When You Wish Upon a Starlink

It seems that the sycamore has been granted a reprieve. For now. The great and awful tree had been destined to attain horizontality as soon as I could find someone who would do it. That was necessary to give my cool new satellite dish a clear view of the sky. The tree is still under a death sentence, but the latest and most urgent reason for sending the thing to the wood-chip pile seems not to have existed at all.

Craft, Need and the Ever Devouring AI

A few hours away from me you can visit Silver Dollar City — a scenic, wooded theme park in the Ozark Mountains where craftspeople blow glass and mill flour 19th-century style. It’s charming and memorable. It’s also not the way I buy glassware or food normally.

Starlink Wars

If only I can get the dish on top of the stick!

As I wrote that I was suddenly reminded that a few decades ago it was popular for performers on variety shows to spin dishes on the tips of what looked like pool cues, the trick being to get many dishes spinning on many pool cues at once. At some point the studio audience would applaud. We were more easily pleased in those simpler times.

The Quintessential American Writer: Ernest Hemingway

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick once again give us compelling entry into one of the makers of the American century in the documentary Hemingway. The writer Ernest Hemingway lived alongside the avatar of the same, through some of the most consequential times in history.

The Olympics and Other Horrors

Okay, yes, it was my fault that the propane ran out before I ordered a refill. It was not my fault, though, that the internet went down, forcing me to watch a bit of the Olympics.