I once heard of a multi-day workshop in leadership that unfolded from a single question, literally the only words the teacher spoke on day one, “How shall we proceed?’

“What do you want to learn?”  To a high schooler used to traditional schooling, the question can raise suspicion.  ”Aren’t you supposed to know?” some think.  ”Does it matter?” others ask.  This latter is particularly troubling to a progressive educator because it defines the student role in school as inert and passive, as if the curriculum could not respond to the curiosities of students even if it wanted to.  And in some schools it can’t.  The curriculum takes on a life of its own, becomes paramount, and must be satisfied regardless of student interest.  But interest in learning does matter.

“What do you want to learn?” communicates a value to students.  It says that the curriculum is flexible, that it is responsive to the human beings in the room, and that it is worth doing because of human endeavor, not institutional mandate.  The question puts student learning front and center, and it engages students in the daily business of learning.  Because all students, whether they know it or not, ask themselves, “Can I use this?  Is this about me?”  In some way, in order to engage students, the answer must be “Yes.”  If it is not, it doesn’t matter what is taught – and what is taught won’t matter.  Shakespeare becomes lifeless, solving for x becomes useless, and mitochondrial DNA might as well be alien.  Actually, alien DNA would be exceptionally relevant – but, again, only because it would put us, human beings, in perspective.  Point being, “What do you want to learn?” gives students a personal stake in their learning.

For far too many students, the only stake they have in school is the grades they receive.  That’s what ends up mattering, because the learning itself doesn’t do as much for them and doesn’t have as great an effect on their lives in the short term as their grades do.  But it should.  First and foremost, learning should be immediately useful and obviously relevant.

I once taught a journalism class that took as its primary project the production of the school newspaper.  The student staff chose the articles, researched the stories, wrote the copy, and laid out the paper.  My job was to teach the skills and understandings necessary to do so ethically and well.  The course was graded but all students began with an A and it took real missteps to earn something less.  The idea was to take grades out of the equation because what is written for the newspaper should be published free of coercion.  The prevailing interest in writing the news should be the good of the community, not personal gain.  And it worked.  One of my students said to me, “I have never had a class in which I tried harder, learned more, and in which grades meant as little.”  But I spent a long time thinking about why it worked.  I believe now that the students in my journalism class learned without concern for their grade because they knew that what they wrote mattered – learning to write accurately and ethically was of immediate use and obvious relevance.  And my students were asked the question, “What do you want to learn?”  In this case, it was more specifically, “What do you want to write?  And what do you need to know to write it well?”

Projects are certainly one way to ask the question, “What do you want to learn?” but they aren’t the only way.  The key is to trust students to be in charge of their learning, to have confidence that they know what they need to know, and to take for granted that they want to learn.

One of my colleagues in the Science Department tells me, “I don’t want my students to learn about science.  I want them to act like scientists.”  In his hands, science is not a subject matter, it is a methodology for discovering how the world works.  As scientists, his students ask questions, form theories, design experiments, and analyze results – and that leads them to ask more questions.  Along the way, he teaches them what they need to know to run their inquiry well and arrive at their own answers.  The process is fundamentally experiential and we are well versed in the experiential model of learning, but it begins differently – with questions to students: What do you want to learn?  Where should we begin?  How shall we proceed?

With these questions, education comes alive.

“The tying of a knot as a symbol of the commitment engendered by an unbreakable promise is an old and hallowed tradition – and it is indeed auspicious and fitting that Andrew and Alison have chosen this as a symbol of their commitment to each other and the unity that they together constitute.

But to what does this symbol refer? Why a knot?

Which is, afterall, a kind of tangle.  A snarl.  A messiness in one’s way.  And sometimes even an entrapment.

A knot, and the tying of a knot on one’s wedding day, can indeed be a reminder of the occasional snarl and messiness that inevitably attends human love and relationship.

But it is far more than that, too.

The real worth of the symbol, and the kernal of our focus today, is in its strength and its integrity.  It is in the bonds that hold in trust a promise that we endeavor to keep, to protect, to hold in the center.

Because a knot is a kind of promise, a promise of strength, support, and unity of purpose.

And the real worth of the symbol is in the once separate strands that weave carefully and intentionally together, preserving the integrity of each and blending to become … something else … something other … something more than either strand is separately… something indomitable only in its unity.

So we do not tie this knot lightly – its symbolism is rife.  It is an intentional act of purposeful creation – as is the life that Andrew and Alison have created together and will from this day forward continue to co-create.

In the strand that they will use momentarily to tie their own knot, there is a solid tangible core.  Alison and Andrew have chosen a polished sphere of tungsten carbide for its weight and its moment.  The bonds that enclose it and protect it are of leather.

And now, as I ask them to take hold of the separate strands, these two, who have intentionally and purposefully become as one, will tie their own indomitable knot.

[tie the knot]

And so it is, has been, and will be.

Alison and Andrew request the support of the community to make this knot strong.  They ask that you each, sometime before you leave today, make your way to the basket that will be held by Hailey and Natasha, choose a strand from the basket, and tie one knot onto the loop that Andrew and Alison have created in symbolism of the part that you have already played in their coming together – and of your ongoing support of their bond.”

Let joy be unconfined!

Promotional flier

The film begins with Rudolf Steiner, the early 20th century Austrian philosopher and, perhaps more familiarly, the progenitor of Waldorf pedagogy. In 1923 (2 years before his death) Steiner published a series of lectures on the biology and the community of honey bees. Famously, he warned that if modern apiculture of the time continued to meddle with and manipulate the natural life cycle of bees, we would see an alarming collapse in global honey bee populations in the span of 80 to 100 years.

The prediction comes to light today mostly, I think, because it seems to have come true. Isn’t that right? Had nothing come of it, it seems to me we would never be citing it.

In any case, it has – and is – coming true. Commercial honey bee populations are declining in this country consistently by 30-50% annually, much of what we eat is dependent on honey bees pollination, and people are concerned about where this might lead. Common sense eater, sustainability activist, and wonderful writer, Michael Pollan is quoted in the film saying that 4 of every 10 bites of everything we eat is the result of pollination. It is a seemingly obvious connection – without honey bees we would not enjoy nearly so many almonds.

The film proceeds from that premise in typical documentary style, from alarming factoid to alarmist interpretation, to persuade us that the bees are in peril, that we caused it, and that we can do something about it if we care enough and if we develop an enlightened perspective. (You can sense my caveat, I bet.)

The film is not objective (but I didn’t want it to be) or balanced (and I was grateful that it took a stand), and it wafts into philosophy and mysticism without warning (which is my own proclivity, as well.) It is a position statement and a rallying cry – and as such it succeeds. I am not sure there is an anti-honey bee statement to be made. Still, the commercial beekeepers come out looking criminal, interested in the bottom line and next year’s income. The only large-scale beekeeper interviewed is shown saying, “It’s a financial concern. We are in it to make a living.” The issue is clearly more complicated than that. Consumers have to bear some of the culpability for their carefree consumption of monoculture crops – almonds, corn, soybeans.

And the film sidesteps entirely the issue of how bees came to be in this country in the first place. The film’s implication is that we need to get back to a wilder, more natural state in which bees live on their own and pollinate without human interventions. The historical fact is that honey bees were introduced intentionally to this county only in 1622 – it is a glaring omission to ignore the fact that honeybees themselves are an invasive species. There simply are no wild hives in North America. They are all feral and introduced and non-native. The film does not take up this issue, but instead takes for granted that bees are here, for us, and we must be their caretakers.

But in the end, from this reviewer’s perspective, it is a worthy viewing. There are wonderful scenes of deeply connected and charismatic nature activists doing what feeds their souls. There are intriguing philosophical and spiritual digressions, and there is a strong message of human place in nature, not as dominator or manipulator, but as stewards.

And it presents the sexy side of the issue seductively. It is easy to get on board with this cause and to feel good about doing your part for a fuzzy, softly buzzing insect that frequents flowers and makes something as sweet and sensuous as honey – sometimes stinging when we misstep in its presence but giving up its life in the gesture. As one student remarked in the afterglow of the film last night, “I think I’m going to get a hive.”

The brood pattern looks okay, not great, but of more concern is the patch of darkened larvae to the left.  Below is a close up.

The larvae are formed well but they are mottled – not brown, but dark grey and black.  The developing pupae in the capped cells all look fine – white and glossy.

Seen it before?  Know what it is?  Here is another clue.  I recently added three frames of brood and nurse bees to this hive to bolster the population and give them some more bodies to warm the hive.  Currently the population seems to be increasing, there is more activity at the hive entrance, and a lot more eggs being laid.  Also, we have had a long spell of cold, wet weather.

So, with

• low population
• cold weather
• recently added brood from a different hive

this is chilled brood.  Not an emergency, it just means that the in the hive could not keep these larvae warm during development and they died.  The fact that the other brood is okay and the population is increasing is a good sign.  My bees will likely get around to cleaning out these cells when they can and when the population swells enough they will be able to take care of their brood properly.

I have always wanted to quote Thoreau to my colleagues – one more thing I can check of my must-do list.  The speech went something like this:

Why go outside?  Some wonder: why do we do it?

Why have outings?  Why hike in the mountains?  Why go SCUBA diving?  Or snow camping?  Or kayaking – when there is so much good stuff to do – inside.

Why learn to surf?  Or climb rocks?  Or hike in the desert?  Or dive for abalone?  These things are hard – and they can be scary.  I can fall and get hurt, and I like to play it safe. So why do it?

And why spend the time and energy to learn the skills that these activities require?  Why learn to identify a wild mushroom?  Or the print of a coyote?  Or the call of Red-Tailed hawk?  These things take time.  And I don’t have a lot of time.  I have things to do.  Homework.  Emails.  Staying current.

So why do it?  Why go outside – to spend time I don’t really have – to do things that are hard and possibly unsafe?

It is not an easy question to answer.  Not really.  Not today.  Not for us living in a day and age in which we define progress as technological advancements in the art and science of  – standing still.  Think about it.  If we were to catalog all of the major technological advancements of the 20^th century – and if you were asked to identify the one distinguishing feature common to them all – you would have to say that 20^th century technology gave us a greater and greater ability to be less and less active.  20th century technology gave us the ability to produce more by doing less.

The radio, the telephone, air conditioning, light bulbs, the automobile, the airplane, instant coffee, television, the yo-yo, the parking meter, drive in movie theaters, the photocopier, the microwave oven, fast food, Velcro, cake mix, super glue, the credit card, the VCR, the integrated circuit, the microchip, the calculator, post-it notes, the lap top computer, cell phones, the internet, email, the tablet computer.  All came about in the 20^th century in the pursuit of productivity – and all require almost no effort to use.  Progress is in some way defined by how little effort is required to produce a product or an effect.

What does progress in this light do to our sense of self-efficacy, our physical sense of our bodies existing in the world by the effect they have on our surroundings?  Do I exist in any meaningful way in the world if my body does not exist in an efficacious physical relationship with its surroundings?  Consider it?  How do you know you exist except by your effect on your surroundings?

You know, I spend a lot of time in the Outings Office – which is adjacent to the Science office.  My desk is not 35 linear feet from the desk of my good friend and colleague John Hicks.  And yet, more times than I care to own right now I have picked up my phone, which is within arms reach of the chair in which I sit, and I have dialed extension 274 – which is the numerical identifier of the phone which sits on the desk of my good friend and colleague John Hicks.  Why?  Why do I call instead of taking myself on a short jaunt into the Science Office to speak to my good friend and colleague John Hicks?  Because it is easier, it is quicker, and I don’t have to go outside to do it.  Of course, right?  No.

It is not a matter of course.  In fact, it is inconceivable, because it is not easier.  Not in the long view.  I memorized John’s extension.  Okay.  Not hard, right?  What is it again?  Right.  272.  And to do that I had to print out the Voicemail Extensions list – think: printer – manufacturing, shipping, diesel, electricity, ink, paper – I had to find his extension listed there – think about all that went into creating that list and the need for it – all those extensions, and all the work that goes into assigning them, reassigning them, and sending out electronic copies of updated versions – and then I pushed some buttons on my phone that elicited a few sounds from that device and I waited to hear John’s voice – think about what goes into that.  Yes, you get the idea.  Is technology of this kind really easier?  Or does it merely duplicate simpler existing techniques?

It is not easier or quicker to stay still and develop a dependence on technology.  Technology has done some wonderful things, of course  look at us here, now, inside this gym with heat and lights and a microphone and – but a dependence on technology is an addiction like any other.

For one thing humans grew up outdoors, understanding ourselves in relation to the natural world of physical things.  Real things.   Our brains evolved in response to outdoor challenges and we developed the ability to make meaning in natural settings.  Real is still more meaningful and more salubrious to us than virtual – and we can tell the difference because we are human and we are alive.  Nature – and its physicality – makes sense to us on a very deep level.

And the inverse is also true.  We make sense to ourselves in nature.  Nature doesn’t lie to us.  It doesn’t sugar coat the truth and it doesn’t respond one way or the other to the stories we tell it about ourselves.  It’s neither impressed with our successes, nor is it disappointed with our failures.  Nature is impervious to charm and wit and spin and elocution.  And yet, it speaks to us.  Every time we grow hungry, thirsty, sleepy, weary, or cold our deep and true selves are in dialogue with nature.  Even if we aren’t listening.  Nature reminds us in the language of our native tongue of the rules we must live by, the boundaries of our existence, and the limitations of our physical being.  Nature defines us.

So why go outside – to spend time – doing things we find challenging?  Because we are alive, because we are human, and because being alive means something by our relationships with the physical world.

But don’t take my word for it – I might just be nuts.  Listen to your self.  Listen to your peers.  And listen to our old friend Henry David Thoreau from the second chapter of Walden.  Listen to how many time he uses the word life – and live:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.  I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.  I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

Marin Academy – I invite you – I encourage you – I implore you.  Get outside and into your next excursion.

“Ultimately, the question is always going to be, ‘What price are you willing to pay?’  The rewards of the Element are considerable, but reaping these rewards may mean pushing back against some stiff opposition.”

Sir Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, Viking, p155.

Not just throw-away advice, it seems to me, although, unfortunately it has the ring of platitude.  In fact, I think all great advances, in whatever field and whatever context, were revolutionary – tending to turn things around or upside down, demanding sacrifices and causing anxiety.

What’s deceptive about Sir Ken’s words, what seems platitudinous is how easy it is to accept in hindsight.  The “of course” factor is huge, as it is in all platitudes.  But there is no “of course” when you are turning your world upside down, swimming up stream, making sacrifices, and causing anxiety.  There is no “of course” in the moment.  Still, that is what people tend to say.  ”Of course, it was hard.  Of course, there were sacrifices.  That is part of the deal.”  But that belies the severity, the pain, and the difficulty experienced.  The great and noble stories unto myths we pass around the family of relatives who gave up everything to follow a dream, uprooted their families to reinvent their lives, faced the fear of failure for the chance to greater success, don’t include the reality of the pain, don’t allow the experience of the anxiety and the difficulty.  What we experience in stories like that is the the inspiration and the success.  As if the price paid for change is somehow a little less relevant.

And it is so much easier to go with the flow, to make lemonade, to take it easy.  But those aren’t the stories we tell.  The story of uncle so-and-so who “was never particularly satisfied with his lot in life, but he made it work.  Day in and day out he just got along, kept on.  Sure, somewhere deep down he had something like passion, a dream that he always said he couldn’t remember, but what he was really good at was going with the flow, taking it easy, playing it safe.”  We don’t tell that story – because success depends on adversity.

Weird, eh?  Why should that be?

And great advances are always perpetrated out of necessity, not luxury or privilege.  It is too hard to swim upstream – unless you have to, unless there is no other option.  Think of pacific salmon that die after struggling to invent the next generation.  (And listen to the inspiration in that: struggling to invent the next generation.  It gives you chills.  But I wonder whether if the salmon had a choice, they still do it?  Would they still swim up stream?)

Looking back we say it was all worth it, but in the moment, how can we know?  We can’t.  In the moment, we trust.  Change requires either necessity or faith – which is belief without support, believing in something despite the evidence (not purposefully believing in something that is contradicted by evidence – some people do that and that practice is perverse.)  But, you don’t always need evidence to know something is true.  Or right.  Or apt.  Or necessary.  That’s intuition.  And as the poet Rumi says, “There are many ways of knowing.”

These Eastern Woods, pine and hemlock, maple and birch, are a place of sound.  I am habituated to depend on my eyes – as are most of us, I believe – but this place is so full of ambient sound that if I were deprived of my sight, somehow prevented from sensing with my eyes, I feel sure this place would come alive for me through sound.

In fact, I have found, puttering around this stout cabin, these shady lands, that in this place hearing is more keen than eyesight.  How often I have heard a whistling birdsong or the echoing knock of a woodpecker – and not seen its maker!  When I can’t see, I can still know.

Two days ago an enormous crack split the woods, a precipitous sound both startling and exciting.  I was inside but I heard it plainly.  Then, following close, the wrenching sound of falling, the breaking of branches and the upheaval of earth.  It all culminated in a booming thump and crash that seemed to roll through the woods like thunder, lingering in the air and falling off slowly.  The lasting reverberations I felt more than heard.

(When a tree falls in the forest, it makes a sound.  Be sure of that.  Sorry.  Couldn’t resist.)

My first thought was of the kids and I hurried out to the front porch.  I didn’t know where they were at that moment and for all their scampering and knocking about in the woods, I thought it could have been them pushing over a tree. (!)  An absurd thought it was and easily dispelled.  The kids, of course, were safely perched on their favorite boulder and just as rapt by the sound as I.  They sat there, all three, frozen where they had been when the first crack sounded, staring off through the timber with wide eyes.

“Did you see it?” I called to them.

They hadn’t.  “It was over there!”  They all pointed.

“What was it?” my youngest said.

The instinct to look for what one hears is not mysterious.  With just a few notions – evolution, self preservation, natural selection – it is easy to see, so to speak, why we do it.

But much goes on in the woods that I hear and never see, and my world, the suburban world of career and commute, is seldom so invisible.  It is disconcerting at first to be so suddenly reacquainted with the significance of sound.  But it is a necessary upset.  It is disconcerting in the way one knows one needs to be disconcerted, a healthy kind of growth.

It is like recovering from an injury I didn’t know I had sustained, learning to hear again.  I didn’t know, wasn’t aware, that I was slowly going deaf.  Like seeing through prescription lenses for the first time – I hadn’t known what I wasn’t seeing.

Ultimately, the desire to see is too strong, the spectacle is irresistible.  Later that afternoon, we all went to investigate the epicenter.  A large white birch, having grown over the years on a bending angle in search of light, now lay in an awkward sprawl across the road to the upper header.  It had taken with it two other trees, both small hemlocks.  We stood and surveyed the scene.  The ground uphill where the tree had stood and the roots had broken was a chaos, like a bomb crater, stones and soil, moss and roots still hanging in the air.  The heavy trunk lay where it had landed, ponderously inert in the deep rut it tore in the ground.  You could almost hear the reverberant thud all over again.

“Wow!” my youngest said.  It was all any of us could say.

The acoustics of this sylvan venue, this landscape of sound, are astounding, enviable for any theatre, lecture hall, or symphony space – because the woods are, of course, all of those things.  But the imagination is always second to the real thing.  A live encounter always requires actually being there.

But it is not.

Those whose habits are in walking the woods, those who watch the trees and come to know how each individual grows, know different.  The tallest and straightest trunks in every direction are evergreen.

The light from the east has not yet penetrated the stands of timber that surround our little house, though it is quite light by now.  In the growing ambient illumination, the hues of green intensify, vary, and the forest deepens as lighter shades of green appear beyond others in long views through holes in the foliage.  The forest is waking up, and the color comes on, grows as things in the forest begin.

The air is still still, though just barely, and the mist that took all night to gather still hangs in the trees, though not for long.  It is not like the fog where I come from that lays in thick sheets, condenses, and drips from eucalyptus branches.  This is a true mist, gossamer, subtle and immaterial, like an ambient quality to the air, a characteristic of atmosphere more than a presence.  So thin you have to ask yourself if it is really there.  Maybe your glasses just need cleaning or you still need to shake off your sleep.  No matter.  As soon as the sun needles its way low through the trees and lights on branches, it will be gone, dissolved back into the fabric of the air, the forest itself shaking off its own sleep, the torpor of the night.

I see it now, through the mist that rises from my mug of coffee, the first bright rays of sun.  It will all begin in moment.  My wife will be up and padding in for coffee, the kids will rise not long after that, and my attention will be needed elsewhere.  But for now, I am here, witnessing the advent of day in the northern woods.  And I feel lucky.  The sun’s rays for now newly shine through the leafy and needled canopy.  But in a moment, that too will be gone.  There are clouds in the sky today, perhaps showers are in store, and the sun will likely be periodic at best.

Sitting here in the slow waking, I feel myself blending.  The boundaries blur and what separates me from the world of trees and rocks and flowing water grows thin.  Couldn’t I just stay here?  Blend in?  Grow wild and lean with original energy?  Maybe I would grow hair, become long in tooth and claw.

That temptation is always there for me in places like this, calling from somewhere pure and permanent.  The instructions to blend are written indelibly in me – I suspect in all of us – and this place feels like my first home.

But I am not wild, not only wild, that is.  I am not wholly wild like that chipmunk, not merely wily like the trout in the stream or the coyotes I heard through the dark last night.  And I am not solely dependent on my wits to survive.  I am a creature of comfort and society.  My fate lies in the company of people, in love and language and thoughts and plans.

But here, for a time, I am closer to original being.

It is not hard to feel.  Give yourself moments of quiet to watch what goes on around you in wild places and you feel it seep into you – the immensity of what we are living, the indifference of nature that takes care of you not for love or obligation, but because somewhere underneath the routines of career and commute, you still know how to live in harmony with nature and nature’s laws.

It is permanent, inscribed where you cannot erase it, your place in the world.

As it seemed to me, and as I explained to my father one night after dinner, there wasn’t enough space for all of the people who were already here. How could I, in good conscience, consider starting a family and adding a few more hungry bodies to the planet? They would just eat up more of our food, breathe up more of our air, produce more waste. Why would I add to the burden, the overcrowding, the misery of the world?

My father regarded me for a moment – perhaps he was considering where to begin or how to explain what he wished had been more obvious to me. After a moment he said, “You know, raising a family is everything. It is what humans do. If you don’t have kids you are not even in the game.” It was one of the best – and most straightforward – pieces of advice my father has ever given me.

My own marriage is 15 years old now and continues to be the most pleasing endeavor of my life. I have three beloved children and a daily sense that I am fully – often too fully – in the game. And I feel that I owe more than I know or can name to the example set by my parents. Like the concentric rings on the surface of a pond that begin with an event, a fish rising or a stone thrown, and expand and grow more subtle by the moment, until eventually they encompass, invisibly, the entire body of water, I am nurtured and moved by the long and continuing collaboration of two people who made the decision to marry 50 years ago. It is an enduring legacy, evidenced by me and my brothers and our families. We are all ripples in the pond.

With this I honor my parent’s 50 years of love and marriage, perseverance and compassion, challenge and growth. Thanks for the example and for encouraging me to get in the game.

The commonplace things I gathered were not for wealth or status, not for show, and I had a hard time explaining to people, when they noticed, why I had a pocketful of stones.  Or an arsenal of carefully carved wooden staves that had been covertly harvested from neighbors’ yards.  Or a varied display of locks I had picked up here and there when they had come within reach. I once found a large ring of tarnished and corroded keys mislaid in the woods around my childhood home.  There were dozens of them.  I felt I had struck it rich.

My father, an architect, once brought home an impressive collection of outdated Formica samples.  Hundreds of them.  Magical tiles, already arranged by color or texture on a silver beaded chain.  ”No one – no one in the world has this!” I thought.

It was like praying.  The youthful devotion of a secular acolyte to worldly phenomena.  I hunted the value latent in everyday things.

I see the same affinity in my own children, though the expression of it is quite naturally individualized in each of them.  My son, in particular, likes to collect special things in his pockets.  Rocks, significant Lego pieces, at one time Pokemon characters, but he has grown beyond those now.  I sense he is not so fickle as I, a quality that will serve him well in life.  Whereas I remember gathering a new category almost daily, he likes to hold on to things over time.  He is slow to change and quick to appreciate and understand the essential worth of a worthless thing.

His bedroom is perpetually a mess, as you might imagine, but it is nearly impossible to dispose of  any clutter.  Because it is not clutter.  Everything is special, magical, of incalculable worth – and sometimes of hidden, perhaps ineffable value, which I find frustrating beyond end.  I confess I fantasize of one day stripping the place when he isn’t looking, though I know it will never happen.  I could never do it.  It would be like pulling a hermit crab from its shell.

He knows as well as I, there is truth to be found in collections of everyday things and in keeping what you find.