Harrowings Summarized
For our latest member of the Board of Directors
It is said that Harrowings (halgill.substack.com) is a rich body of work. The tagline captures it well: “Reflections and excavations of the Self that inhabits the animal on its journey from dawn to dusk and back again.”
I’ve been publishing for about two years with a consistent voice that blends memoir, historical excavation, philosophical inquiry, daily practice, and a quiet but insistent ethical thread. The work feels like one long, ongoing “harrowing” — preparing the ground of the present while honoring what came before and considering what comes after.
Here’s a thematic grouping based on the posts (recent ones + key earlier pieces). The categories overlap heavily because my strongest motif runs through almost everything.
1. Legacy, Ancestry & Good Ancestor Work (The Foundation Thread)
This is one of the most developed and emotionally grounded clusters. It centers on my father’s life and scholarship, the Harold B. Gill Foundation (launched September 2024), and the larger question of what we owe those who come after us.
Core posts/examples:
• “The Harold B Gill Foundation” (Sep 17, 2024) — founding post.
• “The Collected Works of the Harold B Gill Foundation, LLC So Far” (Aug 2025) — inventorying and publishing his output.
• “The York County Project” and related pieces (e.g., “Paths to the Present Understanding of the Past”) — your father’s pioneering computer-aided historical research on ordinary 18th-century Virginians (tradespeople, “historian of the inarticulate”).
• “Putting Flesh on the Bones,” “A Short Biography of Harold B. Gill, Jr.,” “Derivations of the One,” “Family – Genetic and Chosen.”
• “How Do We Do?” — practical and philosophical exploration of high-leverage service (e.g., Seva-style interventions) and the “do be do be do” balance between action and presence for the sake of progeny.
Dominant idea: We are woven into each other’s lives across time. The only sane long game is to try to be good ancestors. This thread feels like the moral and emotional center of the Substack.
2. Cyberspace History & 30 Years in the Noosphere
Personal archaeology of the early web and reflections on what it has become.
Key post:
• “Thirty Years Ago…” (very recent) — 1996 at the Cathedral of Learning (Pitt), learning HTML with Pico, Seth’s Narcissus Patch, Carnegie Museum conservation work + early SixDegrees profile, the Takashi Murakami nap-in-the-spray-booth story, and the return visit where the German Department had vanished. Ends with the responsibility of co-creating reality and the call to be good ancestors.
Related: “The Way Here” (SixDegrees.com history), “Analog!” (analog/digital living).
This cluster pairs with the legacy work — both are about tracing threads that still tug on the present.
3. Daily Life, Service & Embodied Practice
Grounded, often tender accounts of ordinary days as spiritual discipline.
Examples:
• Posts about front-of-house work at Daily Provisions (e.g., “The Way Things Go,” “The Past Gathered” — meeting the new president, etc.).
• Morning routines, writing practice, and presence (“A Productive Morning,” “Up at 4 AM” / “Mind Matters”).
• “Mourning Thoughts” (May 27, 2026) — grief as love and information, being awake and aware as the core of the work, daily acts of noticing (National Zoo, Phillips Collection), and the question “How is your life contributing to the health of life on this planet?”
These pieces often feel like the lived laboratory for the philosophical ideas.
4. Philosophy, Awakening, Grief & Interconnectedness
The reflective/excavatory heart of the project.
Recurring motifs:
• We are all woven into each other’s lives (unseen impacts, co-creation of reality).
• Personal responsibility + “good ancestors” as subversive/maybe-logical stance.
• Presence, impermanence, mourning that is also love.
• Awakening as ongoing practice rather than destination.
• Influences that surface: Jung, Wilson/Discordian currents (reality tunnels, Chapel Perilous), Meher Baba, Fourth Way, seva, planetary stewardship.
Standout: “Mourning Thoughts” and “How Do We Do?” are excellent entry points. “Voices” (recent) fits here too — the chatteriest of primates using our voices to shape a better world.
Many of the live sessions probably live in this territory as well.
5. Live Sessions & Conversational Work
A large portion of the output consists of “Live with Hal Gill” video recordings. These function as:
• Free-flowing philosophical explorations.
• Readings and reflections.
• Community-building / “in the game” encouragement (e.g., mentions of Rebellion Dogs Zoom group).
They give the Substack a living, ongoing quality — the written posts are the excavations; the lives are the excavation-in-progress.
6. Culture, History & Broader Context
Smaller but recurring: colonial Virginia preservation, art/music references, systems thinking (my EA background showing), and occasional geopolitical or planetary reflections.
Overall Architecture & Through-Lines
The work has a strong through-line: the “good ancestor” ethic ties the family legacy work, the daily service at Daily Provisions, the philosophical reflections on interconnectedness, and even the 30-year cyberspace retrospective into one coherent project.
Other strong threads:
• Nostalgia as information rather than sentiment.
• Signal vs. noise — keeping a human voice audible in the hall of mirrors.
• Dawn-to-dusk presence as both practice and subject.
• A Wilsonian/Discordian sensibility (playful seriousness, refusal to take any single tunnel too seriously while still taking responsibility seriously) that appears especially in the cyberspace and philosophical pieces.
The voice stays remarkably consistent: intimate, reflective, sometimes wry, never preachy, and always returning to “So it goes” / “Onward!”
