June 2021 – Journal

State-changers, memorial bench

Wednesday 30 June 2021

A busy day.

:::Topography::: {fragment}

30 June 2021

Two years ago I took a course in Forest Ecology. I learned a lot about forests, and, unsurprisingly, have come to see them differently. But what I didn’t expect was that it would give me a new sense of appreciation for topography.

Prior to the course, I thought of topography as big stuff. Hills. Valleys. Mountains. Plains. Canyons. In my original vision of topography everything was large scale, at least relative to humans who would be small figures situated within it. I did have a sense of topography as fractal, at least a little bit. Valleys have gullies, hills have hillocks and humps, plains – well, OK, plains only have plains within them which is still fractal, but not very exciting.

The Napkin Thief

29 June 2021

Earlier this week I was cleaning out the cupboard in the mudroom. Among other things it contains a continually growing collection of cloth bags. Some are ancient, from professional conferences, often dating back 10 or 20 years, with acronyms I have forgotten. Others are souvenirs of a sort, gathered from various travels. A personal favorite is the Big Save bag, from an eponymous store in Hanalei, Hawaii. Others are kept for functional purposes, typically because they have elaborate structures with outside mesh pockets, and inner pockets, and zippered tops. Some, that appear of no import to me, mean something special to my spouse: ‘You discarded that?’

Unfocused Freewriting: On Errors, Patterns and Learning

29 June 2021

Start of second period of regular blogging (18 month gap)

My charge is to do some unfocused ‘freewriting.’ Don’t think of a topic. Just start. I don’t really care for the notion, but part of the role of being a student is to trust the teacher, or at least to give them a sporting chance.

Of course, I started out by ignoring the assignment. I did a number of focused freewritings. While I produced sizable chunks of text, that were reasonably coherent even though I wasn’t trying for that, I found them boring. Both in the production and reading. (On later re-reading, I did see bits of interest, but overall it was not a satisfying experience. And so I come to the assignment.