#1 This is not a Christmas letter
But it is a summer solstice letter
Happy Summer Solstice. A couple of months ago, my grandmother handed me an archive of letters written by my great-grandparents, who passed away in 1983 before I was old enough to know them; it has been a revelation to get a sense of their personalities from the dozens of letters they wrote right here in Berkeley during the wild years of the 60s and 70s.
Meanwhile, a few friends have recently started weekly newsletters to share updates and recommendations. I don’t read every newsletter, but they’ve generally been more meaningful than most social media. Inspired by the letter-writing of my great-grandparents and the newsletters of my friends, I’m going to give it a try. My idea is to send something out every couple of weeks and keep it short and snappy, but it’s bound to morph over time.
Life
Last week, Iris and I traveled to Washington State for vacation. Iris took a week-long intensive workshop with the weaving instructor Madelyn van der Hoogt while I rode my bike around Whidbey, San Juan, and Orcas islands and ate as many donuts as I could find. (A lot). We also managed to explore Chuckanut Drive — Washington State’s version of Big Sur — and spend some time (though not enough) with family and friends.
What I’m reading
I’ve almost always got three books on rotation at the same time: fiction, nonfiction, and personal growth. This month they are:
The Idiot by Elif Batuman, a fun and witty coming-of-age novel about a Turkish-American from New Jersey trying to make sense of her freshman year at Harvard.
The High Sierra: A Love Story by Kim Stanley Robinson. I’ve never read anything by Robinson, though his “cli-fi” novel Ministry for the Future about climate change has been on my list for a while. I bought this one in hardback as it includes detailed hiking maps and photos from backpacking trips over the past few decades.
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. Consider this an anti-productivity book. Burkeman’s main point is that it’s often easier to be productive than to be present. We can easily spend our lives checking off to-do lists with the illusion that “soon” we’ll be able to relax and enjoy ourselves. But soon never comes; at least not soon enough. I love Burkeman’s idea of “JOMO” — the joy of missing out because you’re so engaged in whatever you’re doing that it would never occur to you to want to do something else.
A useful tool
Copy and translate text from your iPhone/iPad camera. Every since this feature came out last September with iOS 15, rarely does a day go by when I don’t use my iPhone camera to copy text. I still prefer to read a printed newspaper and so this lets me easily copy and share text. And I can save highlights from the hardback version of The High Sierra. While the Google Translate app has had camera-based translation for a while, having it built right into the iPhone camera made it a breeze to order quickly at restaurants when I was in the Netherlands and Switzerland a couple of weeks ago. Apple says the next version of the operating system will even let you copy, paste, and translate text from videos.
Shoutouts
Kudos to my cycling buddies Matthew, Milo, Noah, and Taylor, who managed to ride their bikes 450 miles down Highway 1 from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 40 hours, including their handful of brief stops. In the process, they burned 17,000 calories and climbed 24,000 feet. I know what it’s like to suffer and hallucinate after 200 miles of cycling; I can’t begin to fathom what it’s like after 400.
And you?
My hope is that these newsletters will prompt conversations and not replace them. Hit me up with your summer plans if you’re so inspired. If you press reply, it should go straight to my email.