Just A Peck 0053 // Welcome to Year Two!

7/12/26

Welcome to the latest issue of Just A Peck. I’m glad you’re here!

JOURNAL

This is Issue 53, which means that this is the official start of YEAR TWO for Just A Peck! I’ve changed my process a bit over the last twelve months. When I started, my plan was to solely use the micro.blog platform, but technical issues with their newsletter functionality led me to leverage Buttondown for the newsletter part. I’ve restructured the sections, started including more images, and scripted the processing of those images to save time. I now have a little agent that fetches my Bluesky posts and Letterboxd diary for the week and generates the newsletter HTML.

I’m still enjoying the practice. I’ve never been successful at journaling, but I love looking back on what I was doing/reading/watching/thinking in years past, so this seems like a maintainable middle ground. It has forced a tiny amount of rigor on what I do every day. (Did I finish a book or watch a movie? I should record that along with a brief summary of what it made me think about. Am I doing something I’ll want to remember? I should take a picture.)

The newsletter will continue to evolve. For example, I’m adding a section this week to record books that I’ve purchased, partly as a way to remember, but mostly to give myself a little bit of accountability to keep that particular compulsion in check. I feel confident that it’s a practice that will continue. Thanks for sharing “just a peck” of what’s going on in my life each week. Cheers!

Recovery from my surgery has been going well. I returned to work this week, which meant sitting on a stool for ten(ish) hours each day — and I had no issues. I even ventured to the Twin Cities on Friday and spent Saturday out and about with friends. I had my post-surgery checkup on Thursday and they asked me to continue wearing the binder for another two weeks, which is kind of a bummer. They also explained that the 6–8 week lifting moratorium will only get me to 80% healed. I will need to continue to be cautious as that last 20% of healing takes place over the next six to twelve months!

Jody and I went to the 30th Anniversary performance of Dances on the Lakewalk. It’s a lovely Duluth-ey thing that we try to attend every year. This year it was in the Rose Garden, and — as usual — a bunch of our extremely talented friends choreographed and/or danced.

Dances on the Lakewalk 30th Anniversary performance in the Rose Garden

I bought what might have been the last two tickets to the world-premiere production of My Ántonia at Theatre Latté Da in Minneapolis, and drove down after work on Friday for a quick down-and-back theater sprint. I just read My Ántonia a few months ago for the first time and I really loved it, so I was excited for this production. Lots to like about it, including three great performances from actors playing Ántonia at different stages of her life.

Jody was having a Cousins Weekend, so I took the day on Saturday to venture out with some friends for my first real “day out” after surgery. We checked out the new pinball machines at Yellow Bike, the new arcade/collectibles store in the mall, caught some live music at Wild State’s Battle of the Bands and River City’s Rock the Dock, and had dinner at Bali. It was great to get out after two weeks of staying mostly in one chair. (I did take a small break in the middle of the shenanigans to elevate my feet, re-up my pain meds, and take a quick nap.)

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK

Finished:

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth, by Doxiadis, Papadimitriou, Papadatos, and Di Donna. A work of graphic nonfiction exploring the Foundational Crisis in Mathematics, focusing primarily on Bertrand Russell but also featuring the philosophical arguments and personal turmoils of some of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, including Wittgenstein, Gödel, Poincaré, Cantor, and Hilbert, set against a backdrop of World Wars I and II. The contentious struggle to establish a formal system of logic sets the stage for the world-changing work that Turing and Von Neumann will do in the years after the events in this book end.

In Progress:

How Plays Work, Edgar
Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hofstadter
Hollywood: The Oral History, Basinger, Wasson

BOOKS I PURCHASED

Rogue Moon, Budrys
Trepleff, Harris
How Fiction Works, Hall
The Balloonist, Harris
Among Others, Walton
Out (Special Edition), Kirino
O Caledonia, Barker
Hellspark, Kagan
The Human Condition, Arendt

MEMORIES

Five Years Ago:

We had a “staycation” with our awesome friends, Tom and Brandy. We went to Dances on the Lakewalk, paddled Pokegama Bay, had thrilling adventures with Twin Portals, and then drove up to the Range where we did the Soudan Mine tour and bopped around Ely. We even saw a moose on the way home!

Fifteen Years Ago:

We were watching the Rodeo Parade in Spooner. Alex and Spencer were playing in the High School Band and Kaylee was dancing as part of a showcase for her dance school.

Also Fifteen Years Ago:

The Summer Youth Program at Theatre in the Woods punched way above its weight class with a youth production of The Pirates of Penzance which was not only a cast of kids doing G&S, but nearly all members of the production team were kids as well, and it turned out great! Alex co-directed and Corey, Spencer, and Kaylee were all in the cast. We have a lot of fun family stories about that show.

Youth production of The Pirates of Penzance at Theatre in the Woods

QUICK LINKS

WHAT I'M EXCITED ABOUT

This week, Jody and I will be headed to Winona for the Great River Shakespeare Festival with friends. We’ll be seeing Midsummer and Pericles at the festival’s new location: a historic Masonic theater with painted backdrops over 100 years old!

Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona

Our local indie cinema has resurrected their 35mm projection capabilities and will be kicking things off this week by screening a 35mm print of Nolan’s The Odyssey! (Will I be there opening night? Why, yes I will. Thanks for asking.)

MY FAVORITE QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"The number of hours we have together is actually not so large. Please linger near the door uncomfortably instead of just leaving. Please forget your scarf in my life and come back later for it."

— Mikko Harvey, from his poem "For M"

That’s it for this week. Stay safe, friends. Thanks for reading!

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