Today I’m delighted to share the first annual Lightplay Gift Guide. I had a lot of fun putting this together. Inspired by my pleasure in reading other folks’ gift guides, I decided to collect some of my own idiosyncratic taste and try to boil it down into a compact package. I hope it’s entertaining—and who knows, maybe you’ll find something for someone you love… or for yourself! For your browsing ease, I have sorted the gifts into five categories: I. For Your Lifehacker UncleII. For the Writer in Your LifeIII. Youthful Pleasures for All AgesIV. For the Literary Political JunkieV. For Cooks and… Read More »The Lightplay Gift Guide (2025)

Dear Reader, I recently happened to count up all the posts I’ve made on my blog jasper.land over the last three years, and the number was 460 posts. That seems like a lot! Yet I have the distinct suspicion that no one beyond my friend Norma (thank you Norma!) actually reads my blog. Which is a pity. Writing little blog posts is fun, but having them be read by people you respect is the real dream. I was telling my friend Alex about this last week, and he pointed out that this newsletter Lightplay doesn’t have to always be centered… Read More »Involuntary Perspectival Shift

Dear Reader — This is the third time I’ve written this introduction. The first time was a few weeks back. I spent my only free afternoon in a long time hunched over my notebook in a busy cafe, trying to get it down on paper. The second time was earlier this week. I sat cross-legged on my couch, laptop perched on lap. Again I spent hours trying to say just what I wanted to say. Each attempt took thousands of words. Neither was enough. What I have been trying to say in these essays is: it is awful what those… Read More »An Archipelago of Life-Promoting Culture 

Dear Reader, This Wednesday, for the first time in a month, I remembered my dreams. I didn’t write them down, because I knew I would remember them: heavy trains on old train tracks, precarious above the sea. They were intense, even scary, but I was glad to have them. I hadn’t remembered a single dream in over a month. The last month was a busy time for me. Work, family, and travel took all my time and then some. I kept wanting to write here, but as with dreams, there wasn’t space for it. And maybe other people can force… Read More »In the Night Kitchen

Dear Reader, There was a joke back in 2021 that every email that year started with a disclaimer like, “I know this letter reaches you after a long winter full of tribulation and sorrow…” Was it even a joke, though? And did it end in 2021? I for one continue to find myself inclined to start every email with a baroque, Oregon Trail-inflected acknowledgment of the sorry state of the world. Even little work emails. Even just sending a stupid picture to my brother. With that context, this letter really does come to you after a long winter full of… Read More »Banana Waffles

Dear Reader, We went to one of the protests yesterday, and it was such a good reminder that Taking action is good for the spirit. Alone, atomized, watching the news and unable to act, I can feel so demoralized. Out there on the streets, two-year-old strapped to my back, partner holding a sign that said “Families for Freedom from Fear,” surrounded by people who love this land just as much as we do, I felt the possibility of a path forward. It involves joining hands. As I overheard someone say, “This is just the beginning.” In this week’s Lightplay I can’t… Read More »Actual Size and the Urge to Regurge

Dear Reader — I re-started this newsletter about a month ago because, in this anxious time, I need something to keep my hands busy and my community close. It’s working. I’ve been so enjoying the rhythmic pleasure of having a column to write every week, and having readers like you who do me the honor of reading me. Thank you for that! (And if you just signed up, thanks for giving Lightplay a try!) Like any time you restart an old project, I’ve been tweaking it. One of the tweaks has been to bring back “motes”—the little items at the… Read More »A Book for Watering Plants

Our little family recently came into possession of the book The Night Riders by Matt Furie. First published by McSweeney’s McMullens (their children’s imprint) back in 2012, it was reprinted in 2020 (I think) in support of Furie’s campaign of lawsuits and publicity as he attempted to reclaim his character Pepe the Frog from the gibbering goons who had hoisted the character onto their message boards as a symbol of hate. I love this book. Wordless, its 48 pages follow Pepe and his friend, a rat, as they eat dinner (insects for Pepe, lettuce for the rat), go for a bike ride,… Read More »The Night Riders

2024 was the year I gave in and became what I said I never would: an eat-oatmeal-every-morning sicko. The grimmest fate, I’d always thought: sitting in your kitchen, in the half-light of morning, yet again shoveling into your mouth spoonful after spoonful of gloppy, congealed gray oats. I bristled at the way our culture pushed oatmeal as a just-this-side-of-Soylent method of ingesting calories and fiber before a productivity-optimized day, less a meal than a life hack.  And now look at me. I eat oats for breakfast at least five days a week. And I love them.  So let me, with… Read More »Tim’s Oats