A substantial aspect of my practice studies and creates maps. Recently, I have been looking at maps of global patterns of drought. This isn’t something I am hearing much about. These patterns are being dramatically exacerbated by climate change.

Earth Day 2026, is the official launch of Tidal Flushing. This new project is about how climate change is dramatically changing the Earth and how we might adapt to those changes. I have begun work on visualizing what that looks like. Preliminary sketches will be at Swale House on Governors Island, NYC, the first two weeks of June 2026, viewing by appointment. Over the next sixteen months, I will share my plan for 2027, when I will mark the divestiture and abandonment of my long-time coastal studio to the sea with a major hybrid public event.

In each of these essays, I have prefaced my text with an image from my own practice that epitomizes my thinking in some way. In this essay, I’ve attached a map of the worst-case scenario of our future, swallowed by the sea and losing control over habitats we have depended upon. I discussed this map with Dr. Jim White, with whom I’ve worked for almost twenty years, in a Zoom about my new project, Tidal Flushing.

A diary can be a work of art. Sofia Tolstoya, wife of Leo Tolstoy, a father of civil disobedience, was a genius emotional worker who chronicled her labors in her diaries while he blew hot and cold, alternately demeaning and uplifting her while gobbling up attention from the whole world. She propped up her husband’s ego and narcissistic persona throughout their long marriage, to her personal peril.

Rule #4 of my Trigger Point Theory is that metaphors are idea models.

All societies have stories, myths, and sayings that distill their wisdom, and values as teaching tools. Metaphors influence society by projecting aspirational values. Metaphors can project such vivid pictures of comparison that a powerful vison takes shape, whether or not they are grounded in or supported by truth.

It is the first day of Spring and I am ready for something new. My new work will be “Tidal Flushing.” The lead image for today’s essay is a death mask of my father. It illustrated a previous essay in this series and was painted shortly after his passing . It is based on a photograph I took immediately after his death. It represented what I was just beginning to understand about death, life, tidal flushing, the power of the sea and the vulnerability of the land. Now, I am facing the last years of my life and my life’s inventory must negotiate reality.

The sitting President of the United States recently stated about the current war in Iran, “...some people will die.” Indeed. When you reach an extreme of inability to communicate between systems, war inevitably means some people will die. It may be worth considering why we reach those extremes.

In the natural world, change is determined by laws of physics. Energy in, energy out. In a rhythmic flow of energy for example, ocean tides carry water in, and energy out, as nurturing soil, maintaining a constantly changing wetlands system.

Chaos is terrifying but it’s also a source of fertility. I took a week off last week to think about the uncertainty that chaos creates and what it takes to live with that uncertainty. Two useful qualities I decided were essential, are humility and patience. Faith and trust help but are more sophisticated skills.

This will be brief.

When people disagree, whether in the bedroom or in rooms of power, it is always easier to get angry than to listen and learn something. When power is asymmetrical, too often a disagreement is resolved with bullying and gaslighting instead of some simple reality-fact checking…