These two got a magical Maine cove experience — sea kayaking alongside several pods of porpoises. Their surfacing breaths are so much more alive and grasping up close.

Two teenagers sit in a kayak off the coast of Maine, waiter in every direction

We saw Mission Impossible last night and loved it — sent me back to when I saw the very first one on a hot summer day at the Mann Chinese Theater in LA. Cruise came around a bend in one of those epic slow mo chase scenes and the whole theater erupted in laughter — the kind with utter joy in it.

I no longer think much about turning 50 — since the day has come and gone, months ago — but my inner disposition is still one of Re-Re-Beginning. What work is mine to do? What frame should shape my choices? Have I even been awake this last half century?

Last bit of summer

The backs of two teenagers sitting on the rocks on the coast in Maine at sunset

Derek Parfit on a consequential drive to Andalusia: sarahendren.com/2023/08/2… h/t @chrisfoley

And here’s a companion translation.

From autopilot to self-transcendence, the questions get deeper—from “we do what we want” to “what is worth wanting”?

Miroslav Volf et al in the new book, “Life Worth Living”—what’s worth wanting? Like a tour through midlife. But also useful for my students this fall.

A horizontal bar graph with stripes labeled “autopilot, effectiveness, self-awareness, self-transcendence” down one side and

I reviewed David Gissen’s The Architecture of Disability for this month’s Landscape Architecture Magazine. Featuring the Acropolis, Yosemite, and Madrid’s Salon de Pinos: an interdependent take on the classical allée: landscapearchitecturemagazine.org/2023/08/0…

The Salon de Pinos features trees held up by elegant red stanchions, making an architectural interdependence out of landscape.

six verbs for accessible design (hint: nothing “universal”): https://sarahendren.substack.com/p/six-verbs-for-accessible-design?utm_source=activity_item

Shearing layers in a building, and teaching the big ideas in and via design. sarahendren.com/2023/07/3…

Architect Frank Duffy's drawing of a house outline with concentric lines inside it labeled site, structure, skin, services, space plan, and stuff

Not so interested in Barbie, but loved going back through some old Gerwig interviews about Little Women + Lady Bird (the latter far less successful as a film, but great to see her talk out each process): www.youtube.com/watch & www.youtube.com/watch

My mom on her first kayak trip at age 75. We had a blast in Olympic Natl Park this week and on glorious Lake Crescent (low nitrogen, clear as glass!). I love that she’s sufficiently offline that she told me about a woman I grew up with who’s “wanting to be an in-FLU-encer, do you know what that is?”

My mom with gray hair on the front of a kayak on Lake Crescent—mountains in the background, blue sky above.

Planning a design class toward philosophy, not a philosophy of design: sarahendren.com/2023/07/2…

Olympic National Park! Unbelievable.

Old growth forest in the park has mosses growing on enormous tree trunks and incredible green growth in every direction

Same daughter reporting to the family chat on her other new July skills

Our family chat includes Freddie’s announcement in all caps: GUYS I CAN MAKE A LATTE

My daughter’s foray into printmaking this week. She has just the right mix of hand-eye acuity and relaxed playfulness.

A table is strewn with woodcut prints, some of red or blue fish, some black and white with wishbones and lemon com slices.

Currently obsessed with watermelon sprinkled with Stardust chili lime mix.

Seeking readings and resources for my new course on design for the assisted human body: sarahendren.com/2023/07/1…

Thinking about how one might organize an architecture/planning class around the themes of US transience, family structures, social mobility, the choice to stay rooted in adulthood, rather than chase jobs only. We got that discourse in Wendell Berry when I was in college, but almost nowhere else.

So pleased my teenagers can still get excited about building a fort on a summer day. How much longer?

A teenager’s bedroom has an elaborate fort made of blankets and pillows and suspended from chairs and bed frame.