The big thing this month was the 25th birthday of the spudart.org blog. My first post went up on September 28, 2001. And then on the actual anniversary, I totally forgot about it. I was out on my bike leaving a treasure chest in a brick wall. That seems about right.
» Blog post
Family
Thinking about winter and making tiny snowmen. This year, I want to put a heart inside each one, so when the snowman melts, a little heart is left behind.
» Bluesky
Art
Made a page for Lightbulb Memories. Every time you put in a new lightbulb, write the date and one line about your life on its base. Years later the bulb burns out and hands it back to you. I’ve been doing this since 2012. Now it’s a Try this page with a one-page printable PDF to keep in your box of spare bulbs. I laid out the printable in InDesign, and I’ve drafted seven short posts. Each one gets published when a bulb in our house burns out.
» Lightbulb Memories webpage
Pricing out a mini freezer in the basement just for snowballs. Fill it the first winter. Then every winter after that, take one snowball out and put a new one in. After ten years, I’d have a snowball from every winter.
» Blog post coming
Continuing my Letters on Foil project. My latest letter, Reflection of Autumn Decor, was done in a Trader Joe’s parking lot.
» Artwork page
Playing with the idea of punching holes in fallen leaves with a butterfly-shaped paper punch.
» Bluesky
Getting ready for National Origami Day on November 11 with Fast Food Origami. Make a crane out of a fast-food bag.
» Artwork page
Baseball
My 1990 Topps Mitch Williams lasted less than a block on the sidewalk. A car whistled at me while I was checking the bottom of my shoe. (I was wearing jorts, a Cubs shirt, and Cheez-It socks.) Then the card popped in half. I stuck one half to my 2016 Cubs championship shirt for the rest of the walk. Back home, more purple duct tape put his head back on his body. Sorry, Mitch.
» Artwork page
Online stuff
Made a page of 150 of my quotes, going back to 1997. Quote #150 is “Creating your own quotations page is possibly the most self-centered act possible.”
» Quotes page
Building a searchable archive of everything I’ve written. It started with spudart.org, christiannotebook.com, and 57hits.com. Then came 17 Twitter accounts (about 38,000 tweets!), Flickr, and my old 43 Things account. Since then I’ve added Pinboard, Bluesky, Facebook, Reddit, and my daily notes from 2019 to 2026. I even transcribed three years of paper notepads (2014 to 2016). It’s fun to ask it questions. Apparently I’ve been calling time “so fascinating” for 20 years without ever pinning it down.
From that archive, I’ve started to write scripts for a webcomic with my characters Etym and the Worm. Etym explains where words come from, like “landline,” a word nobody needed until cell phones.
» Webcomics coming
Considering a domain for a site like the old 43things.com, but for slightly weird projects. I’m picking between names like slightlygoofy.com and justalittleweird.com. I checked Google Ngrams, and “wacky” is a fading word.
Cleaning spam out of my newsletter list. A suspicious number of signups all come from one post, how many pieces of paper can you mail with one stamp.
Recently wrote about no longer being able to be seen in the background of Chicago’s free classical concerts.
» Spudart blog post
Tinkering
Built an eBay search URL builder, mostly for finding baseball cards.
» Sorry, no link. It’s a private tool.
Pondering
What makes an ordinary object into art? Does the act of paying attention change it? What about when the documentation becomes as important as the object?
Should each of my art projects get its own Instagram account? I like how consistent @streetworncards looks. That could mean 20 accounts, though.
» Instagram
Does “spudart” make people think of art made from potatoes? I’m keeping the name.
I took the Myers-Briggs test again and got INTJ, with J at only 6%. I’m pretty sure I’m INTP.
Reading and studying
Continuing through Judges. I’ve been looking at the five “minor judges” with very short stories: Tola and Jair, then Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon. Their years add up to 70. Jephthah’s violent story sits right in the middle of those quiet years.
Wondering whether Ibzan’s Bethlehem is actually Bethlehem of Zebulun. Jesus grew up in Nazareth, in Zebulun.
Digging into Samson’s story, especially his unusual birth, the lion and the honey, and the places he goes.
Wrote a post for christiannotebook.com about Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go.” The Hebrew for “in the way” literally says “upon the mouth of his way.”
» This will be published on Sunday.
Art and inspiration
Looking at the work of George Curtis Levi in the Glen Ellyn Public Library’s Trickster Cultural Center exhibit.
» I should blog about this.
Hillary Irene Johnson’s new project, Paper for the Unsaid, uses handmade paper and the mail as a place for grief and words that haven’t been spoken.
» Facebook
If our library’s MakerSpace ever gets a handheld 3D scanner, I’d happily take it downtown to scan sculptures at the Art Institute.
» Bluesky
Photography
Considering a tiny Sony E-mount 30mm f/10 body-cap lens. I have a Nikon D610, so I’m figuring out whether adapting it makes sense. [Hint it doesn’t]
» Amazon affiliate link
