If you read last week's post, you'll know that I went to a funeral. It was lovely and heartwarming and sad and hard. I had a wonderful time seeing so many old friends, some who I hadn't seen in three years and some who I hadn't heard from in twenty five. I feel immensely blessed to have been able to go participate and mourn with those that mourn.

The funeral, however, was 800 miles away. My wife and I knew we had to be there, priced flights, and decided to make it a road trip. And, let me tell you, it was delightful…

When I was much younger—from 1997 to 1999—I was a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was young, very young. Men typically went at 19 years old, at the time, and so did I, and I was called to serve in the Four Corners area. Now, this was before the internet existed in any meaningful way—there was certainly no Wikipedia—so I knew virtually nothing about New Mexico before I got on the plane and flew there on April 9, 1997.

One thing I knew absolutely nothing about was Native American history….

Update 9-19-25:’

I have finished the second draft of the book! I am super happy with it. I’m going to do another pass over the first third, because I think it starts a little slow, but once that is done, I’m going to send it to some of my readers for feedback.

Guys, I’m just excited to be playing in this world again—to be dealing with Benson and Becky and Maxfield, and some entirely new characters who I adore.

I have had a really terrific writing day, a good day at work, a great session at therapy—I even caught an avocado on its perfect day of ripeness. It was a good day…

And then I looked at the news.

Things can be so disheartening, especially now, especially when you have skin in the game and it just feels like there’s nothing left that you can do. You’ve voted. You’ve written your representatives. You’ve protested. It’s very hard, on days like today, to know what to do….

So for reasons that may or may not (they may) relate to the fact that I am working in a long-awaited book involving aliens, I have been reading a lot of Carl Sagan. Sagan has always fascinated me in a way that few other science communicators do: he presents science as not only fascinating--many science communicators do that--but as something that is intrinsically spiritual and humanizing.

There are other astronomers I find interesting, like Stephen Hawking or Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who talk about the universe in glowing and effusive language, but they don't talk about why the mightiness of the universe makes humanity so magnificent. If anything, many of these scientists make astronomy devalue humanity, rather than the other way around.

Anyway, all of this to say: Carl Sagan is pretty great….