My work has become opening digital files to search for signs of life. The biggest thing I do, the midday ritual of checking emails. Refresh, refresh.
Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!
I’m a saint.
I miss you, Ms. Dusto.
I’m dad, away on business.
Can I please have an extension? This morning we got my Auntie’s ashes, from Covid-19.
I’m a monster.
Please know these parts of a wave, how to use the wave speed equation to solve for unknowns. Know something about resonance and octaves. Choose from A through D, or all that apply.
Birds are difficult to photograph, so here’s a ladybug, also spotted during the pandemic.
A big black bird was perched up on the corner of a house, one of the nice, big old houses in my neighborhood.
“Nice,” “big,” and “old” is about as precise as I can get on architecture. But I can nail down that bird. It was an American crow. It called, a single caw! Its friend, from off to my left, cawed back. Caw. Caw! Caw. Caw! The friend flew over, they chatted some more, and it flew off again. I continued on my Saturday morning walk.
My world has shrunk to my 650-square-foot apartment, my parents’ house one afternoon a week, and long, leisurely walks in my neighborhood and theirs. I’ve always liked walking, and now the walks are the highlight of my day. I used to use walking as a form of transportation. I always knew, if I ran out of steam, I could get on a bus or call a Lyft. Now there’s nowhere to go and I’m not willing to be in confined spaces with other people. My walks are smaller, closer to home, always planned to be round trips.
In March, when the boys and I started walking at the beach every morning, I decided I would re-learn the names of shorebirds. Not the gulls—even the professor who originally taught me the names of shorebirds said not to worry too much about gulls. But the other ones, the ones with the w’s in their names. The curlew, the whimbrel, the willet, the godwit.
Some of them have curved beaks, some of them have straight beaks, some of them have cinnamon wings, some of them have tell-tale calls. I don’t really remember how to memorize things like this anymore, so I try to use a combination of mnemonics and mental self-flagellation.
I learn that the marbled godwit is one of the bigger shorebirds, its straight bill has a slight upward tilt toward the end. It spends summers in the northern Great Plains and comes to the coast in the winter. The godwit is often seen with the long-billed curlew. Here we go: similar color to the godwit, but the bill curls down. That’s it, I think, curlew = curls down.
And then I remember the whimbrel. Its bill also curls down. True, its bill is not quite as dramatic as the as the long-billed curlew’s. But if the two species are not standing next to each other, what am I supposed to do? I wish they would skitter up on their thin legs and introduce themselves. Usually they are all skittering away from us.
We turned 10 this week, and instead of getting together for a gala, we wrote each other postcards, alone in our homes. It’s a very writerly way to celebrate. Thanks, pandemic.
Today we wrap up our week-long celebration with postcards from Sarah, Jenny, and Cameron.
Sarah Gilman
4.5 miles from the confluence with the Colorado – Green River cliff camp
Dear 2010 Sarah G.— First, you’re going to have a lot of weird dreams. Dreams where everything will be normal except your stress levels when people come closer than six feet to you. You will become hyper aware of where everyone’s hands are at all times, and of how often they touch their faces. You will deeply miss traveling, the desert, rivers, your friends and family. But your backyard meadow will expand until it’s an entire continent. You will have conversations with the moon and Venus in the meadow at night while the dog pees, and you brush your teeth. You will feel an opening. Remember—when it comes—you must step through it. Even in pause, there is a future growing inside you. –Love, 2020 Sarah G.
Dear Self: In general, OMG. (I know, we hate “OMG,” but trust me, it works here.) I could go on and on about the bizarre and terrifying trip you’ll be taking in a decade, but where’s the fun in giving it all away?Still, a few spoilers are in order. 1) You disliked George W. Bush, but just you wait. You will really, really miss him. 2) Buy Palladium, ZOOM, and yeast. (And T.P. Lots of T.P.) 3) Don’t get rid of all those ugly sweats from college. You will be wearing them to work. 4) Learn how to cook better. Your favorite restaurants? Let’s just say eating at home will be a thing. 5) Learn to love all your husband’s annoying habits. And you know that bathroom renovation he started? Get used to exposed pipes and the unique (rustic!) look of cement board. 6) You will go through periods of heavy panic and think the world is ending. IT MIGHT BE. Sorry. Good luck! Love, ME
Well, there it is. What we wish our 10-years-younger selves knew. Will we still be here in 10 years? Will the world still exist? What would you tell yourself in 2010? Let us know in the comments.
Yesterday we turned 10, which is like 120 in blog years. We’re celebrating all week with postcards we wrote to ourselves in May of 2010.
Today Ann, Emma, and Cassie report back on the present to their younger selves, or at least offer a warning.
Ann Finkbeiner
In May, 2010, I was wondering whether the book I just wrote was any good, what happened to the job I loved, and what a blog might be. Now in May, 2020, I’m wondering what I want to write, how I can handle old age on my own, why I am only now noticing the exquisite beauty of little kids, and whether, when I can finally hug my people again, I will be afraid to.
Dear 2010 Cassie, Next year you’ll go to Union Square to see a movie about a deadly pandemic, and you’ll walk out and think, “I have to get the f$&% out of NYC.” Trust your instincts. Love, Cassie in 2010
Read all of Cassie’s LWON posts. Many of the most-linked-to ones are about slugs and snot and penises and microbes from hell, but this one’s about the joys of being an idiot.
Emma Marris
Dear Me, Good news: in 2020 you live in Oregon! Bad news: Donald Fucking Trump is president, we still haven’t done shit about climate change, and there’s a global viral pandemic! Good news: You are trying to make things better, every day. Love, Me
It’s our 10th anniversary! Today! We’re celebrating all week with postcards we wrote to our 10-years-younger selves. Today Jane, Heather, Jessa, and Ginny hint at good things to come.
Jane C. Hu
Dear 2010 Jane, Welcome to the west coast. You, an indoor cat, have come here purportedly to study cognition, but your time will become a study of many things: the cold sea, warm springs, pale blue eggs and driftwood, how good french fries taste after a few days in the woods. These are the studies you will remember, not the hours at your computer or the esoteric lab meeting debates. <3 2020 Jane P.S. In 3 months, go to the Berkeley shelter and get a dog. Trust me.
Addressed to: 2010 Jane That terrible apartment you paid $1100/mo for which now costs $2500 because of Facebook and Tesla
Read the rest of Jane’s LWON posts. She just recently joined us (we’re so happy!) so you can get through all of them right now, no problem.
Heather Pringle
Gillie with an !
Sixty-six pounds of pure joy, wrapped in toffee-colored fur, ears soft as silk. You haven’t met Gillie yet, but you will, you will. She will be the nose beside your nose when your eyes open each morning, and the snoring you hear as you drift off to sleep each night. Everything she does, she does with gusto-jackrabbiting down stairs, cavorting across the floor, pounding her kibble-bowl. The thing she loves most in the world is her old orange Whistler. Nothing beats it as it flies over her head in the summer grass and she stretches out to catch it.
Cheers H
Heather Pringle is one of LWON’s beloved founders; she left the blog a while back, but you can still read the posts she wrote for LWON, like the one about a footprint — no person, just a footprint.
Jessa Gamble
Dear Jessa (2010) I write to you from an expanded world, from a different paradigm.If the next 10 years hold the same degree of expansion in all aspects of my life as the last 10 years, I will be writing to my current self from somewhere in space in 2030. Enjoy the ride. Jessa (2020)
2020 Ginny here. I’m OK. Dealing with chapped hands and a smidge of restlessness, but no need to bore you with that. Three tips: 1. Pitch more. (Have you talked to many virologists lately? Fascinating stuff!) 2. Call your parents more. 3. You tend to run from big life decisions. Stop that. You are capable of work that seems too hard, and worthy of love that feels too big.
Feel free to share this with your 2000 self — though I’m sure she’d never listen. :eyeroll:
You can still read all of Ginny’s LWON posts (from before she left us, sigh). This one is part of her continuing interest in the Faustian bargains of genetic testing.
May 20, 2020, is our anniversary, and we celebrated by writing postcards to ourselves in May 20, 2010. Today, Craig, Emily, and Helen reassure their 10-years-younger selves. And Sally…I wouldn’t call it reassuring exactly?
Craig Childs
You don’t want to know. You’d overthink it and plan inappropriately. Let it come.
You’re getting back from the Atacama today, May 20, 2010, your gear sweaty and salt stained, and you were looking for how the world ends, how seas dry up and life blows away. What did you find, that the world doesn’t end, that rain continues to fall? Surprise!
My advice is to double compassion at every turn, for every possible thing. Kiss more often. Wish less. Besides that, you can’t go wrong, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Ten years ago, blogs were still new enough to be exciting. A small group of science writers thought they’d like to see what this blogging thing was about. On May 20, 2010, the Last Word on Nothing was born.
Ten years later, the blogging landscape has changed. As has the world. A lot. But LWON keeps on going.
To celebrate this anniversary, the People of LWON, including several of our beloved alumni, sat down and wrote postcards to ourselves, in 2010. What should that person know? Should we warn them about the face masks? Or about having kids?
Every day this week, we’ll post a few of these postcards.
