The Last Word On Nothing | "Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing" - Victor Hugo

The Last Word

By: Jennifer S. Holland | October 1, 2016

anatomic_masterpiece It was another awesome week on LWON. At least we think so.

Helen revived her curious theme of bugs on the window on Monday, but this time the bug, on an airplane, was on the INSIDE! Terrifying. Should she kill it or let it ride to Syracuse? (Or wherever it was going. I mean, maybe the bug had a connecting flight so we can’t really say much about its trip.)

Then came Craig’s really lovely piece about being alone out there in nature. I like this essay a lot, even the part where Craig does a lot of grunting–you should read it.

Guest poster Alison Fromme gave us a terrific read about learning to build a human skeleton out of wax the way 18th-century Florentine anatomists and artists used to do. It’s very hands on and oh-so interesting.

On Thursday Erik recalled being with shark hunters pondering his pity for the dying fish and what that means re: his moral code re: wildlife conservation. (That was a lot of re:s and I apologize.)

Finally, we ended the week with an interview: Ann interviewed me! About my new book! Which you can buy here!

Enjoy your weekend, people, and see you Monday.

Shameless PR for My New Book: A Brief LWON Q&A

By: Jennifer S. Holland | September 30, 2016

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Ann: Jenny has a new book out. It’s part of a series — best-selling, mind you — about unlikely relationships between animals and surprising animal heroics. (This one is called Unlikely Friendships: Dogs. It has a lot of dogs in it.) So far, I’ve read only the Amazon Read-Inside story about the dog and the goose, which I’ll sum up as: dog is bone-mean and slated for termination, given one last chance, nearly blows it, meets goose that’s just as mean, they become life-long friends for a year and a half, goose dies, dog mourns. First, let me say, for what it’s worth, that I believe the goose story. I grew up on a small farm and if you somehow pissed off the geese, they’d attack. By “attack,” I mean, wings fully spread, neck stretched out, hissing like a steam engine, coming at you at 90 mph. I’d put a goose up against a German shepherd any day. I digress: that hate-love-death plot is the plot of many excellent novels and films. So my question is not whether you think you’re anthropomorphizing, but how you handle the inevitable anthropomorphizing?

Jenny: Well howdy, Ann! Thank you for sharing your terrifying goose experience, and for your excellent question. For this series of books (the Unlikely series…a name that for me works on so many levels) I’d say I walk a fine line, one that I do toe over now and then as the stories and photos beg me to. But I am big on qualifying and letting others tell me what they think is going on with their animals rather than me making wild assessments. This series makes people go awwwww; it doesn’t promise a lot of neuroscience. Readers just want to enjoy the cute photos and stories without being asked to question their assumptions. Continue reading →

The End of the Line

By: Erik Vance | September 29, 2016

A few years ago, while working on a story on the shark fin trade, I found myself freezing in the back of a panga 25 miles out from the Baja shoreline wishing I was dead.

Partly it was tossing seas that pitched the skiff from side to side and slapped over the gunwales. Partly it was the fact that the boat was so laden with thrashing sharks that the seas didn’t have far to get over the gunwales and if we capsized, we were dead men. Partly it was because I was freezing in the water and wind. But mostly it was because I had to pee.

Oh sweet mother of Christ, I had to pee. It was the kind of need to urinate that exceeds back teeth floating or desperate post pub-crawl moments, it was the kind of all-consuming need to empty your bladder that literally takes over your mind and won’t allow any other thought in except fantasies of that eventual, blissful release.

So it was a blessing when we approached one of the fisherman’s set hooks and the photographer slapped on his fins and suggested we drop in the water to have a look around (we had agreed, what with blood in the water and a thrashing toothy creature nearby, it would be best if I watched his back while he shot).

Continue reading →

Guest Post: Wax Work

By: Alison Fromme | September 28, 2016

anatomic_masterpiece I took my place at the gray table in the gray, poorly-lit room, meeting the gaze of the eyeless skull staked upright before me. A stiff rectangular block of white wax was my only material, and a simple metal implement, sharp like a scalpel on one end and rounded like a spoon on the other, my only tool—other than my own hands and head, once full of vertebrate anatomy knowledge, now less so. To my right, another student, a painter, ripped wax from his block and manipulated it. My weak hands couldn’t get a grip.

Our teacher, Eleanor Crook, an internationally-known fine artist trained in forensic reconstruction, told us to first create the temporalis muscle on one side of the skull, a plaster replica of a real human’s. The muscle is seashell shaped, she explained, fibers radiating upward from near the ear. You can feel this muscle work, if you put your hand on it while opening and closing your jaw.

Continue reading →

On Being Alone

By: Craig Childs | September 27, 2016

solo-camp Something about the way a river trip starts. Gear gets thrown in, arranged, tied down, and when the current picks up and carries you downstream, your sense of time and distance immediately changes. Connection to the other 7 billion or so people on the planet loosens, and connection to something bigger, and in ways smaller, more intimate, takes hold.

Last week I was on the Green River where it flows through the canyonlands of southeast Utah. For five days I paddled a canoe, which I prefer as a craft, a simple vessel, no frame or pump, no cockpit into which you must burrow, the lower half of your body truncated at the hips. When the current took me, I was alone. I came without a group, no one to call for help, no one to call at all.

Alone, every breath and movement becomes conversation. Every spin of the water, every slow step of cliffs has something to say. Continue reading →

Bug On My Airplane Window

By: Helen Fields | September 26, 2016

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I love seeing bugs on windows, for reasons I’ve never fully worked out. I’ve even written about it before on this blog.

Normally those bugs are on the outside of the window and I’m on the inside. That’s how I prefer it. I think the bugs prefer it that way, too. They are out in the world, taking a pause from their busy lives of flight on a nice smooth piece of glass; I am inside, unable to swat them. I generally don’t swat bugs. I have a soft spot for bugs. (Notable exception.)

This June that usual relationship changed, though. I was inside an airplane, and so was a bug. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: Ann Finkbeiner | September 24, 2016

September 19 – 23, 2016

You know the charming idea of effortless art, that you get in the mood and a couple hours later, you’ve magically got an incisive and elegant story or post or podcast? That idea always has been purest nonsense but it also, Rose says, gets in the way of being paid.

You know how, when you’re holding a hammer the whole world looks like a nail? Which, fine, things need nailing. The problem is, Christie reminds us, that research shows the same thing applies when you’re holding a gun.

You know how sad it is to lose something you like, how nice it would be if everything just had a little geotag so you could find it again? Cameron geotagged a shark named Pablo; a ship named El Faro was geotagged; and they still got lost and it was still sad.

You know how if two towns have the same mosquitoes, you’d expect that they should have the same mosquito-borne disease? They don’t, and my stepdaughter-the-entomologist gets out the bug spray and long cottons, heads out to the field, and finds out why.

You don’t know that you know this, and it’s an astoundment and a delight: if you’re in a tent at night and some animal runs past in the dark, you still know its mass, velocity, volume, and weight distribution. Jessa says this is called bioacoustics. Who knew.

The Patter of Little Feet

By: Jessa Gamble | September 23, 2016

It is the size of a child, pelting through the forest with great dexterity. Quadrupedal but galloping with synchronized fore and hind steps. My concern is not this gentle, slender creature — whose mass, velocity, volume and weight distribution are crystal clear in my mind — but rather the imagined force or creature that set it running.

In the dead of night, with no other sounds around, this unseen animal passes me just as I am lying in a tent beside my son, listening ferociously as I do for about two hours out of every night I spend camping. Usually I hear nothing but the loons and the lapping lake. Continue reading →