The Feather & The Oar

"And men saw that beauty and love in all their forms are of the gods, and they became free and brave, and they grew wings." -M. Kuzmin (Kryl'ia, 1907)

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Star Trek: Discovery premieres tonight! Thought I’d celebrate by making this 1979 throwback poster. 

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“Smart people get a chance to climb on top, take reality for a ride, but it will never stop trying to throw you, and eventually it will.”

Rick Sanchez

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This is a pretty great show. 

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Kicked in the testicles by nostalgia.

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Humble Corn

Coworker: Is popcorn actual...corn?

Me: ...What?

Coworker: Is it like a peppercorn? Or actual corn?

Me: You must be joking.

Coworker: Don't look at me like that! Who are you? Bill Nye?

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The quietest sound in nature is that of a cat vomiting.

An Unnamed District Attorney

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A stellar song for a stellar show

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A coworker told me that our mutual friend is now living next to a sugar glider breeder who calls himself “PFang” and feeds the baby gliders pieces of dried mango braided in his dreads. 

The world is an amazing place. 

[ofburntbreadsandlazyeggs]

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Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

The back of my copy of Black Swan Green features a blurb from Kirkus Reviews that raves “Great Britain’s Catcher in the Rye--and another triumph for one of the present age’s most interesting and accomplished novelists.” This blurb makes me bristle and I thought about it often as I was reading this relatively short (and vaguely autobiographical) offering from David Mitchell. While I can see how a sub-par reviewer might read the first few chapters of this book and associate it with Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, the narrator of this story is--blessedly--a far cry from the spoiled and grating Holden Caulfield. Unlike Holden, Jason Taylor is a dedicated student, empathetic, and loyal. Reflecting on the difficulties that plague one of his developmentally disabled classmates, Jason states “Squelch was just this kid you laugh at. But think about Squelch aged twenty, or thirty? Think about what his mum does for him, every single day? Squelch aged fifty, seventy? What’d happen to him? What’s so funny about that?” As Jason comes to empathize with ‘Squelch’ over the next few chapters, calls ‘Squelch’ by his real name. This, together with other character defining moments more central to the plot, makes Jason a far more likable character. Since I sympathized with Jason more than I ever did with Holden, it was easier to focus on Mitchell’s masterful technique. Like Salinger, Mitchell has adopted an adolescent syntax, diction, and perspective. His sentences can be choppy, there are more than a few references to bodily functions, and section transitions mimic the brief attention span of a fourteen year old. Mitchell had already proven himself as a master of voice and characterization with Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas in the early aughts, so I was not surprised to find his trademark skills in peak form here. In this respect, at least, the Kirkus blurb is right. Black Swan Green is yet another triumph. While I still recommend Ghostwritten and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet over the other books in his oeuvre, I would readily assign this to high school students with Catcher in the Rye.

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This has been stuck in my head for days.

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These made me laugh and cry. 

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The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin

In The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin imagines an hermaphroditic race of humanoids who live on an icy world in an isolated region of the universe. Through the eyes of her narrator/main character, a kind of intergalactic ambassador, she describes how this society functions, how individual "Gethenians" interact with one another, and how their ambiguous and fluctuating gender has shaped their history and culture. It's a compelling thought experiment and, on more than one occasion, I imagined its potential classroom applications (see, for example, Chapter Seven "The Question of Sex"). Despite some antiquated terminology (see Marri's great review), it's easy to see why The Left Hand of Darkness remains a classic. That being said, there were a few things that bothered me. First, I don't care for Le Guin's prose. I know that it's a matter of personal taste, but I found her syntax clunky and overwrought. Second, in a book just over 300 pages long, Le Guin has packed at least 50 pages with lengthy descriptions of snow and ice. While I understand that emphasizing the unforgiving environment allows the reader to better sympathize with the central character, it seemed unnecessarily repetitive. Third, and most critically, I found myself with a number of unanswered questions. Le Guin doesn’t seem to care much for the details of world building and there were several moments where I longed for more information (a map would have been nice!). These minor gripes aside, The Left Hand of Darkness is a great book and a masterful example of the human themes that science fiction can explore.

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Going places with you is like going out with my grandmother. There's a pocketbook involved and a stream of crossword clues.

A Coworker

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This is pretty nice. 

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If you want to know how much darkness there is around you, you must sharpen your eyes, peering at the faint lights in the distance.

Italo Calvino (Invisible Cities)

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Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty

Growing up, my younger brother and I spent an occasional afternoon at the assisted living facility where my mother cared for sixty senior citizens. We listened to stories, helped with crafts, played bingo, and provided ad hoc tech support. We had, it seemed, sixty extra grandparents and we enjoyed visiting them. While I can’t speak for my brother, these trips taught me that a DRN is essential, that cremation is the more “ecologically sensible” funereal option, that our culture’s obsession with euphemisms is ridiculous and unhealthy, and that only one thing in life is inevitable (since some people avoid paying taxes): we will all die.

Perhaps it was that exciting inevitability amid the general uncertainty of existence that made me consider mortuary school. Or, maybe, it was the sincere desire to help shepherd people through difficult and uncomfortable life events (I do, after all, take after my parents). Whatever the reason, I spent some months before college considering the prospect of caring for the dead and the loved ones that they leave behind.

While I ultimately walked a different path, that lingering fascination drove me to pick up a copy of Caitlin Doughty’s Smoke Gets In Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory. In just over 240 pages, Doughty exceeded my expectations. She made me think and laugh, she taught me about global death rituals, and she described the most effective way to cremate a baby. Equal parts memoir and sociological study, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes is an engaging series of essays focused on a subject that many would prefer to ignore. By “lifting the veil” on funerals and mortuary science, Doughty prompts her readers to ponder funeral arrangements and their own relationships with death.

By its very nature, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes is not for the faint of heart. To properly address the inner workings of the “death industry” Doughty often approaches horrifying situations with “gallows humor.” While the book is filled with such examples of this approach, her description of cremating babies is, perhaps, the most emblematic:

“There is no mechanical loading device to deposit babies neatly into the chamber’s fiery arms, as there is for adults. You, the crematory operator, had to perfect the toss: the baby leaving your hand and coming to rest right below the main flame as it shot down from the ceiling of the retort. You had to make sure the baby landed in the sweet spot. With practice, you came to be very good at it.

Baby cremations were done at the end of the workday. The bricks lining the chamber grew so hot by the end of the day that the tiny babies practically cremated themselves. It was not uncommon for Mike to ask me to forgo cremating another adult and ‘knock out a couple of babies’ before the end of the day.

Adults could take hours to cremate, including the cremation itself and the cool-down process. Babies cremated in twenty minutes, tops. I found myself setting goals: All right, Caitlin, it’s what? Three fifteen p.m.? I bet you can do five babies before five o’clock. C’mon, girl, five before five. You get after that goal!

Appalling? Absolutely. But if I let myself be sucked into the sorrow surrounding each fetus—each wanted but wasted tiny life—I’d go crazy…”

While this style may seem “irreverent” or even “cold,” later chapters reveal just how much Doughty cares about both the bereaved and her craft. She is an honest reporter and a steadfast proponent of reform and industry transparency (https://www.ted.com/talks/caitlin_dou...).

In short, this book is worth your time.