#55: Going into the woods, and being out of the woods

Actual updates

It’s hot. This is going to be a typical refrain going forward, evidently¹. Also, I’m upstairs in the hot room because that’s where I have to work when I’m working from home and I’m not alone (so that I can get anything done). My computer is doing its very best to handle it, but I had to watch some training videos today and it was struggling.

We actually just skipped out on the last two real steamy hot days by going camping up in New Hampshire. We were in the super tourist trap part of the state, but it’s like that for a reason: the tourists are there, because there’s so much A+ nature to look at and trails to hike on and rivers to contemplate and mountains to either go up or look at from the bottom, dealer’s choice, and then on the days you don’t want to do something like that, you can go to a variety of amusement parks with varying degrees of adherence to a theme.

We camped, and I am pleased to report that we were NOT menaced by bees, NOT kept up all night by foxes yelling their heads off, NOT struck by lightning - it did rain both nights, but the promised thunderstorms did not materialize and the tent held up great (and the second night, anticipating those storms, we switched to one of their very bare-bones cabins, just 4 walls and a roof and beds you put your sleeping bag on, and that was perfect). I didn’t really sleep the first night, but that’s not the fault of anything in particular.

The funny thing is, in my notes for this issue, i had “i’m in the dumps. stagnating on everything” because I haven’t been able to work on anything creative for awhile - not just the book I haven’t been writing, but also the short stories I haven’t been thinking up, writing, and sending out, or editing and resending; haven’t been singing, haven’t even been making very many decent jokes. And it feels fucking bad!

But then I was out in the woods for a few days.

I’m not trying to say that suddenly the light came back to my eyes or anything like that, saw one tree and the creative fires lit right back up, no, but I’ve got ideas again - I don’t even know if it was the nature or the break in and of itself that did it. Now I just have to capitalize on it. I need a second vacation that I just go on by myself, so that all I would have on my plate is working on things that have meaning to me. You know how likely that is to happen, so it’s back to grabbing whatever shreds of time I can to write, but at least my motivation hasn’t completed curdled. We’ll take small victories where we can find them, I guess.

Speaking of. Last issue, I mentioned off-handedly that Marty had a heart murmur, which the vet heard at his regular checkup. They have a feline cardiologist come through every month or so, so we made an appointment for him on that doctor’s next visit to have it looked at via a chest x-ray and an echocardiogram. The day came - well, first the day before came, which I had confused for the correct date, so Marty got two successive trips to the vet, but anyway - the correct day arrived, and I dropped him off in the morning, figuring I’d go back for him in the early afternoon when the procedures were done.

It was about noon when the phone call came. The vet was nearly in tears and she hadn’t learned the lesson that so many schools and daycares have learned: if they’re ok,lead with that. It’s true that he wasn’t “ok” by that point, but she talked about him going into “distress”² when he was put under for the procedures and I honestly kept expecting her to tell me he had died. He did not die. But he was in dire straits, and the x-ray suggested it was because of one thing, and they waited to see what the echo said, and then the echo came back saying everything was fine, actually. Nothing to see here but high blood pressure. Give him a pill every night and he’ll be ok.

It was startling how emotional and scared the vet was; it must have been really touch and go. I know he’s no spring chicken at 13, but I thought we’d have at least another few years with him. And maybe we will! But I didn’t expect that the way he could go would be while at the vet, being examined. I’m still a bit shaken up, and it was two weeks ago. He had a followup checkup, and no lasting medical effects are in evidence, but he seems noticeably older in a day-to-day sense. He’s slower, he’s less insistent on begging for treats, he stays close to me more. I worry.

What am I reading

I’m reading a book about one of my disaster obsessions³, the Halifax Explosion; the book is called, sensibly enough I suppose, The Great Halifax Explosion. It’s by John U. Bacon, and I’ve learned new and interesting facts about the disaster from it! For instance, while I knew the collision that started it all was because another boat, not the one filled with explosives, was sailing on the wrong side of the road, as it were, I didn’t realize that there were probably a dozen little decisions that led to that being both a) the case, and b) not being changed. It was wartime! Sensible peacetime rules were thrown to the winds, sometimes for good reason!

Okay. Let me back up. I’m going to give those of you who didn’t grow up reading “Great Disasters in Canadian History” a quick rundown. In 1917, in the middle of World War I, Halifax was a major port for cross-Atlantic shipping, and a ship full of high explosives AND what was effectively fancy gasoline was coming in from New York, for a brief layover before shipping out across the Atlantic to deliver the explosives to the war. In the harbor, they collided with another ship, albeit not immediately catastrophically. A fire started onboard, and tons of people in the town decided to watch and see what happened, because they didn’t know what was in the ship. It drifted for a bit and then, when the fire reached the explosives, blew up - in the largest man-made explosion ever. It held that particular grim record up until the atomic bomb. All the water in the harbour was blown out of it momentarily - you could briefly see the sea floor - and the concussion wave flattened most of the city, followed by a rain of oil and hot shrapnel. Fires were everywhere; the loss of life was massive, and horrible wounds were common (especially to the eyes - which resulted in Halifax becoming a leader in ocular medicine due to all the surgeries they had to perform on the victims). The chapters on the devastation in the book are harrowing.

But there’s plenty of other detail; some early chapters are spent following one man and his family; he goes to war, and his forebears were privateers. His war story recalls my own great-grandfather’s, who was a minister, and he could have been a chaplain, but decided to be an enlisted man instead so he wouldn’t be taking an easy out. He got hit by some shrapnel and was recovering at a field hospital; when he was out for a walk one day to try and exercise his injured leg, the hospital was shelled, and so he survived by chance by being outside. Plenty of survivals-of-chance like that in the book, too!

It’s not perfect; it gives only glancing mention to the communities of Africville and Turtle Grove, both of which were leveled and it did major damage to their status, standing, and rights, as well as demolishing homes and lives. I recommend it because I want more people to know this story, but I also recommend that your reading on the subject doesn’t stop here.

Some links

The longest piece in this newsletter, this is a deep dive into finding the women who were Carlos Castaneda’s inner circle, his “witches” or chacmools - they were very much in a cult with him, and since his death, they have vanished. Or have they? The Case of the Missing Chacmools

This is definitely a stunt, but it’s a historical stunt, and, as such, has my attention. This Man Brewed Beer Using 3000-Year-Old Yeast and a Recipe from an Ancient Egyptian Papyrus

On the effect that A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (one of the few books I brought with me to college) had on a former conservative teen, and on society at large. Books Are Weapons - and Plowshares

Rich failsons are a way bigger problem than people realize. The Problem with Erik: Privilege, Blackmail, and Murder for Hire in Austin

Did you know that the same woman invented both Miss Piggy and the Philly Phanatic? Also, perfect reason to get to post the most important Miss-Piggy-related conversation I’ve ever read: Miss Piggy Has a Mother

It’s a good question. Why does everyone think of them as flying rats, just because they live in cities? They’re not particularly disgusting; they might eat trash, but what kind of urban scavenger animal doesn’t? I feel a stronger kinship with seagulls, but I’ve got an affinity for the humble pigeon as well; I too belong in cities and love the dark rainbow colours of an oil slick that they wear around their necks. Why Do People Persecute City Pigeons?

This title is a bit of clickbait - it starts out being about the secret-shopper spies that the big department stores employed, but then focuses in on one woman who started in that role and then moved up to ultimately become the president of Lord & Taylor. It’s still interesting! But it’s not mostly about espionage. How Did Department Stores Rule the Fashion World? Spies, of Course

Why, and I’m being serious now, but why was every fashion fad of the 17th century completely bonkers? They weren’t just sticking little cloth patches to their faces to add visual interest, but wallpapering themselves in them, sending messages about their personalities by the locations of the spots. The Secret Code of Beauty Spots

This article gets two things extremely correct: first, the thesis of the piece, which is that the meme industry constructs identity for dead celebrities in a way that is perhaps way off what they would have done in life (although I agree that in Bourdain’s case specifically he was fully in the business of constructing a public persona). And second and possibly more importantly, it gives CORRECT CREDIT to the true inventor of the phrase “big dick energy,” which anyone who was on Twitter at the time was aware of but everyone somehow decided that Ariana Grande should get the credit instead? So, finally, justice for imbobswaget. The Meme-ification of Anthony Bourdain

I feel like the “Harvard scientists” in this title are the ones their fellow professors have inside jokes about. This is TLC-brained. Harvard Scientists Say There May Be an Unknown, Technologically Advanced Civilization Hiding on Earth

This is rather sweet. A collection of interviews with folks who came out as adults, in their 40s and 50s - either because they couldn’t or didn’t want to earlier, or because they didn’t realize they had anything to come out about until well into adulthood. There’s really still time for everyone⁴. People Are Coming Out Younger and Younger. Then There Are People Like Me

Leaving aside the bananas amount of quotation marks in this article title, these three people got treated abominably, both in terms of losing out on money that should rightfully have been theirs, and in terms of having their actual real names used for promotion without their consent. I loved that movie at the time! I went to a midnight premiere of it with a bunch of my high school friends at the 5th Ave (and the boys said they weren’t scared, but I looked over at the ones beside me during the movie and they sure as hell were). But I don’t know if I want to watch it again now. “The Blair Witch Project” Actors Call Out “Reprehensible Behavior” After Missing Out on Profits for Decades: “Don’t Do What We Did”

This is about training to become a death doula, someone whose job it is to guide a dying person and their family through the death process, and to help them manage afterwards, similar to the kind of doula you may be familiar with who works with people before, during, and shortly after they give birth. But in a big way, it’s also about a “good death,” and what constitutes one. It made me think about my grandmother quite a bit, and I think you can expect an issue of this very publication coming up about the way her life ended, and what was and wasn’t “good” about that. Grief Guides

How to hunt worms! The Worm Charmers

Speaking of squirmy tubes. How to hunt eels! Inside the Slimy, Smelly, Secretive World of Glass-Eel Fishing

Speaking of fishing. This touches on how drugs intersect with the hard life of fishers, and what members of that community are doing to keep each other safe. The Mayday Call: How One Death at Sea Transformed a Fishing Fleet

Speaking of the ocean. Would it stun you to know that the guy in charge of the company that made the Titan submersible encouraged corners to be cut and naysayers to be fired? It shouldn’t! The Titan Submersible Disaster Shocked the World. The Inside Story is More Disturbing than Anyone Imagined

Speaking of the ocean, again, but way better this time: efforts to reintroduce sea otters to the Oregon coast! Sea Otter Reintroduction Could Mend Ecological and Colonial Scars

I shared this article with someone at work, and he mentioned that he’s recently started going to the gym more regularly and is hearing about why he ought to get onto some steroids too. He’s not a bodybuilder or a pro athlete, he’s just a regular guy, but apparently the moment you touch a weight in a gym, the steroid fairy pops out to offer you a magic pill or shot. After he had read the article, he messaged me to say he thought it might be the saddest thing he’s read in a long time. Why Is Everyone on Steroids Now?

I did not realize that Juneau, AK has become a hotbed of landslides, but I suppose that’s what happens when a lot more water is added to the soil due to heavy rains and swollen rivers and melting glaciers. What Happens When Climate Change Threatens to Bury Your Home?

This is a great article on how archaeologists do and don’t determine the gender of the people they dig up, and ways they’ve been wrong or had difficult-to-determine cases in the past. It’s also a clear illustration that variant and expansive gender is not a modern invention, and people in eons past presented and understood themselves in a variety of ways that aren’t so foreign to us today. Also, it’s got a Mattie Lubchansky⁵ header image! Can We Exhume Gender from the Long Dead?

I had no idea that 1, the American chestnut tree is not the same as the horse chestnut tree whose spiky seed cases we gingerly broke open as kids to find the smooth giant seed inside, or 2, that the American ones were majorly historical, or even that 3, they were in trouble. This was a fascinating article. The Problem with Darling 58

How would you like a little hope today? Here you go: Scientists Discover Way to Destroy Harmful “Forever Chemicals” in Water Supply

I was surprised at how long this place lasted. Also, reading the article reminds me I ought to pre-order Women’s Hotel⁶. At the Webster Apartments: Inside One of Manhattan’s Last All-Women Boarding Houses

Even more cuts to useful public services in the name of… what, exactly? Saving money? Ensuring no one has a nice time time ever again? As you can imagine, the people most impacted by the closing of a public neighborhood pool are people who needed it for cooling on a hot summer’s day, and you know we’re just going to have more hot summer’s days in our future. This Public Pool Was a Summer Lifeline. Tampa Residents Mourn Its Closure

This is an all-timer of a headline, and the first paragraph is also pretty spectacular. But the crabs in question are also worth your time on their own merits! The Biggest Crabs in the World May Have Eaten Amelia Earhart⁷

Tunes I’ve been listening to lately

This was on one of the Pride month radio shows a colleague put on at work, and it’s stuck with me, musically speaking. Literally, the progression of notes is very compelling to me. Bonus: gay!

I pulled a tick out of my leg for the first time the other month. If you saw the other song here earlier, no you didn’t!

Some people would argue it’s illegal to listen to Led Zeppelin with your shirt on. I don’t make this argument personally, for obvious reasons, but I support you if it’s part of your belief system.

This month’s top 5: Elements

In reference to the book I just finished, Periodic Tales by Hugh Aldersey-Williams, which bills itself as a “cultural history” of the elements, and which I found deeply fascinating. Also, at one point, as many nonfiction books do, it cited another book on a subject it touched upon; the book it mentioned was written by a girl I went to high school with⁸.

1. Lithium, not for the medication or the song but for the demonstration in grade 9 or 10 science class where Mr. Procyk dropped some into an aquarium full of water.

2. Rutherfordium is the longest name on the periodic table, at least at the time when our periodic-table shower curtain was printed, and Hap learned to read it and was very pleased with himself. Also, I had some classes in the Rutherford Physics building in college; same guy.

3. Did you ever play SimCity 2000? I played it to the point of obsession, and it had this “Newspaper” feature where you could see how your citizens were feeling about this and that, plus some columns just for personality. It was always referring to molybdenum cans, just because everything in it had to be a little different from the real world (and because the game makers had their little in-jokes). So molybdenum always gets a little nod of recognition from me.

4. Toss-up between neon, for the vibes, and mercury, for its super weird liquidness, although I suppose its extreme hazardousness to health ought to demote it a bit.

5. The 5th Element (1997)

Alright, that’s it, and now back to your regularly scheduled episodes of the finale season of American democracy!

_{1 climate change!!!}

_{2 cardiac and respiratory, specifically}

_{3 everyone has those, right? right??}

_{4 lookin’ at you, the 3-6 straight people who read this newsletter}

_{5 one day i want to get a tattoo of their “skull with an ass” image}

_{6 by Daniel Lavery. In case you want to as well, you can do so here}

_{7 every time i think of amelia earhart (more often than you might think!!), i remember someone’s reply to a twitter post asking for people’s mothers’ irrational celebrity dislikes: the respondent said that her grandmother had it out for Earhart and would not say why, and even though i don’t feel the same way at all, this delights me}

_{8 i say “girl” because the last time I knew her, she wouldn’t have been more than 18; she’s obviously a full adult now! but it’s weird to think of someone you knew in high school (and not since) as anything other than that same age forever}