Contested roads and happy holidays from Take Note
Ted here, with some stray thoughts grasped from the holiday whorl.
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Writing with: A Blackwing matte pencil, which is wholly too soft for my taste as I’m not drawing a still life.
Writing in: Field Notes Harvest edition with Orleans Reinette Apples on the front.
Writing: gift shopping lists; holiday party prep to-dos; Mr. Rogers quotes; half-baked song lyrics; a “project list” to refer to when free time emerges like a dream/miracle now that my kids are getting older (11 and 9)
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“There’s two sides to every story.”
- Keith Richards describing the use of both hands in the playing of guitar.
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After numerous New Yorker articles read, I now recognize and bow to the power of AI to transform even relatively modest tasks. But I struggle to determine the task that will move the needle. “I’ve got it!” I yell to myself, “I’ll program a spreadsheet to emphasize and organize the most meaningful events on my work calendar!” My query to ChatGPT: What is programming?
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The Take Note zine — which we are dropping in the mail today — wherein Adam and I go through our notebooks from the last year drop in our favorites and then send it to our Patreon supporters, continues to bring me pleasure. The act of going through the year’s books, reliving goofy interactions and mind-blowing insights, remembering what’s already sluiced its way down the memory hole, is a thoughtful and not unpleasant way to close out the year. A lot goes on in a life; there’s worth in reflecting on that simple fact with the help of some paper stapled together and folded into a shape that fits in your back pocket.
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I work at a university with a library that is big and labyrinthine and classic (and creepy if you ask my 11-year-old). The other day I wandered through the fiction section and encountered over and again the names of writers with whom I’d intersected as a student. Dan Beachy-Quick, Julia Alvarez, Jay Parini, others. A distinct pleasure of studying writing and literature. I checked out Parini’s fictional account of Tolstoy’s last year of life, The Last Station.
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The family hard at work on the New York Times annual massive crossword puzzle.
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In these short days, when it seems like bedtime but it’s only 7 p.m., I’ve taken to offering to read aloud to the kids. The first time I offered was a hail mary, but we collectively knew that it was a good weekday activity in these weird wee hours. I read Robert Service poems (“The Cremation of Sam McGee” is a home run every time), a little Robert Frost, some children’s books that still ring warmly in my kids’ ears (Visitor for Bear, the Circus Ship). Life got a little busier, but with those few reading sessions, I added a few cobbles that paved the way for random reading aloud to each other, catch as catch can, in non-bedtime settings.
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The Big Bend Sentinel creates really strong journalism from West Texas, a region that is far from any city center but a place of tourism and adventure that holds a special place for most Texans I know. These competing forces, town and country, lead to funky conflict, and this recent story of a remote contested road reads like Dickens in the Desert. A little teaser:
Ponton pointed out that the Forts, the Judd Foundation, Border Patrol and the Sheriff’s Office had been allowed access to the road over the years, though none of the entities had ever drawn up a formal easement agreement.
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Adam and I wish you holiday warmth, eventual recovery from the holidays and reinvigoration, and freedom from labyrinthine court cases.