En freehlicher (zwedde) Grischtdaag!

Have Yourself a Medieval Christmas. Ten years since I wrote this piece, and I wouldn’t write it the same way now, but it’s worth sharing again anyhow. Come tomorrow night, kick up your heels and raise a glass to the newborn king!

I want someone to record an album of cheeseball “Christmas” songs of the 20th century in historical styles. “Rock around the Christmas tree” becomes a late-Medieval Iberian dance (think “Riu Riu Chiu”). “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” as Gregorian chant. A polyphonic “Last Christmas” in the style of Tomas Luis de Vittoria (it hardly has any lyrics anyway, you’d barely notice the repetition). Also “Frosty the Snowman” arranged in shape note.

Each task that I address begets precursors /
As if work’s genealogy reverses, /
And so another once-promising day, /
Like last night’s beer, is swiftly pissed away.

Once again this year my daughter and I are really enjoying Matthew Scroggs’ math puzzle advent calendar. It’s not too late to get in on the fun (if that is your idea of fun)!

Of useful work and community: Some thoughts on a barn raising managed by my great-grandfather.

View of my workshop, by my daughter Ivy, sometime last year. If you look closely it appears that I was assembling a chair on the workbench.

Please tell me they see the irony in this.

The Arch Mission Foundation sent its first archive to space in 2018 in the glove compartment of Elon Musk’s Tesla, which is now in a 30-million-year orbit around the sun. That archive contains Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy…