A couple of people helped me remember how this old world can work, actually does most of the time. My neice, Emily, sang a song she wrote about how the tech industry introduces into their work either friction (to help get us stuck) or frictionless (to help us slide right into the spot where they want us to be); so we end up feeling like getting in the car and going to the store locally is hard and beaming up and buying the same goods online is easy. She didn’t say it but I realized the blog I posted about earlier this week about the garden where I just sit and enjoy life as it can be—often IS—totally frictionless.

She also performed to a packed room this amazing piece of music/theater:  “High Priestess, Sole Proprietor” which is a wonderfully farcical piece with delightful liracs and unbelieveable harmonies that expands upon a world overheating, literally, with the purposeful friction of capitalism and the worst of human greed. Please take time to enjoy her work and, if you are so inclined, send her “Fifteen bucks” or so to support it.

The other person who’s work just overlaid with what I was thinking and had tried to express in my last post, is my friend Bryan Pfeiffer who writes the always remarkable substack blog, Chasing Nature. In this week’s post, A Dragonfly Without Borders, Bryan alerts us to be on the lookout for Pantala or the Wandering Glider, a dragonfly that literally flies around the globe. Talk about frictionless! And this is not some AI critter but an insect that has been flying around the planet for millions of years, far longer than humans. Bryan too is an artist who works hard to earn a living doing this important writing so, if you are able, send him a few bucks too! Note: the Widow Skimmer pictured above is a very different dragonfly but still remarkable.

Life may not always be “frictionless,” but it continues to find ways to incorporate the friction that often occurs naturally into the whole of what we see in the web of world around us, whether a flower or the bee gathering nectar there, or a whale deep under the water or a breeze blowing through the leaves and over my sun-warmed skin. Thank you Em and Bryan for chiming in.

01 Aug This entry was published on August 1, 2026 at 1:47 pm. It’s filed under Ecosystem, Garden, John Snell, John Snell Photographer, People, Photograph, Vermont, www.johnsnell.photography and tagged Bryan Pfeiffer, Chasing Nature, Emily Bate, High Preistess, insects, nature, Photography, wildlife, writing. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.