Looking for a ten-year-old blog entry just now and paging backward and forward from it, I am reminded just how much writing I used to get done when my time was being wasted by pointless meetings.

Here’s my annual plug for Matthew Scroggs’ wonderful math puzzle advent calendar. This was how my daughter finally learned to stop worrying and love the maths, and we still work through it now that she is in college. If anybody is game to play along, let me know!

New batch of sugar spoons… finished Tuesday and already sold seven of eight. I never quite know what is going to sell until it does (or doesn’t).

If you find a wheat penny it’s still good luck, right?

Can someone please explain to me why pachelbel’s canon is Christmas music

New on the Mountains-to-Sea ‘stack: Yee, Haw! Don’t drink the water. Lovely autumn days along the Haw River, where natural beauty and the legacies of industry will be at odds for some time.

Interesting essay about mini-trucks, which I have considered buying when my ancient Ranger eventually dies. But as Road and Track mentions, reviewing a Toyota bare-bones truck, it is not urban design but 21st-century safety mandates that prevent their being sold in the U.S. Build in compliance with federal regulations, and you double the price, beyond what anyone will pay for something so simple—and beyond what a young person just trying to start a micro-business could afford (or an older person, ahem, trying to run a micro-business can justify).

Well, it has been thirty-six hours now and the American Ornithological Society still has not responded to my demands, so I am going to have to consider stronger measures, such as gluing myself to an art gallery. I hear that’s what the kids are doing these days.

Forget racism and misogyny: The fact that we allow “societies” of “experts” to tell us what we may call things, such as birds, is itself fascistic. I call upon all such “societies” to disband immediately.

The Haw River was just begging to be a jigsaw puzzle this morning.