Ice avalanche

I started the day with this. You may have seen it, and the longer take posted by Chinese authorities, which confirmed it's not AI, and including more of the many people who fled the building, only to be engulfed by a torrent powerful enough to send buses bouncing. Or the other videos of enormous surges of brown and black water tearing down valleys in Nepal, sweeping away bridges, pulling down buildings, washing away all in their path... 

The apparently glacier-triggered cascade tumbled at the edges of my consciousness all day. The border crossing to Tibet looked familiar. I remember my anxiety as guards looked through our things, leafing through some books I'd brought and tearing out a few pages, worried they might not let me through. And when I later learned that at least a hundred Indian Kailas pilgrims are among the missing, it seemed to confirm that this was the very place we'd passed through on the 2013 Kailas kora. The scenes of jumbly Nepali towns downriver (the flood barreled through mile after mile after mile of them) brought back memories of busy streets full of market stalls and children. All gone?

I've established now that this was not the place we were, which was one river valley farther to the east, Zhangmu-Kodari rather than Gyirong-Rasuwa. (Unsurprisingly, Chinese border buildings all look the same.) 

But this makes the reality of the horror even greater, washing away the self-pity of my having lost places of precious memory, as if this calamity were somehow about me - and somehow containing it as that kind of loss. 

No such thing. All gone.

Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom

Checked out the twin exhibitions on the Tarot at the Morgan Library today, Renaissance Symbols and Modern Visions. I'm planning to take the "DIY Religion" class there. Tarot is not really my thing but, judging from last year's cohort, it's likely to be of more than casual interest to at least a few of the students. I'm not sure the part about the original 15th century Italian tarocchi cards will wow them, but the modern adaptations have something for everyone. For me, it was the Six of Trees (they're flying!) from Rachel Pollack's Shining Tribe Tarot of 1994.

Rising tide

The timing of the record is particularly notable. Global ocean temperatures are typically highest in March and April, following the austral summer, yet this record has been reached in August. It also exceeds the previous highest August value, recorded in 2023 at 20.98°C. This latest daily record follows a succession of monthly sea surface temperature records and near-records observed throughout 2026 across the extra-polar ocean (60°S to 60°N), underscoring the persistent warmth seen across much of the global ocean. Copernicus

Window dressing

First day of orientation, The New School still a work in progress! These workers are involved in the restoration of the Orozco Room murals.

Snap!

Tree damage in Riverside Park, perhaps from Thursday night's squall.

If you can make it out, imagine that opening of sky was once filled with a tree canopy, and look down to where the trunk of that tree was and, in part, still is. Then look left, to see where the snapped-off tree fell, and up and down to see the damage done to the tree on which it fell.

Hither and yon

(Hit the triangle to play this time lapse of this evening's splendiferous sunset. Remember, you can enlarge the video by clicking the open square, second from right on the bottom)

In stitches

More machine-stitched Gnarls, this time gracing a hoodie, on one many racks of collegiate merch on sale outside the University Center. I don't think we had quite this much in years past, our liberal arts students being too cool for collegiate gear, and the designers all in self-curated couture and vintage.

Fidgety

At the Parsons Teaching and Learning Days 2026 (part of which I attended in my faculty senate capacity), participants were encouraged to check out the university's various making centers, and explore 

possibilities for collaboration. I happened into the 3D Print Lab, where a batch of fidget toy narwhals were being made. Amazingly, the seven hinged parts are all printed together! Maybe one could do something with the cute tangles of discarded "filament" disposed of on the side?

DIY seminar

Not a moment too soon, I've started tightening the bolts on this year's iteration of "DIY Religion." Though we won't get into the syllabus until next Wednesday, I'll be meeting the students a week from today!

What do I have planned for them? Alum voices will again play a significant part in the class, but we haven't the budget for six guest lecturers this time. This gives us time for some field trips, including to the newly redesigned "Contemplation Room" in the University Center (whence the above image of a chill Gnarls) and to the exhibit on Renaissance and contemporary Tarot at the Morgan Library.

The broader argument of the course has changed a bit, too. If last year's point was "gosh, religion has always been DIY!" this year's will also explore the resources and limitations of DIY in religion and more widely. These issues came up in our discussions last time, as we noted the bias "DIY" seems to have against established communities and institutions and even relationships - but can an individual really know what they need? The questions are made more urgent yet by the inroads AI agents have made in young people's lives even in the last year, threatening all those relationships and communities (and institutions like universities!).

A familiar refrain from all my classes: what we do in a seminar is special, something none of us could do on our own. 

Wave crochet

I'm in love with this photo by Brazilian-Australian photographer Daniella Tommasi, a finalist in the "Adventure" category of the Ocean Photographer of the Year competition at oceanographic magazine. Everything's in motion, rippling and circling both towards shore and sea.