The Last Word On Nothing

I want a dog. For a while now, my awareness of this has been getting louder. It was when I encountered these little gentlemen that the urgency of the situation became undeniable. (If you value your hearing turn down the volume before you hit play.)

I’ve lived with many canines – parents’ dogs, roommate dogs, partners’ dogs, my dogs. These animals are an unceasing upside of being alive. However, owing to circumstances, I haven’t had a dog living in my house in 10 years. I have been too busy to commit real time to fretting about this – and life circumstances don’t permit remedying it just yet – but increasingly the sense of needing a dog has become absolute. My reactions to cuteness in public are becoming alarming. As you probably surmised from the pitchy caterwauling above (pity the poor owner).

That was when I remembered cuteness aggression. 

Look at this worm!! Folks, I met this giant earthworm during a trip to a cloud forest in Ecuador where I was covering amphibian declines with photographer Joel Sartore for National Geographic. It may recall one of those corrugated plastic pipes you use to run water from your downspout to the street, but it’s not that. (It’s too narrow to do much good in that department anyway…it would certainly clog up with the first rain.)

The worm was just a thing we found along the trail, and we weren’t prepared with a worm field guide or a worm expert and so didn’t officially ID it. However, there’s another giant earthworm known to Ecuador called Martiodrilus crassus—which one online source says translates to “worm that feeds on dogs” and another insists means “thick martian,” and I’m too lazy to go down this particular wormhole to investigate further. Anyway, it’s possible that’s the kind of worm this is, but don’t quote me on it.

Earthworms live in burrows underground, which they tunnel out themselves with their muscular heads. If their burrows flood, they come up to the surface. That’s probably why this one was out and about: It rains a lot in the Ecuadorian cloud forest. In fact, you’d think the trail would be displaced worms as far as the eye can see. You know that childhood game “The Floor is Lava” where you leapt from chair to chair in the living room to avoid burning your feet? What if the floor were worms? It seems like a bad idea for lots of reasons (squish squish), but it did spring to mind when I considered all those drowning worms’ emergence.

There are bigger earthworm species in Australia. Some can reach nearly 10 feet in length and can even be heard gurgling and glugging underground. But this South American one, which made no sound that I could detect, was no slouch. Earthworms eat organic matter and minerals in the soil, and then poop out said organic matter and minerals (minus whatever their simple bodies need, I suppose). Those “castings” left behind are called frass, and big worms leave behind a lot of it. I’ll say this: I’m glad I don’t have to clean up after this particular earthworm or any of its big-ass cousins.

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Thanks to top-notch photographer and friend Joel Sartore (you may know of his Photo
Ark project, and if you don’t, you should) for the wacky image of me and the worm shot on a trail in the cloud forest reserve of Reserva Las Gralarias, near Mindo, Ecuador.

This piece initially ran exactly a year ago, and it’s no coincidence that the Canadian Broadcasting System had me on air again today. This time, though, it was a program called Good Question, Saskatchewan! which addressed the issue of why that province (mostly) dodged the hassle of daylight savings time. If you would like to hear more on this question, here’s the podcast of it. I’m pleased to report our bi-annual ritual of self-sabotage continues to unite us in hatred and annoyance.

Twice a year, for more than a decade, now, I have addressed the nation.

Today, I do so again. At 6am it’s Ottawa, then I’m swiftly on to Thunder Bay at 6:10. My voice will echo through the kitchens of Saint John at 6:20 and rustle the lace curtains in the Anne of Green Gables parlours of Charlottetown at 6:40. Cape Breton, Moncton, Winnipeg, Yellowknife, Regina, Prince George, Kelowna, Fredericton, Kitchener-Waterloo. And what that voice will be saying – what it has always been saying – is that daylight savings time is stupid. Again and again, to 14 separate cities, year after year.

And it’s been working. During the time I have been regularly interviewed on the CBC syndication desk about daylight savings, by dint of a professional focus on circadian rhythms, some questions have remained the same. We’ve talked about how the lost hour during our spring forward leads to population-level effects on heart attacks and traffic accidents. We’ve talked about its origins as a satirical proposal and the fact that its energy-saving theory has never panned out in practice.

This post first appeared in March 2021. My longing for more spontaneous museum visits continues.

A little over a year ago I made an unplanned trip to the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. I had driven to the city to run errands but then decided to go look at art instead, a moment of pre-pandemic spontaneity that felt indulgent then, and now, I imagine, would feel like intense catharsis. It was a rainy Sunday; I remember stepping over crushed magnolia blossoms on the wet pavement. I paid my admission and declined the headset tour, bought a cup of coffee in the museum cafe and drank it in the light-filled glass atrium, a relatively recent expansion of the oldest public art museum west of the Mississippi River.

I enjoyed all of the exhibits, more or less, but one installation made such an impression on me that I still think about it: A collection of 1st-6th century Roman glass jars, flasks, juglets and perfume bottles called amphoriskos. The placard by the case was succinct, noting only a few physical details like “turquoise twin handles, spiral and zig-zag trailing,” and “globular sprinkler with pinecone.” It didn’t say anything about how the glass was made, where it was found, or how the donor, a local painter, acquired it. I left the museum without asking, not realizing it would be the last time I’d visit.