These Things: Nostalgia for Dust
Curious is a good thing to be. It seems to pay some unexpected dividends.
- Iggy Pop
Nostalgia for Dust
It’s the first day of summer (tomorrow) in the Northern Hemisphere and I’ve got Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” stuck in my head like the memory of riding a BMX bicycle through a dry creek bed in the woods of Arkansas in the early eighties and amazed at all the life all around me and then back across the field thinking how hot again it is and humid but isn’t it amazing how fine the dust becomes like baby powder as the summer continues and you can see exactly where you’ve been and exactly why the tires on your Mongoose BMX are called “snakebellies” and all you need is the longest day of the year on this bicycle.
These Things
inspired or intrigued or helped me recently:
Here’s a clever way to remember your hotel room number as you travel this summer.
Mary Shelly’s “Frankenstein” was based on actual 19th century science (making it way creepier).
What if the best thing to come out of the Mueller report is erasure poetry?
“They” now believe that Mona Lisa’s smile is one of someone hiding something.
Really? Do astronauts leave their poop on the moon? More interesting, is the bacteria in it still alive and what does this mean for the evolution of organic life?
The easiest-to-understand explanation of how to set up your computer desk according to an ergonomics expert.
And finally, here’s a poem I wrote and recorded called “The Other Side of Solstice” which may be about summer or Frank O’Hara or Maybelline or nothing. The best part is you can listen to a recording or read it. I’m down with multimodalism.