Stop What You're Doing And Watch This Birdwatching Documentary Right Now Life comes at you fast: On Monday, I was not at all interested in birdwatching. On Tuesday, I was obsessed with it for two straight hours. I am probably not the first person to tell you that you should, as soon as you can spare one hour and 59 minutes, watch the film Listers: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching. Someone sent me a link to it on August 29th, 10 days after it went live on YouTube (thanks, Jason), followed...
5 days ago • 3 min read
Friday Inspiration 503 I spent a good chunk of the beginning of my book Ultra-Something talking about the movie Rocky, so of course when this CinemaStix video about it popped up in my YouTube feed, I of course watched it, and of course was not disappointed (although I did already know the bit of trivia about the skating rink scene). (video) I am a big believer that you don’t necessarily have to go to film school to make films, and that you don’t have to go to art school to make art, and that...
11 days ago • 3 min read
Friday Inspiration 502 I watch way too many of these NBA highlight collection videos, and I know not everyone likes basketball, but I love this one for a couple reasons: a) The conceit of the video, “Dunks but the dunker gets increasingly more unlikely,” is actually backed up with each person’s statistic of “dunks per season,” and b) many of these clips show the reactions from the team’s bench, from the teammates who are often baffled and elated that their teammate threw one down (video)...
18 days ago • 2 min read
I Go To The Hardware Store When the world is going crazy, which is how it feels anytime I spend too much of my time looking at the news slash social media slash glowing screens slash information, which I’ve been doing for the past week or so, I go to the hardware store. Because at the hardware store, I can feel, for a few minutes, that maybe the world is not falling apart, as much as these people screaming at each other about “your side” and “our side” on TV news clips have very nearly led me...
19 days ago • 1 min read
Friday Inspiration 501 I have enjoyed many of Arthur Brooks’ columns for The Atlantic over the years, so I wasn’t surprised that this video, “You Need to Be Bored. Here’s Why.” hit home for me as well. Sometimes I wonder if we’re all keeping ourselves so “busy” with everything that we don’t have time to feel anything anymore—boredom included, but also other things. (video) I don’t know who the market is for this app, or if the market actually exists, but I love that this person created it: A...
25 days ago • 3 min read
Friday Inspiration 500 Well, today is the 500th edition of this Friday Inspiration newsletter. Aside from a couple of short breaks (one for some time off in 2021 and the other for the first few weeks of Jay’s life back in 2022), I’ve been doing this every week since November 20, 2015. Which is a long time. If you open this email every week or every once in a while, thanks for reading. If you are supporting this whole operation via Patreon or a paid subscription, thank you again for your...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
I Hope You Like Mountains I’m walking my kid to the library in Chamonix, holding hands, or rather, he’s holding my middle finger in his hand. I get a tug on my finger every few steps, because he’s looking down as he jumps from seam to seam on the sidewalk, and I am looking up at the Aiguille du Dru, one of the six classic north faces of the Alps, 850 meters of steep granite, trying to remember the history of climbing routes on it. It’s almost a mile and a half straight up from where we’re...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Friday Inspiration 499 I kind of think this idea—having kids dream up fairytale characters and then having those characters professionally designed—should happen more often? (video) We are hopefully getting toward the end of fire season here soon-ish in the western U.S., but I thought it might be useful to share the app I use to track wildfires around Missoula during the summer and early fall. I’m sure many people have heard of it, but Watch Duty is a free app (which you can support for...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Friday Inspiration 498 I saw this video somewhere on Reddit a few weeks ago and would have shared it here but I couldn’t verify that these folks actually went and retrieved the tire afterward—but it appears they answered that question in the comments on YouTube, so please enjoy this very satisfying three minutes. (thanks, Hannah and Dan) (video) Hilary is a huge fan of Blackbird Spyplane, and I am a fan of the writing voice and general presence, although I am not as regular a reader as she is...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
