This outing was a two-mote experience because, as after any good museum show, we couldn’t leave without going to the gift shop. And good stuff we found. I bought the catalog, which has uneven essays but who cares, you’re there for the concept drawings and artboards, which it delivers. I also picked up Susan Napier’s Miyazakiworld: A Life in Art, which I’ve been reading with great pleasure. It connects biography with film criticism to form both a very specific portrait of an artistic genius and also a larger meditation on the interplay of life and art.

The newly-opened Academy Museum (of the American Academy of Motion Pictures) has an exhibit featuring the art of Hayao Miyazaki, the Studio Ghibli founder and director of masterpieces like My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away. I got to see it three weeks ago and haven’t stopped thinking of it since. Worth the price of admission on its own is his conceptual drawing of the eponymous dwelling—chicken-legged and charismatic with jutting turrets and impromptu clotheslines—from Howl’s Moving Castle. Other highlights: poems Miyazaki wrote on Ghibli letterhead to his team while they made Princess Mononoke, countless incredible backgrounds and gels, Miyazaki’s 6-second stopwatch that measures 24ths of a second, and his practical but perfectly-designed drawing desk with built-in light table. Closes June 5th.

Have you heard about the protests in Jackson Demonstration State Forest? Many dozens of protestors have been interrupting logging, staging sit-ins, and collaborating with the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians to try to wrest control from pro-logging CalFire and have the Indigenous people who’ve lived in the forest for millennia take the lead on deciding how this land is managed. The protests have flown under the radar for months; I’ve only known about them because a close friend is deeply involved. But despite not getting press, the protestors persisted. Now they’re starting to win. New Timber Harvest Plans have been suspended for the rest of the year; the Pomo are holding government-to-government negotiations with the State of California; and the big regional newspapers, like the LA Times in this pretty good feature, have started covering the protests. It’s an inspiring movement, showing how powerful even a few dozen activists can be if they stay principled and disciplined and keep pushing. But the most exciting part to me is the collaboration with the Pomo—as you may know, I think the US should return the National Parks and much more to the tribes. Jackson Demonstration State Forest would be a great place to start. If you’d like to get involved or send support, I’m told a good place to begin is this website.

I wrote a long profile of José Ramos-Horta, the 24-year exile and advocate for freedom for East Timor who won the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize and then, in 1999, returned home and became his newly free country’s president. José was a profound pleasure to interview, addressing me in emails as “my dear good man Jasper” and sharing a fascinating, tragic, but ultimately sweet story. The article ran as the cover story for the Antioch Alumni Magazine, which I co-edited. You can read it online.

Readers of the last installment of Lightplay will know that I love using my moka pot to make stovetop espresso. But prolific and sonorously English YouTuber James Hoffman, in a delightfully deep dive into this impractically-steampunk coffee brewing method, corrects us: the liquid the moka pot makes is not, precisely, espresso.