{This was a newsletter I had drafted, but never sent, almost a year ago. In my own mind, I thought I’d sent it (since I had done the writing), but apparently the Send button never got pushed. So here it is, 11 months late (though on a day not quite as gorgeous as that one last October), plus some newer updates tacked on at the end.}

29 oct 2024 — It is stupidly, pleasantly warm in SE Michigan today, and I have the house open and warming things up (when we’ve had the furnace turned on for a couple weeks now). I got to work from home today so that we could have the final electrical inspection on the house (which passed). That’s one more step towards getting things back and settled after the fire.

As much as I am able, I am trying to keep my online presence small and under my own control, rather than having it subject to the caprice of various bilious techbros. I want to have an online presence, both as a writer and creator, as well as a 21st century inhabitant.

I’ve long been a technophile: I used to stay after school in high school to play on the school computer (a DEC PDP8/e); I was involved in BBS sites back in the pre-Internet 80s-90s; and I was intrigued by the prospects of what an Internet connection might bring, and used to check out the NCSA What’s New page when the number of new Internet things was countably finite. But I’ve always disliked being part of the crowd. So I have also found myself veering from anything that is too much about popularity. So I’m not really active on any of the sites that have heavy-handed feeds or are too technically gated (chiefly Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, LinkedIn (though that’s a whole other fraught sector), etc.) I’d rather craft my own internet presence, even if that limits me to a smaller audience.

But even wanting to have my own hand on things carries its own risks. The guy running Buttondown seems decent enough, but so too, at one point, did the guys running TinyLetter; then they sold it to MailChimp, who then kept it around for a while before strangling it. The guy who runs WordPress has decided to start acting up like a poo-flinging monkey.

So, I could do an absolutely unmediated, hand-written email for this Newsletter, but that could become unmanageable, and some of the access control and the back catalog availability would be lost. And hand-coding a website is a more difficult process than when I could build a site with just a handful of HTML and some embedded images.

But I have access and an adequate level of control over the things I am putting on the Web (mostly). If WordPress gets even more problematic, I’m sure there will be paths that other exiles are taking that will help guide where I land next. But I like the idea of having enough in my own hands that that kind of pivot remains feasible.

2025

Stacia’s job teaching ESL to recent immigrants was already fraught, and the government’s woodchipper attacks on simple decency brought cuts to that program. However, she has ended up at Henry Ford Community College, with work in their tutoring center, as well as now teaching a couple ESL classes of her own. She is also teaching workout and fitness classes in connection with two different gyms.

Both Neil and Theo are living at home with us, and both working in the golf industry, though in different ways. Theo followed his brother and grandfather, and is working for Leslie Park Golf Course (one of two municipal courses operated by the City of Ann Arbor), although he is doing maintenance work on the course, as well as equipment and things like the sprinkler system. Neil (who used to do carts and course operations at Leslie a few years ago, and more recently was working at a course in Arizona over the winter) is now assistant pro at a public course just outside Ann Arbor. He also competed in the Leslie Park Tournament earlier this summer, as well as making a first attempt for his pro certification. He did not make that, but given that he has been golfing for only a couple of years (and others there, in some cases, had been golfing since they were in elementary school), he did well, and it’s a learning process. He is looking for his next job, as the season winds down here.

Since this is catch-up for the past year, we also have to note the passing of Eero, our noble Auskenhund (probably a Australian Shepherd + Husky mix) who had been with us since 2011. He was a rescue, and had been burned before he was given to the rescue group. We never learned the backstory, and we never had any information about his past. He was post-puppy (but probably not by much) when we got him, and he had a shaved back from treatment and care. That grew back, but there were also some areas of scar under his fur that never filled in. But he was such a floof no one ever could tell.

I am reading the usual several things right now, including “A Natural History of Empty Lots” by Christopher Brown, which has resonances for me back to the kinds of spaces and landscapes I was interested in when I was in grad school at Cranbrook; Also, as mentioned previously, I discovered the work of Dr Ursula Franklin at the beginning of the year, and am now reading her “Real World of Technology” which was an adaptation from her 1989 lectures, and which contains a lot of very relevant ideas that resonate even today. Among the books I finished this summer were the most recent Katherine Addison novel in the Goblin Emperor series - highly recommended. Also read Guy Gavriel Kay’s most recent book, “Written on the Dark” - I very much associate summer with reading GGK; several of his books have been summer reads, and this year was another.

This fall’s leaves haven’t begun to turn yet, but they will get there soon enough. I brewed a new batch of beer last weekend, an English Bitter style, which should be ready before the leaves have turned too far.