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​Friday Inspiration 549​

Stan Lee tells the totally under-assuming/unlikely story of how he came up with the idea of Spider-Man, all the while coming off as the most humble, chill guy in the world (video)

I thought this was going to be one of those “look how badly humans behave on airplanes” videos, which I guess it kind of is at the beginning, but how this musician ended up using it had me laughing and clapping at the end.

PATH Projects is sponsoring this week’s newsletter, and I’ve been running in a couple items from them that I’ll be mentioning in future newsletters, but this week I thought I would mention the shorts that I’ve been wearing the longest: the Sykes PX, which I wear because a) they’re comfortable b) they’re durable and c) they have three external pockets in the back, the middle of which is big enough to hold a phone. And they’re available in 5” and 7” inseams. I am not sure how many miles I’ve put on the six pairs I own, but I know I bought the first pair in early 2024 and haven’t worn them out yet. They’re on sale now at the PATH site (along with a bunch other apparel), and you can check them out with this link.

Thanks to Marty Brodsky, whose writing I have mentioned many times in this newsletter, I melted away 20 minutes poking around this website, Read The Places, an open atlas of literature, which maps locations of novels, and allows you to add map locations in novels. (I had a blast poking around the map of all the locations that have been added so far)

I have just discovered The Ocho subreddit, and have scrolled through several videos of activities I had no ideas were sports, and I don’t know that this game/sport actually has a name (somebody let me know if it does?) but wow does it look strenuous.

This essay about someone using AI to read The Last of the Mohicans, and I wouldn't say I care much about someone using AI to read a book, but I really enjoyed the writer Albert Burneko’s very salty explanation of What Reading Is And Why We Do It, which contained sentences like these: ‘When you read a book, the stuff in the book goes into your mind, and your mind assembles all of the stuff into imagery and thoughts and feelings, and alchemizes meaning from it. A person reasonably could consider this "what's good about reading," or "the point of reading," or "buddy that's actually just ... what reading is," but that all assumes that your reason for reading anything is that you want to learn something from it, even if it's only at the level of, like, what ultimately happens to the Whos down in Whoville.’ [GIFT LINK]

I met Derik Penny when he was working behind the counter at the Denver Bicycle Cafe in 2013 or 2014, and we have stayed in touch through the years thanks to a mutual love of baseball, art, and making things out of wood (something he is 3 to 4,000 times better at than I am). We were messaging about something a few weeks back when I thought, “I bet Derik would be a great guest to have on My Favorite Things,” and I am happy to say I was not wrong. We talked about Jeff Lemire’s trilogy of Essex County graphic novels, BadBadNotGood’s album Sour Soul, the YouTube channel Ishitani Furniture, and Andrew Forbes’ book of baseball essays The Utility of Boredom, and you can listen to it here.

I am pretty sure I still have the glasses I wore to watch the 2017 solar eclipse, and I now want to go digging for them after seeing this collection of eclipse glasses from 1793-2019.

Speaking of that eclipse, I was chatting with a friend about the most recent eclipse and remembered I had shot a short video of the one in 2017, when Hilary and I drove to western Nebraska to check it out. I turned the camera on us instead of the sun, so you can watch the fields behind us go completely dark and then light back up again in about 3.5 minutes. (I re-uploaded it yesterday)

Books I’m Currently Reading:

• ​How to Wash the Dishes by Peter Miller

I picked up this meditative book on, you guessed it, how to wash dishes, at our local bookstore, noting that the "Staff Picks" card inside it was from the owner, Garth, with the simple note "this should settle some arguments." I'm only a third of the way through it, and we don't have any arguments about dishwashing at our house, but I'm enjoying it so far.

• ​The Size of Your Joy by Elise M. Powers

Totally forgot how I found out about this book of poetry or when I ordered it, but it showed up in the mail a few weeks ago. I had been enjoying reading a few poems every night when I finally read the back cover out loud to Hilary: “For every woman who’s ever held joy and sorrow in the same breath—this debut is a tender, powerful reminder that you are not alone.” So I guess I’m not the primary target market—but I’m still loving the book!

• ​Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art by Mary Gabriel

Hilary was reading this for months and absolutely gushing over it, and there’s only so much you can hear about one book before you just say “I’ll go ahead and borrow that whenever you’re finished.” And I am happy to say it’s as good as she said it was (although I would be terrified of taking on the challenge of writing about five different [famous] artists all in the same book like Mary Gabriel did).

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