The Jonah Treatment

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A kayak on the ocean might’ve seemed to be a safe place during a pandemic.  In November of 2020, however, two women ended up getting the Jonah treatment.  While it happened some time ago, the story appeared in Slate just in August, so the world is learning about it after a few years.  At least those of us who hadn’t seen the viral videos before.  Julie McSorley tells how she and a friend were paddling out to see some humpback whales along the California coast.  Then, like a scene from Finding Nemo, bubbles started to well up around them and they found themselves briefly in the whale’s mouth.  They escaped unharmed since humpbacks don’t eat mammals, being baleen whales.  Apart from the natural fascination of the story, what caught my attention was the reference to Jonah in the log line.  As Heather Schwedel notes, few people “outside of storybooks and the Bible” have actually been inside a whale.

Image credit: Gustave Doré, Illustrations of Baron von Münchhausen, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The typical biblical scholar response is generally somewhere along the lines of, “the Bible says ‘great fish,’ not whale.”  This may be true but we don’t possess a biblical glossary for the animals, real and imaginary, in the Good Book.  Ancient Israelites were neither great seafarers nor precise describers of nature.  There are many strange references to animals in the Bible with no certain referents in the world we know.  Not being oceanographically inclined, biblical authors wrote “great fish,” a term that was still used to describe whales up to Melville’s time.  But we now know there are other big fish as well.  Whale sharks, for example, and if you’ve ever watched River Monsters you’ve likely seen catfish large enough to send shivers down your spine. 

The funny thing about the book of Jonah is that the point of the story is often overlooked for the splashy action.  There’s a moral to the story.  It’s all about not judging others because they don’t belong to your group.  Jonah has already condemned the Ninevites as godless idolaters.  The book teaches that such judgment isn’t a human prerogative.  But we simply can’t get past that image of a whale, or great fish, swallowing a guy and digesting him for three days.  Like Jonah, Julie was spit back out by the whale.  It took only a matter of seconds since, despite what Pinocchio shows, the interior anatomy of most whales won’t allow living space for a long weekend away from home.  Julie McSorley and her friend emerged relatively unharmed.  McSorley even says it was a transformative experience.  One might even suggest it could be a spiritual one.

Loco Locusts

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It really used to bother me.  Other kids in kindergarten or first grade called them “crabs.”  The picture, however, clearly showed a lobster.  Quiet and introverted, at least I knew how to tell apart basic body plans.  It’s a weakness I’ve always had—the need to correctly identify.  This didn’t come from my family, who really seem not to be bothered about such things.  It came from somewhere deep inside.  A lobster is not a crab.  The same applied to toads and frogs, or any number of other fine distinctions.  Now I confess that I try to stay away from Nextdoor.com.  It seems that no matter what anyone writes the comments immediately turn political and belligerent.  Such is our world.  But when someone can’t identify an animal, that’s clickbait to me.  I just have to take a peek.

A couple of months back a woman posted a photo of a cicada.  I didn’t chime in because at least thirty other people already had.  The thing was, several locals said it was a locust.  Even after previous commenters had sent helpful links showing the difference between a cicada and a locust.  Probably it comes from many years of teaching biblical studies, but I couldn’t believe anyone would misidentify a locust.  Mind you, when I taught the book of Joel we talked quite a bit about locusts—they are amazing creatures.  In a pre-market economy, they were also deadly.  They don’t attack people like they do in horror films, but they will eat every green leaf for as far as the eye can see.  They travel in huge swarms, capable of blocking out the sun when they fly overhead.  Cicadas are harmless.  Noisy but harmless.

Cicada. Image credit: R. E. Snodgrass, public domain, vía Wikimedia Commons

How someone can live in the world and not care to know the other things that surround them I cannot fathom.  I can understand mistaking similar creatures—some animal mimics can be incredibly effective.  A locust, however, looks nothing like a cicada.  They’re both insects, yes, and they both have wings.  The similarity stops there.  Life is complicated, I know.  There’s a lot to learn.  As a writer one of the things constantly using up my time is trying to find the right name for a thing I know by sight but have never heard called by its noun.  With the internet, identification of critters has become somewhat easier.  But only somewhat.  You have to know where to start.  I still have the well-thumbed animal identification books from my childhood.  Outdated, yes.  Coming apart at the spine?  Definitely.  Full of childhood memories of learning what things are?  Of course.

Of Wolves and Humans

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Time has a funny way of distorting perceptions.  I remember when The Wolfman (2010; please, I’m not old enough to have seen the classic initial release in 1941) came out.  I’d already started this blog by then, and I was occasionally watching and writing about horror movies.  Initial reports said this reboot was too violent and bloody.  I had the impression that it’d done well at the box office, but I didn’t see it.  I found a used copy on DVD several years later and still I waited to watch it, a bit afraid from the initial assessments I’d read.  (I tend not to read reviews or watch trailers before seeing a movie—I prefer to come in fresh.)  All of this is to say I finally got around to seeing The Wolfman and I was disappointed.  I really wanted to like it too.  The wolf man was my favorite classic monster as a kid.

I do need to praise the gothic setting and landscape cinematography.  This is beautiful and well done.  Part of the problem is the way the story is changed.  Another is that, apart from The Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Hopkins doesn’t seem to fit the horror genre very well.  Claude Rains made a believable Sir John Talbot, despite being so much smaller than Lon Chaney.  Hopkins has trouble pulling it off.  It could be poor directing, I suppose, but it was difficult to take him seriously.  And two werewolves?  That suggests just a little too much CGI.  Still, there are some good moments.  I did appreciate Sir John encouraging his son to let the wolf run free.  I suppose if you’ve got a werewolf issue, having a dad to talk you through it would be a good thing.

Werewolves, like most classic monsters, are thinly disguised psychological tendencies.  Civilization isn’t always easy, even for social animals like our own species.  There’s a werewolf inside.  Transformation, however, always suggested redemption to me.  The ability to become something better.  I saw The Wolf Man as a parable.  That may have been unusual for a kid, but when religion and monsters come together strange things can happen.  The wolf may be angry, but it need not be dangerous.  It turns out that I really didn’t have to wait thirteen years to see this movie.  I’ll probably watch it again for the points it scores on the gothic scale.  The action features aren’t necessary for a good monster flick, though.  The 1941 version worked just fine.

Swamp Things

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If I have time, before I go on a trip I like to consider what different flora and fauna I might see.  People from southern states traveling north to Pennsylvania would likely not see too much that they can’t see at home, I expect.  South Carolina, however, is far enough south to hold what seem (to me) to be exotic species.  These are things that are probably pretty quotidian here, but to a traveler they really stand out.  My family had hoped to see an alligator, in a safe way, as long as we were here.  That’s why we ended up at the Audubon Swamp Garden on the Magnolia Plantation just outside Charleston.  Although it’s October, it’s still warm here and although it took some time we eventually spotted a fair sized gator sunning itself many yards away.  After seeing the first one you kind of know what to look for and we ended up spotting four more.

This swamp has a walkway intended to keep visitors safe, so we followed it through the facility.  You have to pass a kind of Jurassic Park entry gate to get in, and it may be best to reflect later that alligators have been around since the dinosaurs.  There were plenty of other animals too.  Our first encounter was a snowy egret.  This was followed shortly by an anole, but my lizard species identification isn’t very developed, I’m afraid.  There were dozens of turtles sunning themselves—several quite large—and a blue tailed skink.  And spiders of apocalyptic size.  My phone camera didn’t zoom in much on the gators, so I’ll put the anole here for you to enjoy.

This iconic swamp was used in the filming of Swamp Thing (I couldn’t resist), and is rumored to have been the inspiration for Shrek’s swamp in that movie.  The most poignant aspect to me, however, was just how much beautiful diversity the world allows if people aren’t constantly trying to improve it.  When a field in my native Pennsylvania is left to its own devices, it will likely become a forest and all the usual suspects will come back.  We do still have elk in some northern counties.  Yes, I suspect if we left swamps run wild mosquitos and other less fun species would also proliferate, but still, there are places that are transcendent for not having been improved upon.  The Audubon Swamp Garden is one such place, although the sunning platforms allow us to see some of the creatures, and with an alligator just a few yards away, I am grateful for this raised walkway.

Consider the Ant

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Ants, the Bible suggests, are worth both watching and learning from. I was reminded of this while at the Easton VegFest a couple weeks back. The VegFest is an annual event promoting vegan food in a riverside park. I’d given someone a ride and ended up finishing earlier. I could either walk all the way back to the car or spend the time outdoors. It was a pleasant enough day and there were places to sit (with no back support, however). One such sitting venue is a concrete retaining wall about 12-feet high, that borders a walking trail along the river. Since there’s a lively inner tubing business along the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers, you could watch groups float by, looking very relaxed in the way that only being on the water can make you. It was while sitting along the top of this wall that I realized I was on an ant highway.

Image credit: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos, under CC BY-NC license, via Wikimedia Commons

While individual ants don’t live very long, colonies (and their lives are very interconnected) can last several years. Some queens even make it to 30, which is impressive for an insect. As I was sitting (more like leaning, since the wall has a rounded top and I have a fear of falling) I’d notice some larger ants approaching with great determination. I would stand to let them pass. They weren’t in a close line or anything, so if I didn’t notice one in time, I became part of the trail. Looking confused—if an ant can look confused—at missing the chemical trail, they’d nevertheless continue in the same general direction unless some microscopic bit of a dropped piece of lunch on my lap caught their attention. Their determination was a lesson. They simply don’t give up.

Although the wall predates any of their individual lives, it has become their highway just as any interstate becomes ours. They didn’t build it, but it has become their recognized and known pathway. This was clear because in the course of my hour there, several members of what I presume was the same hive came by. I suspect the writer of Proverbs wanted readers to notice their busyness, but what I saw was their marked will power. Not even a giant wearily resting on their road deterred them. There was an utter conviction about what they were doing. Obstacles were simply climbed or gone around in the assurance that the trail would resume on the other side. Their sense of hope was admirable and, in its way, contagious.

Hope by Butterflies

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Butterflies are the most hopeful of animals.  I’m always thrilled when I see the first ones of spring and I silently cheer on those that last until autumn.  One of the three insects I didn’t fear as a child (ladybugs and fireflies were the other two), butterflies seemed like nothing so much as goodness incarnated in insect form.  While at the 4-H Fair a couple weeks back, we were fortunate enough to be there for a butterfly release.  Volunteers handed butterflies to children who were eagerly awaiting the opportunity to hold one.  It’s like touching a rainbow.  It reminded me of the butterfly rooms at various museums or zoos where even adults wear bright colors and hold still, hoping an insect will select them for a temporary perch.  We want to be kissed by butterflies.

Photo by Shiebi AL on Unsplash

Their hope goes beyond their bright colors and the cheer they spread.  To become a butterfly is to be willing to undergo transformation.  A caterpillar is an eating machine.  When its biology gives it the cue, it forms a chrysalis and inside that temporary shelter made from its own body, it literally dissolves.  Nature, knowing what to do, reconstructs that goo into the flowers of the animal world.  Could there be anything more hopeful?  More able to draw tears of joy?  Butterflies don’t bite—some don’t eat at all—they don’t dig into you with sharp chitin, they don’t fly into your eyes or ears.  Gentle and delicate, their sole purpose seems to be the bringing of happiness to other creatures.

I know I’m over-simplifying here, but I’m in a poet’s skin this morning.  Life transforms us.  We don’t know what’s ahead and some things melt us down and make us into something else.  The butterfly shows us how to do it with grace and light.  When times are difficult we realize, often only later, that we have been transformed.  We had built a cocoon around ourselves, we dissolved and became something even more beautiful than we were before.  Winter came and froze our world, but when we felt the warmth of spring, we responded, not even knowing how we did.  And looking back we can see that we bring color and light and joy into a world that had formerly been gray.  There’s a reason that butterflies are widely recognized as symbols of hope.  They’re brave without even knowing it.  And they give the world just the optimism it needs.

Middle Ground

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It’s the real poison Trump baptized.  Polarization.  The idea that there is no middle ground.  It’s a shame since the middle ground has been what’s kept America stable over the years.  Now it seems to be eroding rapidly.  While my sympathies have always been on the left, I realize that radical change tends to dirempt societies.  As much as I deeply desire justice and fairness for all, I know it will take time.  In my way of thinking that “all” includes animals.  That’s why I’m vegan.  Now, I know being completely vegan is likely not possible since who knows what everything is made of, and who has the time to find out?  I do the best I can and I don’t eat animal products and I try not to wear them either.  I know there are those who don’t share my outlook and they’re entitled to their point of view.

For nostalgia’s sake, and to get out of the house, we attended a 4-H county fair.  An annual event when we lived in New Jersey, it’s now a rarer treat.  So I put on that scarce recording of Bruce Springsteen’s song “County Fair,” not on any of his studio albums, and headed for New Jersey.  This county fair is the kind with animals rather than rides, and we stopped in to see the sheep, goats, cows, and alpacas.  It was in the cattle tent that I saw the following poster, claiming “There’s no such thing as vegan.”  Well, I don’t go around saying there’s no such thing as omnivores (thus the polarization) but this poster convinced me that we need to try even harder to stop raising animals to exploit. I understand, I think, the intent of the poster—cattle aren’t just meat.  The thing is, I think of them as conscious beings.

I miss the middle ground.  People no longer want to compromise or negotiate.  Since Trump it’s become “my way or the highway.”  I think I prefer the highway.  That highway takes me far from industrial feedlots where it’s illegal to document the cruelty that these animals undergo daily.  It’s quite a different thing for Bessie to lay down with a fan blowing on her under a tent with a small farmer caring for her, but that won’t feed a nation.  Small farms aren’t the problem. I don’t insist everyone be vegan.  I would like it if we could sit down and talk about it, however.  Cattle raising is the industry that generates the greatest amount of greenhouse gases that are causing global warming.  If we keep dividing ourselves and refusing to change we’ll be having this polarizing argument under water before too many years have gone by.  My highway is middle of the road.  Even slow change can benefit many.  The goal is to get “many” to “all.”

Small Hops

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It was about the cutest thing I’d seen in a month of Saturdays—a baby rabbit.  It was no bigger than my fist and it was looking lost on the sidewalk.  The front “lawn” of the next neighbor’s house is paved and there’s only a wide street in the opposite direction.  Our front lawn has a retaining wall well about the jumping height of the little guy.  I didn’t want it dashing into the street, so I circled around from that direction, but the poor thing couldn’t get high enough to reach our lawn.  It was young enough not to be certain something at least twenty-five times its size meant it harm.  It allowed me to get close enough to scoop it up and put it on our lawn.  It immediately leapt away and sheltered under a bush, before eventually disappearing down a hole that I hoped might be its home.

Besides being a hope-filled chance encounter with the wonder of nature, the incident also caused me to ponder what that leporine brain made of this learning experience.  For human brains, any sufficiently large animal is a monster, and anything even larger is a god.  While there are some bad folks out there, people don’t seem evil to me.  And although we’re certainly not gods, I wonder what that little rabbit thought.  What I was attempting was an act of kindness.  I’m sure it scared the timid tyke—I can imagine being lifted by an enormous creature that I can’t understand and it is a most frightening prospect.  But what if that monster were to set me down just where I needed to be?  Might not my assumptions about it change?

We don’t know what other animals think, yet it’s clear that they do.  Our yard has a fence and we have no dogs, so rabbits tend to like it here.  I often mutter softly and try to avoid direct eye contact and sometimes they let me get fairly close.  I like to think some of the larger ones recognize me, and maybe can tell that a vegan has nothing but their goodwill in mind.  We like to think this about God.  Larger, easily able to harm us, but that somehow being divine also conveys good will.  The bunny incident cast a pleasant glow over the rest of an otherwise anxious day.  It had calmed me and conveyed a sense of appreciation for just how helpful the world of nature can be.  I hope for some tiny rabbits in your life too.

Hoppy Fourth

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Today is the one of the relatively rare summer holidays.  Modern industrialized nations tend to take a more relaxed view toward summers without having to give out too many prescribed company holidays.  This seems to follow on from school schedules because the kids are out in summer and adults need some flexibility when work demands collide with family needs.  The internet has made work-life balance a little tricker to achieve since work is always just a click away.  Some more generous employers gave yesterday as part of an extended four-day weekend, which is rejuvenating in a way that’s easily forgotten until you start to feel it.  The sense of obligation takes a couple of days to wind down, and then on Monday you realize “I’ve still got another day off!”  It’s a sublime feeling.  Why not watch holiday horror on it?

The Wicker Man is a holiday horror movie.  One of my arguments in the book is that holiday horror has to derive its energy from the holiday, and not just be set on it.  For example, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Return of the Living Dead are both set on or near Independence Day but the movies don’t really draw their horror from the holiday itself.  It falls into the same category.  Frogs?  Well, maybe.  Perhaps holiday horror, it’s definitely in bad movie territory.  A rich southern family is dominated by a Trump-like grandfather who controls the money and measures everyone by loyalty to him personally.  On his birthday, the fourth of July, nature revolts and his adult children and grandchildren (apart from one granddaughter), are killed by animals in this eco-revenge groaner.  But is it holiday horror?

One scene may suggest that perhaps it fits the category, but the real significance of that day is that grandpa won’t let it be celebrated any way other than by his prescribed plan.  Even as the estate is overrun by frogs (mostly), snakes, lizards, alligators,  tarantulas, and even some birds (thank you, Mr. Hitchcock), he insists that everyone do what they always do on the fourth of July/his birthday.  The only scene that suggests holiday horror is where the eponymous frogs hop onto a cake decorated like an American flag.  I normally like nature-revenge films, and this one starts out well but quickly goes downhill.  The environmental message is there, but underplayed.  There are some firecrackers and a number of dead rich folks, but otherwise the film seems to have no message at all.  It’s a bad movie.  Holiday horror?  Not really.  Something to watch for a day off work?  Definitely.

Feathers and Flight

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Bird identification must be one of the trickiest activities known to humankind.  My office window overlooks a small segment of a porch roof that is popular with birds.  Whether it’s pecking at some invisible specks on the shingles or dipping a sip from the gutters, they stop by often during the day.  Maybe my brain wiring is odd, but since I was a child I wanted to be able to identify correctly any animal I saw.  We had a few of those Zim Golden Nature Guides that I poured over like a second Bible.  I would study page after page, repeatedly, until I could identify just about any critter I came across.  It seemed, in those days, that all birds were sparrows, starlings, or robins.  There was the occasional blue jay or cardinal, but usually it was the more ordinary, less colorful variety.  Birds are symbols of hope.  Their lightness and ability to fly are what human dreams are made of.

I’m not an avid bird watcher, but I do try to identify them.  I see bald eagles occasionally, several times a year usually, and plenty of red-tailed hawks.  Once in a while, however, a smallish bird hops by that resembles nothing in my field guides.  In frustration I turn to Cornell University’s bird identification app, Merlin.  Almost never can they find anything like what I saw.  Maybe it’s because the app asks the wrong questions.  Never do they say “was the tail long, medium, or short?” for example.  Things you’d actually notice.  They do ask where you saw it, and “on the roof” isn’t an option, let alone “on the roof overlooking my porch.”  I saw an interesting bird the other day that was all gray.  Bill and all.  I saw it next to a starling, from which it was clearly distinct.  It wasn’t in my book and it wasn’t on Merlin.  What could it have been?

This isn’t the first time this has happened.  Strangely, bird color isn’t always a reliable indicator of species although this is what the viewer tends to notice first.  To make positive identification takes close observation of details most people don’t immediately catch.  The more common species are seldom an issue, but the less showy kind are often more difficult to identify.  This strikes me as a life lesson.  We may all know who the showiest are, but those more modest of our avian friends likely live lives of greater satisfaction without people constantly chasing after them.  At least I imagine it so, since I can’t find a write-up about them in my identification guides.  But I can still watch them and gain hope.

Half Full

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Is the glass half full or half empty?  Perhaps trite, this is the textbook example of optimism.  In times when hope is important—and that may be always, but at times it’s really much more keenly felt—we need to see the glass filling again.  Emily Dickinson famously wrote “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers.”  Although published posthumously, many refer to this poem when the glass starts to look empty.  Recently a friend pointed us to a more realistic version of this by the contemporary poet Caitlin Seida titled “Hope Is Not a Bird, Emily, It’s a Sewer Rat.”  It’s easily found with a web search but I’m hoping to buy Seida’s book because most poets have a difficult time of things.  The gist of it is that hope is a scrappy, gritty rodent that knows how to survive in a dark, noisome world.

Of course, the Bible has a lot to say about hope as well.  Sometimes we tend to see the half-empty glass of the judgment verses, but what truly makes it Scripture is the hope.  In fact, hope is all around if we look for it.  For example, I recently had to get a new set of glasses.  I really liked my old frames and they had stopped being produced.  I had to try something new.  This pair, instead of screw-hinges holding the arms on, has a mechanism that uses tension between the two pieces of metal so they retain their shape but can also be folded.  The end result is they don’t have a solid fixed “normal” position, but one which can be slightly adjusted because they’re more pliable than fixed screws (it’s clear why I’m not a technical writer).  In any case, their ability to adjust is a sign of hope. If things don’t look right, literally, a nudge can fix it.  You can find resilience even in your eyeglasses.

In times of difficulty doubt can be the thing with feathers.  What we need is one of those water-drinking birds.  You know, the kind that’s made of glass filled with a red liquid that bobs its head up and down into a glass of water.  (It turns out they have their own Wikipedia article under the title “Drinking bird.”)  Here is the ultimate symbol of hope that spans both Seida and Scripture.  The bobbing head always dips into the glass even though it can’t actually drink.  We might be tempted to say it’s a foolish waste of time.  With the correct perspective, however, it shows the glass to be half full. At least when seen through the lenses of hope.

This bird knows hope! Photo by Matt Flores on Unsplash

Parthenogenesis

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It’s only a matter of degree, isn’t it?  I mean between reptiles and mammals.  While our common ancestor was quite a bit older than Lucy, we’re still fam, right?  I’m not the only one, I’m sure, who read with interest the New York Times story about the female crocodile who recently gave birth without the help of a male.  It’s called parthenogenesis and, according to the article, it’s not as rare as we might think.  Birds and amphibians do it.  Some fish even change gender under reproductive pressure.  And if you’ve seen Jurassic Park you know the implications might be larger by an order of magnitude or two.  My mind, however, wanders to mammals.  Then primates.  Then humans.  If our distant cladistic cousins can do it, can we?

The key appears to be males leaving females alone long enough.  As Malcolm says, “life will find a way.”  Life amazes me.  While we can’t count on it happening for each individual, life has a way of reemerging when you think it’s gone.  Previous owners of our house neglected a green ash tree growing in a location far too close to the house itself for many years.  Granted, it was on the north side where you seldom have any reason to go, but that tree sent out progeny that I’ve had to try to eradicate for five years now.  As much as I love trees, when they’re growing into the foundations of your house, they’re a bit of a problem.  I snip off the water shoots whenever I find them but they keep coming back.  I’m sad to cut them but I admire their persistence.  Life’s persistence. It’s will to carry on.  It continues even when we think it can’t.  Never forget the water bears!

Just a few days later the Times ran an article about the strong possibility of life on Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons.  Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised.  I’m absolutely certain there’s life elsewhere.  It makes no sense for it not to be.  Life evolves to a point, it seems, where the “intelligent” variety seems to become arrogant.  I embrace our reptilian and amphibious and piscine cousins.  Even our insect and arthropod family.  Our plants and fungi.  Life is amazing and we seldom stop to ponder just how wonderful and mysterious and resilient it is.  A lonely female crocodile decides to have a family.  Phosphates spewing from an ice-cold moon whirling around a colossal planet that wanted to be a star.  Life!  How can we not be stunned into trying to admire it in its many, many forms?

Solstice Wonders

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It’s difficult to tell where summer begins and spring ends.  Transitions are like that.  Today’s the summer solstice.  Since I’m an early riser I keep track of when the sun comes up so that I can go for a jog.  Actually, I tend to get out just before sunrise when twilight is enough to see by.  You see, the solstice is a day of hope.  My jogging path is on the edge of town and it borders some woods that, all things considered, are quite shallow.  There’s development on the other side of the river, although you can’t see it from here.  As I’m out before most other crepuscular exercisers I often see critters along the trail.  I’m not sure I can catalogue all the animals I’ve seen but a partial list includes fox, coyote, raccoon, bald eagle, raven, ducks, herons, and the ubiquitous rabbits, squirrels, and deer.  Last month I saw a doe giving birth as I jogged by, something I felt it inappropriate to watch beyond a passing glance.

At times when it’s too dark to go before work I have occasionally gone on a slightly later schedule.  Then I’ve seen groundhogs, a snapping turtle, and red efts (newts).  The thing is these woods are rather thin and they support (along with the towns, I’m sure) a variety of creatures, many of which I don’t see.  Appearances can be deceptive.  Things that appear certain are often wrong.  Those who wake later and don’t spend their evenings on the trail (and animals, I expect, are shy after people have been out all day) may not believe there is so much fauna in the area.  I know there’s even more: opossum, bear, and frogs among them.  I believe they are there.  And believing is just as important as knowing.

Summer is thought of as a more relaxed time, but that’s really only an appearance as well.  It’s actually quite a busy time—what’s relaxed is our capitalistic drive for work.  We realize the warmer days (hopefully not too rainy) afford us the opportunity to do the things the long, dark, cold months prevent.  And those of us in northern latitudes tend to think of it as a magical time.  Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream captures the traditions of fairy activity during this short night with long, sunny days either side of it.  A family member recently reminded me of this connection, and it seems to me that we should be reminded once in a while of the miracles that surround us.  The solstice is one of them.  It’s a matter of believing and a cause for hope.

Spider Planet

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Misnomers aren’t uncommon when it comes to click-bait.  I’ve fallen victim more than a few times.  But such misdirection is probably as old as humanity, and is perhaps part of consciousness itself.  (Some birds are known to practice deception, as are some other primates.)  Earth Vs. the Spider is drive-in-bait as a title.  In the 1958 horror-sci fi movie (also titled The Spider), the danger isn’t really to the earth but to one small town.  There is, however, a giant spider and somehow it’s not as scary as the real thing can be, writ small.  Occasionally, such as when a spider comes out into the open in the house, I ponder why this is such a deep-seated human fear.  I know spiders are beneficial to the ecosystem and that they pose very little danger, at least in places where I’ve lived.  So why are they so scary?

Scientists, including those of the mind, have proposed looking to our primate cousins for an answer.  They too are afraid of spiders, and it’s posited that since primates climb trees to escape danger and that spiders also climb, the phobia is hardwired.  For me it’s only certain body-plans that are scary.  I don’t mind the cute little jumping spiders that get in around the windows.  They don’t seem out to hurt anybody.  It’s the kind with long, grasping legs that bother me.  As a child I used to try to identify spiders with a picture book identification guide, but soon the guide started to scare me and I had to put it down.  I wasn’t cut out to be an arachnidologist, I guess.  The movie could’ve used one, however.  They kept calling the spider an insect.

The unblinking advocacy of DDT was the scariest part of the film.  Got a problem?  Spray chemicals all over it!  It gives me the same fear as when I see all those pallets of RoundUp every time I go to Lowes.  That stuff is deadly to the environment, and I’m kind of attached to the environment.  Spring arrived around here late this year, but it was spider season by the time I watched Earth Vs. the Spider as part of my minor quest to see the “so bad they’re good” movies.  They’re also part of the history of horror.  Apart from Psycho in 1960, horror was kind of on vacation for the fifties and into the late sixties.  Of course, movies kept being made.  It’s just that they couldn’t be taken seriously.  And even though drive-ins seem to be extinct, I still fall for drive-in bait from time to time. Even when watching alone.

Finding Family

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Sea Change is a probing story of learning to live with loss.  Of learning how to say goodbye.  I’m sure that I didn’t catch all that was being offered in this novel, but for those of us who did grow up without a father there’s a kind of therapy here.  I know that I eagerly awaited the end of work each day so that I could pick it up and read a bit more.  Framed as the story of the only child of Korean immigrants, the novel features Aurora (Ro), a young woman who has had to find her way ever since her father has gone missing.  And even before that, actually.  Her father, as a marine biologist, had captured an octopus (Dolores) who now lives in the aquarium where he once worked.  Ro, whose relationship with her mother is strained, takes a job in the aquarium after her father goes missing and befriends the remaining part of him—Dolores.

At the same time Ro’s boyfriend is accepted into a mission being launched to Mars.  (This isn’t science fiction, just to say.)  The loss is another deep cut to a woman who had to deal with the earlier significant loss of her father.  I won’t say much more about the plot since I think you should read the book, but it is a thoughtful, and from my experience, realistic journey through the mental states of those who cope with abandonment issues early in life.  Of course, I can’t speak to the experience of being a child of immigrants, but the novel shows we all deal with the same kinds of issues, no matter where we’re from.  At least we do in modern civilization.

Sea Change made me ponder, however, whether children raised communally would feel the same kind of loss if a parent they didn’t know was theirs left.  The mother-and-child bond is a deep one, so I guess it could be that fathers, after conception, would be expendable in such a situation.  It’s difficult to project how such a society would work.  The family unit is so deeply engrained into our experience that, unless a situation is truly dire, we know we can rely on our parents not to try to harm us, but rather to protect and love us.  Those of us who grew up without fathers (I’m not sure if that’s the case with Gina Chung or not) deal with insecurity issues that never quite go away.  This beautifully written novel was, for me, a healing kind of experience.