What I’m Doing Now

Updated February 18, 2026

I’ve been my Mom’s caregiver since 2016. Taking care of her has of necessity been my primary activity. She passed recently, two weeks shy of her 102nd birthday. She will be missed.

I will be closing her estate and moving, not necessarily in that order.

In Progress

• Site conversions from WordPress.
• Creating a small private site for residents of the senior community where I currently live.
• Emptying an apartment, moving, and figuring out what’s next.

Projects

2026 Changes.

• I posted a bit about Twelfth Night, Or What You Will
• We got about 15'' of snow in 24 hours, proceeded and followed by wicked cold temperatures in - F territory.

Technology

• I expect to finish the MacSparky Alfred Field Guide online class this week.
• I plan to start the MacSparky Apple Productivity Field Guide 2025 soon.
• I am having fun with a FujiFilm Instax Mini Link 3 photo printer.
• I lost several files on iCloud. I am fairly certain that the data loss was a syncing failure, and inclined to blame the local WiFi (which I do not control) at least as much as Apple. I’ve subscribed to a paid DropBox account.
• The new Kobo Remote for turning pages is fabulous. I can place the Kobo on a stand close enough to easily read it, and turn pages with the remote.

Reading

• I created a reading plan for 2026 to re-read Tolkien’s The Hobbit followed by the LOTR trilogy. This will be the first time in decades that I’ve read all four books in close succession.
• Re-reading Tom Shippey’s books The Road to Middle-earth (2005 3rd edition) and Author of the Century in tandem with LOTR and Hobbit.

Links

These are some of the thought-provoking things I’ve read on the Web.

• Via NPR: To keep AI out of her classroom, this high school English teacher went analog

  Were I still teaching, I’d probably do much the same, though I might use LLMs at the final draft stage.

• Scott Galloway, author and marketing teacher at New York University, created a Resist and Unsubscribe Website listing companies that worked directly with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or have so much influence over the American economy that a month-long strike / boycott in February will slowdown in their growth and / or profit will draw attention to market decline — and drive a policy change around ICE facist tactics.

  Even if you aren’t going to participate in a boycott, check out the companies abling and abetting ICE.

• Via The Guardian:“The global publishing platform Substack is generating revenue from newsletters that promote virulent Nazi ideology, white supremacy and antisemitism, a Guardian investigation has found.”
• “Rex Brasher (1869–1960) is one of America's great bird artists. His vast body of work — including nearly a thousand original paintings and lyrical descriptions of every bird species in North America — has remained largely unknown to the public for the past century.” You can see all of his paintings now at rexbrasher.org.

My Now page was inspired by David Sparks’ Now page.

You can see previous Now pages, AKA Then pages.

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