Hi! Right before Halloween, I was at a family member’s house and children were getting their faces painted for some festivity or another. I noticed that the picture on the packaging for the face paints was not a real photograph of a real human. Instead, the model was clearly created by AI. She had the […]

Hi! It’s already been a roller coaster of a month, with the election turning decisively toward the Democrats followed almost immediately by eight centrist Democrats blowing that capital and folding on the shutdown with basically nothing to show for it. But generally, I’m still feeling pretty good about the results of the election. Any off-year […]

In which I share my thoughts on Bellingham, the movie Halloween, and two of November’s hottest tickets. Hi! Since the last newsletter, I’ve been out of commission with a pretty bad cold that might have been the flu. If you haven’t gotten your flu or Covid shot yet, please consider making an appointment to do […]

Hi! Thanks so much to all the folks who wrote back with opinions about the cadence of this newsletter. Two of you wrote to say you prefer one big edition at the end of the month, the vast majority of you said you would be happy with two editions per month, and a couple of […]

We’ve hit the portion of the summer that’s best described as “overripe.” People are annoyed and aggressive, drivers are even more unhinged than usual, and it feels like every trash bin is overflowing into the streets. I don’t know how other cities do it, but in Seattle, at least, we need a good chilly rain […]

Hi! When I was younger (groan,) summer was the season of pop culture. All the catchiest pop songs tumbled out of the windows of passing cars, all the expensive blockbusters popped off in movie theaters like a months-long fireworks show, and all the grabbiest books by the biggest-name authors weighed down the new arrival tables […]

Hi! Sometimes the summer solstice leaves me feeling a little depressed. I’ve always seen the solstice as a time to celebrate and luxuriate in the long warm days, but also a time to mentally prepare for the dark days ahead. I think it says something about the way I see the world that my innate […]

Hello! On the first Saturday of this month, I did my annual(ish) walk around Lake Washington.  Let’s start with the stats that people most frequently ask about: I left the house around 4:30 in the morning and got home around 10 pm. According to my Pedometer++ app, it was 109,284 steps, and 60.4 miles. I […]

Hi! I cannot tell you how much I needed spring to show up. Here’s a picture of Wally that really captured how I felt last week as the good weather arrived: The world is still on fire, of course. The news that broke me this month was the government sending a four-year-old American citizen with cancer to […]