What I’m Doing Now

Updated November 9, 2025

I’ve been my Mom’s caregiver since 2017. Mom’s 100+. She broke her hip in 2020 and taking care of her has of necessity been my primary activity since then.

In Progress

I am converting my sites from the bloat and Gutenberg annoyances of WordPress to static sites or to newer, simpler platforms than the current iterations of WordPress. This is slow work, in bits and pieces.

I am moving Something Pacific to Posthaven.com.

I am in medis res regarding moving my last two WordPress.org sites digitalmedievalist.com and lisaspangenberg.com to Ghost. The sites are better than twenty yeas old, so there’s a lot of clean-up to do first.

I’m watching Adam’s Neato CMS as a possible alternative for a site I’m currently hand-coding. I like Adam’s omg.lol project.

Projects

• I’ve started planning for 2026.
• I’m going to be more deliberate about logging birds as I see them, using a Field Notes notebook, and stickers.
• Mom has expressed a desire to track-and-sticker birds in her own notebook.
• We’re working on clearing “stuff,” so Mom can enjoy giving things to people now.

Technology

I am learning to use Alfred on my Mac via the MacSparky Alfred Field Guide online class, and lots of reading and experimenting.

Alfred experimenting has been briefly side-lined as I adjust to macOS Tahoe and the new Spotlight.

Current Media

• Still enjoying Celtic music Internet radio Thistle Radio with Fiona Ritchie via Soma FM. I have abandoned the Vox app, since it became unreliable. Instead I’m streaming via Apple Music and iHeart Radio by telling/typing to Siri: Play radio station Soma FM Thistle radio.
• Also enjoying the new-to-me human-curated Celtic music channels on AccuRadio.

Reading

• I am re-reading the previous three J. P. Mallory books before reading Mallory’s recently released The Indo-Europeans Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution is Rewriting Their Story. Mallory is the only archaeologist I know of with a solid background in Celtic and other early I. E. languages.
• I’m slowly reading Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations in two English translations (C. Scott Hicks with David V. Hicks, and Gregory Hays). I started with the Hicks translation and then moved to Hays. A Classics scholar and friend encouraged me to try Aurelius in Greek; it’s not Classical or Ancient Greek, it’s Koine. I have just enough Koine to manage reading the New Testament with a dictionary at hand, very slowly. I am resorting to the Greek text via Loeb fairly often.
• I took a quick look at Epictetus/Arrian in Greek, and it’s too difficult. It's a matter of syntax, more than vocabulary.
• I am taking a break from reading productivity books until 2026. I’m reading about productivity as research for my own book (not about productivity), but I mostly hate them.

I participated in the free Stoic Week program from modernstoicism.com in late October. It was . . . OK.

• I like the overall structure of the class, and the use of short quotations to think about during the day, and the support for meditation.
• I would have preferred less overt emphasis on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and more on Stoicism.
• There’s a little too much evangelical avidity with respect to CBT; understandable since the staff are largely CBT therapists, but off putting to me personally. I understand their close relationship, but I felt like I was being asked to learn two similar but not identical systems.
• I do not like the way the quotations from primary sources (Aurelius, Epictetus, etc.) were not accompanied by full citations, or in some cases, accurately quoted. Not a translation difference; they were silently emended.
• Would I recommend Stoic Week? Maybe? It would depend on the person. There are better options for an organized introduction to practical Stoicism.
• In addition to the primary sources (Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca) try:
  1. Brian Inwood’s Stoicism: A Very Short Introduction. ISBN: 978-0198786665.
  2. Take a look at Donald J. Robertson’s How to Think Like a Roman Emperor , ISBN: 978-1250621436.
  3. Some might find Robertson’s Stoic-inspired CBT-influenced workbook Stoicism and the Art of Happiness: Practical Wisdom for Everyday Life ISBN: 978-1473674783 helpful. It’s both very structured and very simplified. I suspect that the Stoic Week owes quite a lot pedagogically to Robertson^rsqu; book.
  4. I just now learbed that Ryan Holiday, author of The Daily Stoic (and many other books about Stoicism and living a Stoic life) also has a free seven-day Introduction To Stoicism email course.

Current Obsessive Passions

• Stationery, particularly notebooks, fountain pens, and ink, and both woodcase and mechanical pencils. I took the Starter Fountain Pen Challenge, and discovered I really like to write with the Lamy ABC.
• Bird watching: still seeing Northern Cardinals including at least two adolescents, House Finches, Black-capped Chickadees, and Tufted Titmice. The Bluejay has been back, but never lingers. I’ve seen White-breasted Nuthatches (or a Nuthatch) several times. The first Grey-eyed Juncos of the season arrived in late October.

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