Do you remember the helicopter scene in Goodfellas? Henry Hill has a busy day delivering lots of things including guns, cocaine, and food. He has to do family things, meet his mistress, cook dinner, and all sorts of other things. He’s getting everything done, taking cocaine for energy. If you ask him, he’d say he was being super productive. Only he’s not doing anything meaningful. It’s all superficial. Any actual[…] Keep reading →

We’re in an orchestra with a command performance impending. No one knows how to play even a scale. Instead of practicing their instruments, they’re saying learning to play their own instruments would distract from the orchestra playing together. We have to practice as an orchestra without knowing how to play ourselves. They keep pointing at the musical score and reciting musical theory, but not putting their fingers on their instruments.[…] Keep reading →

Sasha Laghonh invited me to her new series, Author Interviews by Sasha Talks | Celebrating the Arts, Culture & Life, to speak about writing. She’s a longtime podcaster who has hosted me before. We speak about many aspects of writing: habits, style, motivation, goals, and more. If you’re thinking about writing, I recommend listening. You don’t have to copy my style or goals. On the contrary, developing your own will[…] Keep reading →

For context, I’m talking about myself before my sustainability experiments as much as anyone. I’ve concluded that someone trying to lead people to live sustainably when they haven’t seriously tried themselves doesn’t know the joys, physical challenges, (more importantly) emotional challenges, social challenges (people create more challenges than you’d expect), hopes, discoveries, and so on. I see them like someone reading a book on music theory trying to teach piano,[…] Keep reading →

As a kid growing up, I avoided reading the New Yorker. My dad subscribed to it, so I figured I wouldn’t like it. Now I consider its writing some of the best around. Over the summer, I picked up this framed poster of an iconic New Yorker cover from a neighbor getting rid of it. My opinion started changing in 1990, my year in Paris, when two things happened. First,[…] Keep reading →

At an art show recently, I was looking at a painting that caught my eye and attention. It was of a beach or shallow ocean, viewed underwater so you could see the waves from below, with the sun filtered and refracted through it, echoing the waviness of the sea floor. Here’s a similar piece by the artist, though online doesn’t match the beauty in person: As I looked at it,[…] Keep reading →

I found an article in the Philadelphia Encyclopedia about Mount Airy, where I grew up, “a national model of racial integration, ” created through generations of conscious, deliberate work by residents, against opposing trends the article describes below, including white realtors trying to redline and black leaders trying to protect “blackness.” My mom, dad, and stepfather participated in several institutions promoting Mount Airy’s values mentioned in the article, especially West[…] Keep reading →