A week ago I left my job. We are moving to Maine this summer. Currently we’re still in the process of getting under contract and through all of the bits of inspection and financing, but if all goes well soon enough we’ll be in a place with a bigger barn, more acreage (we might actually grow hay to feed our sheep year round, assuming we can find someone to hay it), and a legislature not trying to make things unsafe for my family. That move wasn’t compatible with staying at my job, and so for the summer I have the difficult task of enjoying myself with my kids in New Hampshire and midcost Maine … we all have our crosses to bear :)I have rediscovered that kayaking is a lot of fun, and that in particular my oldest simply lights up when they’re out propelling themself around on the water. We’re planning to do a lot more of that this summer. We’re also going to see if the three siblings can remember how to be kind and extend grace to each other more often than pushing buttons (or lashing out pre-emptively in order to protect the buttons). I’m also going to see if not being “on” quite so much will help me extend a bit more grace. So far, the signs are good.Today we had two different unplanned kids come over, which was awesome for us, and seem sot have been appreciated by the other parents. Hopefully we’ll manage more of that.I haven’t yet gotten back into the groove of reading, but I’m working on it.I recently listened to this podcast series on churches in decline, and an episode about a church in the bay area trying to stay active. The host interviewed a number of young adults about inviting others to the Church, and all demurred, because they don’t want to just go out an evangelize. And look, I’m not big on evangelism either, and I don’t regularly invite people to attend Quaker Meeting with me, but if it comes up, I do let them know they are welcome, and if I’m being honest, I think most people should go. I mean, the spirit of God lives within us, and speaks to us best spontaneously when we gather in silence, and through our relationships in community. There is one, indeed, who can speak to my condition and also to yours. And I think if you’re attending a church and can’t comfortably say that, or something similar, and mean it because you think it’s a true statement about the world, and a gift to the person you’re talking to, then you probably just shouldn’t really be going to church. (Which is easy for me to say, since I attend the Meeting for Worship where I am a member, which we don’t call a Church, ‘cause the Church is a whole different thing, and is us, not a steeplehouse).I have done some tinkering with computer stuff, and while there’s a lot that can be said about LLMs, I can say pretty conclusively that they are very good at pumping out code in arbitrary languages that more or less does what it’s supposed to. In a week (including two weekends) I’ve stood up a Raspberry PI, a few different services (tailscale networking, plus a calendar/task manager, and Obsidian note-taking), a service on the Pi to manage turning simple tasks and notes into coordinated project/action management with linked reference material, and an Obsidian plugin to turn random notes into tasks. I don’t know javascript, typescript, or python, but I’ve got code from all those languages running and doing more or less what it’s supposed to, plus various Docker installations.I wouldn’t want to use all this stuff in production (I was on a call near the end of my time at work with a developer who had a very straightforward and well-thought implementation for bug-fix that ALSO didn’t really jibe with some of our standard architecture and after talking it through, the architect made him do the more complex but also more correct implementation. I’m sure an LLM could do the thing either way, but certainly my company lacked the tooling and structure to also incorporate the “understanding why”, “making it meaningful to all the needed stakeholders” and “making the call about which possible option to select”, which are much more important pieces of solving actual production issues that affect something more important than me getting to scratch a computer-productivity-system itch), but for being able to do the thing that there are lots of tutorials about, it feels a bit like I’ve unlocked the “how to draw an owl” where there are a few outline circles, and then it jumps straight to the detailed owl. The other observation I’ll make is that my job for the last 8 years has been capturing users saying “I wanna do X” and turning that into “here are some detailed implementation plans for a computer system” and then making sure it actually worked. I couldn’t use generative AI to draw a pretty owl because I don’t know what a pretty owl is. But telling it to write me code that does X, and describing when it deviates from that, that I can manage.Anyway, more to come on the book front, and the computer tinkering front, and the house front, and the kayaking front, I hope. Have a couple pictures of NH in the summer. It’s lovely.

I discovered Hadestown (the Musical) a while ago. I think first “Why We Build the Wall” on an NHPR music evening, and then references on Twitter for people looking for their Hamilton fix after finally coming to a point that we’d listened to the Hamilton and In The Heights cast albums as often as we could. For those who haven’t listened, it’s a musical retelling of the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice. A recurring description of Orpheus is that he’s a poor boy whose art can show the world the way that it could be, in spite of the way that it is. The kiddos and I listened through recently, and I was reminded how impressed I am by the creation.

Hadestown NPR Tiny Desk It seems a little odd to be discussing Hadestown in the farming category, but last year I was cleaning out the barn and playing the Hadestown album. At the end of the album, Hermes (who narrates the album) reflects on the story we were just told.

Cause, here’s the thing:

To know how it ends

And still begin to sing it again

As if it might turn out this time

I learned that from a friend of mine

Hadestown / Road to Hell II

Last year, getting piles of manure into the wheelbarrow, I got all the way through the album, and then circled back to the top.

It’s an old song

It’s an old tale from way back when

It’s an old song

But we’re gonna sing it again

Hadestown / Road to Hell

I was sobbing as the tragedy came round again (and I did not learn from either Orpheus or Anais Mitchell the lesson of how to listen as if it might turn out this time), and had to take a break and switch my listening before returning to fill the wheelbarrow. The sense-memory is enough now that whenever the album comes up again, I find myself right back in the barn full of filthy manure.

The barn’s a lot cleaner now than just before the annual mucking. Also, I find myself reminded of Isaiah and the lion lying down with the lamb, and world as it could be, in spite of the way that it is.

It’s a truism to say that there are a lot of cycles on the farm. The sheep are wandering through the grass, which is loving our hot, wet summer. I mucked the barn again a couple months ago. The sheep found some grass on patches that hadn’t grown well last year because I dumped last year’s manure there & the organic matter did what organic matter does. There’s a new pile of smelly, dirty stuff on what had been bare earth that hopefully will grow a bit more grass next year. Cycles repeat, with variation. The summer is hotter and wetter, and that variation is unlikely to change. It’s hard to see a path for that trend that isn’t tragic.

But here’s the thing: I don’t have to see the path to a non-tragic future. I don’t know what will happen on the farm, and in even that smallest uncertainty of that “don’t know” is all the gap I need to “begin to sing again / as if it might turn out this time”. I’ve learned that from a Friend of mine, and it might not be a daily occurrence that I can look out on the farm and see the world as it could be, in spite of the way that it is, but it happens a lot. So, if you haven’t heard it yet, or if you have, here’s the Hadestown album – “it’s an old song / But we’re gonna sing it again.”

(link, since I think the embedded playlist isn’t working and I don’t really want to try to figure out how to fix it - youtu.be/ZgsfT2w7F…)