Redux: Vanishing Points

This essay originally appeared in 2012.

If the artwork above looks familiar, the reason might be that it was part of the argument that Ann made in a recent post. She suggested that the beauty of the Florentine paintings of the fifteenth century—“stunning, literally; you look at them and can hardly breathe”—couldn’t have been due only to the usual reasons that art history texts cite: Florence’s return to a leading role in international commerce combined with the rise of humanism and rationality. The intensity of the beauty, Ann argued in both words and images, must be due to the intensity of the catastrophes that recently had befallen Florence: the flood of 1333, the financial collapse of 1346, the drought of 1346 and 1347, and finally, in 1348, the Black Death.

No argument here. Or, I should say, no argument with Ann. But the final work of art in her argument, Sandro Botticelli’s 1489 Annunciation, prompted me to think about not only where fifteenth-century Florentine art came from but where it would lead. More precisely, what got me to thinking was the window in the painting.

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Toward a theory of cuteness aggression

I want a dog. For a while now, my awareness of this has been getting louder. It was when I encountered these little gentlemen that the urgency of the situation became undeniable. (If you value your hearing turn down the volume before you hit play.)

I’ve lived with many canines – parents’ dogs, roommate dogs, partners’ dogs, my dogs. These animals are an unceasing upside of being alive. However, owing to circumstances, I haven’t had a dog living in my house in 10 years. I have been too busy to commit real time to fretting about this – and life circumstances don’t permit remedying it just yet – but increasingly the sense of needing a dog has become absolute. My reactions to cuteness in public are becoming alarming. As you probably surmised from the pitchy caterwauling above (pity the poor owner).

That was when I remembered cuteness aggression. 

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This Is Not a Snake, Though It Is Snake Shaped

Look at this worm!! Folks, I met this giant earthworm during a trip to a cloud forest in Ecuador where I was covering amphibian declines with photographer Joel Sartore for National Geographic. It may recall one of those corrugated plastic pipes you use to run water from your downspout to the street, but it’s not that. (It’s too narrow to do much good in that department anyway…it would certainly clog up with the first rain.)

Not one of these.

The worm was just a thing we found along the trail, and we weren’t prepared with a worm field guide or a worm expert and so didn’t officially ID it. However, there’s another giant earthworm known to Ecuador called Martiodrilus crassus—which one online source says translates to “worm that feeds on dogs” and another insists means “thick martian,” and I’m too lazy to go down this particular wormhole to investigate further. Anyway, it’s possible that’s the kind of worm this is, but don’t quote me on it.

Earthworms live in burrows underground, which they tunnel out themselves with their muscular heads. If their burrows flood, they come up to the surface. That’s probably why this one was out and about: It rains a lot in the Ecuadorian cloud forest. In fact, you’d think the trail would be displaced worms as far as the eye can see. You know that childhood game “The Floor is Lava” where you leapt from chair to chair in the living room to avoid burning your feet? What if the floor were worms? It seems like a bad idea for lots of reasons (squish squish), but it did spring to mind when I considered all those drowning worms’ emergence.

There are bigger earthworm species in Australia. Some can reach nearly 10 feet in length and can even be heard gurgling and glugging underground. But this South American one, which made no sound that I could detect, was no slouch. Earthworms eat organic matter and minerals in the soil, and then poop out said organic matter and minerals (minus whatever their simple bodies need, I suppose). Those “castings” left behind are called frass, and big worms leave behind a lot of it. I’ll say this: I’m glad I don’t have to clean up after this particular earthworm or any of its big-ass cousins.

—–

Thanks to top-notch photographer and friend Joel Sartore (you may know of his Photo
Ark
project, and if you don’t, you should) for the wacky image of me and the worm shot on a trail in the cloud forest reserve of Reserva Las Gralarias, near Mindo, Ecuador.

Science Poem: The Birds of Hyde Park

A colored pencil drawing of lime-green parakeets perched atop an electrical tower and on the surrounding wires.

Long before I knew that science writing could be a job, I wrote science poems. A lot of them. Sometimes several in a day. And just as quickly, I abandoned them and moved on to the next vivid factoid in astronomy, anatomy, or animal behavior.

There are hundreds of these dashed-off verses in my files, raw and rough around the edges, forgotten and gathering dust. Once in a while, someone will say something that triggers a flicker of memory. In this case, it was Our Jane sending me an Instagram post about the feral monk parakeets of Chicago.

It would be so easy to write an entire post, or three, about the surreal midcentury explosion of tropical birds in urban Illinois. Instead, I’ll direct you to this truly delightful article, and get to my poetry point.

The Birds of Hyde Park

Chicago's winter is nine months long.
Wind fit to hollow the cheeks of sweet children 
spins, screaming, down each vacated street.
And screaming, too, from the dips
of the satellite dishes, the birds of Hyde Park 
come home to roost. Each nest is a mess 
of yesterday's vines, each bird uncanny in a jungle
of cold wire. Argentina is thirty worlds away.
From the topmost floor of the busiest building 
you can just see them landing,
great feathered limes in a bowl
of smoke and slate.

I dashed this poem off in 2009, when the parakeet population in Hyde Park was the greatest in the city. In the intervening time, that flock has dispersed or relocated, as have I. A lot of other things have changed, too; most relevant to you, perhaps, is that I edit my poems (including this one) now.  

*

Drawing by me, based on a photograph by Gary Leavens.

Space Is Real

A defensive back playing for a Texas university football team recently said something unusual into a press microphone. “I don’t believe in space,” he said. “I’m religious, so I think, like, we’re on our own right now. I don’t think there’s, like, other planets and stuff like that.” 

I welcome eccentric ways of thinking. Being bogged down by rational observation can hide glimmers of truth science doesn’t see. Believe away, I think, which the young football player did, using the word ‘heliocentric,’ saying he doesn’t believe the Earth revolves around the sun. “I started seeing flat Earth stuff, and I was, like, that’s kind of interesting,” he said. “They started bringing up some valid points.”

The mind doesn’t always take kindly to infinity heaped with countless nuclear engines swirling through galaxies as numberless as the stars. It might be easier to think of space as a canvas, a background, nothing to see here. There’s a reason Galileo stood trial before the church.

Several days before these quotes came out, I attended an event for Rebecca Boyles’ wonderful new book, “Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are.” She described how moon dust is like tiny splinters of glass, not softened by the erosive processes we experience on Earth, no wind to blow it around, no water to wear it down. As of the lunar landing in 1969, NASA scientists weren’t sure if the dust might be flammable, insisting astronauts re-enter their lander without any on them, which they found to be impossible because the minuscule barbs of bolide ejecta stuck to everything. Everyone held their breath and, thank goodness, the dust turned out to be inert. That is real. 

I took the football player’s quote to Richard Panek, another writer for LWON, and in a video chat his mouth struggled to come up with a response. He finally said, “It’s a new one on me. It would never occur to me. It would be like saying the ocean isn’t real. It makes no sense.”

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The Queen’s Speech

This piece initially ran exactly a year ago, and it’s no coincidence that the Canadian Broadcasting System had me on air again today. This time, though, it was a program called Good Question, Saskatchewan! which addressed the issue of why that province (mostly) dodged the hassle of daylight savings time. If you would like to hear more on this question, here’s the podcast of it. I’m pleased to report our bi-annual ritual of self-sabotage continues to unite us in hatred and annoyance.

Twice a year, for more than a decade, now, I have addressed the nation.

Today, I do so again. At 6am it’s Ottawa, then I’m swiftly on to Thunder Bay at 6:10. My voice will echo through the kitchens of Saint John at 6:20 and rustle the lace curtains in the Anne of Green Gables parlours of Charlottetown at 6:40. Cape Breton, Moncton, Winnipeg, Yellowknife, Regina, Prince George, Kelowna, Fredericton, Kitchener-Waterloo. And what that voice will be saying – what it has always been saying – is that daylight savings time is stupid. Again and again, to 14 separate cities, year after year.

And it’s been working. During the time I have been regularly interviewed on the CBC syndication desk about daylight savings, by dint of a professional focus on circadian rhythms, some questions have remained the same. We’ve talked about how the lost hour during our spring forward leads to population-level effects on heart attacks and traffic accidents. We’ve talked about its origins as a satirical proposal and the fact that its energy-saving theory has never panned out in practice.

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Amphorae

Ancient Roman glass (1st-6th century CE) at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento
From the collection of Marcy Friedman.

This post first appeared in March 2021. My longing for more spontaneous museum visits continues.

A little over a year ago I made an unplanned trip to the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. I had driven to the city to run errands but then decided to go look at art instead, a moment of pre-pandemic spontaneity that felt indulgent then, and now, I imagine, would feel like intense catharsis. It was a rainy Sunday; I remember stepping over crushed magnolia blossoms on the wet pavement. I paid my admission and declined the headset tour, bought a cup of coffee in the museum cafe and drank it in the light-filled glass atrium, a relatively recent expansion of the oldest public art museum west of the Mississippi River.

I enjoyed all of the exhibits, more or less, but one installation made such an impression on me that I still think about it: A collection of 1st-6th century Roman glass jars, flasks, juglets and perfume bottles called amphoriskos. The placard by the case was succinct, noting only a few physical details like “turquoise twin handles, spiral and zig-zag trailing,” and “globular sprinkler with pinecone.” It didn’t say anything about how the glass was made, where it was found, or how the donor, a local painter, acquired it. I left the museum without asking, not realizing it would be the last time I’d visit.

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Any Chance You Have Time to Read This Post?

*If you are home and not busy, would F. be able to get a Ziploc of ice?

*Would one of you be able to do Monday morning carpool next week?

*Any chance you’d have time to work Friday lunch? S. is home sick.

*S. is staying home sick. Is there any chance you have time to do lunch today?

*Is one of you going to be home today? S. is home sick but I might leave him for an hour so I can exercise and not [have a mental health crisis] . . .  He says he is fine by himself but if something catches fire he will come and get you.

*Did R. seem ok to you on Friday? She’s been kind of low energy all weekend.

*Could I have a grownup buddy . . .to hide in the kitchen with me . . .?

*Can we split carpool Tuesday?

*Could S. come over to your house until about 3?

I was feeling weirdly uncomfortable last week when my husband went out of town. Being on my own with the kids is easier than it’s ever been—they’re friendly and fun to be with about 95% of the time, which is more than I can say for myself. On request, they empty dishwashers and make beds and get ready for school and even cook their own mac & cheese. There were no health emergencies, work crises, or other issues that made it particularly stressful.

I couldn’t figure it out until I looked at my texts.

Ugh. I hate asking for help. Typing out all those texts a second time feels like chalk squeaking along the inside of my ribs, a combination of how awkward each question sounds (“any chance”? Double ugh!)  and the fact that I had to ask it at all. The accumulation of each small request seems to weigh much more than it should.

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