Hanif Abdurraqib

February 2, 2026 in Black History Month, poetry | Tags: | Leave a comment

Black history month, #2

I discovered this poet thanks to The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, which has introduced me to many contemporary poets, many of them African-American. It is a testament to the power of using one’s platform to move beyond the narrow and the known. So many people are writing, have always written, great poetry, and only a tiny sliver of them are dead white men, so hooray for the Academy of American Poets for shining a light on so many others. I loved the poem linked below when it arrived in my inbox one day, and then I read others by him and felt a kinship there.

Please click on through to read How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This, or to hear the poet read it. The page also has links to other poems of Abdurraqib’s.

Black history month, #1

February 1, 2026 in Black History Month | Tags: | Leave a comment

Aerial view of suburban Levittown, PA, circa 1959. Accessed at Wikimedia Commons. From http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hist/thumbnail429.html, public domain.

I want to spend the month here exploring and celebrating African-American history –which is of course US American history. Today’s item is not reason for celebration, but lifting the burden of the lies we tell about why Black people tend to live in segregated and inferior neighborhoods?–that is. Check it out:

White-Only Suburbs: The History You Didn’t Learn

Given the impact housing has on generational wealth, access to education, vulnerability to crime, even access to groceries, our country’s racist housing policies have dug a hole out of which African-Americans are still trying to climb.

Daily drawings, late January

January 30, 2026 in art journal, drawing outside every day, drawings, uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Chilopsis tree in our yard
Loose-skin orange
Leonotis leonurus (?), Holly Park
L. leonurus (?) seed pods, Holly Park
Organ, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Minneapolis
Succulent
Water bird at Heron’s Head Park
Fence shadow, Heron’s Head Park

All ink pen on 5″ x 7″ or 17 x 17 cm sketchbook paper.

Daily drawings

January 16, 2026 in drawing outside every day | Tags: , | Leave a comment

My practice: go outside and draw something I see every day. I’m not being purist; if it’s pouring, or I wait too long and it’s dark, I draw inside, and in a pinch, from a photo I’ve taken. It has been a very rainy start to the year, and once I sat in our enclosed entryway while the rain fell on the poppy leaves just outside.

Fern in our yard
Palm, Balboa Park, SF
Pine cone
Oceano dunes (from photo taken last summer)
California poppy leaves
I hungrily watched the golden-hour light on the trees along Market Street as I was donating blood, hoping I would be done before the sun went behind the buildings so I could draw that light and the shadows it cast. But by the time I was released to the canteen, the light was flat, and as I ate my snack, I drew this tree’s outline instead.
Downtown building, SF, from a photo taken last summer
Lichens on our tree
Leaves of an unidentified shrub in Opera Square, Van Ness Ave,  SF
Pine cone
Blueberries, from photo taken in our yard
Leaf of Chilapa x tashkentensis
Luna

After the first day, I have drawn with a gel ink pen. I might return to graphite pencil at some point, but right now, given my tendency to get fiddly, I’m enjoying the constraint of having only black to work with. These are all 5″×8″ or smaller, the size of my current sketchbook.

Spiritual practice for the coming year

January 1, 2026 in drawing outside every day | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Several years ago, inspired by my friend Janet and her daily butterfly practice, I drew a leaf of a California tree every day for the entire year, mostly from photos. I really enjoyed it and stuck with it, which is rare for me for a daily practice. So I am doing something similar this year, combining two spiritual practices: I will go outside and draw something I see there.

I’m not going to be a purist about it; if it’s pouring rain, I’ll draw indoors (ideally, drawing something outside from indoors). I thought I might have to do that today, but the rain let up and I went out to our back garden and drew a fern there. I’ll post my drawings now and then with the tag, “Drawing outside every day.”

Weeds, mostly dandelions, in the cracks between concrete paving slabs on a terrace in Tuntorp, Brastad, Lysekil Municipality, Sweden. Photo by W.carter, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Getting outdoors and making art are also both good for my mental health, even if I only do them for a few minutes. I’m prone to anxiety, and various studies show that spending time outdoors and drawing both reduce anxiety–certainly for people like me, who enjoy them. I don’t need to go to a big natural expanse, though I am very much looking forward to pulling over now and then on my commute through Marin and Sonoma Counties and drawing some of the more scenic stretches. Even spending attentive time with a weed growing through a crack in the sidewalk is an experience of awe and beauty.

What I read in 2025

December 31, 2025 in books | Tags: , | 2 comments

Interior Bernal Heights Library, L Maule. CC 4, Wikimedia Commons

Well, more or less. I lost the notebook I used from January through mid-July, which is so frustrating, because I put everything in my notebooks: sermon notes, journal entries, weekly schedules and to-do lists, lists of books I want to read and have read. However, the sermons can be recreated from audio (thank you, Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, for recording and posting your services), old to-do lists are unimportant, and as for journal entries, when do I ever reread them? I did manage to recreate a lot of my books-read list by looking up what I borrowed from the library, though, so here they are: most of the books I read in 2025. NF = nonfiction.

Old Babes in the Wood, Margaret Atwood

System Collapse (Murderbot Diaries), Martha Wells

Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret, Benjamin Stevenson

Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik

Uprooted, Naomi Novik

See No Stranger: A Manifesto of Revolutionary Love, Valarie Kaur (NF)

A Sinister Revenge, Deanna Raybourn

The Author’s Guide to Murder, Beatriz Williams

Noor, Nnedi Okorafor

Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi

The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer (NF)

The Kaigu Preservation Society, John Scalzi

One Way Witch, Nnedi Okorafor

On Looking, Alexandra Horowitz (NF)

Fire from Heaven, Mary Renault

All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (reread)

Long Island Compromise, Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Marble Hall Murders, Anthony Horowitz

Everything is Tuberculosis, John Green (NF)

What It Is, Lynda Barry (NF)

James, Percival Everett

The Berlin Stories, Christopher Isherwood

Kills Well with Others, Deanna Raybourn

My Murder, Katie Williams

Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison

The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison (reread)

Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father, Alysia Abbott (NF)

All Over Creation, Ruth Ozeki

Everyone Is Lying to You, Jo Piazza

The Snow Child, Eowyn Ivey

If You Leave Me, Crystal Hana Kim

Asta’s Book, Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell)

Grasshopper, Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell)

A Dark-Adapted Eye, Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell; reread)

The Face of Trespass, Ruth Rendell

Martin Chuzzlewit, Charles Dickens

The Time of Five Pumpkins, Alexander McCall Smith

The Rose Field, Philip Pullman

The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Amy Tan

The Impossible Fortune, Richard Osman

The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan

Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

How High We Go in the Dark, Sequoia Nagamatsu

Ten Minutes and 38 Seconds in This Strange World, Elif Shafak

Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado

Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward

Love Marriage, Monica Ali

And Then There Were None, Martha Noyes (NF).

Forty-eight books, three of which were rereads. I won’t try to rate them or summarize them or even start my favorites, but I’m happy to say more about any of them if someone asks.

What’s a book you read this year that stuck with you?

Too much too soon

November 4, 2025 in religion, religious education | Tags: | Leave a comment

The latest Ask Isabel column answers a parent whose child has learned about a heavy topic–from a church Sunday school.

Ask Isabel: Advice for the Spiritually Perplexed and Vexed

By the way,  if you enjoy Ask Isabel, two things you can do to support it is subscribe (it’s free) and share the column on social media, or with any friend who might take an interest.

El Diá de las Muertos llega

October 29, 2025 in fiestas & holy days, Oaxaca | Leave a comment

A lot of the decorations around doorways and such use fake cempazuchiles, but the real ones are also brought in by the truckload.
The corners of the Zócalo, the main square, have these entrances set up.
On the Alcalá, the pedestrian street running south to the Zócalo, there have been lots of dances, songs, theater performances, and parades–more than usual, or I guess all I can be sure of is more than six years ago. I think the intensity has increased because of the fiesta.
I hope the person who did this performer’s makeup knew a lot of the applause was for them. Just gorgeous.

Nopal

October 26, 2025 in art, drawings, uncategorized | Tags: | Leave a comment

Why I carry my sketchbook and notebook with me. When our feet get tired and it’s time to sit and rest, I can write or draw, which makes the extra several ounces in my backpack very worthwhile. Yesterday, when the heat and elevation forced a rest, this nopal cactus across the street from the Santo Domingo church caught my eye.

Pencil, 5×8 sketchbook page

I think I’ve probably adjusted to the elevation now. I used to dream of going to Macchu Pichu, but I don’t know if I could now. A jump from sea level to a mere 5,800 feet–Oaxaca’s elevation–takes me a couple of days. As with so many things, sufficient water and sleep help a lot.

In Oaxaca

October 24, 2025 in Mexico, Oaxaca | Tags: | Leave a comment

The street just outside the place we’re staying
I don’t want to eat gelatina for breakfast (or ever), but I feel a pleasant nostalgia seeing it set out at tiny little home-based establishments.
Pomegranate tree
“Movimiento,” a beautiful mural a few blocks away. Oaxaca’s indigenous people show up here and so many places.
Is this what happens if you let an impatiens grow into a tree? It might be. 
Día de los Muertos is coming soon and already celebrated, with cempazuchiles (marigolds) everywhere.
This made me laugh. The sign asks drivers please not to park in the pedestrian crosswalk, marked by steel bumps and orange paint. It’s having no effect.

I was headed to a café several blocks from our place, but gave up–I think Google Maps is out of date–and went to the local huge supermarket for oat milk and other necessities.

I love the way in their Mexico marketing, Kellogg’s just drops the euphemism and calls Frosted Flakes “Little Sugars.” Like Calvin’s “Sugar Bombs” in Calvin and Hobbes.
There’s great stuff at the supermercado, though, like an entire bakery with lots of fresh bread.  Naturally, I brought home one of these crocodiles.
Walking a different route home. We, too, can have sidewalks like this if we get rid of all those pesky regulations and the agencies that enforce them. It looked like a drop of 10-15 feet. Fun!
And when you come to the curb, a chasm opens between the sidewalk and the street. In case you missed the opportunity to plummet through the concrete before. US Americans, we could save so much tax money and our boring, “safe” sidewalks would soon disappear!

We had breakfast at the house and then headed to the centro. Altars and special decorations for the fiesta are everywhere.

What pictures can’t capture are the smells, like the heavenly scent of tortillas cooking all through the neighborhood. The feel of the round bumps of paving stones underfoot, and the necessity to duck now and then where a guy wire crosses the sidewalk. The sound of the very annoying truck driving all around with a recording of a woman speaking that was loud yet unintelligible. When the truck passed close by me as I explored, I realized she was listing all the tamales the truck driver sold. Yum. Maybe tomorrow I’ll flag it down, though I hate to reward such an obnoxious method of advertising. And then there were the sounds of dogs distantly barking, roosters crowing, people chatting with their neighbors. It all adds up to a place so familiar and beloved, I can’t believe we stayed away for six years.

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