a stream

I’ve explored a lot of alternatives, but I’m going to continue with posting bespoke reading updates here; I’m also going to try and get back to sharing updates on Goodreads again.

1. Tried Taqueria Los Lee for lunch today. +

   I’ve procrastinated actually trying this place for a year or two, so I’m lucky it still is open - the good, easy fast food taco place by my work closed down a couple of weeks ago, so I was finally driven to find a new option. I had gorditas with rice and beans and it was all very solid. I’ll be back for a burrito or tacos or something.

   I like their happy little website, too:

2. This interview with Alok Vaid-Menon was by far the best thing I’ve read/listened to/otherwise taken in this week. +

   Listened casually while eating my lunch - I’m going to need to listen again more carefully and unpack this, and then explore their work.

A man’s life should be constantly as fresh as this river. It should be the same channel, but a new water every instant…Most men have no inclination, no rapids, no cascades, but marshes, and alligators, and miasma instead.

– Henry David Thoreau, from “Monday,” A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (location 283-284 of 882)

Herein is the tragedy: that men doing outrage to their proper natures, even those called wise and good, lend themselves to perform the office of inferior and brutal ones. Hence come war and slavery in; and what else may not come in by this opening? But certainly there are modes by which a man may put bread into his mouth which will not prejudice him as a companion and neighbor.

– Henry David Thoreau, from “Monday,” A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (location 283 of 882)

“I love man-kind, but I hate the institutions of the dead un-kind. Men execute nothing so faithfully as the wills of the dead, to the last codicil and letter. They rule this world, and the living are but their executors.”"

– Henry David Thoreau, from “Monday,” A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (location 282 of 882)

Evening sun breaking through the clouds to some of the upper bows of the Siberian Elms after the rainstorm.

Here are some of the things I’m working on and thinking about now…

A large ant crawling on the buds of some plant growing through the fence from our neighbors' yard.

i’m paddling my way through Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, though it is definitely taking me more than a week.

I have this Library of America edition, but I’m actually mainly reading it on my phone - Standard Ebooks edition, added to the iOS Books app. The LoA edition has reference notes, so I look at it when I can, but I actually like reading on my phone.