Writer & lawyer. Novels TROPIC OF KANSAS et al • urban nature newsletter FIELD NOTES • forthcoming: A NATURAL HISTORY OF EMPTY LOTS (narrative nonfiction)
And Octavia Butler wasn’t the only SF writer who anticipated MAGA—here’s Kim Stanley Robinson in his 1984 debut, The Wild Shore, as the young protagonist listens to his elders wax amid the ruins of the Californian future: us.macmillan.com/books/9780312890360/th…
(**They all got it from Reagan)
When I set my fresh copy of @mjohnharrison.bsky.social's Climbers on the bedside table last night, my 5-year-old daughter immediately picked it up and asked "Dad, why do you have so many books with pictures of furniture outside?" A fair question (even though I think she already knows)
Our unplanned staycation at DFW thanks to a cancelled flight was a lot more enjoyable than we would have expected. Nothing like the rooftop swimming pool of one of those hotels where you never leave the terminal and are surrounded by runways and freeways in every direction 🛫
Found a cherub on this morning’s walk in the East Austin edgelands—19th Century German porcelain doll, almost smiling from the bottom of a side channel of the urban river behind an old warehouse:
The NYT’s ever-evolving standards for who merits an editorial obituary in the print edition will always be a mystery, but it was a big smile to see mid-list mid-70s comics end up canonized this way amid the news of the day 😮
Checkered white butterflies (Pontia protodices) making eggs, in a rewilded gravel dredge on the banks of the urban Colorado in East Austin.
Real life on dead media (35mm film).
Within eyeshot of the Super Heavy rockets lined up on the horizon at SpaceX Boca Chica, saw this perfect anti-Cybertruck (offroad-ready 1969 Beetle) for sale outside a South Padre dive bar, $6500 obo
Our dog Lupe investigating the Easter eggs someone left in the field behind the abandoned dairy plant, which has acquired the horror movie frisson of a post-apocalyptic first-person shooter game in a matter of months since its closure
Spiderwort after the rain, before it all disappeared as spring turns into Texas summer.
All shots taken on an old Canon F-1 liberated from my dad’s basement closet, on CineSteel 800T (tungtsen film for low light, well-suited to daybreak wanders in the urban woods).
