seeing you, charles. seeing you big time.

well done.

pasqueflower hanging out on #wisconsin ave at @MarquetteU. #plantwatching #milwaukee

bloodroot coming up in the beds! #plantwatching #milwaukee

Dear friends, you, however, are real persons! Creation itself has a body, a breath, a life to be listened to and safeguarded. It “groans and suffers” (cf. Rom 8:22), just as each one of us does."
www.vatican.va/content/leo-...

"Within digital environments — structured to persuade — interaction is optimized to the point of rendering a real encounter superfluous; the otherness of persons in the flesh is neutralized, and relationships are reduced to functional responses....

2/2
Do not look the other way: this is a service to the truth and to all humanity. Without this demanding educational effort, passive adaptation to dominant paradigms will be mistaken for competence, and the loss of freedom for progress."
www.vatican.va/content/leo-...

1/2
"While the African continent is well acquainted with its alluring aspects, it also knows the darker side of the environmental and social devastation caused by the relentless pursuit of raw materials and rare earths....

sna poems #154: mcgilvra woods easter monday we stopped by mcgilvra woods for a brief afternoon walk. the forests are just waking up ’round these parts, so not too many species out and about yet. but saw some vibrant hepat…

new installment of the sna poems--been awhile!
mcgilvra woods, sauk cty, wisconsin
#plantwatching #wisconsin #wildflowers #mushrooms
jacobriyeff.com/2026/04/11/s...

cutleaf toothwort about to blow in sauk cty easter monday.
#plantwatching #wisconsin

also, the crocuses have been kickin' for over a week. #milwaukee #plantwatching

virginia spring beauty in sauk cty. #plantwatching #wisconsin

man, signing off at least until easter monday. be well, humans.

the psychology of grading is funny. i'm genuinely interested in the rough drafts my students submitted, and on the whole they're really interesting. but man do i not want to do these last five. fighting the aversion. partially just b/c i let them submit digitally.

Some absolutely stunning Milky Orchids Neotinea lactea amongst the grassland and woodland at Monte Lauro, Sicily today. 5°C though! Brr. @europeanorchids.bsky.social

iuvencus and arator came in today from the library. resisting the urge to avoid all other work and just read them until i'm done. ugh.

Photo of small cluster of relatively large mature oaks. But, sadly, there might be disease issues.

The Sacred Oak Grove …

… as far as I’m concerned.

Primrose Unit, Southwest Wisconsin Grassland and Stream Conservation Area

considering "giving up" social media for the easter season.

my personal mission statement for the university:
"The function of a university is to teach [one] how to drink tea."
~Thomas Merton, “Learning to Live”

skunk cabbage is having a great time. #plantwatching #milwaukee

when genuinely i just find the glut of digital material i'm supposed to engage with cognitively and neurologically oppressive.

wrestling quietly today with how in some sectors not liking computers is considered elitist. what a world.

ours just started popping up!

it is nonsense.
i'm also weary of the "leaving it to professors is confusing & chaotic" angle.
we've been giving our own guidelines on tech & textbooks for centuries, that's just how it works. based on our pedagogical goals & what we think a human is, we decide how to teach. it's not weird at all.

oh boy, hatching an idea for a class on epic that takes the west's reception history seriously—ie, start w/ virgil b/c folks didn't know homer until the humanists, move to the christian latin epics (iuvencus, arator, sedulius), _maybe_ beowulf, then end w/ chapman's iliad.

"Jemez Falls"
acrylic on canvas panel
12" x 12" x .17

Acrylic black, white, brown, turquoise painting.

companies want to _frame_ knowledge (experience?) as co-terminous with statistical probabilities extruded from vector arithmetic, with humans as (at best) curators of machine-derived content.
reject their epistemological reductions.

in @marquetteu.bsky.social's library today to find books on:
plant philosophy
celibacy
late antique latin epic retellings of the new testament.

i love my work.

as someone who studies medieval monastic culture, i've got some qualms with this "400 years ago" claim.