Daily Create: Honoring Wendell Berry

Our prompt this morning at the Daily Create was to create something that celebrates the poet/writer Wendell Berry, who just passed away. I took the first stanza from one of his poems — I Go Among Trees — and worked with that. The poem captures some of the serenity of being quiet in the woods.

You can read the full poem here.

Peace (in the wood),
Kevin

Daily Create: One App To Park Them All

Suffering Parkware Syndrome? - 1

The prompt at the Daily Create was to read through a list of new words and phrases that represent frustrations of the modern technological world and make something.

I chose “parkware” for the feeling of when you visit a parking lot, and need to use an app to park, and you look through the handful of apps you already have, only to find you need yet another one. Why not a universal parking app? (Why Not? Because then all the data is in one place. This is a satire post, if that is not clear)

Peace (in gear),
Kevin

Book Review: Thunder & Lightning (Weather Past, Present, Future)

Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future by Lauren Redniss

I am hard-pressed to describe the experience of reading Lauren Redniss’ Thunder & Lightning (Weather Past, Present, Future). The graphic look at weather and its many different strands of topics is illuminating, immersive, provocative and instructive — in all the good ways imaginable.

With sections centered on topics ranging from Chaos to Wind to Dominion to Forecasting and more, this over-sized illustrated book is a work of art (even the font – named after an Inuktitut word for “falling snow” is magical) that bridges many elements of weather and climate, and human experiences, and braids them together in ways that are unexpected.

It’s clear that Redniss has done her homework here, as her inclusion of so many voices and interviews — set against her powerful artwork and her own observations — provide a deep dive. And it’s all so poetic, too.

It’s a long book — at more than 250 pages — but I found myself so intrigued by it that I finished it within three days. Each sitting left me thinking of something new – about the way fog impacts a sense of being in the world, or how global winds bring sand and dust from Africa to Florida, or how some people make money through weather derivatives, or how an effort to run a hose into the atmosphere to release sulfate dioxide to reduce sun exposure to earth, and much more.

Peace (and wonder),
Kevin