Sarah Angleton's Blog, page 7

A Book for the Chore Doers

Spurred by the return of soldiers blinded from service in World War I, the American Foundation for the Blind was established in 1921. The organization quickly set about the work of becoming a wellspring of knowledge, research, and advocacy for the visually impaired. It ushered in important standardization in English Braille, pushed for universal design in manufacturing, and encouraged considerations of accessibility.

How audiobooks got their start. American Foundation for the Blind, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

And in 1932, led by AFB Education Director Robert B. Irwin, and with the lackluster support of Helen Keller who thought there might be more important priorities, the foundation established a recording studio for the purpose of putting books on vinyl records.

A year later the Library of Congress got in on the action. Soon audio performances of the Constitution and the writings of William Shakespeare became available in 15-minute segments on vinyl. The Bible also made the cut, as did many of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, O. Henry, and Helen Keller, who finally decided she was pretty much on board with that.

In the ninety years since, the audiobook has grown up quite a bit alongside some pretty impressive advances in technology, to become the fastest growing segment of the publishing market for going on twelve years now. The consumers of audiobooks have expanded beyond the visually impaired to include the commuters, exercisers, and household chore doers.

I’m just glad we no longer have to change the record every fifteen minutes. Image by sindrehsoereide from 
Pixabay

Like Helen Keller, I was a little bit of a latecomer to the audiobook, but over the last few years, I have listened to more and more of them. It’s still not my preferred method of book consumption, but as much as I would like to sit and read books all day long, I do occasionally have other things I need to get done. When that happens, it’s nice to have someone read to me while I work.

About a year ago, I set out to put one of my own books into this format. I have started with Gentleman of Misfortune, my first published novel, which you can learn more about here if you like. The project took a little longer than I expected, primarily because of slow communications with distributors, but finally, the audiobook is available in enough places that I feel like I can start to tell people about it.

For when you just want to read a book, but you really need to clean your house.

If you are into audiobooks, I hope you will consider checking it out at whatever link below would make you the happiest. Also, in case this is important to you here at the murky dawn of everything AI—and I really do hope it is—the reader for Gentleman of Misfortune is a real live human being with a real live voice.  His name is George Sirois and he is a talented voice actor, podcaster, and writer, who I think did a pretty bang-up job bringing my story to life in this way.

At this moment, Gentleman of Misfortune is available on audio in the following places, but platforms are still being added, so if your favorite isn’t listed, you still might find it there.

Audible

Spotify

Scribd

Libro.FM

Storytel

Kobo, Walmart

Google Play

BingeBooks

Chirp

NOOK Audiobooks

Audiobooks.com

Overdrive

Chapters Eight

In 1955, responding to a Life magazine article that explored the problem of underachievement in American children’s literacy rates and a book published soon after titled Why Johnny Can’t Read, then Houghton Mifflin education director William Spaulding reached out to an old friend with a challenge.

Theodore Geisel thought it would take him at most a month or two to use a provided list of 348 words every six-year-old should know, whittle it down to about 225 words, and shape them into a story that, at Spaulding’s insistence, “first graders can’t put down.”

It’s been a few years since our household has contained a first grader, but this is still in the collection because you never know when one might pop by for a visit.

It turned out to be a much taller order than the beloved Dr. Seuss, who was accustomed to making up silly words when he couldn’t find a rhyme, first assumed. At one point, he claimed he looked at the list and determined that the first two rhyming nouns he found would be the subject of his book. When he put a striped hat on a naughty cat, children’s literature was changed forever. He ended up using 236 unique words to write his The Cat in the Hat. It took him a year-and-a-half to do it.

I can sort of relate. I’m in the middle of a second draft of what I hope will someday be my fourth historical novel. That is, by the way, the best of my many excuses for not being super consistent on my blog lately. Also travel and the chaos of summer and life in general, but mostly it’s the novel thing. I’m fairly certain the novel won’t delight many first graders, but I would like to think it may someday be a book readers won’t be able to put down.

It’s a long way from that right now. A good portion of the book is still in that terrible rough draft stage in which the plot contains holes, the research has thin patches, the word choices are sloppy, the pacing is erratic, and the irresponsible characters are largely calling the shots. At this stage, I’m still hoping someone who loves me would have the good sense to destroy it if anything should happen to me before I’ve had a chance to clean it up.

Slowly but surely, I am working my way through the second draft. This is when I consider the rhythm of the story. I might move things around a little, adjust the pacing, fill in some background information, answer a few more targeted research questions, rein in those rambunctious characters, and start to play more intentionally with language. And like Dr. Seuss writing The Cat in the Hat, I’m finding that the whole thing is taking a lot longer than I thought it would.

Fortunately, I have not been tasked with changing the face of children’s literature and the landscape of early literacy education, but I do have approximately one million words in the English language I can choose from. I will not be trying to figure out how many unique ones I end up using, but my goal is somewhere in the neighborhood of 90,000 words or so, which does require some whittling.

For right now, most of that whittling needs to happen in chapter eight, which is where the pacing of this story really went off the rails. I must have been on a roll when I got to that part of the rough draft because I threw everything in there, including something like a quarter of the book’s major plot points.

It’s a monstrous hot mess that will eventually become at least five chapters, if not more, in the second draft. The problem is that it’s hard to convince myself I’m making much progress when, after days and days, I’m still trying to shape chapter 8d.

I’ll get there. Eventually. In the meantime, it does help to recognize that while I’m struggling with a process that is taking longer than I expected, the Greats have struggled with this, too. It also helps that even though my ninety-ish thousand words probably shouldn’t be made up, very few of them have to rhyme.

I’m okay. Mostly.

It’s a big week in the Angleton household. Son number one is preparing to leave this weekend for his first college move-in day.

I’m okay. Mostly. I’ve never been one of those moms who wanted to keep my kids from growing up because I just enjoyed them so much when they were babies. I did, but to be honest, every stage has come with its own frustrations and moments of joy. I know this one will, too.

I look forward to seeing what this smart, funny, loving, messy eighteen-year-old with the whole world open to him does with his independence and how he will change and grow over the coming weeks, months, and years. And yes, I’m a little scared, too, to watch it all unfold.

Did I mention he’s messy? How he’s going to fit all of his stuff in half of a tiny space like this, I still don’t know. Sdkb, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I still get sort of misty eyed when I think about the first time I dropped him off at preschool and he came home with knowledge someone besides me put into his little head. Driving away from him at college will be kind of like that, I imagine, only harder because I won’t get to pick him up three hours later.

So, we’ve spent this week organizing and packing, making sure he’s equipped with all the things he will need—extra-long bedsheets, a brand-new computer, and the best advice I have to offer. I did not, however, think to tell him what not to do in college. That is until I stumbled on a little book that pretty much covers it.

The book is The College Freshman’s Don’t Book by George Fullerton Evans, published in 1910. If you have the time and inclination, it is a pretty delightful read. As you might imagine, some of the advice is a bit dated, and I feel quite certain is fairly tongue-in-cheek. I doubt, for example, my son needs to be told to leave his fine china and Turkish rugs at home, and it’s unlikely he would choose to carry a cane or wear an excessively tall hat, which are frankly, pretentious things for a freshman to do.

But it contains some highly useful don’ts, too, such as:

Don’t pawn your pocket watch. That’s timeless advice. Charles Frank Ingerson. Public Domain.“Don’t imagine that you own the College Town from the moment you strike it.”“Don’t think that Exams can be passed without any preparation.”“Don’t put off that long piece of written work till the night before it is due.”“Don’t be surprised or disappointed, if you find you have neither time nor inclination to keep up with everything you thought you would, when first coming to College.”“Don’t hesitate to hear other people’s opinions. The World did not begin, nor will it end, with you.”

I especially like that last one, and I sincerely hope it is a lesson my son will carry with him into the wider world.

There are two more pieces of advice in the book’s long list of don’ts that I find particularly important. They say this: “Don’t forget to receive your visitors as if you were glad to see them,” and “Don’t forget to write home once every so often. Mama and Papa are always glad to see the College-town postmark.”

Of course, I do stand a better chance of getting a text or call or even an email than an actual letter, which outside of mandatory thank you notes, I doubt he’s ever written in his life. But any contact at all would be nice. I hope a little enthusiasm when I occasionally visit isn’t too much to ask, either.

What I do know is that for all the don’ts that I hope he won’t do, my young adult son is going to do and discover and learn amazing things. It won’t be long at all until he doesn’t miss me nearly as much as I will still miss him. And also, I’m okay. Mostly.

Really Fowling Up the Place

In March of 1847, 19th century literary journal The Knickerbocker published what is most likely the first printed version of what has become one of the most ubiquitous terrible jokes in the English language. It asks, “Why does a chicken cross the street?” It also offers up the answer: “Because it wants to get to the other side!”

Gas station chicken.

And because as everyone knows, a joke is always funnier when its punchline is thoroughly explained, the editor includes that as well: “There are ‘quips and quillets’ which seem actual conundrums, but yet are none.” In other words, the joke is vaguely funny, because it’s not.

This joke has been running through my head a lot the last couple of weeks because my family and I recently returned from a vacation in Hawaii, a big trip when you consider that we live in Missouri.

Many years ago, my husband and I decided we wanted to visit all fifty states in the US by the time we turned fifty. Our ambitious now eighteen-year-old son decided he would do it by the time he turned 25. He’s close, and pretty smart, so when we asked him to choose our family vacation destination before heading off to college, he didn’t hesitate.

Parking lot chicken.

When the boys were small, and we lived on the West Coast not far from an airport with direct flights to the islands, the two of us left the kiddos with grandparents and visited the Big Island, but this was the first trip there with all four of us.

We chose Maui this time (with a quick hop over to Oahu to visit Pearl Harbor for the history buffs among us) and it was as absolutely gorgeous as you might expect. There were waterfalls, and rainbows, and sea turtles, and lava tubes, and secluded beaches, and deadly narrow roads on mountainsides, and feral chickens.

So many chickens. There were chickens at the airport, at our hotel, on hiking trails, in the parking lot of the grocery store, and even hanging out beside the pumps at the gas station, where I assume they were fueling up to head out across the road.

Resort chickens. What is funny is the amount of time I spent during my vacation to beautiful Hawaii taking pictures of chickens.

I was more or less expecting most of the sights we took in, but I admit I was not expecting feral chickens. I didn’t remember noticing them on the Big Island. I’ve since discovered that while it’s a problem there, too, the islands of Maui and Kauai are especially overrun.

There have been chickens on the islands for as long as there have been people there. When the Polynesians first arrived as early as 1200 AD, they brought food supplies with them, including several crops and animals like red junglefowl, which is believed to be the ancestor of the domesticated chicken.

When Captain Cook arrived in 1778, he brought a more domesticated version with him. So did the missionaries, turned businessmen who ran large sugarcane plantations. That industry surged through the American Civil War when the North couldn’t import sugar from the South and then declined sharply toward the end of the century. Chickens, which were good to have around for pest control on the plantations, were then released into the wild where they began really fowling up the place.

The state hasn’t managed to get control of the chicken problem, but their efforts have resulted in a number of signs. So I guess that’s something.

And then there are the hurricanes and storms that blow up and tear apart chicken coops, releasing even more of the birds onto islands where there’s abundant food for them and not much in the way of predators that want to eat them.

Of course, humans make a pretty formidable predator of chickens, except that these have crossbred with the protected red junglefowl, making it difficult to know which, if any, can be legally harvested. Also, rumor has it, they are awfully gamey.

The state has made attempts to address the growing problem of loud, messy, feral chickens scratching up gardens and making a general nuisance of themselves, but they haven’t made a lot of progress. And so, for now, Hawaii has breathtaking sunsets, gorgeous flowers, awe-inspiring starry skies, majestic marine life, and a whole bunch of chickens crisscrossing its streets. That could seem vaguely funny, except that of course, it’s not.

Better than Bloodletting and Mercury Poisoning

It’s been a little bit of a long week around these parts, first with the internet woes that have been finally more or less resolved. Judging by the general complaints of nearly everyone I know who uses the same provider, their technicians and maintenance crews have had a couple of even longer weeks than I have, but I am grateful for their efforts.

At our house, the week has mostly been long because we have been nursing a sick kid. He wasn’t scary sick, just persistently so. What started as mild cold symptoms quickly turned into crazy swollen tonsils and a fever that wouldn’t quit. He was tested for all the things, and came up empty, leading to the conclusion that what he had was just a run of the mill miserable virus. Yuck.

So, he traded spending time with grandparents and a visiting cousin for time shivering on the couch and working up the courage to swallow. Meanwhile, I spent my time following him around sanitizing everything he touched and forcing preventive doses of zinc and vitamins C and D on the rest of the family.

British Library, London. Scanned from Maggie Black’s “The Medieval Cookbook,” but not nearly as tasty as a nice chicken soup. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

We’ve been lucky with our kids in regards to childhood sicknesses. They’ve always been pretty healthy and nothing has ever kept them down for long, so it was unusual when nearly a week later, he was still fighting a fever. I did what any good mom would do and turned to the real experts, those who lived long before the age of modern medicine.

Don’t worry, I didn’t bleed him to balance his humors or force him to take mercury pills. Thankfully, it didn’t come to that. Instead, I went with the suggestion of twelfth century Jewish philosopher and physician Maimonides and made a pot of chicken soup.

Maimonides wrote that the cure for asthma and leprosy and pretty much everything that ails you is chicken soup, and he wasn’t the first to say it. The 2nd century Greek philosopher Galen, with whose work Maimonides was surely familiar, suggested chicken soup as a cure for migraine, constipation, and fever. And Chinese culture has held chicken soup up as restorative for even longer than that, notably adding noodles to the mix, a brilliant move that wasn’t popularized in western culture until Campbell’s did it in 1934.

Maimonides, whose mama probably made a really good chicken soup. Blaisio Ugolino, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I decided to give it a try. The trouble is, my kiddo is not a huge fan of soup. If I were to give him a made-from concentrate Campbell’s chicken noodle from the can, he probably wouldn’t find it worth the painful effort to swallow, even if his throat didn’t hurt.

And so, I made it from scratch. Now, before you get all impressed with me (actually, go ahead and be impressed if you want), it turns out, chicken noodle soup is not really that hard to make. I have made my own broth plenty of times by throwing the picked-clean parts of a rotisserie chicken into the pressure cooker with some onion, celery, carrot, and seasonings. I figured it wouldn’t be hard from there to make it into a soup by adding more vegetables and chicken. And because I sometimes like to be that mom who is a little bit extra, I decided to add some homemade egg noodles as well.

I admit part of the motivation here is that there is currently a list circulating on Facebook that asks how much of a cook you are, to be determined by how many of the things on the list you have ever made from scratch. The list includes things like cooking a pot of beans (which I have done) and making your own noodles (which I had not). And, you know, I like to feel superior. Also, my mom used to make homemade egg noodles and they always tasted a little bit like love.

I don’t mean to brag (except that I kind of do a little bit), but this is a really tasty homemade chicken noodle soup.

It turns out homemade egg noodles aren’t nearly as impressive as they sound, either (but you can still feel free to be impressed). They are, however, pretty much medical magic, because after nearly a week of my otherwise healthy teenage son’s fairly rock solid immune system fighting off a viral infection, he got better right around the time he ate his mama’s homemade chicken noodle soup.

Yes, that could have almost certainly been a coincidence, except that researchers at the University of Nebraska have taken the time to study the effects of chicken soup on illness. This groundbreaking study from back in 2000, suggests that chicken soup may in fact possess some as yet unidentified properties that might legitimately reduce inflammation in the body and make a sick person feel temporarily a little bit better. Or at the very least it’s better than bloodletting and mercury poisoning.

My son did enjoy the soup, and only partly because it was the first thing he’d been able to swallow without pain in several days. Regardless, he’s fully recovered now and this is shaping up to be a much better week.

How’s it Going?

This week began with jury duty. Now it seems to be ending with widespread intermittent internet outages, severely limiting my ability to put together a blog post. So…how are things going in your corner of the world?

Maybe We Should Taco ‘Bout It

In 1632, Italian scientist Galileo Galilei published his book Dialogue Considering the Two Chief World Systems. Produced under a license issued by the Inquisition, the work presented a discourse between different points of view on a wide range of scientific topics of his day.

One of these conversations involved the competing theories of 2nd century Egyptian mathematician Ptolemy who believed the earth to be the stationary center of the solar system, and that of 16th century Prussian mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus who said, “Nuh-uh.”

Clearly this is heresy. Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

It turned out that Galileo, a devout Catholic who was clearly well versed in the arguments of each, and pretty handy with a telescope, kind of sort of agreed a little bit completely with Copernicus. In the course of his Dialogue, it started to sound that way to his readers, too. Among those readers was Father Vincenzo Maculano who was appointed by Pope Urban VIII to suss out the truth behind Galileo’s potential heresy, general bigotry, and absolute hatred of puppies. Probably.

And he did just that, because three hundred and ninety years ago today, under the threat of torture, Galileo made a public statement denouncing his ridiculous, data-fueled suspicion that Earth revolves around the sun.

The Catholic church at the time, supported by the questionable literal reading of several verses of Scripture, was thoroughly convinced this was an error that had been inappropriately and willfully spread by Galileo’s heretical work. Also that Galileo most likely had other incriminating documents locked up at his house, or possibly in a box tucked behind his Corvette.

Although, the man really did know his way around a telescope. Justus Sustermans, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s not hard to imagine why Galileo, sixty-nine years old at the time and not in the greatest of physical health, went ahead and stated for the record: “. . .with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies, and generally every other error, heresy, and sect whatsoever contrary to the said Holy Church. . .”

The book was banned, which made the world much safer from thinking. That was a good thing since the world was already pretty busy revolving around the sun. Galileo himself was sentenced to penance and imprisonment that was soon softened to house arrest for the remainder of his life.

And it served him right, because troublemakers who float theories that go against the grain of societally accepted truth, and who are consequently bigots and puppy-haters who have obviously broken all the laws, deserve to be harshly judged and silenced.

Except that three-hundred and ninety years later, I think it’s safe to assume most of us would agree the trial and forced recantation of Galileo was wrong. It only took the Catholic church three hundred and fifty-nine years to officially come to that conclusion, remove his book from the list of the banned, and pardon the man so he could leave the house and get a taco. Tragically, he didn’t live long enough to see the day.

I’d probably be happy listening to any of your crazy ideas over a taco. Also, I might be a little bit hungry. Kurt Kaiser, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Still, it’s nice to know that given enough time, humans will listen to and consider the ideas of fellow humans without automatically assuming the person presenting those ideas hates puppies, which I should add, it’s entirely possible that Galileo did not.

I’d like to think we might even be able to swallow our pride enough to make an effort in fewer than three hundred and fifty-nine years, even though I know it can be pretty uncomfortable to listen to someone challenge a widely held idea that you personally think is pretty spot on.

But it might just be worth the effort to listen, because maybe the person on the other side of that discussion really is a bigot who hates puppies. Or it’s also possible that person actually shares most of your beliefs, but just has a telescope and some pretty good evidence that should also be considered. And that person would probably really like to go get a taco.  

Brought Low by Cherries

It’s been a pretty nice spring around here so far, a little drier than ideal, but the temperature has been mostly mild and with a little strategic watering, the garden is doing well.

I’m kind of a clumsy gardener, but I keep trying. So far this year, I think it’s going pretty well.

A few days ago, I harvested my first (admittedly late) lettuce for a salad, and the locusts I call my sons devoured all the pea pods, strait from the plants. Last week, I pulled radishes that I promptly gave to my mother once I remembered that radishes are gross.

Now I’m watching the formation of green tomatoes, tiny peppers, blossoms that will someday soon become cucumbers, and the crazy growth of squash and melon plants that will eventually battle the potatoes for an epic garden takeover.

The blueberry bushes are producing, and the young strawberry plants are coming along. The blackberry brambles we planted last year are progressing nicely, and our apple trees are looking to be as productive as they ever have been. That means we have an awful lot of applesauce to eat still between now and harvest time. 

Nothing says spring quite like this.

But the one thing we don’t have this year is cherries. With the exception of only a few years in my life, I have always lived with at least one cherry tree in my yard. Their beautiful pink and white blossoms against a storm blue sky is one of my favorite sights of early spring, and I know that spring has truly arrived when I begin fighting the robins for the bright red fruit.

Then come the pink-stained fingertips from endless seeding, followed by a thick slice of tart cherry pie smothered with a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream. Add in a buttery ear of sweet corn, and this midwestern gal just tasted summer.

But not this year. Because as mild as our weather has been, we did have one unfortunate cold snap that brought us a night of freezing temperatures just as those beautiful blossoms were fully developed and ready to turn the corner into juicy orbs of deliciousness. We watched anxiously to see what would happen, and slowly admitted the cherry harvest wasn’t going to happen.

Our tree, that only a few weeks earlier had been so full of promise that I went ahead and used up the last two cups of last year’s frozen harvest to bake chocolate chip cherry bread, had no more than a handful of fruits on it. And the birds ate those.

Now there’s a man who appreciated a good cherry. Until he didn’t. James Lambdin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s okay, though. I’ll miss the homegrown pie, but at least I’m comforted knowing we won’t go the way of US President Zachary Taylor, who died sixteen months into his presidential term at the age of 65. Taylor, a hardened war hero known as “Old Rough and Ready” because of his rugged, unstoppable nature, may very well have been brought low by cherries.

That’s not the only theory floated by historians and physicians. His own doctors believed he died from cholera, not uncommon in Washington DC at the time. What is known for sure is that on July 4th of that year, the president attended Independence Day festivities at the construction site of the nation’s favorite phallic monument, and while there, ate quite a large number of cherries, which he chased down with a good quantity of iced milk.

That sounds like a pretty great 4th of July to me, but it didn’t work out so well for Old Rough and Ready. Evidently it was a warm day and President Taylor took a stroll along the Potomac before heading back to the White House. Once there, he ate more cherries and enjoyed a lot of ice water to cool down.

America’s favorite phallic monument, the Washington Monument, and cherry blossoms. Sjgdzn, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Then that night, the president got sick. Like really sick, with full on abdominal cramping, nausea, and diarrhea of the variety that, I assume, makes you regret your life choices.

It’s possible, of course, the water was contaminated, as Washington DC is well known for containing an awful lot things that are difficult to stomach, or perhaps the iced milk was at fault. But another theory is that the acidity from the cherries Taylor consumed, combined with the acidity of the milk, caused the severe abdominal distress from which he never recovered. He died on July 9th, 1850, leaving Millard Fillmore, of unearned bathtub fame, in charge of the nation.

It is true that Taylor had made some political enemies during his brief stint in the White House. His support for the Wilmot Proviso, which would have excluded slavery in territories acquired from the Mexican-American War, along with his strongly worded promise to personally bring the hurt to anyone who attempted succession, have led some historians to suspect assassination.

I’m not convinced there’s very strong evidence for that, though I admit assassination by cherries would be awfully clever. I know of at least one blogger who may want to use that in a story sometime.

Regardless of whether assassins, or cherries, or bacteria, or all three are to blame for President Taylor’s early demise, the whole story does make me feel a little bit better about our own lack of cherry harvest. Still, I sure could go for a slice of homegrown cherry pie about now.

Orca-strated Attack

These past few weeks, or maybe months, I have fallen out of the blogosphere a little bit. Life has just been really busy. Fortunately, it has calmed down a little now, and I’m hoping to reestablish the routine of a weekly post, because apparently when I turn my back for just a couple of minutes, the killer whales go to war with humanity.

To be fair, this might not be entirely unexpected behavior. In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder refers to the orca as “an enormous mass of flesh armed with teeth” that is “peculiarly hostile” to whales, often ramming them until they manage to kill them, “dash[ing] them to pieces against the rocks.”

This man knew a storm was brewing. Pliny the Elder, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons.

Humans have had a varied relationship with these animals throughout history. While Western culture has often feared orcas, most Indigenous American cultures have, through various mythologies, regarded them as powerful rulers of the sea, sometimes depicted living in houses and cities beneath the waves, and generally benevolent toward humans.

It turns out that both perspectives might reflect a little bit of the truth, because one thing that’s pretty clear is that orcas, which are more closely related to dolphins than to whales, are pretty smart. Reading about their natural behavior, one comes across words like clans, matriarchs, and friendships. Orcas have highly organized social structures. Throughout the world, though they may “speak” different dialects and enjoy different dietary habits, they still seem to communicate pretty well with one another.

An enormous mass of flesh armed with teeth. But it’s also pretty cute, as long as you don’t make it angry. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

And a growing number of them are angry. It turns out that a global pandemic isn’t the only thing that 2020 brought us. It also saw a rapid uptick in orca attacks on boats, particularly off the coast of the Iberian Peninsula. Some researchers trace the attacks to a single female orca they’ve named White Gladys who after experiencing some unknown trauma at the hands of humans, started rallying the troops to get her revenge.

Now, I’ve grown up in the era of Free Willy, rather than the horror film Orca. I’ve enjoyed watching these beautiful creatures play in the wake of a ferry in the Pacific Northwest, and my adorable little niece (now grown) dubbed them “Er-Ers” because to her that is what they sounded like. I’ve always kind of liked orcas, and so it has been a little shocking for me to discover that they are vengeful, and organized, and seem to have a solid working knowledge of the mechanics of boats.

Because the behavior Pliny the Elder described in 70 AD is more or less exactly what the orcas are now doing to boats. They ram them in a particular and consistent fashion, targeting the rudders until the boats are disabled in the water. These are not boats that have provoked the creatures in any way, though they certainly seem to be getting the blame for something terrible.

I mean, if the orcas have declared war on the humans and their boats, I don’t know that it’s entirely unjustified. Charles Eden Wellings (1881-1952), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Often the animals have lost interest once the boats are rudderless, but there have been recent cases in which the orcas have followed, continually ramming the boat and pretty much terrifying the people on board as it’s towed back to safe harbor. In at least three instances now, boats have actually been sunk by orca attack.

Since July of 2020, there have been more than seven hundred reports of orca encounters in the same part of the world, five hundred of which resulted in engagement and damage to boats. Some observations suggest that adult orcas have been teaching younger ones how to efficiently take out rudders. The behavior is spreading.

One solution on offer is to tag and track several of the adult orcas we know to be instigators so that we can better predict where attacks might occur and boats can more easily avoid troubled waters. The problem is that the tagging process can be fairly traumatic for the animal, which is clearly already a little disgruntled with humans. It could make the problem worse.

Personally, I’m not terribly concerned as I live something like seven hundred miles from the nearest coastline. I’m unlikely to encounter an angry killer whale in my neighborhood. And not to be a traitor to my species, but I also would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little impressed with the orcas.

Obviously, people who do spend a fair amount of time on the ocean are going to have to figure out a good way to avoid conflicts, and marine biologists need to determine how best to stop the problem from spreading across the world. Then again, in a fast-paced world in which the biggest new problem facing humanity feels like artificial intelligence, it’s kind of nice to know that good old fashioned animal intelligence can still be threat.

Shaking the House

In 1864, abolitionist and women’s rights activist Lydia Maria Child wrote in what is known as a drudgery journal that she “swept and dusted the sitting room & kitchen 350 times. Filled lamps 362 times. Swept and dusted chamber & stairs 40 times.” I assume she did not do this all at once, although I’m sure that some days it felt like it.

Lydia Maria Child taking a much deserved break from the drudgery of shaking up her house. See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I’ll be the first to admit I am not a great housekeeper. I do attempt to at least clean the bathrooms regularly and keep the kitchen surfaces more or less sanitary, but beyond that it’s a little bit of a battle. Because there’s always something more interesting to do or write about or both.

I am, however, a spring cleaner. And it turns out I’m in really good company because a recent survey found that about 74% of Americans engage in deep cleaning in the springtime. Psychologists tell us that may be because with the return of longer days, our natural melatonin levels decrease and we are more energized. What better way to spend that extra energy than by laundering the drapes or mopping behind the refrigerator?

Historians tend to believe that this compulsion to clean every spring is rooted in an awful lot of human tradition that reaches back thousands of years to at least three distinct cultures. First, there is the Iranian celebration of Nowruz, or New Year that occurs on March 21, and includes a cleaning tradition called khane tekani, which translates as “shaking the house.” This strikes me as pretty much a perfect phrase for the occasion.

I mean, it’s still drudgery, but once in a while it’s just got to be done. Image by svklimkin from Pixabay

Another possible source of the tradition is found in the Jewish remembrance of Passover. Also in the springtime, this involves the purging of leavening agents from the home and tends to include a great deal of cleaning. And then in Chinese culture, it’s pretty common practice to scrub and sweep any potential bad luck from the home before it can carry into the new year in late January or early February, when the days are just beginning to noticibly lengthen.

It doesn’t seem like there’s a particularly strong case that any of these traditions is totally responsible for inspiring the human habit of spring cleaning. Instead, they seem to be evidence that it’s just a thing that we humans, or at least 74% of us or so, like to do.

I think for most of us, the day-to-day process of keeping a clean-ish home probably feels a lot like drudgery. I for one can’t even recall the last time I filled the lamps or dusted the sitting room. But over the last few weeks I have been shaking my house, and I gotta say, it feels pretty good.

Are you a spring cleaner?