The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times: Issue 33, December 27, 2020
“In a moment like this, I can only wish America a “Mourning Christmas”. If we are wise, we will not gather with people outside our households to sing Joy to the World. We will, instead, light a candle at home for the loved ones who are no longer with us this year. We will remember our neighbors and friends who have experienced great loss, many of whom are still risking their lives as essential workers. We will cry out with those who, like the Christ child, have no place to lay their head. If we are faithful to the story of the one whose light “shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it”, we will cry until our tears flow together into a river of justice that rolls down like mighty waters and an ever-flowing stream. And in that stream of justice and love and mercy, we will commit to work together for a better world in 2021 and a Christmas when we can truly sing of peace on Earth and good will toward all people.” —Bishop William J Barber II, The Guardian, 12/25/20, In mourning, there is strength
“Stay positive. Test negative.” —E. Ethelbert Miller
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“Well, I woke up this morning and I got myself a beer
The future's uncertain and the end is always near” —The Doors, Roadhouse Blues
Ashley Park sings La Vie en Rose, A stunning video of a song she sang in the recent Netflix series, Emily in Paris.
The great acceleration: The virus isn’t transforming us. It’s speeding up the changes already underway, Carlos Lozada, Washington Post, 12/18/20
Some writers are already imagining the long-term impact of the pandemic on our culture, politics and economy, and they suggest that we may end up in much the same places where we were headed all along — except now we’ll get there faster, with less control over the landing and less time to prepare for life upon arrival. In their books, vaccines are not the only things moving at warp speed.
Life after the coronavirus “is going to be, in many aspects, a sped-up version of the world we knew,” author Fareed Zakaria writes in “Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World,” a survey of the possible socioeconomic and political consequences of the outbreak. In “Apollo’s Arrow,” physician and sociologist Nicholas A. Christakis warns that the pandemic can “amplify” our inequalities and divides, touching on what is most human about us, our griefs and our fears and our denials. And journalists John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge argue in “The Wake-Up Call” that this is a “history-accelerating crisis,” one that will deepen the dysfunctional politics and ineffective governance of Western societies.
The Serviceberry, An Economy of Abundance, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Emergence, Dec 2020
As Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and ecological systems to reimagine currencies of exchange?
Saskatoon, Juneberry, Shadbush, Shadblow, Sugarplum, Sarvis, Serviceberry—these are among the many names for Amelanchier. Ethnobotanists know that the more names a plant has, the greater its cultural importance. The tree is beloved for its fruits, for medicinal use, and for the early froth of flowers that whiten woodland edges at the first hint of spring. Serviceberry is known as a calendar plant, so faithful is it to seasonal weather patterns. Its bloom is a sign that the ground has thawed and that the shad are running upstream—or at least it was back in the day, when rivers were clear and free enough to support their spawning. The derivation of the name “Service” from its relative Sorbus (also in the Rose Family) notwithstanding, the plant does provide myriad goods and services. Not only to humans but to many other citizens. It is a preferred browse of Deer and Moose, a vital source of early pollen for newly emerging insects, and host to a suite of butterfly larvae—like Tiger Swallowtails, Viceroys, Admirals, and Hairstreaks—and berry-feasting birds who rely on those calories in breeding season.
In Potawatomi, it is called Bozakmin, which is a superlative: the best of the berries. I agree with my ancestors on the rightness of that name. Imagine a fruit that tastes like a Blueberry crossed with the satisfying heft of an Apple, a touch of rosewater and a miniscule crunch of almond-flavored seeds. They taste like nothing a grocery store has to offer: wild, complex with a chemistry that your body recognizes as the real food it’s been waiting for.
For me, the most important part of the word Bozakmin is “min,” the root for “berry.” It appears in our Potawatomi words for Blueberry, Strawberry, Raspberry, even Apple, Maize, and Wild Rice. The revelation in that word is a treasure for me, because it is also the root word for “gift.” In naming the plants who shower us with goodness, we recognize that these are gifts from our plant relatives, manifestations of their generosity, care, and creativity. When we speak of these not as things or products or commodities, but as gifts, the whole relationship changes. I can’t help but gaze at them, cupped like jewels in my hand, and breathe out my gratitude.
In the presence of such gifts, gratitude is the intuitive first response. The gratitude flows toward our plant elders and radiates to the rain, to the sunshine, to the improbability of bushes spangled with morsels of sweetness in a world that can be bitter.
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“There’s also the fact that Beat poetry is what I’ve always considered “bomb poetry,” coming out of that sense, as Ginsberg said, of poets confronting the destruction of the entire world. As he said, no other poets have ever experienced that. I have to say, we have to consider the conquest, and this sense of Chicanismo, of being conquered by the sword and the book, had become universalized, globalized, through globalized threat, beginning with the atomic bomb, now with extreme ecological destruction, the destruction of our entire world. And how do you create poetry out of that, how do you write about that? How do you not write about that? All of these things are very much connected to the Chicanao sensibility. Also there are the Buddhist tenets, or non-tenets I guess I should say, which to me are indigenous, indigenous American, that I see and draw from my indigenous side. This erasure of self, of the self and other split, and this notion of poetry and the body being in service to others. Going from the body into the body politic, through the magic of spirit inspiration. Poetry, breath—back to breath, spirit, etymologically has to do with breath, inspiration. This is the magic of poetry.” —Lorna Dee Cervantes, from The Beats at Naropa, Coffee House Press, 2020
In the Colombian Amazon, a leader trains her people to save the forest, Maria Fernanda Lizcano, Mongabay, 12/16/20
In that small school in the heart of the jungle, María Clemencia showed her spirit, refused to be mistreated, and demonstrated the strength of Amazonian women. Today, at the age of 52, Clemencia is the brains behind the School of Political Education of the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon (OPIAC).
This initiative is supported by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), and each year it trains dozens of young people to defend their territory. It uses its own pedagogical model that reinforces the participants’ roots, reminding them of their mission to protect Mother Earth and giving them the tools to face the world. It is a space where women and men are given the same opportunities, and from which 245 young people with leadership potential graduated between 2016 and 2019.
Clemencia, from the Uitoto community (also known as the Muina Murui people), has been a voice for Indigenous people and won numerous national and international accolades for her work.
Could seaweed help save us from climate catastrophe? Nadra Little, Huffpost, 12/21/20
Perhaps the most promising solution for reducing bovines’ release of this powerful planet-warming gas? Feeding cows seaweed.
The red seaweed species formally known as Asparagopsis taxiformis is a “complete game changer,” according to Ermias Kebreab, associate dean for global engagement in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at the University of California, Davis. In July, preliminary results from the latest study that Kebreab co-authored on the algae found that it reduces intestinal methane production in beef steers by more than 80% when added to their feed. Other research found reductions of up to 98%, without adverse effects on the cows’ weight or the quality of beef produced.
“A couple of years ago, I would never have believed it,” said Kebreab, who serves as a scientific adviser for Blue Ocean Barns, which is commercializing a red algae feed supplement. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
[ed note: and if that wasn’t enough good news for you, try this:]
Proponents of seaweeds have lots of other plans, too.
“They can be used for biofuels, and seaweed biomass can be used to make fertilizer to make crops on land more productive,” said Jennifer Smith, a University of California, San Diego, marine biology professor in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who also advises Blue Ocean Barns. “Seaweeds can be used to make plastics that are biodegradable, and that are a lot less harmful than the plastics that we currently use that stick around on the planet for hundreds of thousands of years.”
Seaweeds produce compounds that have been investigated for use in antibiotics, cancer drugs and anti-inflammatories. Seaweed is a nutritious, sustainable vegetarian food (if more Westerners would come around to eating it). Growing it can even clean up polluted waters. “And the list goes on,” Smith said.
Seaweeds and seaweed-based products have the potential to usher in enormous environmental benefits. By removing carbon dioxide from the ocean, seaweeds decrease harmful ocean acidification resulting from man-made carbon emissions. In fact, the brown seaweed kelp is estimated to absorb five times more carbon than land-based plants. Seaweeds also remove excess phosphorus and nitrogen that collects in waterways as a result of fertilizer runoff, a condition called eutrophication that can cause toxic algal blooms and wildlife dead zones.
Discovery of ‘cryptic species’ shows Earth is even more biologically diverse, Excitement as DNA barcoding technique leads to unmasking of new species tempered with fear that some are already at risk of extinction, Patrick Greenfield, The Guardian 12/25/20
A growing number of “cryptic species” hiding in plain sight have been unmasked in the past year, driven in part by the rise of DNA barcoding, a technique that can identify and differentiate between animal and plant species using their genetic divergence.
The discovery of new species of aloe, African leaf-nosed bats and chameleons that appear similar to the human eye but are in fact many and separate have thrilled and worried conservationists. Scientists say our planet might be more biologically diverse than previously thought, and estimates for the total number of species could be far higher than the current best guess of 8.7 million. But cryptic discoveries often mean that species once considered common and widespread are actually several, some of which may be endangered and require immediate protection.
The Jonah’s mouse lemur was only unveiled to the world this summer but is already on the verge of extinction. The newly described Popa langur in Myanmar, previously confused with another species, numbers around 200 and is likely to be classified as critically endangered, threatened by habitat loss and deforestation.
“DNA barcoding is a tool that allows us to detect differences among species at a finer scale than before, like a microscope allows us to see fine details of surface structure that are invisible to the naked eye,” says Brian Brown, entomology curator at the LA Natural History Museum, who is using the technique for research on flies. “It gives us a way to delimit some of the previously suspected, but unexplored, diversity within what we call species. It is showing that the world is even more wonderfully biodiverse than we suspected.”
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The enduring lessons of a New Deal writers project, Jon Allsop, CJR, 12/22/20
At its peak, the Writers’ Project employed more than six thousand people. Some of its hires—Zora Neale Hurston, John Cheever, Richard Wright, Saul Bellow, and Studs Terkel, among others—were celebrated, or would become so, but most qualified by dint of their economic circumstances. The result was an eclectic staff—“a mazy mass,” as Time magazine put it, of “unemployed newspapermen, poets, graduates of schools of journalism who had never had jobs, authors of unpublished novels, high-school teachers, people who had always wanted to write,” and so on. Putting writers on the public payroll was controversial, but as Harry Hopkins, the administrator of the Works Progress Administration, said at the time, “Hell, they’ve got to eat just like other people.” ….
EXPERTS CREDIT THE FEDERAL WRITERS’ PROJECT with germinating some of America’s great literary works. Its oral histories helped inspire Dave Isay’s audio project StoryCorps; the author Colson Whitehead read the interviews with formerly enslaved people when he was researching his novel The Underground Railroad. The project’s guidebooks remain in use, and have many dedicated fans.
It’s time for America to give support to writers and other arts on a large national level the way countries like England, France and many others have done for years.
On a Barstool
The government walks in
talking about Bob Dylan
A man & a dog
snicker
The light is low, the mood is sour
who knows who knows who
Goes to the swinging john door
to peep at the skinny girls hauling
up their socks
who follow
a large-headed handsome man
in a goosestep jacket & a line of talk
Pulling us into the past
like blue comes to cheese
the barkeep can’t believe —
another round for the house!
another government
for Bob & me!
—Elinor Nauen
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Just in time for the new year, here is some amazingly good news to help us get through the next phase of pandemic:
UK scientists trial drug to prevent infection that leads to Covid, Dennis Campbell, The Guardian, 12/25/20
British scientists are trialling a new drug that could prevent someone who has been exposed to coronavirus from going on to develop the disease Covid-19, which experts say could save many lives.
The antibody therapy would confer instant immunity against the disease and could be given as an emergency treatment to hospital inpatients and care home residents to help contain outbreaks.
People living in households where someone has caught Covid could be injected with the drug to ensure they do not become infected too. It could also be given to university students, among whom the virus has spread rapidly because they live, study and socialise together.
Dr Catherine Houlihan, a virologist at University College London Hospitals NHS trust (UCLH) who is leading a study called Storm Chaser into the drug, said: “If we can prove that this treatment works and prevent people who are exposed to the virus going on to develop Covid-19, it would be an exciting addition to the arsenal of weapons being developed to fight this dreadful virus.”
Livewriters goes LIVE!
As some of you know, I’ve been podcasting about books and publishing at Writerscast (almost 400 episodes since 2008). I love talking to writers and people in publishing.
Now, with so many great podcasts appearing daily, I felt it would be useful to launch a new site to curate and support podcasting about books, authors and publishing, Livewriters, featuring a curated selection of podcasts for readers, writers and publishers. Livewriters also provides services and resources to help podcasters in their work.
Please visit the site and let me know what you think of it. Suggestions and ideas for improvements are always welcome. And we are looking for sponsors and advertisers!
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Our Julian calendar may be the central artifice we use to organize time, (our sixth sense?) but it is, of course, an immensely useful creation.
Celebration at this moment may be uncomfortable, perhaps impossible, yet we can and must commit ourselves to join together and move forward into a more just, equitable and sustainable future. Among us, we have the means to create a new communalism that incorporates the best elements of human creation and honors the natural world. I pray that we have the imagination, will, and desire, and I believe we have the capability to create our future as we wish it to be.
My best wishes to all of you for 2021. Thank you for reading and supporting The Weird Times through the end of 2020. You are a big part of what keeps me going every day now.
The Weird Times bookshelf continues to add new books weekly.
Feeding America is a nationwide network of food banks that needs our support more than ever.
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'
—Bob Dylan, The Times, They Are A’ Changin’