If American Catholics dressed up like birds, I’d be a heck of a lot more likely to convert. I’m not saying I’d do it, but I’d have to seriously consider it.

If your employer is so odious that you feel compelled to publicly insult it or create an app to undermine its work, is it maybe, just possibly, time to quit your job?

Rose pink.

Saw the neighborhood green heron again this week. A great blue heron was stalking something only a few yards away, but separated by brush, and I don’t know if they were even aware of each other. The difference in scale was fascinating.

Facebook Marketplace just sent me an email suggesting I might want to buy a 1963 Chevy Impala. Should I be insulted?

Think of craft as a pearl, which begins with a novel irritant but is built by patient accrual into something rare and beautiful.

What I’m working on carving this week: six panels, 15”x18”, custom handmade frame. The smaller panel of leaves took close to four hours, or roughly one baseball game and half an opera.

If you are trying to figure out what makes certain kinds of “creative” work visibly or obviously “human” in the age of AI, be aware that this is not a new problem! People have been struggling with it since the dawn of the first industrial revolution, and thinking deeply about it since at least the time of William Morris and John Ruskin. You may be very late to the party, but you are not alone.

There’s a whole reading list I could offer, but start with David Pye’s The Nature and Art of Workmanship, which has some really good thoughts about what makes a physical object visibly handmade: what he calls “the workmanship of risk.” How would that concept apply to writing, or visual art? (If anybody wants to have a book club reading, I’m in.)

Regarding this headline, the next time it crosses my mind that I might subscribe to the Atlantic, I will remember that I cannot possibly do so, because I am literally nobody.