I'm Dan.
My name means "God is my judge."
Man is he going to be dissapointed.

Today's color is Summer Green.


"Yeah, I got heart, but I ain't got no locker, do I Mick?"

—Rocky Balboa


Birthday

Sat, Jul 15, 2023

I made this video for my dad in celebration of his 90th birthday back in April. I look like I've been at sea for months.

Talking to my dad on video. April 2023.

Dirty Word

Fri, Jul 14, 2023

Long curving bike stand full of bicycles for public use.

You don't always have to have your own.

Scream about losing your liberty and freedom. Fling the words communism and socialism into decontextualized rants about the benefits of capitalism.

We know what word really scares you. Your night terror word. A word that everyone understands.

Sharing.


Hardware

Wed, Jul 12, 2023

Julia Isbell, Morgan Phelps, and Shreyaa Brahmachari with their gold medals.

Julia Isbell, Morgan Phelps, and Shreyaa Brahmachari with their gold medals.

It was a very good morning for the KU Crew! A clean sweep at the Stars & Stripes USRowing Central Masters Regional in Oklahoma City.

I'm late in posting this, but back on June 24th, these three ladies and their faculty advisor Steven Maynard-Moody, won all of their events at the Stars & Stripes USRowing Central Masters Regional in Oklahoma City.

Congratulations to these KU Crew rowers! Way to represent!

Results are here: https://kansascrew.com/results-stars-and-stripes-usrowing-central-masters-regional/


No.

Wed, Aug 3, 2022

Feeling pretty good about what Kansans did last night.
No.
No to cruelty.
No to control of the many by the few.
And for many of us, no to primitive ideologies that destroy the essence of our humanity.


Camera Man

Tue, Feb 8, 2022

Cover of Camera Man by Dana Stevens.

First Paragraph:

“New Year’s Eve 1899 must have felt momentous even if you weren’t a four-year-old backstage at Proctor’s Twenty-Third Street Theater, still buzzing from last week’s Christmas gift: a big brown stitched-leather ball meant for playing an American game less than a decade old, which was just beginning to organize into professional leagues. Of course, Buster was still too young to grasp what it meant for one century to turn into the next, or for that matter what it meant that his parents—who had struggled so hard to find work in New York that winter that the three Keatons had at times gone cold and hungry—were suddenly flush enough to buy him such a lavish present."

—Dana Stevens, Camera Man


Lies

Fri, Jan 7, 2022

A warrior stands alone with his sword, facing an oncoming charge by soldiers on horseback.

Don't worry. I got this.

I understand everything I read.

Loneliness builds character.

A fiscally based environmental policy is smarter than an environmentally based fiscal policy.

Lima beans have any redeeming qualities.

Misty Copeland is real.


Blue Train

Thu, Jan 6, 2022

Composite photo of album covers, Joe Henderson - The Milestone Years, My Bloody Valentine - Loveless, and John Coltrane - Blue Train, and a photo of a real steam locomotive decorated with blue lights.

A cold walk in the dark tonight.

At home today it was obscure Chet Baker and then a few hours of this Joe Henderson treasure.

Out walking I took MBV to try and stave off the cold.

But I should have taken...

Because I ran across...


Admonish

Mon, Dec 13, 2021

Black and white photo of an old persons hands.

Photo by Berkan Küçükgül.

Am I a stupid, silly man?

Would I add my desires to the weight of her struggles?
Would I hold her a pixie, a sprite I conjure to relieve my lonely hours?

But yes.

I would have her fall into me and
feel what strength remains in my arms and
I would lift her up and kiss her eyes.

What is it to anyone else if I am a stupid, silly man?

—d.j.


A Walk Downtown

Sun, Dec 5, 2021

Hazy, dirty lens photo of coffee shop counter.

Photo by Kelly Moon

I went for a walk downtown.

I tried the door of a restaurant but it was locked. I went somewhere else to eat. I went into a store and bought a book by an author I've read before.
I stopped in a coffee shop and got a large cup. Paper or styrofoam? Paper please.

I walked home, taking a different route.

I don't know how far I walked. I didn't take the device that measures. There will be no more ledgering the vectors of trips like these.

I have a commitment to measure something I'll do later this month. After that, I will lop off those metrics forever and see what might replace them.


Mary Oliver

Mon, Sep 13, 2021

Black and white portrait photo of seated Mary Oliver.

Poet Mary Oliver

It was the birthday of Mary Oliver two days ago. Oliver passed in 2019. I am just now discovering the wealth of poetry she left for us.

This meditation on beauty...

The Metaphysical Club

Mon, Jul 26, 2021

Cover of The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand. The title is is superimposed on the stripes of an American flag.

First Paragraph:

“Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was an officer in the Union Army. He stood six feet three inches tall and had a soldierly bearing. In later life, he loved to use military metaphors in his speeches and his conversation; he didn't mind being referred to good-naturedly as Captain Holmes; and he wore his enormous military mustaches until his death in 1935, at the age of ninety-three. The war was the central experience of his life, and he kept its memory alive. Every year he drank a glass of wine in observance of the anniversary of the battle Antietam, where he had been shot in the neck and left, briefly behind enemy lines, for dead."

—Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America


Post Colonial Love Poem

Sat, Jun 19, 2021

Cover of Post Colonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz. Author is pictured with her hand covering one side of her face.

First Paragraph:

“I've been taught bloodstones can cure a snakebite, can stop the bleeding—most people forgot this when the war ended. The war ended depending on which war you mean: those we started, before those, millennia ago and onward, those which started me, which I lost and won—these ever-blooming wounds."

—Natalie Diaz, Post Colonial Love Poem"

Natalie Diaz writes of her heritage, her connection to earth and water, and her lovers, as if they are all part of the same emotional (erotically charged) experience. The synthesis is eloquent and moving.

Pulitzer prize for Poetry, 2021


Gideon the Ninth

Sat, Jun 5, 2021

Cover shows a drawing of a red-headed woman wielding a sword, walking through a swirl of bones.

First Paragraph:

“IN THE MYRIADIC YEAR OF OUR LORD—the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death!—Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth."

–Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth