Outside in the mid-afternoon there was just the sound of birds and kids and cars going by. It was too hot for anything, everyone hanging onto the edges by the shade. I’d gotten up when the church bells struck six… Read More ›
travel
In the Alps with Eberhard | Size Really Does Matter
We went back to the Austrian Alps and it was the same as it was last time, ending our hike on an old chair lift, coming down the valley with the sound of cowbells and accordion music drifting up, back… Read More ›
It is the right light to be critical
On Tuesday the moon was still up when I walked to the lake in the morning. I was in the slot, now. Like being at the airport on one of those skywalks when you know you’re about to go time… Read More ›
Checking ID at the border between heaven and earth
We sat waiting for the heat to break. They said the record for this day was 103, set back in 2009. That was the day we flew to Germany for our first family sabbatical. In fact we’d gone to Germany… Read More ›
Decorative chains, lucky charms, symbols in garbage pails
In the morning it looked like it had rained over night, and the mountains were socked in with clouds. I took a last walk to the river but there wasn’t much to see, and the dog wasn’t out. The dog… Read More ›
Teaching machines to learn cause and effect
The twitch in my eye is the result of an outdated prescription, or from reading too much online at work, I’ve decided. The reading has been on artificial intelligence, training machine models to learn unsupervised through clusters of computers tied… Read More ›
The god of only children
For some reason when I’m in Portland I feel like I can be more myself, maybe because no one knows me here. I wake and walk down César Chávez to the Starbucks in the cool, marine air. And remember the… Read More ›
Testing and failing, most every day
By the time we get to Friday we’re all so tired, we’ve just started going out for dinner. Last night I took the high road and just had a salad but when we got home, a couple slices of pizza… Read More ›
Dover to Dunkirk, Jan. 31, 2016
And just like that, January was over. It meant we could reenter the Schengen by way of France, spend a night, and the next day return to my mom’s house in Germany. The radiator crapped out on the Opel and… Read More ›
Discreet Music | January 16, 2018
I made marrow soup for the first time (or released the marrow I guess, into a soup). And I took a hot bath and imagined myself settling into it the same as the chicken carcass, reduced. I flickered in and… Read More ›
