Isak's Blog

Happy Friday,

Cue the music, brew that pot. This week I learned my plumber plays the hurdy-gurdy at the Rennaissance Festival, so I guess that’s as good a reason as any to go for the first time?

Here are 10 interesting things worth sharing this week:

1. I listened to this interview with Maria Popova of “The Marginalian,” one of the few blogs I’ve followed for over a decade — and I eventually realized I needed to pull it up and transcribe the entire thing for myself: her lack of productivity, no editorial calendars, why archives are deeper than the internet, walking four hours a day to think (making her writing merely transcribing) — there’s just so much packed into this interview.
2. I’m on a roll, because I also listened to Michael Pollan on the same podcast talk about how writing is like a compost heap, laundry lines as narrative, why what we read before bed matters, and so much more. I loved that Pollan’s influenced by Hoaglund’s nature writing — I read his essay collection “On Nature” in 2014 and it had a big impact on me.
3. This letter on nostalgia reminds me of that line from Patricia Lockwood: “You’ll be nostalgic for this, too, if you make it.”
4. My favorite niche, hyper-specific thing biographies do is when they go way, way back to explore how an area’s geologic history affected the person they’re writing about.
5. If you’re a writer, maybe you can relate to this short article about the importance of deadlines? This Friday Favorites post would never make it without a weekly, firm deadline holding me accountable (my Tuesday blog post got deferred to today, in no small part because the deadline was less firm!).
6. This 1:43-minute video of all the weird sounds David Brynes makes in the Talking Heads discography is hilarious and something I’ve long wanted to create myself.
7. Really relate to Carmen Maria Machado in how her writing happens in short, concentrated bursts. As alluring as a disciplined writing practice is, it’s always a fantasy to me!
8. That said, a lot of authors know to show up even when they don’t feel like it.
9. One Main Character of the Day on BlueSky this week was a writer at Axios (the place that writes news for short attention spans) who described how he uses AI to help him read books his attention span can’t handle. But more interesting is this Defector article responding to it about why we read.
10. If you like books and maps, boy do I have a website for you.

See you on down the dusty trail,

Happy Friday,

Cue the music, brew that pot. I’ve been listening to Charli xcx all week and soaking up the dog days of summer before it’s pants season.

Here are 10 interesting things worth sharing this week:

1. A few years ago I watched “Adaptation” and became really interested in how Hollywood and writers can use “The Hero’s Journey” to structure stories, which led me to read Vogler’s “The Writer’s Journey” and Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” So I really enjoyed this 90-minute interview with Steven Pressfield on “How I Write”, who talks a lot about structure, Hollywood, writing good stories, and why we like The Hero’s Journey so much.
2. I’m still listening to nothing but “No One Lasts Forever.” Voice samples in music are nothing new, but it is interesting how the speech-to-song illusion can make certain statements feel so musical.
3. I wrote about my love for vintage mass market paperbacks — those gorgeous, portable books I recall from 60s and 70s lit classics and 80s horror — and why I think they’re the best book format.
4. This Tuesday was August 4, 2026 — the day of Ray Bradbury’s 1950 short story “There Will Come Soft Rains,” which makes it as good a time to read it as any.
5. I have a few meals I’ve made several times a week for years (popcorn, bean bowls) — and beans are a hot food item this year — so I’m thinking about that time Beau Miles ate nothing but canned beans for 40 days then ran 50 kilometers. (If I did this I would consider coffee a form of bean and have a better adjustment.)
6. Every couple years a local news station will talk about why people still like typewriters, and I’ll watch them every time. This one’s about Gramercy in New York City, the same store Ruth Ozeki got hers.
7. “I can’t dance, I’ve got two left feet!” “I thought he was kidding.” “But I wasn’t, I was born with two left feet.” “Best In Show” is a really funny movie, and after talking with a few people older than me, a once-popular movie that’s not talked about much anymore!
8. Sorry, this newsletter is becoming a place I share everything I see about typewriters, but Andrew Loura’s restoration of his family’s 1919 Underwood was very satisfying.
9. I finished Stephen King’s “Duma Key” about a painter grieving a life-altering event who moves to a vacation community and slowly uncovers its dark past as it impacts their creative process. Which is exactly the same premise as “Bag of Bones,” which I read earlier this summer. I love when writers return to the same well to explore the same idea in new ways.
10. I relate to a lot in this video essay about ordinariness feeling boring, being stuck in the past or future, and overthinking instead of experiencing your life.

See you on down the dusty trail,

Happy Friday,

Cue the music, brew that pot. I’m sending this newsletter out before killing time at my local bookstore before catching a matinee of “The Odyssey” — an ideal way to start the weekend early.

Here are 10 interesting things worth sharing this week:

1. I’ve been listening to Charli xcx’s “No One Lasts Forever” on repeat since Tuesday, the one with filmmaker David Cronenberg talking about death, mortality, and art. Goosebumps. So I loved this deep dive into the song with Charli, AG Cooke, and Finn Keane. I assumed they sampled an interview, but Charli personally recorded him! It reminded me of Steve Reich’s “It’s Gonna Rain” and “Different Trains,” and it was neat to hear AG Cooke confirm it.
2. Seriously impressed by this person’s dedication to building a typewriter-inspired writerdeck, complete with 3-D printing a typewriter shell, creating an LED word counter, and a sliding screen. Puts my writerdeck (ViWoods e-reader plus a clacky keyboard) to shame!
3. I don’t take for granted how great music streaming is — you can listen to anything, whenever you want! A miracle. But there’s also too much to choose from, so I’ve been enjoying curated radio shows more: American Routes, David Byrne Radio, Mark Hoppus’ After Hours Radio, and the weekly Bob Dylan radio hour on 103.3.
4. I might have to find the 37-volume set of Pliny writing about the natural world in the first century A.D. to dip in and out of like Valeria Luiselli suggests. Same but different: I snagged a copy of NYRB’s “The Journal” from Thoreau, a collection of entries about the natural world — its secrets and experiences.
5. One of the best openers I’ve read in a while: “Take capelin, a small silvery fish in the smelt family. Now add salt. Then throw those two ingredients in 110 vats, each of them about 10 feet tall, and let them sit in a defunct factory for over two decades. The resulting stench might haunt an entire community, as it has the people of St. Mary’s, a coastal town of about 300 people in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.”
6. I’ve been enjoying ending my day by reading a snippet of this New Yorker essay about an international scandal and “Alpine Divorce” — a bonkers story for outdoorsy folks.
7. “But there is a value, too, in language that dissolves like an afternoon in July, the last rays guttering in the branches as you close your book and go inside.” Great writing about the “Beach Reads” here — but I’d be lying if I didn’t say summer and winter are for big books! Something about the long seasons around the solstice make me want a long story, not an episodic one.
8. In a huge loss for Minnesotans and people with good taste, Pearson’s — of Salted Nut Roll fame — is closing in Minnesota. I await an in-depth, 3,000-word tribute to the snack and will report back.
9. I’m more of a “scribble it in a field notes notebook” type of guy but I very much love the appeal of creating a digital garden to have some semblance of organizing what I read online.
10. And finally, 30 seconds of David Lynch to end your week: “Stay alert, do your work, don’t worry about the world going by; it doesn’t mean you can sit around and not do anything, you’ve got to get your butt in gear and do it.”

See you on down the dusty trail,

Happy Friday,

Cue the music, brew that pot. When did summers get so busy, and how is it already late July! I’m trying to soak in some sunny days, but they’re passing me by.

Here are 10 interesting things worth sharing this week:

1. “Writing is hard because your human brain, the one that’s been running and updating the biological human survival software for roughly 200,000 years, is genuinely convinced that putting words on a page might kill you.” There’s neuroscience behind why our brain sees writing as quietly dangerous and how meditation can help.
2. Hot people read books, as it turns out. It’s funny how we collectively lament the end of reading thanks to social media and AI, but simultaneously there are so many book clubs and buzz over new subgenres.
3. The Lo-Fi Cinema YouTube channel have the best video essays about the creative process and identity, and their latest about uncertainty and rigidity in your artistic path really hit home for me. It reminds me of a Rumi quote I stumbled upon this morning, serendipitously: “As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.”
4. Everyone’s talking about “The Odyssey,” and I’m waiting until Tuesday to see it at our old three-screen theater (cheap movie night is the best night!), but it has me remembering this great interview with Emily Wilson, the first female translator to put The Odyssey and The Iliad into English. (Tyler Cowen quickly jumps between topics with guests, which is jarring at first but youg et used to it).
5. Emily Wilson also knows how to have fun: When we were all quarantining over the summer of 2020, she decided to read and act out a bit of “The Odyssey” every day, complete with wigs, sunglasses, and other props she had in her home. Having fun with your work is important!
6. That reminds of of Austin Kleon’s chapter “Don’t Take Things Too Seriously” from his new book “Don’t Call It Art”: find who’s having fun, pretend it’s all a comedy, and play the fool. “Ask yourself frequently, ‘Am I having fun?’ The answer needn’t always be yes. But if it’s always no, it’s time for a new project or a new career,” says Stephen King.
7. I’ve lifted a few pens from restaurants I love as a memento to a good memory (a few restaurants of which have now closed), so this tight essay about pilfering restaurant ephemera is very relatable. (I also share a love for Field Notes, Pilot G2s, and abhorring Bic Clic Stics)
8. Brendan’s latest video about why we run is really about why we do anything: to keep doing it. (See: writing, reading, lifting, going for walks)
9. Nearly every day, Kent Peterson types up a short, interesting essay or thought on his typewriter, pushes a few hand-carved ink stamps onto the paper, snaps a photo, and uploads it to YouTube — and this recent post “Lessons in Slowing Down” gets at why, I think, and also shows off a particularly old typewriter (he has a big collection!).
10. Finally, a watch that tells the time and also shows exactly how I plan to spend my weekend.

See you on down the dusty trail,

Happy Friday,

Cue the music, brew that pot. One of my favorite camping spots in northern Minnesota had an AQI above 1,600 this week, and my mouth tastes smoky while I’m typing this many hours south of there.

Here are 10 interesting things worth sharing this week:

1. PurpleAir is my favorite way to track air quality and monitor the summer smoke situation, recommended by someone who’s dealt with more wildfires in Colorado.
2. “There is such a thing as righteous anger, because that is not about you and your personal ego; it really is the anger you’re feeling on the behalf of the vulnerable.” Anger can be a powerful, empowering, and positive force when facing systemic injustices like climate change. (It’s been my main climate emotion for 7 years and I recommend it.)
3. I’m also a fan of having a creative nemesis. (My former nemesis wrote climate disinformation in Minnesota.)
4. “’It’s much worse than we think, and sooner;’ [the child in my dream said] to whom I said ‘no duh child in my dreams, what do you think this singing and shuddering is, what this creaming and reaching and dancing and crying is, other than loving what every second goes away?” Ross Gay’s “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” is one of my favorite poems, and it’s great set to Bon Iver.
5. Adults are seven times likelier to be advocating/taking action against climate change if their primary emotion is anger rather than hope. For every two clicks a person moves on the anger scale, they move one click on the activism scale.
6. I’ve apparently replaced “Big Book Summer” with “Stephen King Summer” after finishing “The Body” now listening to “Duma Key” and reading “Fairy Tale.” Something about King’s characters, from 11-year-old boys to high school teenagers to adults, makes his stories interesting even when the plot lags or the endings are unfulfilling. I grew up in a small town, and there’s something genuine in his simple, rural characters.
7. “Humans are not as dysfunctional as we think, we can work together to produce something joyful.” David Byrne on why he replaced one drummer with six so they can move around on stage.
8. I’m fascinated by people who commit to a seemingly pointless and time-intensive project , like Van Neistat typewriting, cutting out, and arranging every word of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” or the local legend riding Valley Fair’s Excalibur Roller Coaster (my childhood favorite) over and over, day after day, in search of — something.
9. When I grew up, the internet was a place; specifically, a computer tower and monitor on a desk in a room in our house. Now it’s in my pocket (and seemingly in my hand without me noticing), so I like this idea of using a scrolly phone and a scrolly chair to make it place-based again.
10. Very excited that Adventure Journal, a quarterly print mag that’s my ride or die (been subscribing since Issue 18 and want to buy the first 17) has archived their entire catalog to subscribers.

See you on down the dusty smoky trail,