The Weekly Essay

It’s Another Story.

Marching On.

Author: March 21, 2025 0 Comments

The Five Stages Of March:

  1. Denial.

It can’t possibly be March. Sure, February is the shortest month on the calendar, but it’s still too soon to be March. And too cold. It seems like just a week ago we were in the middle of January. How could it possibly be March already?

  1. Anger.

Fine, it’s March. It’s still too cold but the weather’s supposed to warm up a little bit the next week. And then go back to freezing after that. Later in the week we’ll get tornadoes. Yep, that’s definitely March and I hate it.

  1. Bargaining.

Can we get some consistent weather here, please? Is there anything I can do to make that happen? I promise I’ll wear my heavy coat to work in the morning and won’t complain about having to carry it home in the afternoon when everybody’s out wearing shorts.

  1. More bargaining.

I swear I’ll do anything if it will just get warm and stay warm. Or get cold and stay cold. I can’t tell if I’m coughing because I’ve got a cold or because of allergies.

  1. Extra special bargaining.

Yes, I said I wish I were on a beach somewhere but I didn’t mean I wanted flooding. Look, the kids get Spring Break. Isn’t it close enough to spring that I could catch a break here?

  1. This is definitely bargaining.

Of course it’s raining nails and tiny little Ernest Borgnines. It’s March. I think I’d better lay off the allergy medication.

  1. Back to bargaining.

This is the third time I’ve packed away my heavy coat and then had to pull it out again. If I just leave it out will the weather finally stay warm?

  1. Depression.

Sun is out. Birds are singing. Buttercups and lilies are popping up in yards. The grass is getting green. Everyone’s happy. Yep, it’s definitely March and I hate it. I’m just going to sit here wrapped up in my winter coat.

  1. Acceptance.

All right, spring really is finally here, the forecast shows nothing but high temperatures and clear skies. I’m going to go out for a walk in the park and just relax and enjoy myself. Time to break out the shorts and sandals.

  1. Acceptance, ten minutes later.

Blizzard.

Nature Talks., Not Non-Fiction, Quick Takes., Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay

Basket Case.

Author: March 14, 2025 3 Comments

People make fun of me when I tell them what I’m majoring in at college. They say “I thought that was just a joke!” Well, let me tell you, it does sound funny and a lot of us who major in it joke about it too, but there’s also a very serious side to it. Do you think basket weaving is easy? Have you ever tried it? Do it before you make jokes. There’s a lot more to it than just threading a strand around the spokes. That takes a lot of manual dexterity and also concentration and time. And you have to think about the materials you’re using. Wicker, reed, rattan, and bamboo all have to be handled differently, and each one can be woven in a wide range of styles. Those are just some of the most common materials, the sort of stuff you’d get from your local hobby shop, if it hasn’t gone out of business. If it has, well, you can buy a kit online if you want, but, as a college student, I’m also learning how to forage for as well as grow my own raw materials. If you think that’s easy then just try it. But don’t come crying to me when your willow tree dies because you didn’t know where to plant it.

Yes, I know, the process of making baskets can be mostly automated. Mostly. Who do you think designs and builds the machines that make baskets? Well, mostly engineers, but they need to consult with trained basket makers to know where to start. It’s all interrelated. And think about how useful baskets are. Let’s back up a bit. Think about the whole history of humanity and our reliance on handmade crafts. That kind of puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? Now think about all the things you can use baskets for: storage, carrying. Well, they can be decorative too. The point is, if you’ve got a nice basket for carrying things or storing things you’re not just going to throw it out. If you were going to do that you might as well use a plastic bag. Thanks for helping to trash the planet. And when’s the last time you heard about a kid suffocating inside a woven basket?

Great, so you want to know about the other part. That’s not easy either. What, do you think we just sit waist deep in a swimming pool? Or hold our breath while weaving? No, we go all in. We don’t have to do it but we like the extra challenge. And that’s what it’s all about: learning to overcome challenges. I realized that way back in fifth grade when my English teacher used to use “underwater basket weaving” as a metaphor for something useless that didn’t require any thought. Not that I’m knocking English. After all English majors know what I’m talking about. We even get the same questions. “What are you going to do with that?” I don’t know. How does creative problem solving, manual dexterity, and scuba certification look on a resume? Exactly. It’s not like I’m studying something so highly specialized it’ll only be applicable to one career path. If I wanted that I would have studied accounting.

Source: Tenor

Not Non-Fiction, Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay

Look Before You Leap.

Author: March 7, 2025 2 Comments

When I was offered a golden parachute for my retirement I jumped at it. Well, not literally. The jump would come later because it turned out what they were giving me was an actual golden parachute. Literally. I don’t know how they got enough pure gold to make an entire parachute and it’s probably best not to ask. Sure, it’s just gold foil so it’s not exactly thick but it’s still a parachute. All folded up and in the pack ready to go. The thing’s got to weigh at least fifty pounds. I checked and the price of gold is close to $3000 an ounce right now. If I can find a place to cash all that in I really will be set for life. That’s the problem, though. It’s not like I can just walk into a pawn shop with fifty pounds of gold foil and expect them to buy it from me on the spot. Even if I can still find one of those cash for gold places I couldn’t expect them to have enough on hand to buy it all. If they could I’d need five, maybe six briefcases for all that cash. Okay, now I know I’m being ridiculous. They’d give me a check or maybe we could work out some kind of direct deposit. Even if they could, though, I’d be lucky to get the whole amount. Talk about flooding the market. It’s not like a few years ago when there was one of those cash for gold places on every corner and I could have made a separate stop at each one before they knew what hit them.

What about the taxes? Could I set up a Swiss bank account? How hard is it to do that? Or maybe one of those offshore deals in some place like the Cayman Islands. I would have looked into this if I’d known I was going to suddenly get this much gold. I guess I still have time, though.

Yeah, now that I think about it I realize I really don’t want to cash it in all at once. It would be better to break it up into little pieces and cash it in over six months or maybe a year. That would be smarter and even a little bit of gold is going to be enough to live on for a pretty long time.

That still leaves me with the question of whether I can sell it like it is. Are there places that take gold foil? Maybe I could find places that make statues, like the Oscars or something. Or those super fancy restaurants that put gold foil on desserts sometimes. But I doubt they’d want this much gold. Now that I have it, though, I’d kind of like to try one of those desserts. Hey, I could even make my own. Then I’d get the gold back. Yeah, that’s kind of gross but I still wouldn’t want to waste it.

Maybe it would be smarter to melt it down into little ingots or something. How hard could it be to melt gold foil? Oh, this says the melting point of gold is almost two thousand degrees. I guess it wouldn’t be that easy. Maybe I should buy a forge or something. I bet I can get one online for pretty cheap. Sure, I’ve got a big wad of gold right now but I still want to be smart about how I spend it.

Speaking of research I also need to figure out how to open this parachute. I never really thought about it before but I think this building’s got about twenty, maybe twenty-five floors. That’s got to be at least three-hundred feet. Should I check that? Never mind. I should be fine if I just pull the cord as soon as I’m in the air. But it’s almost five o’clock and that’s when they said they’d be throwing me off the building so I really need to figure this out.

At least I’m not stupid like Dan in the next cubicle who took the severance package. That cost him an arm and a leg.

Not Non-Fiction, Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay

Night Watch.

Author: February 28, 2025 2 Comments

Orion was high in the west last night before I went to bed. Jupiter, the brightest object in the sky right now with only a very thin crescent Moon waning towards new, was up too, and almost directly overhead was Mars. I know a lot of people think of Mars as our next step into the universe now that we’ve been to the Moon, though we haven’t been back in more than five decades now. In so much science fiction Mars is inhabited, or at least habitable, a home away from home for terrestrial life, but last night looking toward the brighter planet I thought about how Jupiter is really the New York of our solar system: if we can make it there we can make it anywhere. Not that Jupiter even has a surface we could land on, and if it did the gravity would crush almost anything we’d send down, but it’s got dozens on moons we could settle on if we could overcome a few challenges like creating a breathable atmosphere, producing food, dealing with the intense radiation—Jupiter spews out more energy than it receives from the sun—and also hauling almost everything we’d need more than a billion miles through space. Getting to Jupiter makes the Oregon trail look like a hop, skip, and a jump.

Then I turned toward Orion, the constellation of the hunter, the second constellation I learned to recognize after Ursa Major. I was never very good at connect-the-dots puzzles but there’s a certain clarity about constellations. After seeing a picture of the Orion constellation in a book I just looked up one night at the right time and there it was, literally right before my eyes, a distinct figure, not quite pareidolia but close.

Winter is hunting season, when herds are culled and freezing temperatures and snow mean meat’s on the menu so it’s fitting Orion is high in the sky. But Orion is at its peak I also know it means winter’s coming to an end, the grass and hibernating animals will be waking up, the spring birds will be coming back. The squirrel nests, big clumps of dry leaves taking up space in the empty branches of trees, will be replaced by green leaves. The horizon I can see now will be obscured by greenery, and the sky directly overhead, so clear right now, will get hazy with humidity.

It was a warm night for late February and I stood out there for a long time thinking about the planets, the stars, and also how all of us, even when completely still, are always in motion.   

Keep Looking Up, Ramble With Me., The Weekly Essay

Then And Now.

Author: February 21, 2025 5 Comments


The difference in taking cough medicine when you’re a kid versus an adult:

Kid: You don’t remember taking it before but something about that shimmering spoonful of liquid that manages to be both purple and brown at the same time triggers fear in you. This is a trick. They’ll have to strap you down and pry your mouth open before you’ll let that in your mouth.

Adult: It can’t possibly be as bad as you remember.

Kid: Bleh, that is the most horrible, awful, disgusting thing you’ve ever had in your mouth, and you were once tricked into trying kale.

Adult: How is it worse than you remember? Seriously, that is the worst thing you’ve ever had in your mouth. Okay, there was that one time in college at a party when what you thought was a rum and Coke was the spit cup being used by that one guy who chewed tobacco…no, this is worse.

Kid: It’s been ten whole minutes. How is the horrible taste still there? At this point you’d drink anything, even water, to get rid of it. And when is it supposed to make you stop coughing?

Adult: It’s only been ten minutes. Is it too early to drink some water? 

Kid: You’re never taking that crap ever again. You’ll never risk getting a cold. You’ll never go outside. What’s that? Your friends are sledding. Now you remember why you agreed to take it in the first place. Where’s your coat? Never mind. You won’t need it. But first you’re going to sit down on the couch for a minute.

Adult: The label says “may cause drowsiness”. When is that supposed to kick in? Some sleep would be nice for a change. Must not work on you for some reason. You’ll just sit down on the couch for a minute.

Kid: Why is it dark? Oh, it’s been about four hours. Oh no. You feel another cough coming. You have to suppress it or they’ll give you another dose.

Adult: How are you still tired after sleeping for more than four hours? Oh great, here comes more coughing. Time to take some more. It can’t be as bad as you remember, right?

Kid: Maybe if you scream enough next time you’ll get the kind that tastes like candy.

Adult: Next time you’re buying the kind that tastes like candy.

Not Non-Fiction, Quick Takes., The Weekly Essay

Beware Of The Flowers.

Author: February 14, 2025 4 Comments

Valentine’s Day is a time for giving flowers because nothing says love and affection like giving someone something that’s going to wilt in hours or days, or, if it’s a living plant, that they’ll have to take care of but at least isn’t dying. Roses are the most popular, especially red roses, because nothing says love and passion like something that’s ridiculously difficult to cultivate, doesn’t like to get its leaves wet, and, if not handled correctly, will stab you.

The symbolism of roses is one of the last lingering remembrances of a time when there was a whole language of plants and flowers. In Victorian England, and even earlier, there were flower glossaries, like decoder pins. A bouquet could send a message, or several messages, and depending on what book you were using, could even mean contradictory things. An amaryllis could mean “pride” or it could mean “timidity”. I’m not sure if it would be the giver or the receiver who was timid. I guess it depends on whether or not you sign the card. Dahlias could mean “elegance” or “dignity”—I’m not sure why they’re so special—or they could mean instability, and that seems like it’s going too far in the other direction. Anemones—the flower—meant “frailty” or “sickness” or “expectation” so you had to be really careful about giving those. A potato meant “benevolence” and a cactus could mean “humor” or it could mean “imminent danger”, and I guess it depends on whether you were about to sit on it. Passion flowers meant “piety” and not, well, “passion”, and while a red rose meant love a yellow rose could mean “jealousy” and a white rose could mean “I am worthy of you” which I think would be up to the recipient to judge. A striped carnation meant “refusal” and I hope the person who got them knew that. Meadow saffron, a crocus that only grows in Britain and Ireland, meant “my happiest days are behind me” which seems weirdly specific, but then it’s got a limited range. And some are, I think, more understandable. Violets meant “shyness” because they like to grow in shady places, and a shy person might still be described as “a shrinking violet”. Then there are pansies which simply meant “thoughts” and I have no idea what they were thinking. Calling someone a pansy is still supposed to be an insult, meaning they’re weak or, if they’re a man, effeminate, but I see pansies blooming in the bitter cold which is why I think they should mean “survival in adversity”, or just the botanical equivalent of a middle finger to anyone who thinks “effeminate” is an insult.

In 1875, at the same time that Victorians were sending all these flower messages,  Charles Darwin published a book called Insectivorous Plants. It didn’t get as much attention as his previous work on evolution which is a shame because it could have opened up a whole new area of flower language. The Venus’s flytrap does show up in flower dictionaries—it meant “deceit” and not “cleverness” or “ingenuity” which would have made more sense if you ask me. Sundews, which were ignored, could have meant “I’m stuck on you” and the gift of a pitcher plant would be a nice way to say “I’d like to drown you in digestive juices”.

And that reminds me of the time I texted a musician friend, “The only thing better than roses on your piano is tulips on your organ.” He texted back, “I’M IN CHURCH RIGHT NOW!”

The Weekly Essay

Fire And Ice.

Author: February 7, 2025 5 Comments

It’s warm for February, a meteorological island where I don’t even need to put on a jacket before going out. The weather’s been brutally cold, and we’ve even had an unusual amount of snow, so this sudden spike, while nice for those of us who tend to be more cold-blooded, is also unsettling. February shouldn’t feel like May, though the coming May will probably, at least at times, feel like August, when it really should feel more like September. It’s even possible that May will feel like February, which will be even worse.

There were times like this when I was a kid, brief warm spells in the middle of winter, the bare trees and beige spiky grass contrasting sharply with the ambient warmth. My parents insisted I still go out wearing at least a jacket. It was still winter, after all. That’s what the calendar said and that mattered more than the thermometer. At any moment the heat could break, like a fever, like the time my own temperature spiked and I stayed in bed all day, shivering even as my body burned,a thick quilt pulled up to my forehead, and hours swirled away into a dark funnel. And the heat did break, eventually, cold rushing back into the world the way it did on those late nights when I’d open my window to listen to the darkness.

The sky then was always cloudy when it was warm, another disjunction. The sky looked like winter even if the ground didn’t feel like it. It’s cloudy now, too, the flat dull gray of cold weather, of a sky that doesn’t have the energy to do anything but spread itself out and close its eyes. 

This afternoon, though, there was a change. The clouds curled up, still swaddling the sun but there was an azure expanse overhead. And off in the distance there was the faintest rainbow, barely together, a block of the spectrum against a flat backdrop of ash.

I’m not sure how to feel about this. We have words for how the winter cold makes us feel, and the summer heat, but a warm February has me tongue-tied. How should I feel? I ask the sky as though I need some external guidance, something to tell me what it means. But I know what it means. The world is in flux, in motion, and things will change even as I am, for the moment, frozen.

 

Nature Talks., The Weekly Essay

Through A Glass Darkly.

Author: January 31, 2025 4 Comments

Source: The Public Domain Image Archive

This week two of my friends sent me separate but similar messages they’d copied from social media sites, messages reminding adults to to take time to play, to do what makes us happy, to allow ourselves to be occasionally childlike. I’m not knocking the message but I wondered why they were sharing it with me. Both of my friends make time in their lives for fun creative pursuits. One collects and builds Lego sets. The other plays Dungeons & Dragons, and occasionally does live action roleplaying. Then I realized that all my friends have fun, creative pursuits—things outside of their day jobs that they make time for. I know I’m overanalyzing, which I might say is one of my hobbies if I thought about it too much, and, again, I’m not knocking the message which is a reminder I think we could all use occasionally, but why were they sending these messages directly to me, and why now?

That also got me thinking how much hobbies have changed since I was young—how much the internet has changed the world. When I was young if you had a particular hobby—say, building model train sets, it was likely a solitary pursuit. You might share what you’d made with friends and neighbors. If your set got really big, or it was just a slow week in your community and you lived in a small town, you might be featured in the newspaper or on the local news. If you knew fellow enthusiasts you probably met them at trade shows and corresponded by mail.

Now your hobby, whatever it is, can be shared with anyone with internet access, which definitely has its pros and cons. You can feel connected to a community and you can share what you love without feeling like you’re dragging your friends and neighbors away from something else they’d rather be doing. But it can also create a sense of insecurity. No matter how good you are you’ve likely found someone out there who you think is better than you. Maybe they’re devoting more time to what they do. Maybe they’ve turned it into a career and for you it’s still just a hobby, something you do to relieve the stress of your day job. And let me be clear: not every hobby can or should be turned into a moneymaking pursuit. If the only reason you do something is because it’s fun and it makes you happy, if it’s what you turn to when you get overwhelmed or just need a break, that’s great. I hope it always makes you happy.

But I keep thinking about how the internet has changed hobbies. It’s not just being able to share what you enjoy; it’s also access to resources and even knowledge that most old time hobbyists couldn’t imagine. When Star Wars came out my friends and I built versions of R2-D2 out of cardboard boxes. Now you can build an exact replica of the real thing in your garage if you’re willing and able to invest the time and money.

The internet changed even more than that. I remember when we didn’t even have VCRs. And when we had three channels—four if you were within range of the goofy little UFH station. If we missed that movie we wanted to see on TV it might be a year before it was rebroadcast. We didn’t have streaming services. We felt lucky if we had a creek in the backyard. And don’t get me started on music and how if we wanted that song we liked we either had to buy the album at a store or hold our cassette recorders up to the car radio. Or video games that you could only play at the arcade or the 7-11 for a quarter a game.

I’ve barely touched on how much things have changed and all this, as I’ve said, comes with pros and cons. That’s is why when I’ve talked about it with my friends and they say kids today don’t realize how good they have it I get a little grumpy and remind them that kids today face a lot of challenges we didn’t have to deal with; the world has changed and not entirely for the better. And then I start waving my cane at them and yelling at them to get off my lawn and, oh, okay, now I get why my friends are telling me to occasionally be childlike.

Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay

Winter Stillness.

Author: January 24, 2025 4 Comments

There’s no silence like that of a late winter night. It’s not muffled, as it’s so often described, though if you’re out on a late winter night you may be wrapped up in layers of wool and cotton. The silence of a late winter night is as clear and smooth as the surface of a frozen pool, and can be as sharp as the cracked edges of that same ice. Even the water in the air clings to the ground so that even a cloudy sky is deeply detailed. The stars are brighter, crystals shimmering. Jupiter directly overhead is like a lamp, and even Saturn, hanging just a few degrees away, is so distinct its rings seem like they must be visible even without a telescope.

In spring, summer, and even into late fall every night is alive all night. Crickets and katydids sing to each other, tree frogs blurp away on damp limbs, and as the night spins toward morning, even before the first hint of sun, birds start to chirp their annoyance that they’re awake before daylight. In winter there’s mostly silence. There may be the snort of a deer in the trees, the rustle of a possum or coyote, the cry of an owl. Lonely cars may hiss along the road. These sounds disappear as quickly as they come, swallowed by the stillness. It’s possible to stand outside on a late winter night, see a meteor flare across the sky, a whole world burning, and feel only the numbness. It’s possible to stand outside on a late winter night and believe that the world has dropped to absolute zero, the state where matter itself ceases all motion. It’s possible to believe the world is no longer living but is like the moon that slides like a scythe across the sky. It’s possible to stand outside on a late winter night and believe time itself has stopped.

There’s a folk tale of a man who went to the town square on a late winter night and confessed all his sins to the sky. There was only silence, his own voice muted by the stillness. When the spring thaw came his words dropped from the air, heard by everyone; for months they’d been frozen in place.

It’s only a story but I can stand outside on a cold winter night and believe it’s possible, that even words can freeze and hang in the air. There’s the threat of frostbite, of numbness, of hypothermia. I don’t want to stay out in it long but I can stand outside late on a cold winter night and feel there’s true magic in the world, that it comes to the surface when everything else is stilled.

I just wish it weren’t so damn cold.

The Weekly Essay

Plays Well With Others.

Author: January 17, 2025 5 Comments

Of course I have more thoughts about the ukulele, and music in general, because, as with so many other things in life, there’s always some new aspect to cover. And I knew when I started that there’d be things I’d discover that would surprise me. I just had no idea what they were because if I did they wouldn’t have surprised me. One of those is that by picking up the ukulele I was actually joining a community. Of course that’s true of any musical instrument, and it’s true of singing, and really it’s true of almost any pursuit, but unlike, say, writing, which I’ve done for most of my life and which is very much a solitary activity, music is something you can do by yourself or with others. Some people do play music just for themselves and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it can also be a lot of fun in a group, and, yeah, it sounds like I could just as easily be talking about something else, but fossil hunting is an entirely different subject.

I first realized I’d become part of a group a few months after I started playing the ukulele. I was at work and found an empty conference room to practice in during my lunch break. I was sitting there by myself happily playing chords—badly—and a woman came in and sat down. She told me there was going to be a meeting in there later but that she really liked the ukulele. She told me she remembered watching Tiny Tim when she was young and also that her father played the ukulele. I thought, wow, what are the odds I’d meet a random person who knew a ukulele player? Then another woman came in, there for the same meeting, and told me she played the ukulele too, although it had been a few years since she last picked it up. And I thought, wow, what are the odds of that? Then a third woman came in and told me she’d taken up ukulele playing when she had a really stressful job and that it was the one thing she could do on her lunch break that relieved some of the stress. At that point I stopped wondering what the odds were and regretted not buying a lottery ticket because a fourth woman came in and told me she didn’t just play; she had a woodworking shop and had built her own ukulele. I was starting to wonder if I’d walked into a convention, but then several other people came in who were talking about fourth quarter earnings or something else business related. That seemed to be for the best because I had to get back to work. But as I’ve continued playing I’ve found that so many people, some I’ve known, some I’ve just met, play or used to play the ukulele too.

I picked it up because I wanted to try learning a musical instrument, and it seemed simple and inviting and fun, and it is, but I didn’t realize I was also joining a group.

Now for a completely random thought that came to me one day as I was strumming the strings: Ukulele players tune their instruments by singing “My dog has fleas”, guitar players tune their instruments by singing, “My dog does not have fleas”, and sitar players tune their instruments by singing, “Enough with the dogs and the fleas, I don’t know why you’re talking about them, and anyway I have a cat.”

Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay