unpack this response to Pollan's question. At best, it represents a lack of emotional intelligence. At worst, well...a slaver's gonna slave, I guess.

And I know...I know many people don't see it this way. They don't want to see it this way. We have all dreamed about that shiny future presented to us in our favorite science fiction stories, and to reconcile that dream with our current course of action pretty much shits in the buffet. But the real point of the "Robot Uprising" trope in sci-fi lit isn't to scare us away from trying, but to warn us to take responsibility for the pursuit. In the best stories, the conflict doesn't come because of the alien nature of the machines.5 The conflict comes because we refuse to recognize the autonomy and "personhood" of the those who are not like us, but who are the culmination -- directly or indirectly -- of our actions. There is a societal ignorance to our own ingenuity that is almost charming in a self-deprecating way. We build these tools to make our lives easier and accidentally achieve a miracle.

The stories grant us the grace to not understand our own potential, while hoping that we will have the poise to take responsibility for it. The reality watches as we gleefully strive for that potential so we can package and sell it as a product that works as advertised.6

I was a soccer dad this weekend

2026-02-22T00:00:00Z

As a librarian, reference interactions frequently call on me to be an expert on things I might have no knowledge of. It can happen on the spot, and when it does it's a balancing act between managing expectations and doing my best to provide good information. Because of this experience, I've developed a mantra that I use with my library community, whenever I am asked something I don't know:

"I'm not sure, but we can find out together."

I find being a parent is a lot like being a librarian in this regard. My son has developed an interest in soccer which means I now also have an interest in soccer. Because it's not a sport I grew up with, I have very little practical knowledge of the game. Even so, I want to encourage him, so we spent all weekend practicing his dribbling and learning the terminology and basic technique of various ways to receive a pass (it's called a "stop" in soccer -- something I didn't know until yesterday.) We would kick the ball back and forth, and our cat Mittens would run alongside any rogue passes that got away from us.

Like any human excited about something, his vision exceeds his grasp. He wanted to try something called a "nutmeg" which is when you pass the ball or dribble it between your opponents legs (it's real -- I looked it up later.) I let him play in this sandbox a bit because I wanted to keep him interested and mitigate the feeling that we were doing "work." Eventually I made the observation that it might be hard to kick it between his opponents legs on the field, because they're all kids about his size. So we started practicing kicking it around me and picking up the dribble on the other side. There were other moments like this, where he wanted to try something absurdly beyond his ability and I humored him for a while, before gently pulling him back on track with fundamentals that I barely had any grasp on myself.

Afterward we sat on our front lawn and watched some drills on YouTube, while Mittens stretched out next to us for sun and pets. As we sat there, snuggled together in the cool grass, I quietly worried about whether or not he got what he needed from me. Did I give him good information? Was he going to be a complete train wreck at his first practice, trying things far beyond his ability?

"Dad," he said. "I had a really good time practicing with you."

That answer was good enough.

The Laws of Time Travel

2026-02-12T00:00:00Z

Sometimes, when my mind finds a quiet moment it begins to wander around. And when it wanders it sometimes conjures Gobbledygook.

Gobbledygook is the best kind of intrusive thought exercise because it's not imagining terrible or self-abusive things. More often than not it sparks an internal conversations where I try to give the Gobbledygook shape and meaning. I was putting my son to bed one night when the phrase "Chronoal Drift" just kind of appeared in my head. To which I responded, "Kronol Drift? The hell does that mean?"

To which the other guy in my head responded:

"No, not Kronol -- Chronoal. Derived from the Greek god Chronos -- the personification of time. Chronoal Drift is the phenomenon that prevents time travel to precise dates and times. Dr. Weber once said, 'If time is a river then to travel through time is to fight the pull of time's current'."

"Who?" I asked.

"Dr. Leonie Weber," the other guy said. He paused. When I didn't respond he offered, "The Weber Solution?"

"Who?" I asked again.

"Okay," he sighed, turning to give me his full attention. "Dr. Leonie Weber is a theoretical physicist. The Weber Solution is her mathematical equation that compensates for Chronoal Drift, allowing us to chart a reasonably accurate course through the time stream."

"Reasonably accurate?" I asked.

"Yeah, once we started to observe and map exotic particles we learned that these particles occasionally become entangled; and when they do, they create small gravitational anomalies. These are brief, and largely inconsequential on a cosmic scale, but observation of the particles revealed that when that entanglement "broke" it created a significant amount of energy that propelled the particles in opposite directions. That's where Dr. Weber got the idea for Cosmic Superstrings."

I stared blankly at him. He sighed again looking to the sky, beseeching the universe for patience.

"Okay. Understand that what I'm about to say is an analogy -- and a piss-poor one that that. When you manage to weave enough particles together, you create a gravity well that is essentially a river through time. That's a Cosmic Superstring. We can't make them for very long, and they are highly unstable. Energy moves along the Superstring in one direction and it moves very fast. The instability created by the particles trying to break apart creates...exit points."

"So it's like a highway," I said.

"No," he responded emphatically. "A highway is static. It doesn't move you; you move along it. The exits are predictable and measurable. This is why even the river analogy is a bad one, because ports on a river are static just like exits on a highway. Because of the current and instability of a Superstring, nothing is static. It's elastic -- expanding and contracting the whole time as the particles try to break apart, so the exits aren't measurable that way. This creates Chronoal Drift, and why we need the Weber Solution to travel through time."

"Earlier, you said the Weber Solution allowed for a reasonably accurate course through time," I said. "Define 'reasonably accurate'."

"The Weber solution can land a traveler within 72 hours of their chronological destination," he said. "Usually."

"Usually?" I asked.

"We have found that the magnetic field created by solar winds can help stabilize the Cosmic Superstring for safer, more predictable travel," he said. "However, there have been cases where the shifting in the magnetic field can bend or warp the string unpredictably. We call these Solar Riptides, and they can drag a traveler way off their intended course."

"Time travel sounds really scary," I said. "Why would anyone ever do it?"

"It's fucking terrifying," he said. "And no one has done it. That's why you still haven't written this story."

Conversations with Dead People

2025-11-12T00:00:00Z

It happened last night in the garage. I was listening to some music and trying to wrestle the chaos into some semblance of order when a song started playing that I had never heard before. It was a song in the Bardic tradition about King Arthur’s final moments and of his oldest friend Bevedere who he charges to return Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake. The song tells of Bevedere’s struggle to fulfill his dying friend’s wish and of his sorrow at the loss of his friend and the end of the dream they shared.

You would have liked it all over. The folksy vibe of it, the subject matter — which was both mournful and triumphant all at once. It’s the kind of song that would have woven its way into our identity when we were kids. It would have been burned onto a mix-tape that we played in your car as we cruised around town, or on some back roads sojourn to Woodland Hills Mall.

The clarion call of self-stylized, postmodern knights errant.

Out of nowhere I broke down into sobs right there in my hot mess of a garage. Because this song was one of those discoveries that brought on this bone-deep compulsion I have to share something cool with you. But I can’t share anything with you anymore.

No more books. No more games. No more anything.

And not for the first time since you left, I found myself hating you for what you did.

Conventional wisdom tells us that the final stage of grief is acceptance. But here we are — all these years later — and there’s a piece of me that just...endures it all. Some days the edges are fuzzier…softer…but then I have these moments like in the garage where I hate you more than I’ve hated anything, ever. I hate you for what you’ve done to us. I hate you for being so stupid and short-sighted as to think this is the better timeline.

And I hate myself a little for hating you. Because I know you suffered. I know you were in pain and you just kept trying to medicate it with reinvention and distraction. You couldn’t make sense of the world or your place in it and so you kept trying to find new ways to fit.

But you did fit. You always fit with us, in whatever shape you chose. And I hate myself — just a little — because I never found the words to tell you.

Just thought you should know that. Hope you like the song.

Grit and Determination

2025-02-08T00:00:00Z

Superman: Up in the Sky is one of my favorite comics to circle back around to every once in a while. Written in 2019 by Tom King, Superman: Up in the Sky tells a breathless story about Superman as he travels around the galaxy, looking for a young girl that has been kidnapped by aliens from her home in Metropolis. In each issue Superman finds himself facing a Herculean trial that he must overcome in order to get the next bread crumb of information that will lead to the girl.

Superman: Up in the Sky # 2. Written by Tom King with art by Andy Kubert.

Issue #2 jumps off with Supes getting into a boxing ring with a mercenary who has been hired to stop Superman's search in its tracks. Mighto offers a wager that if Superman can beat him in a straight up fight, that he'll give up his client. If not, he goes home to Earth and forgets about finding the girl.

In full Rocky fashion the fight stretches the full 12 rounds across multiple, visceral pages. The best Superman stories don't focus on what Superman can do, but who he is at his core. And at his core -- what defines the 'super' in Superman -- is that he does not give up. Not ever. When he breaks it's not because he took a knee, but because he left it all on the field. This book -- for me -- is a reminder of that we can all be a little super if we can find it in us to get back up when we fall.

Whether you are a Superman fan or not, it's a book with a lot of heart, and I can't recommend it enough if you find yourself needing to be inspired while also enjoying a banger of a story. If you are anything like me and you occassionally begin to feel worn around the edges and in need of something to give you that spark to get back up and keep going, look no further than Superman: Up in the Sky.

This last bit is about to get a tad political, so feel free to check out here if that's not your jam.

You sure? Okay then...

The heroes of my youth like He-Man and Superman taught me something that has lived in my bones my entire life. It's that the purpose of power is to know when not to use it. That being the strongest person in the room means you also have the responsibility to be the kindest.

The gentlest.

It's why at 25-years-old, when I stumbled into a job as a circulation clerk in a public library, I found a life of service that I wanted to live. I married a woman who also lives a similar life of service, though in a different professional field than my own. When you live in service to others, you are made acutely aware of the marginalized and underrepresented in a way that is a little harder to see if you are just caught up in the hustle and bustle of daily life.

The life of public servants is always harder when the people in charge don't believe in service to others. And we are living in that time now. We live in a time where our government is being weaponized against its own citizens. That may sound scary or melodramatic, but this isn't headlines and news articles for me and mine. It's life in technicolor. And while I'm relieved to see that some of our checks and balances are holding, I'm realistic enough to know that this administration will try to circumvent those checks to power in any way they can.

Maybe you agree with me, and this time has you feeling as scared and angry as I am. My advice to you is simple: find your path of service. Find some small way to directly impact the life of another in need. It's different for everyone, and that's okay. We don't all have the resources or circumstances to walk the same path. But we can all help in some way, and helping each other reminds us that we are not alone, and that we have some small measure of power in this world.

Maybe you don't agree with me, and you've been conditioned to see the plight of others as an agenda. Maybe you cast a vote in favor of this new administration of ours, thinking it will improve your life and make you safer. While I do extend you the courtesy of not assuming your personal decision was one driven by bigotry or racism, I won't delude you. You made a decision based on insecurity and fear. And while there is a lot to feel insecure and fearful of, this administration won't address those things. They will talk about those real issues -- issues that we can all agree are a problem. But they won't fix them, because to do so undermines their core interest: keeping power and using it to benefit themselves at the expense of the rest of us. Even you. I also invite you to find a path of service, because it grants us perspective. It helps us make sense of things and gives us a measure of control over our insecurities and fears.

On Grief and Love

2025-01-05T00:00:00Z

“Grief can destroy you --or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. OR you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn't allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it's over and you're alone, you begin to see that it wasn't just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything, it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it. The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can't get off your knees for a long time, you're driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life.”

Dean Koontz, Odd Hours

This passage always chokes me up a little. And while it exists as a reference to the loss of a romantic partner, the sentiment applies to any relationship in your life you have cherished and lost. If you have loved in any capacity, this wisdom holds true: to dwell on your grief is to neglect the love that still resides in your heart.

Of course, the paradox of grief is that it's a heavy burden that is next to impossible to put down. Grief never truly leaves us; once grief settles in our hearts, it has the ability to color our happiest memories with sadness. When we are of a healthy frame of mind sadness mingles with the happy memory, transmuting it into something golden and precious. While in the wrong frame of mind, sadness corrodes everything about the thing we have lost.

Acknowledge your pain. But know when to put it away. And if you need to seek help to do so, then please ask for it.

Fear

2020-10-15T00:00:00Z

I love monsters, and Bela Lugosi's Dracula holds a special place in my heart. I remember watching it when I was a kid and feeling this electric charge of excitement. It lacked the real sense of terror I'd become accustomed to with my vampire flicks, but that didn't matter. Long before I read the novel or saw any of the Hammer Horror movies, Lugosi's Dracula was THE Dracula in my mind, and the experience did not disappoint.

I’ve had this image with these colors in my head for weeks, but I was too scared because I don't have a lot of experience with paint. So I split the difference and invested in some Posca pens. Comfort zones are cozy, but every once in a while it’s good for us to take a look around, stretch our legs, and try new things. Once I told myself to get over it and got to work, it was like anything else in life. Mistakes, trials, errors, discovery. That seems to be my common pattern.

Am I happy with this? Not entirely, but I had fun and pulling the image out of my head and into reality is always satisfying when making art.