One of my favorite date nights over the past year was this one: a speakeasy hidden within another bar. One that made me feel like a Crazy Rich Asian.
This place was a lot of fun. I loved the ancient Chinese medicine theme, the secret passageway to get in… and the food was pretty great. Not to mention cocktails- loved the earl grey bourbon mix I had towards the end, and the scallop spaetzle.
Eager to go back!
Most maps you see are pretty misleading
But I usually use a quick little India-Greenland test to see how off one is.
India is about 1.5x the size of Greenland… if I were to try and trace the country shapes on a globe and cut them out, you can see this pretty well.
But here’s what most paper maps show instead…
Greenland is often way larger than India… sometimes four times as big.
The reason this happens is that distortion is inevitable when you’re going from a 3D sphere to a flat projection, and whenever you try and compensate you usually wind up with a funny shape and have to splice through countries.
It doesn’t have to biased against countries closer to the equator though and in fact could favor them. But don’t forget most map makers live in the Global North.
Happy Easter to all, and especially to Kai & Juniper celebrating their first.
“The more I grow, the less I want to see my faith as a weapon to be used and more as a world to be explored.
God cares more about me being free and whole than arguing and winning. I want to live grounded in as much love and liberation as possible.”
–Dante Stewart
My current aesthetic is all adventure-meets-domestic.
I love this crew so much. Among many other things, they’re my constant reminder that God is good, that so some of the seemingly impossible things we hope for are just around the corner, and not to wish ahead a single day.
Adventure is a Family Value:
Maurice Sendak was once asked to share his biggest piece of advice about raising children. “Love them,” he said.
At first I was like, well duh. Isn’t that just super obvious?
One day last week, Rhys had a pretty rough day at preschool… long story short he was bit by another kid and that’s not too uncommon at that age, but you wanna know that he’s safe and something you’d have to repeatedly worry about. It was easy to jump into problem solving mode, talking to the school and what not. Now Maurice Sednak’s advice makes a lot of sense to me. The most important thing in the moment was making sure my kid felt loved and safe. Sometimes that response can get buried by overthinking and problem solving.
We figured, getting to go to the zoo on a weeknight wouldn’t be a bad way to show Rhys some love. Kai and Juniper went to the zoo for the first time, and we found the new area opened as kind of an ultimate playground.
Bad days happen, but it’s a lot of fun to respond to someone having a bad day with some creativity, spontaneity, and lots of love.
Panta Rhei.
Ever hear of that phrase?
It literally means ‘everything flows.’
It’s attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus to describe how change is constant. He said “You cannot step twice into the same rivers; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.”
Even if the river were static, it couldn’t be the same thing twice, because you yourself are changing.
That’s been an especially helpful reminder for me over the past few months, as I’ve been living in a stretch of my life that is simultaneously extremely demanding but incredibly sweet.
At the day to day level, it’s also felt like the same day over and over again, and as someone who thrives off breaking routines and going to the unfamiliar, it’s been challenging in ways that go beyond the physical tiredness.
But lately, I’ve also been delighted more and more by the small moments in between and the sheer sweetness of it all.
How do you handle a creative dry spell?
I get into it in my newest video.
See my prior post or visit me on YouTube for the full length version.
The Washington State Ferry system has got to be the most underrated public transport system in the US. It’s not much of a surprise to Washingtonians, but it gets little buzz outside the PNW.
You can drive, bike, or walk onto the ferry and for a low cost it can take you to some of the coolest spots on the Puget Sound or Olympic Peninsula.
I’ve taken this thing to the San Juan Islands, Bainbridge Island, Seattle, Anacortes, Orcas…
I love being able to get out of my car and explore around the passenger area. Sitting at one of these tables staring out onto the ocean is a vibe.
Of course, I can never spend the whole ride there. As long as the weather allows, I love climbing on to the deck for the open air.
First time I took my kid he absolutely loved it- and here’s the thing that for me cements it as the best public transport in the U.S.
We totally saw an orca.
Shoutout to everybody in the jumbo sized family club.
This is what it looks like when me and my cousins get together.
Some of my cousins.
On one side of my family alone I have 20. And now we’re all grown, lots of us with kids.
This means we don’t get to see each other all that often anymore, but when we do it looks like this.
01 April 2022 // San Diego, California
02 April 2022 // San Diego, California
03 April 2022 // San Diego, California
04 April 2022 // San Diego, California
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26 April 2022 // Corona, California
27 April 2022 // Carson, California
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30 April 2022 // Torrance, California
This is perhaps the most consequential photo I’ve ever taken.
Not necessarily the best, but perhaps the most consequential.
I find a lot of joy and meaning in my life- adventures, community, projects that do good for the world… but this wasn’t always the case. As a college student at the end of 2009, I thought my life felt a bit empty. Directionless.
I wanted to live a better story. I decided to take on the project of taking a photo every day throughout the year.
This photo was from a New Years party in 2010. I don’t even know most of these people.
I figured it would at least encourage me to pay more attention to my surroundings and to train my eye for beauty. I also figured that if my photos were constantly of the same mundane thing every time, it would signal a need to go do something different.
I’m not the first or last to do a project like this. It’s not especially original, but what’s special is the impact it had on my life and the fact that I’ve now been at it for twelve years.
I’ve captured the evolution of my love story and family.
Countless adventures around the world.
And my journey to use creativity to solve world problems.
This was the start of my journey as a storyteller, and why I see my life as a story and the world around me as a great big story full of interconnected threads. That’s why this is perhaps the most consequential photo I’ve ever taken.
Right around this time last year, so much was happening. A year to the date was when Deanna first found out we were pregnant again… she’d tell me a little bit later on Easter. Yup, it was on April Fool’s Day and I guess the joke was that she didn’t know there were two kiddos in there just yet.
This was shortly after we took a family trip to Arizona and got to take Beignet to the best dog park ever.
Hopefully that makes up to the fact that we haven’t been to the dog park a whole lot since Kai & Juniper showed up.
Chagga and his neighbors have not had easy lives. I met him in Thailand, but they aren’t Thai. They’re part of an ethnic group called the Lahu and they originally lived in Myanmar.
They faced a lot of persecution, though. When he was younger they had to escape the Burmese military, which is how he wound up in Thailand. Things got better but they were still tough.
As noncitizens they couldn’t own land. And local governments and industries often tried to have them kicked out of the forest that they lived in and relied on for survival.
Being trained in forest management didn’t just support their livelihood, it also helped them make a case to stay.
When I met Chagga, he was with his grandson. I asked him if he thought the boy would have a better life than he did. Kind of an obvious question but he replied.
When I was his age, we had to put down our animals because their sounds would give our location away to the soldiers.
Of course he is going to have a better life.
Life is so freaking domestic right now! But I’m happy.
I heard Laurie Santos talk about how many young parents experience life on two separate tracks- on one hand the minute by minute experience is kind of rough. Taking care of littles is demanding. On the other hand, it does give you satisfaction on a totally different level.
This window in my life is such a wild paradox, it’s hard to know how to even start talking about it. Living in survival mode has made it harder to stay creative, inspired, and present.
The hardest part of having three kids under three for me? It isn’t the lack of sleep, the rising costs of everything, or the fact that at all times, I’ve got to be changing somebody, feeding somebody, or holding and consoling somebody… it’s the Groundhog Day-ness of it all. The adventures, diversions, and breaks from the routines have all been a bit out of reach for the past few months, and if you know me, you know I feel the most alive around the unfamiliar.
But talking about it that way doesn’t seem to do justice to the fact that it’s also the sweetest season of my life and I’m continually astounded with how much of a distinct personality I see out of each child. I almost physically feel some invisible happiness meter start to surge whenever I’m reading books with Rhys, or simply holding Kai or Juniper against my shoulder.
I guess it’s simply a lot. And that’s kind of what’s beautiful about it.
This month I’m celebrating FIVE YEARS as a climate storyteller. Back in 2017, I started applying my creative skills to the crisis that defines our generation, and it’s been a wild time.
I’ve been doing this through years of wildfires, hurricanes, and heatwaves, a new IPCC report, the student-led climate strikes, and climate consciousness entering the mainstream.
Climate change is urgent and devastating and is already wreaking havoc on millions of lives. Having that narrative as part of my daily work should be overwhelming, right? Some days, for sure! But there’s also so much more to it… more than I would’ve thought just getting started.
I’ve learned so much, and I get excited about how there’s much, much more to learn.
Here are a few:
You can’t talk about climate without talking about the Global South… or better yet, talking WITH people living there, mostly listening. And you’ve got to use present tense, too. It’s not some projected threat. For Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, South Asia, and a host of other places, climate change is already messing things up. International development was sort of my pathway into climate, and those realms are completely inseparable.
You meet the coolest people along the way. I’m talking about my colleagues. I’m talking about biologists. I’m talking about farmers. Sometimes climate scientists get portrayed as over-serious. Their subject matter is serious, they’re some of the coolest people I’ve met. Every time I’ve interviewed someone with an ecological research background, it’s a whole bunch of adventure stories in epic locations. On the days that climate work seems the most draining, the people are the best pick me up.
Speaking of people and experts, nobody knows EVERYTHING. The field of climate is simply too broad. Different solutions require knowledge in technology and engineering, others in biology, but also city planning and design, policy, advocacy, communication, education, food systems, animal behavior, psychology, and for me… storytelling. It’s not so much about top-level experts, but people applying their little zones of passion.
Esperanza showed me all the varieties of corn products she grew- from red corn to blue corn and huitlacoche. I told her she had the same name as my grandma, and she told me about how her community was able to curb deforestation.
“Our friend said that we never really understood the importance of planting trees before. We didn’t understand that we needed a large number of trees to breathe. We thought as long as we had air around, it was fine. But in order for one person to have life they need trees.
For one person, we did the math. If there are 4 or 5 people in a family, how many trees do those family members need to breathe? We counted how much we were planting, and also the rate at which we were cutting down trees. Raising awareness is a big task. But people saw there was a big need and they started planting trees.”
Shortly afterwards, she started to get emotional. “Thank you for hearing my story,” she added. “I am just one woman and I have not gotten a lot of formal education. People don’t listen to us very often.”
And yet Esperanza has worked with her neighbors, and together they’ve done more to reverse deforestation in their area than I’ve seen well-equipped, well-educated PhDs accomplish.
We often scam ourselves by thinking people need some sort of status to make a difference. Identify a need, start doing what you have to, and you’ll be surprised where that takes you.
Seriously, did they just add my mom as a character in Molly of Denali? My kid loves that show and theme music slaps!
Okay that wasn’t specifically my mom, but the show creators did a brilliant job of nailing the look of a mid60s Filipina Lola- from the Lola cut to the glasses to having to go to ‘dance fractice.’
Arielle Tuliao did the voice and told me she just channeled her own mom.
This episode itself was a really cool look at a part of the Filipino diaspora that you don’t see featured very often- Filipinos in Alaska, many of whom share and mix traditions with native Athabascans.
It’s the first time I’ve seen a show- especially a kids show- go deep enough to recognize the diversity within Filipino cultures, using culturally specific details like a Kapampangan flag.
This show’s pretty next level with their representation game.
Telling climate stories has taken me to some incredible places and introduced me to remarkable people.
We don’t need to wait around for some carbon zapping technology that doesn’t exist yet.
We have lots of solutions, many based in nature, that just need proper investment.
We have thousands of communities vulnerable that can best implement those solutions. We just need to center those stories.
And we need to remember that climate isn’t abstract. Climate action is compassion at a global scale.
