(Update: Done.)

I don’t think I made my intentions plain here on the site, but I had intended to post at least once a week over the course of 2024. That was my goal. Yet the site went silent by the middle of February! The reason for that was I began work on my Capstone Project to complete my Masters in Sustainability Management. That created a little pattern where any time I thought about making a blog post, my brain would tell me that I should be working on my Capstone. So I wouldn’t post… and frequently I wouldn’t work on my Capstone either. I’m happy to report though that the Capstone is basically complete. There are a few minor, finishing touches that my Advisor has asked for and then I can finally graduate from graduate school. What is my capstone about? Hummus. But I’ll post about that later.

The other thing that happened is I got a job… Five years ago, we sold Kavarna and I had the chance to think about how I’d like to spend the final third of my working life. I decided that fighting climate change was the most important thing I could do with my time. While it hasn’t been a straight path by any means, that’s what I’ve been working towards. First, by enrolling in graduate school to study sustainability. Second, by investigating ways to produce sustainable hummus at uBu Foods, our little hummus company. At the end of May, I was hired by the City of Green Bay as their “Clean Energy Connector.” For the past month, I’ve been going to work sitting (and standing!) behind a desk fighting the good fight. My work is connecting Green Bay residents, nonprofits, and small businesses to programs and incentives to help them switch to clean energy. I’ll be creating and executing a public outreach campaign to do that over the next two years. It’s been an adjustment after being self-employed for 25 years, but I feel like I’m getting that hang of it.

The unexpected thing though is that I’ve been coming home mentally exhausted. I just have not had the bandwidth to think and write on evenings after work. I do feel that’s getting better though. For the first two weeks or so, I’d come home, go to bed around 7:30, and pass out by 9. I’m not doing that any more. And today I feel fine.

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The photo at the top of the page is the band, They Might Be Giants, which we saw at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee last week. They’re pretty great. I’ll be honest though, it was not a good concert for a casual fan. I recognize that it’s hard for a band to make a set list that pleases both casual fans and the fanatics, but last week, at least with me, they failed. It was an hour and forty minutes into the show before I recognized a song. We saw them on the second night of a two night run and the setlist for the first would have been much more up my alley. The fanatics were overjoyed, of course. And I was happy for them. If I’d gone to see, say, David Byrne and he opened with an hour long set of songs off of his 1997 record Feelings, I’d be thrilled. But someone excited to see the lead singer of Talking Heads live would probably be thinking, “What the hell is this?” I’m just not that deeply into They Might Be Giants. Fortunately Linda and the kids have much better attitudes than I do and enjoyed the show.

I will say that “The Big Show” sounds great. They’re currently touring with horns, so it’s 8 people on stage. I especially admired the trombonist whose solo in the lead-up to “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” was one of the most gorgeous things I’ve heard recently.

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Recommendations

You Dreamed of Empires, by Álvaro Enrigue

The meeting of Moctezuma and Hernán Cortés in 1519 was really one of the most interesting things to ever happen. Tenochitlan at its height would absolutely be on my time travel itinerary (if I could figure out how to do it safely). But as much as that intrigues me, I’d almost rather see it with the eyes of a 16th century Spaniard than my own (Bernal Diaz’s diaries are on my to be read list). Enrigue has captured a lot of oddness of that situation that fascinates me. This is a novel about that first meeting, about Cortés and Moctezuma sizing each other up, about people being people, and about the reverberations of that moment through time. It’ll live in your mind like a rich cup of espresso laced with hallucinogenic mushrooms.

Conquistador by Buddy Levy

Naturally I had to pick up a non-fictional account to chase You Dreamed of Empires with just so that I could understand where Enrigue had departed from the historical record. This was an excellent read, I highly recommend these two together. Cortés’ two year push into Central Mexico is a remarkable story. Not only for the collision of two worlds aspect, but because of the sheer persistence of Cortés. He was an astonishing figure. You’ll wonder how it is that Werner Herzog hasn’t made a movie about him. He was that kind of character.