Jack Cheng: Sunday

Rufus turned two last month.

We’ve been trying to teach Rufus not to flip over his dinner plate or throw his toys, and I often find myself saying, in the moment, stuff like, “Your plate wants to hold delicious bagels and blueberries for you, but it can’t do that if it’s upside down on

We took Rufus to our downtown YMCA for his first toddler swim class, which was perfectly scoped to half an hour.

This month Rufus had his first overnight at my parents’ place without us (he did great!).

I’m thinking about formats today.

This week I joined Every as a senior editor.

Happy Lunar New Year, friends.

Current events have me thinking, oddly enough, about plant sociability.

I came home Christmas week after my second residency teaching at Antioch MFA and promptly got sick.

Our new internet plan included a free year of a mobile line so I picked up an old Pixel 3a, installed a minimal launcher (the truly excellent Before launcher, which I also have on my e-reader), and am trying it out as a dumbphone.

I don’t think I’ve ever experienced here, in Michigan, an autumn as stunning as this one.

My former creative director Marty passed away.

A short documentary project I’ve been working on for Building Beauty is finally live: A tour of a house Christopher Alexander designed for two writers, Ann Medlock and John Graham, in Washington State.

I tried to sit down and do another of my intermittent daily routine check-ins, but everything I wrote was more or less about Rufus’s schedule.

Every Friday at noon, Julia and I have a household meeting.

Rufus turned a year old this month.

What started out as video editing for a couple of part-time gigs has turned more into video production, shooting, and—new for me—directing.

This weekend we went to a plant expo to pick up some native perennials for our garden, and spent all weekend planting said perennials and tidying up the beds along our fence.

Last letter I forgot to include what was maybe the biggest thing on my mind when I was in China: the stark difference in cost of living, even compared to a smaller American city like Detroit.

I’m in Hainan, China, having just last week crested the hill of a slate of author visits.