Reading

I just finished reading Toms River, a book by Dan Fagin about a community that suffered the consequences of a chemical company’s environmental malpractices. It is a case not unlike one my mother told me about when I was in elementary called Love Canal. And it is not unrelated to the disaster in Bhopal, which I read about in Dominique Lapierre’s book Il était minuit cinq à Bhopal.

From Dan Fagin’s book, I especially appreciated the history that eventually lead to the building of the chemical plant… a story that stretches all the way back to the 1800’s when

coal gas and solid coke had replaced candles, animal oils, and wood as the most important sources of light, heat, and cooking fuel in many European and American cities. Both coal gas and coke were derived from burning coal at high temperatures in the absence of oxygen, a process that left behind a thick, smelly brown liquid that was called coal tar because it resembled the pine tar used to waterproof wooden ships. But undistilled coal tar was not a very good sealant and was noxious, too, and thus very difficult to get rid of. Burning it produced hazardous black smoke, and burying it killed any nearby vegetation. The two most common disposal practices for coal tar, dumping it into open pits or waterways, were obviously unsavory. But Hofmann, a Hessian expatriate who was an endlessly patient experimenter, was convinced that coal tar could be turned into something useful.

In the course of his experiments, a chemist named William Henry Perkin made the accidental discovery of a dye that would be named anilin purple. Fagin writes:

Perkin had stumbled upon the molecular magic of aniline. [...] The young chemist did not know why the resulting color was so vivid; the ability of molecules to absorb photons at specific wavelengths based on the structure of their shared electron bonds would not be worked out for another fifty years. He did not even know exactly what he had created; the precise molecular structure of his new chemical would not be deduced until the 1990s.

Much as I appreciate the history, it’s the fact that it took so many decades to understand the chemical properties that made the dye possible that feels like a larger metaphor for all kinds of experiences that are only explained after their occurrence.

Enjoying

Jodi Ettenberg just published the 50th edition of her newsletter “Curious About Everything” and it is one I alway look forward to reading.

A friend of hers wrote a lovely appraisal of her work here.

Food

This week I made a supper so colourful, I took a picture…

Alsatian Pan Pizza from Don’t Worry Just Cook by Bonnie Stern and Anna Rupert, and a cucumber and strawberry salad.

The Bay

Closing sales continue at the Bay, the models have congregated.

Pool

The weather was so warm earlier this week, the boys took full advantage of the pool’s early set up this year.

Postcard

And just like that, everything is green…

Have a great week!

Vicariously

I got completely caught up in Hurricane Milton for some reason. I blame TikTok. Hurricane Helene shared the same name as my daughter’s, my friend blamed a windy day on it but it was only after it had passed that I learned of it. Milton was on my “For You” page before it even hit land and an influencer pointing to the dropping levels of a river backing-up endeared me to her by dint of compelling explanations and windswept hair. I followed her, refreshed the feed for hourly updates, went to bed with a prayer for Floridians (what a lovely name for residents… anyone from Saskatchewan would be jealous), and woke up wondering how they fared.

I walked the dog in the morning and the air in Winnipeg was completely still. Not calm-before-the-storm still. Just regular still. It was odd to feel the contrast be so stark, perhaps because my mind was a little drunk on vicariously living through someone else’s storm.

It is thrilling to live in a time when we can peak through a window onto people’s lives and be transported to a different reality. It’s a great distraction to spend some time poking around another person’s story. Recently I’ve been interested in the camping adventures of Fiona Macbain for example. Or when a link lead me to Jodi Ettenberg’s newsletter, I got caught up in reading about a lumbar puncture that lead to a big life change. I’m grateful in a way to be able to continue to discover people whose writing inspires me, just as, so many years ago, I felt inspired by those “dawn of blogging” bloggers… Petite Anglaise, Dooce, Mighty Girl… so many.

In the penultimate episode of “Nobody Wants This” when the Jewish mother is talking, about to tell a story, Noah, her son, turns to his girlfriend Joanne and says “There’s always a moral.”

I feel like I’m always looking for a moral. Like my writing has a dreadful subconscious gravitational pull toward moral, and I’m constantly fighting against it. Thwack, thwack, thwack. No moral. This makes for incredibly short paragraphs, like a person being curt, because were you to prod them more, words would tumble out everywhere in a cascade. What a mess. This section could end, would normally end there, at “so many…” because I like avoiding the longer thoughts underpinning the blithe observation.

Still, there should be a point. I think it’s there, in the allusion to windows, the image that is so compelling it is also a brand, the inference being both possibility and voyeurism. I catch myself feeling a little guilty for this sudden preoccupation for someone unrelated to me, and for using the thing that enables it.

I recently read Martin Luther King’s Nobel Lecture delivered in December 1964. It’s such a beautiful speech. I didn’t know it was so beautiful. My heart swelling aside, there’s a paragraph which begins:

We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say “We must not wage war.” It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace.

And King refers to the story of the Argonauts in which Ulysses gets Orpheus to sing because, King explains, Orpheus’ melodies were sweeter than the Sirens’ and thus they saved themselves more intelligently from the Sirens’ lure. He applies this analogy to war and peace:

So we must fix our vision not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but upon the positive affirmation of peace. We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody that is far superior to the discords of war.

If the analogy can be made between such far ends of a spectrum as positive influence, Orpheus and peace on the one hand and Sirens, war and negative paths on the other, a far humbler application can be made here. It is that all kinds of valid fears and true horror stories can indeed be managed with fences of rules and warning tut-tuts, of giving in to feelings of shame and vaguely resolving to be better. But deep down I believe it is both more challenging and more rewarding to nourish the “positive affirmation” of values.

I’m endlessly buoyed by people who do so and who are generous enough to write about it. Or who make videos. (I have only to think of the organist Anna Lapwood on TikTok to be infected by her smile and exuberance!)

There was a moment there when my preferred influencer had no hurricane updates on her feed. Had her windows shattered? Was that other person’s concerns about high-rises and hurricanes right? Was the wifi out from night to morning? No… none of that. My dear influencer had been sleeping. And good on her!

If I’m to conclude this mini-essay, it’s with that almost comical juxtaposition… a body that needs sleep, a mind that’s tirelessly curious. Governing both is a soul, a heart, a thing that can elevate the physical sleeping and eating and moving to resting and nourishing and caring. To contrast the Sirens’ call of mere distraction with an admiration and gratitude for the creativity that allows me to share in someone else’s life, and the value in that. I do not delude myself by thinking this will solve big problems, you need King for that. But I think that just as much as anybody else, I need to be reminded that joy is a flame whose benefits radiate outward.