Tales From The Vault
My life changed forever in late 2003 when I set up an account on Blogger and decided to share my thoughts in public. Writing in the public sphere – literally thinking out loud in front of the entire world –…
Hugh's Blog
Hopeful in spite of the facts
Hugh's Blog
Hopeful in spite of the facts
Dictating How People Show Up
I’m republishing things I have written elsewhere in the past to archive them here. I think of them as tales from the vault. This is one of them. I recently observed something that suddenly made me understand something I have…
The comfort of books
There has never been a time when I did not love books. Growing up in my small rural life, books were my window to the wider world. I explored the streets of Paris with Dupin, the alleys of Victorian England…
Meta Data – Weeknotes 4/7/2023
It’s always a balance – I make a portion of my income from my writing, including the weekly newsletter and this blog, and so I try to treat them like a business. Confession: I suck at treating things like a…
Credit
In the fall of 1969, my mom and dad were newly married. They were home one night, no doubt staring lovingly into each other’s eyes when the phone rang. It was my grandfather, Mom’s dad, and he needed a ride.…
Friction | Weeknotes – 3/31/2023
(This is a weeknote: a weekly update of the behind-the-scenes work and thinking that goes into being an independent web publisher. You can read past weeknotes here) In Consistency is Easier Than You Think, CJ Chilvers writes about how consistency…
Infrastructure
It begins with the best of intentions. You see something – say, a hand-turned wooden bowl, and think how amazing it would be to be able to do that. Or maybe you want to make a coffee table for your…
Weeknotes
In my day job as a community organizer, we have a practice of writing a reflection each week to our supervisor. In it, we are encouraged to reflect on the week we had, and our plans for the upcoming week.…
I don’t want fighting to be my default
From 2009 until 2018, I did a lot of work in what can best be described as the “Progressive Christian Influencer” arena. I wrote extensively, publishing articles in national publications and having chapters and essays published in books. I traveled…
An Inconvenient Truth
I want to tell you a secret. Or maybe “secret” isn’t the right word since it’s pretty evident when you think about it. Either way, virtually nobody wants to talk about it. And what’s worse, they plan movements and actions…