“Of course we had to turn it down.”
Not going to win any parenting awards here, but I think I know who will be carrying on the tradition in my twilight years. (Clip art brilliance, I say!)

Not going to win any parenting awards here, but I think I know who will be carrying on the tradition in my twilight years. (Clip art brilliance, I say!)

I went back through this blog (and my Flickr account) on its 20th anniversary, retracing digital footprints made on what feels like a different planet. Here are some highlights.
Explorations of place in horror fiction — real or imagined, geographical or psychological — culled from my time on The Heavy Leather Horror Show 2023-2026.
Subscribe to the podcast or the email newsletter or just read through the archives posted here.
How I hauled myself, two teens, an 80 lb dog, and a whole load of crap 4000+ miles across six states in twenty days using an electric vehicle. And survived to tell the tale.
Stuff I’ve found interesting from around the web lately.
Last week, I joined colleagues at Public Data Project from the Harvard Law School library and Paul Ford of Aboard for “When Public Data Goes Dark”, a conversation about public environmental data and the tools available for monitoring it. I had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Jack Cushman, Gretchen Gehrke, Alison Smart, Abby […]
Continue ReadingStaring out from my new workspace this week I realized I was looking at Ellis Island in New York Harbor, the first American soil my great-grandparents stepped foot on 123 years ago. My son wryly noted that this means the average Tolva generational velocity is zero. This is mathematically true, though my actual distance covered personally […]
Continue ReadingPrefer to listen to this post? (It’s really me, not AI!) Greetings travelers! Do you remember what you were doing on September 19 last year? Perhaps, like me, you were avoiding any co-worker, friend, or family member enthralled by the very 1990’s Talk Like a Pirate Day parody holiday. You know these people, texting you […]
Continue ReadingYou're reading Ascent Stage, by John Tolva.

Only in Chicago doea a story involving the repeated calling of the cops on you parents get a “Very Nice!”
At what age do children start turning in work in Powerpoint? Or was that a Lotus Product?