Writings

Portrait of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, photographed by Albert Witzel around 1922.

September 30, 2026

Echo Park

A domed church, a Dodgers game, marinated beef, and an evening in Echo Park return as fragments of one great Los Angeles day—and a memory of how places, people, and institutions can hold together without strain.

Great Falls of the Potomac River rushing through a rocky gorge, with several people standing on the rocks above the water.

September 30, 2026

The Somerset Healing Bubbler, or a modest accessibility experiment in Vinton Woods.

A resident using a power wheelchair wants to reach one lovely place beside a creek. Instead of asking how to make an entire forest accessible, the Somerset Healing Bubbler proposes something smaller: start with a destination, study the journey, and experiment from there.

Sidewalk entering the Town of Somerset beside a town boundary sign and wooded parkland.

September 30, 2026

At the Edge of the Valley, or landscape and civic life in the Town of Somerset

Somerset sits between streets and stream valleys, suburb and forest, municipal infrastructure and preserved landscape. A civic history of how geography, planning, accessibility, and everyday movement shape the ways a community learns to share a place.

Portrait of Isaac Merritt Singer wearing dark formal clothing and a fur-trimmed coat.

September 29, 2026

Historianishing, a new method for practicing loss.

After nearly twenty years away from academic history, a former historian returns to discover that much has been forgotten—but the machinery still works. A visit with some dead Americans, an old mentor, and the emerging discipline of Historianishing.

Luca Pacioli demonstrates a geometric construction at a table surrounded by books, mathematical instruments, and polyhedra.

September 29, 2026

My Foursome with Finance, or how not to raise capital.

A humanities guy assembles a foursome of finance professionals hoping to discover the Secret of Finance. Instead, over eighteen holes, he learns about mentorship, patience, long horizons, Purple Martins—and what a return actually looks like.

Limestone bulldog architectural carving perched above Yale Law School.

September 29, 2026

Choose Your Shame Carefully, a selection criterion for an elite education.

A practical guide to choosing a graduate school based on an underappreciated criterion: the architectural language in which you would someday prefer to experience professional shame. From Lutheran limestone to Yale Gothic, choose carefully.

An adult Canada Goose stands upright on grass beside six growing goslings, several feeding or walking in different directions.

September 29, 2026

The Goose Belt, a summer ecology report.

At Argyle Country Club, the Canada Geese have established a civilization of flexible borders, adolescent chaos, evening repopulation, and occasional interference with golf. Welcome to the Goose Belt—and the nightly Re-Goosening.

Two Canada Geese stand on grass beneath a tree, one with its neck extended and beak open toward the other.

September 28, 2026

The Gyle, or a newsletter tall tale.

A spring round of golf, a narrow bridge, an aggressively self-possessed Canada Goose, three suddenly strategic golfers, and one power wheelchair combine to produce an enduring piece of golf-course ornithology that may not, strictly speaking, be true.

September 24, 2026

Things I Do Not Send to the Cornell Lab but Wish That I Could

A pressing ornithological question: Did Say’s Phoebe (Sayornis saya) have any influence whatsoever on Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson’s “Say Say Say”? There is only one surviving songwriter who can settle the matter—and, regrettably, the research window is closing.