The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 81, November 28, 2021 (V2 #29)
Robert Bly 1926-2021
The honeycomb at night has strange dreams:
Small black trains going round and round—
Old warships drowning in the raindrop.
—From “An American Dream”
Stephen Sondheim 1930-2021
Sometimes people leave you
Halfway through the wood
Others may deceive you
You decide what’s good
You decide alone
But no one is alone
—From “Send in the Clowns”
William Blake born November 28, 1857
Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
—From “Jerusalem”
The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you but yourself. —Rita Mae Brown, born November 28, 1944
Roll down the window, put down the top
Crank up the Beach Boys, baby
Don't let the music stop
We're gonna ride it till
We just can't ride it no more —I Love L.A., Randy Newman, born November 28, 1943
“In today’s America, those who call themselves “conservative” are the very opposite of conservative: they are dangerous radicals seeking to bring us to our knees by attacking the grand philosophy that made this nation great—and which, if we could finally make it a reality, could make it greater still—replacing it with the stunted beliefs of petty tyrants.” —Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, 11/21/21
Pandemania
'Patience is crucial': Why we won't know for weeks how dangerous Omicron is. Lab tests and patterns of spread will show whether the new SARS-CoV-2 variant's many mutations are a serious threat, Nic Kupferschmidt, Science, 11/27/21
The New Omicron Variant is a Pandemic Gut Check, Jacqueline Howard, CNN, 11/27/21: “"New variants are going to continually be generated by this virus, most of which will be inconsequential. It will remain an important task, however, to characterize and track new variants to determine their significance," Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security”
Environment and Climate
Want to fight for climate action but feel daunted or powerless? Try this: The scale of the crisis is intimidating. But most people are already members of organizations – like our employers, universities, unions or religious groups – that are great avenues to fight for concrete climate results, Tayo Bero, The Guardian, 11/23/21
Indigenous Solutions to Climate Change Could Inform Nationwide Policies, Melissa Hellman, Center for Public Integrity, 11/20/21
Connecticut’s largest dairy farm taps into energy markets with a plentiful supply of cow manure, Stephen Singer, Hartford Courant, 11/22/21: “In the complicated business of energy markets, manure produced from a herd of 3,000 cows at Oakridge Dairy in Ellington will be transformed into gas sold in New Jersey.”
Artificial island on Georgia coast to provide nesting habitat for shorebirds: Sea-level rise is making their nests more vulnerable to flooding and storm surge, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 11/23/21
Why Putting Solar Canopies on Parking Lots Is a Smart Green Move: Solar farms are proliferating on undeveloped land, often harming ecosystems. But placing solar canopies on large parking lots offers a host of advantages — making use of land that is already cleared, producing electricity close to those who need it, and even shading cars, Richard Conniff, Yale Environment 360, 11/22/21
The average person’s daily choices can still make a big difference in fighting climate change – and getting governments and utilities to tackle it, too, Tom Ptak, The Conversation, 11/22/21
In the Food System and Beyond, Plastics Are the Problem: The co-director of the Peak Plastic Foundation discusses the size and shape of the plastic problem, how the pandemic reshaped the plastic landscape, and how food fits into the plastics puzzle, Matthew Wheeland, Civil Eats, 11/17/21
Shopping online surged during Covid. Now the environmental costs are becoming clearer: Piles of cardboard and fleets of delivery trucks are changing the environmental equation of retail, Catherine Boudreau, Politico, 11/18/21
Flooding and nuclear waste eat away at a Tribe’s ancestral home: A stockpile of nuclear waste from a power plant next to their reservation, which the federal government reneged on a promise to remove in the 1990s, has tripled in size. It comes within 600 yards of some residents' homes, Pete Myers, Environmental Health News, 11/13/21
As young people brace for climate change, kids TV is going green: Climate-related content geared toward kids is on the rise, Jenna Benchetrit, CBC News, 11/13/21
After Years of Pushing for Prairie Strips, This Ecologist Won a MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant: Lisa Schulte Moore used to have to explain the benefits of her work to farmers in the Corn Belt. Now, over half of farmers in Iowa are willing to plant prairie strips next to cropland to improve soil health and water quality and mitigate climate change, Nathan Beacom, Civil Eats, 11/22/21
Mobile app allows citizen scientists to identify and report invasive species: Early reporting helps agencies like the U.S. Forest Service to control their spread, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 11/26/21
Monarch butterflies may be thriving after years of decline. Is it a comeback? The North American species is seeing an exponential increase in California, but the population is far short of normal, Gabriele Canon, The Guardian, 11/21/21
Humans Have Broken a Fundamental Law of the Ocean: The size of undersea creatures seemed to follow a strange but stable pattern—until industrial fishing came along, Matt Reynolds, Wired, 11/23/21
Battery power: five innovations for cleaner, greener electric vehicles: EVs are seen as key in transition to low-carbon economy, but as their human and environmental costs become clearer, can new tech help? Oliver Balch, The Guardian, 11/26/21
The Clean Energy Transition Enters Hyperdrive: Researchers argue that the shift to carbon-free energy is gaining momentum, largely because of economic benefits, Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News, 11/25/21
Politicians are failing to deliver climate justice. Lawyers and scientists could do it in court, Angela Dewan, Isabelle Jani-Friend, CNN, 11/25/21
Canada’s Tar Sands: Destruction So Vast and Deep It Challenges the Existence of Land and People: Oil companies have replaced Indigenous people’s traditional lands with mines that cover an area bigger than New York City, stripping away boreal forest and wetlands and rerouting waterways, Nicholas Kusnetz, Inside Climate News, 11/21/21
Politicks
Republicans are quietly rigging election maps to ensure permanent rule: The past decade in Ohio shows how bad it can get – and how quickly. Despite the state’s voters often swinging Democratic, 75% of its congressional delegates are Republican, David Pepper, The Guardian, 11/28/21
A historian of white power reacts to the Rittenhouse verdict: ‘a bonanza for the far-right’ Kathleen Belew says Rittenhouse’s acquittal signals an approval for growing militant vigilantism against racial justice protesters, April Glaser, The Guardian, 11/24/21
US libraries report spike in organised attempts to ban books in schools: The American Library Association, which monitors ‘challenges’ to books, says social media have amplified protests to the highest number for decades, Alison Flood, The Guardian, 11/25/21
Punishment for Pipeline Protesters, but Not for Pipeline Firm’s Violations? In the legislature, Green Leader Sonia Furstenau points out a stark contrast, Andrew MacLeod, The Tyee, 11/24/21
The Terrifying Future of the American Right: What I saw at the National Conservatism Conference, David Brooks, The Atlantic, 11/18/21
These corporations back the sponsors of an Ohio abortion ban that's more extreme than Texas, Judd Legum, Tesnim Zekeria, Rebecca Crosby, Popular Information, 11/23/21 (Ed. Note: the list includes Nationwide, Pfizer, Anthem, Johnson & Johnson, AT&T, all companies that proclaim to support empowering women. Tell them what you think)
The Good Stuff
‘They Become Our Family:’ US Farming Couple Rescue Afghans, Julie Watson, AP News, 11/24/21
Psychedelics can change humanity for the better. It’s time to unlock their power: Studies of MDMA, ketamine, psilocybin mushrooms and other psychedelics have shown tremendous potential for therapeutic applications, Rick Doblin, The Guardian, 11/26/21
An Elusive Wish: A Conversation with Dennis Cooper, Rick Spielberger, LA Review of Books, 11/22/21: “I’m not hostile toward anything. It’s just I don’t live a normal life. I’ve always been this weird artist, and I’ve never participated in kind of mainstream life or culture — queer or otherwise. I don’t relate to wanting to find a life partner and get married and all that stuff. I don’t relate to that kind of work of fiction or books. I have no interest in conventional fiction. It’s just not my world.”
He spent almost 50 years alone at 10,000 feet: His hobby helped shape climate research in the Rockies: An amateur scientist began logging snowfall to keep busy. Along the way, he became an unwitting chronicler of climate change in a region known as the water tower for the drying American West, Karen Brulliard, Washington Post, 11/27/21
A quiet revolution: the female imams taking over an LA mosque: While many have misinterpreted a hadith to mean women can’t enter a mosque, these women are covering progressive topics like sexual violence, abortion, pregnancy loss, domestic violence in their sermons, Amel Brahmi, The Guardian, 11/23/21
How to Shop More Ethically This Holiday Season: Consider these tips for putting your dollars back into your community, from supporting small businesses to making more sustainable choices, Jaime Stathis, Wired, 11/20/21
What's Notable about the Notable Books? Thinking way too much about the New York Times list of "notable" books, John Warner, Biblioracle, 11/28/21
What Lovecraft Country Gave to Black Audiences: The Cast and Creators Speak to the Making—and Unmaking—of the HBO Series, James Andrew Miller, LitHub, 11/24/21
“Early On, there was no word for “groundhog.” Neither were there groundhogs, or grandmothers, or event coordinators. There were events but they were uncoordinated like the Tunguska Event. There was nothing, but no word for it. In some ways it must have been nice, all that wordlessness, because sometimes now you meet somebody and all you can think is, Please stop talking. Our planet has become so much wordier than the other planets, although there are respites if you hang out with eagles or angels. Eagles never explain anything, and angels are no more voluble than they are visible: visibility is not their shtick.”—From Presto, Amy Leach, in Orion Magazine
PRAYER TO WINTER
By James P. Lenfestey
White earth, and ruins, ourselves, and nothing beside.
— D. H. Lawrence
Do not abandon us!
We who fear your fury
love your coverlet of snow.
We who cower at the bus stop
love the ice beneath our skates.
We who daily deplore your omnipotence
weep at your unseasonal melting.
We will push our skis uphill for you,
chain our tires, jump our batteries,
scarf and beard our cheeks,
bury the curves of our bodies
for you.
And we will shovel
until the rhythm of our shoveling
exalts us in your presence.
Until the stroke of our blade
And the smoke of our breath
blows honest and pure, until
the Niagara of our nose is frozen,
our muscles sinewy and warm,
and we burst through the door
with an explosion of stomping
and clapping, throwing open
ourselves, yelling, “I’m
home!” I’m home!”
Do not abandon us,
as we
have abandoned you.
Recommended Reading
Apples & Oranges, A Photographic Essay by Cheryl Aden
Free Speech and Koch Money: Manufacturing a Campus Culture War, Ralph Wilson and Isaac Kamola
The Eater of Darkness, Robert M. Coates
When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and Other Stories, Poems by E. Ethelbert Miller
Justice on the Brink: The Death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Rise of Amy Coney Barrett, and Twelve Months That Transformed the Supreme Court, Linda Greenhouse (Review by Charles Kaiser in The Guardian, 11/21/21: “Linda Greenhouse does a fine job of raising the alarm about the conservative conquest and what it means for the rest of us – it’s a pity she does not also recommend ways to fight back”)
Rubyfruit Jungle, Rita Mae Brown
(Ed. Note: Hanukah, Festival of Lights, and Feast of Dedication begins tonight. Even if you do not celebrate, you can sing along with us for each of the next eight days.)
Put on your yarmulke
Here comes Hanukkah
So much funukah
To celebrate Hanukkah
Hanukkah is the festival of lights
Instead of one day of presents, we have eight crazy nights
—Adam Sandler, The Hanukkah Song (v.3)
“The Hebrew spelling of Hanukkah also serves as a mnemonic device, reminding us that the date of the holiday is the 25th of the Hebrew month of Kislev, as represented by the last two Hebrew letters of the holiday, which are equivalent to 25 in the Hebrew alphanumeric system.” -- Haaretz
This weekend felt like the beginning of winter. It was cold and we even saw some snow. We ate with family. Not too much eating this year. And we celebrated Indigenous People’s day by going outside with the birds and squirrels, like them, preparing for the cold to come. We are together in our hope to make a better world. There is so much still to be revealed. Stay well all, stay strong, stay engaged. We will need each other in the days ahead. Sharing in the miracle of light.
Send your news, poems, paintings, and stories.
Love to all — David
