The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 133, November 27, 2022 (V3 #29) - Holiday Issue
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is—W.S. Merwin
For this infernal, endless chore,
for these eternal seeds of rain:
Thank you. For dust.—Marilyn Nelson
Kristin’s Dream of November
I went thru the turnstyle to the party
In the risqué penthouse that was not
A penthouse, I followed people but maybe
They weren’t people, it was ethical
To follow them over the edges of the balloons
Until we found some tapsons to eat, heartily
We indulged & found the right move in relation
To the movements of the lion’s mouth, the mouth
Which counted all who entered & left waywardly
Haphazardly the immigrant sphere where
Frozen petals fell behind the red curtain
So slowly they woke me like a knock on door #7
Behind which I’m dreaming
& trying to tango remorselessly
—Bernadette Mayer
The brilliant, extraordinary Bernadette Mayer has died.
unconditional death is a good title because it’s almost completely meaningless, yes? i wrapped the green tomatoes in newspaper, rolled up the lovage in wet paper towels, mailed peggy’s postcard, didn’t see the bear, emptied the skink, read rebecca solnit, said to the greens “would anybody like to go to gethsemane hill with me? i have to atone for my sins.” thought about ball lightning, thought that it’s friday & about the s&s brewery in nassau. when there’s a frost, do the poison plants die? —from “Unconditional Death Is a Good Title,” by Bernadette Mayer, in The Paris Review.
Politics
Getting Clean From Twitter: On addiction, and the guy supplying the drug, and why it's time to quit, Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin, The Newsletter with ECM, 11/22/22: “…the real truth of the matter that so many of us have been unwilling to recognize: that much like the cigarettes sold to we Gen Xers as cool additions to our punk wardrobes, much like the “wine mom” culture currently sold to us on t-shirts at Target, Twitter has been purposefully and intentionally altered over time to make us junkies for its supply.
Elon Musk Would Have Done Better With Twitter If He’d Read Noam Chomsky: Musk is impaled on the horns of a corporate dilemma described in radical critiques of the media, Jon Schwarz, The Intercept, 11/12/22
Moral Panics Never Go Out of Style: On the Corrosive Effects of the Culture Wars: Racism and Homophobia at the Heart of Conservative Activism, Arlene Stein, LitHub, 11/16/22: “The battles against gay and lesbian rights in the 1990s and against transgender rights today seek to consolidate power on the right and undermine democracy.”
Courts Use Increasingly Lawless Arguments to Block Student Debt Relief: In the latest ruling, the Eighth Circuit turned a non-plaintiff into a plaintiff, David Dayen, American Prospect, 11/15/22
‘The US can still become a fascist country’: Frances Fox Piven’s midterms postmortem: The 90-year-old sociologist on ‘vengeance politics’, cruelty and climate change as she looks back on half a century of activism, Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, 11/24/22: “The Maga mob is not a majority of the American population by any stretch of the imagination, but the fascist mob don’t have to be the majority to set in motion the kinds of policies that crush democracy.”
US corporations gave more than $8m to election deniers’ midterm campaigns: Brands such as the Home Depot and Boeing donated to candidates who falsely claimed that Trump won presidency in 2020, Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, 11/23/22: Choose carefully where you spend your money.
What Mexico Gets Right About Race: The attitude of "mestizaje," though imperfect, has a lot to teach the U.S., Luis Parrales, Persuasion, 11/21/22
The Meaning of the Colorado Springs Attack: The essential precondition for mass violence is not guns or hate but a culture of terror, a common imaginary that includes the possibility of a mass shooting, Masha Gessen, The New Yorker, 11/23/22
The incredible shrinking future of college: The population of college-age Americans is about to crash. It will change higher education forever, Kevin Carey, Vox, 11/21/22
To live is to fly
Low and high,
So shake the dust off of your wings
And the sleep out of your eyes. —from “To Live is to Fly,” Townes van Zandt
Environment and Science
The Cause of Alzheimer's Could Be Coming From Inside Your Mouth, Peter Dockrill, ScienceAlert, 11/22/22: “Now, for the first time, we have solid evidence connecting the intracellular, Gram-negative pathogen, P. gingivalis, and Alzheimer's pathogenesis.”
‘This looks like the real deal’: are we inching closer to a treatment for Alzheimer’s? Ian Sample, The Guardian, 11/22/22: “What really needs to be trumpeted from this trial [assuming the results hold up] is that you can change the rate of decline of the disease.”
Expedition Retraces a Legendary Explorer’s Travels Through the Once-Pristine Everglades: Taking water samples along the way, just as Hugh de Laussat Willoughby did in 1897, a team hopes to enlarge understanding of modern-day pollutants in a watershed that millions of Floridians now rely upon, Amy Green, Inside Climate News, 11/23/22
Dimming the Sun to Cool the Planet Is a Desperate Idea, Yet We’re Inching Toward It: The scientists who study solar geoengineering don’t want anyone to try it. But climate inaction is making it more likely, Bill McKibben, The New Yorker, 11/22/22
‘In Delhi I can see the climate catastrophe unfolding before my eyes,’ Rahul Raina, The Guardian, 11/15/22
The Precarious Future of Sanibel Island: After Hurricane Ian, should the government help people rebuild, or help them leave? Charles Bethea, New Yorker, 11/17/22
One man’s lonely quest to save the world’s corals draws a following, Rebecca Tan, Washington Post, 11/16/22
The U.S. Promised Tribes They Would Always Have Fish, but the Fish They Have Pose Toxic Risks: For decades, the U.S. government has failed to test for chemicals and metals in fish. So, we did. What we found was alarming for tribes, Tony Shick, Maya Miller, ProPublica, 11/22/22
To Ditch Pesticides, Scientists Are Hacking Insects’ Sex Signals: It’s now possible to mass-produce pheromones that keep insects from breeding near crops—protecting cereals and other staples with fewer chemicals, Maria Perez Ortiz, Wired, 11/23/22
Plastics tsunami: Can a landmark treaty stop waste from choking the oceans? As nations meet this week to negotiate an agreement on plastics pollution, researchers warn that a lack of information will make it hard to enforce any agreement, Meera Subramanian, Nature, 11/22/22
Robert MacKimmie and his local bees capture the tastes of San Francisco in a honey jar, Christine Campodonico, SF Standard, 11/13/22: City-grown honey is a “symphony for the taste buds.”
Discovered in the deep: the squid that makes a decoy out of its own skin, Helen Scales, The Guardian, 11/23/22: “Self-camouflage is just one of the tricks of Brenner’s bobtail squid, a newly found species that is also helping research into microbes in the human gut.”
Tracking Amazon: the New Yorkers monitoring pollution from delivery hubs: Brooklyn residents are using air quality and traffic sensors to see how new warehouses affect their community, Kaveh Waddell of Consumer Reports, Aliya Uteuova, Andrew Witherspoon, The Guardian, 11/20/22
Car tire chemicals are killing salmon and steelhead: The chemical 6PPD, added to tires to prevent degradation, is causing a “complete breakdown of the blood brain barrier” in fish, a new study found, Katherine Raphael, Environmental Health News, 11/21/22
Inside Egypt’s first climate-friendly farm: Tulima Farms in the Nile Delta relies on climate-friendly mechanisms to promote agriculture that adapts to climate change and relies on less water consumption amid a looming water crisis in Egypt, Rasha Malmoud, Al-Monitor, 10/16/22
What Seed-Saving Can Teach Us About the End of the World: Interest in the ancient practice spiked during the pandemic. But as climate change bears down, why we save seeds may matter as much as the act of saving them, Kea Krause, Levon Biss, Orion
Humans v nature: our long and destructive journey to the age of extinction: The story of the damage done to the world’s biodiversity is a tale of decline spanning thousands of years. Can the world seize its chance to change the narrative? Phoebe Weston, The Guardian, ˆ11/25/22
A Peopled Wilderness: We must find new ways to act toward animals in a world dominated everywhere by human power and activity, Martha C. Nussbaum, NY Review of Books, 12/8 issue: “And what is “the wild”? Does it even exist? Whose interests does this concept serve?”
America’s Billion-Dollar Tree Problem Is Spreading: Grasslands are being overrun by drought-resistant invaders that wreck animal habitats, suck up water supplies, and can cost landowners a fortune, Brianna Randall, Wired, 11/23/22
The Price of Paper: Coastal communities around the world contend with the toxic legacies of pulp and paper mills, Larry Pynn, Hakai, 11/22/22
AWARE-II Near Death Experience Study, Steven Novella, Neurologica, 11/7/22
Life's the study of dying
How to do it right
—from “Song for the Dead,” Josh Homme/Mark William Lanegan/Nick Oliveri
Books and Culture
Featuring Emily Dickinson and Phoebe Bridgers: A Conversation with Andrew Bird, Elizabeth Metzger, LA Review of Books, 11/16/22: “Speaking to what we know about Dickinson as a person, she makes me think of certain times in my own life when what it takes to get along in the world and have a healthy social life are at odds with this internal world and the lifelong struggle to translate and project it out to the world.”
A French Village’s Radical Vision of a Good Life with Alzheimer’s: Every resident of the Village Landais has dementia—and the autonomy to spend each day however they please, Marion Renault, The New Yorker, 11/23/22
It Only Takes One Parent to Get All The Graphic Novels Removed From a School Library: A school district in Oklahoma removed 3,000 titles after an angry parent complained about ‘pornography,’ Claire Woodcock, Vice, 11/23/22
At These Powwows, Two-Spirit People Are Always Revered: Across the country, powwows specifically intended for Two-Spirit people are carving out space to heal scars and build community, Quispe Lopez, Them, 11/21/22
Uncommon Women: In Andrea Barrett’s stories, female characters with at least one foot in the sciences have to pick sides and contend with radical changes, Regina Marler, NY Review of Books, 12/8 issue
The Art of Consolation: How to find solace in dark times, Michael Ignatieff, Persuasion, 11/23/22: “Consolation is the opposite of resignation.”
My Big Break: Jennifer Dines reviews—and redefines—an assault she experienced in her twenties, Jennifer Dines, Memoir Monday, 11/23/22: “Back then, I never considered myself raped, but something inside my twenty-one-year old brain, the one who wrote the lyrics to ”One Wish,” knew he had done something violent and shameful. But at the time, I couldn’t admit how much it hurt.”
Zelda Fitzgerald: Writer, Muse, and… Painter? On Discovering Her Grandmother’s Hidden Artistic Talents, Eleanor Lanahan, LitHub, 11/23/22. Book: The Paper Dolls of Zelda Fitzgerald
Birds
The Return of the Wild Turkey: In New England, the birds were once hunted nearly to extinction; now they’re swarming the streets like they own the place. Sometimes turnabout is fowl play, Jill Lepore, The New Yorker, 11/21/22
The social lives of birds: Turkeys are violent, back-stabby, and class-obsessed: The concept of a "pecking order" isn't just a fowl myth, Matthew Rozsa, Salon, 11/24/22
New Nests Help African Penguins Beat the Heat: Artificial ceramic nests deployed on penguin colonies in South Africa could shield the endangered seabirds from rising temperatures, Ryan Truscott, Hakai, 11/23/22
Planet's rarest birds at higher risk of extinction: A new study finds that bird species with extreme or uncommon combinations of traits face the highest risk of extinction, British Ecological Society, Science Daily, 11/25/22
Avian flu outbreak wipes out record 50.54 million U.S. birds: The deaths of chickens, turkeys and other birds represent the worst U.S. animal-health disaster to date, topping the previous record of 50.5 million birds that died in an avian-flu outbreak in 2015, Reuters, NBC News, 11/25/22
Photographer Celebrates Birds and Their Rainbow Wings: Christian Spencer captures the "winged prism" effect, Mary Jo DiLonardo, Treehugger, 11/24/22. Book: Birds: Poetry in the Sky
Happy Birthday William Blake, born November 28, 1757
The Sick Rose
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
From Great Consciousness vision Harlem 1948 buildings standing in Eter-
nity.
I realized entire Universe was manifestation of One mind –
My teacher was William Blake – my life work Poesy,
transmitting that spontaneous awareness to Mankind.
—from “Who,” Allen Ginsberg
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.—Joy Harjo
Winter is everywhere upon us. I’m thinking about the past, the future, friends gone, and those still present. And most of all family. And for all we are given, all we cherish. Best wishes and much love to all. —David