Weeknotes: April 21–25, 2025
Monday, April 21
I'm up earlier than usual and tip-toe into the kitchen to make coffee, trying not to wake Islay. If I make too much of a fuss, she will activate into breakfast mode and we'll have to begin our whole morning ritual. I turn the radio on low and learn that Pope Francis has died. I'm not religious and the Catholic church is historically controversial, but I liked this pope. For 13 years he was a voice of empathy and compassion to a large global flock. For him to die during a period of such fractious leadership is a blow to the world. He was an outlier amid his lineage and I'm afraid his successor will be much more conservative. That's how the pendulum is swinging right now. I visited the Vatican in 2018. I stood in St. Peter's Square and toured the Basilica. It's a place of awe and reverence, even for secular people like me.
In Massachusetts, it's Patriot's Day, a holy day for the running community. I’ts the 129th running of the Boston Marathon. I've never attended, nor qualified to run it (yet), but I love to follow the sport's oldest annual race. Like many, I was delighted when Des Linden, an American runner from Michigan, won in 2018. I read her memoir last year and this morning she announced that this would be her final professional marathon.
I keep the race broadcast on in the background while I work. Kenyan John Korir distances himself from the pack early on and it's his to lose. He finishes well ahead of any competitors and 13 years after his brother Wesley Korir, making them the first pair of siblings to wear the laurel wreath. The women's race is more dramatic with Kenyan Sharon Lokedi keeping pace with her teammate, the reigning Boston champion Hellen Obiri, until the final mile. Obiri is known for her kick, but it never comes and Lokedi pulls away, shattering the women's course record at 2:17:22.
Weeknotes: April 7–11, 2025
Monday, April 7
C-G-D-G-B-D. It's a version of C Wahine, a Hawaiian slack key tuning I'm playing around with this morning. The low C vibrates against the back of my guitar and into my chest like a Pacific frequency. Outside a pale blue sky is flooding the weak clouds in a slow diffuse throb.
During a Zoom meeting we discuss a now-beleaguered company that we used to be a part of and it depresses me. I break for lunch and listen to a podcast dissecting last night's season finale of The White Lotus. In late afternoon I put the Tigers game on the radio. The entire homestand against the Yankees has been rescheduled because of the cold weather. Early April night games are a gamble in the Midwest. Two weeks into the season and the team is playing really well. I'm excited about them. They beat the Yankees 6–2 and who doesn't love to beat the Yankees?
I go for a drive, chasing the evening light and listening to Michael Rother's calm, radiant music. At Mary McCann Preserve, I hop back and forth over muddy lanes to get to the rail line at the back of the property. A dozen or so inert train cars are linked together on the track and have been there since I discovered this park during the pandemic. I'm collecting photos using different lighting strategies for my photography class, trying to find my way around manual mode. Right now I feel uncreative and pressed for time and I wonder how many lame photos of rusting train cars and derelict factories the instructor has to sift through every year from novice students like myself. They must be the G, C, and D chords of photography.
Weeknotes: January 13–17, 2025
Monday January 13
My limbs trundle reluctantly up the hill past the south edge of campus, the wind biting my bare face. The first half mile is accomplished by will alone, but it gets better. I gauge my footfalls gingerly over the ice patches and head down the ginnel that connects College Place with Pearl. By the time I cross onto Spring Street, my body feels relaxed and lithe. At Waterworks Park a woman stands over the hood of her blue minivan arranging loaves of supermarket bread to feed to the assemblage of ducks and geese closing in around her.
I think of my mom, a lifetime nurturer of urban waterfowl populations. I picture her tiny figure holding up a bag of hamburger buns to feed the squawking gulls. For a brief time she and I kept up a Christmas Eve tradition of emptying a large bag of cracked corn on the grass by the Brighton Mill Pond, a gift to the cold feathered peasantry. Even now when I go to visit my parents, she is constantly managing a half dozen feeding stations. Just yesterday I caught her scattering seed on the front porch for her favorite possum and then on a metal table out behind the kitchen for her resident doves. She loves her doves. My parents have always had big hearts for wild things.