There is a hyper-intelligent mammal in the oceans with whom we might communicate if only we were a more empathetic and patient species. This is the unspoken assumption behind most coverage I see of dolphins. But since 2013, when I read the book reviewed below, I view those ideas in a completely different light. One wonders what other animal could accidentally have been made the subject of that fiction.
When John Lilly first suggested dolphins were super-intelligent, the context was clearer. The neurophysiologist was injecting his dolphins with LSD, masturbating them to encourage cooperation and hanging out with Timothy Leary. Before understanding that dolphins were conscious breathers, Lilly accidentally asphyxiated his subjects by fully anaesthetizing them for brain studies, but as they died they made a lot of strange sounds. He slowed down the recordings and – woah, man – the dolphins were totally trying to talk human.
Dolphin researchers at the time joked that – far from the living, breathing marine mammals they worked with – Lilly had conjured a sort of floating hobbit, peacefully civilizing the ocean Shire. The thing is, my generation never even held these notions up to the scrutiny of the adult mind. Extraordinary assertions, after all, require extraordinary evidence. In Are Dolphins Really Smart?, Justin Gregg patiently hauls away the entrenched myth for an honest assessment of what science is, and isn’t, telling us. The book is set to hit the Christmas-shopping shelves, but here’s a sneak peek of his important findings.
King Lear and the Fool in the Storm by William Dyce (Wikipedia)
“I’m not going to do a damn thing to help
you,” the old man said, glaring at me across the boat with
bloodshot eyes. “I’ve been usurped.”
I stared back, speechless. We were moving fast downriver toward a churning brown rapid that could swallow our boat whole. Bob was refusing to help me tie up our raft on shore next to the other boats on our river trip. “Not helping” meant leaving the rest of the boats behind and running the rapid alone.
I had only spent a few minutes with Bob, an 80-year-old oarsman. I’d been hired to replace him halfway through a commercial river trip on the Grand Canyon, because — due to age and infirmity — he could no longer handle rowing a 22-foot-long raft carrying baggage and food, and I could. I understood why he didn’t like me. But it was already clear to me that one way or another, I was going to have to kick Bob out of my boat.
Some of the postcards I’ve sent to my friend Kate Ramsayer over the years.
I got my primary tip on writing postcards from Garrison Keillor, an essay of his I read at least a decade and a half ago: Don’t try to write a letter. (This was in an era when many people, including me, still wrote letters.) Write a little scene. Paint a word picture for the recipient.
Writing a scene feels like showing off how good a writer you are, but I do avoid trying to squeeze a letter (“How are you? I’m fine. I’m in Hawaii. It’s nice!”) into the 60-word space. Mostly I try to be amusing.
My second postcard-writing tip came from my parents. On a visit to Romania in 1998 I commented, on a postcard, on something about Bucharest – the smell, I think? – and they alarmedly told me about a Peace Corps volunteer they heard of, in the 60s, who wrote something uncomplimentary about his host country on a postcard home and created a minor international incident.
I have been
trying to write more letters, the kind that have an envelope and a stamp and go
into that white box with the little flag at the end of our driveway. It’s a
work in progress, I’m still at a ratio of about 579 emails and texts to one
letter. So this weekend, when I went away with a friend to a “digital detox
zone” I thought, hooray! Time to work on that!
I brought a
happy little set of notecards and my
favorite pens and got to work. It was fun. I liked practicing my actual
handwriting. I liked thinking of the person receiving it. I liked the
satisfaction of sliding the card into the envelope. And then: “Gah!”
“Why are
you laughing?” my friend asked.
Because I
had tried to lick the envelope and it didn’t work. It didn’t work because I had
licked the tab that you are supposed to pull off which already has adhesive
underneath. I didn’t learn, either. I did this with every letter I wrote.
“Why do we
lick envelopes, anyway?” my friend said. “It’s kind of gross if you think about
it.” I didn’t know. So of course, now that I am back in the digital
intoxication zone, I will tell you what I have now learned through my freewheeling
internet bender on envelope-licking.
Q: I’m so sorry to hear about your stepmom. How are you?
A: Oh, thanks. I’m fine. I’ll be ok.
A: I’m managing, I guess.
A: Yeah, it has been hard. It was so sudden.
A: I’m . . . I don’t know. I’m coping, I guess. I have a bunch of mints in my pocket from the funeral home. The name of the home is printed on the wrapper. I’ve been pondering how that kind of marketing might benefit the business. Would you like one?
On Monday I found myself unexpectedly caring for a pre-schooler all day. It seems there is a holiday in America known as President’s Day. We didn’t have it in Mexico and the last time I remember noticing it was as kid when it was attached to something called “ski week.” Yay, no school!
What is the point of this holiday? Why would we want to honor these morons? Most presidents have been nothing but trouble. What, James Buchanan and George W Bush need a special day? It’s like having a holiday called Children’s Day between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Every day is children’s day, kid.
Freelancers cannot afford to celebrate such silly holidays and I have ignored it all my adult life until I found myself in the parking lot of a pre-school realizing that there were no teachers. No school. Yay.
So, after a full day of sword fights and museums and generally throwing my child around, I was thrilled to be invited to a potluck President’s Day dinner (no doubt commemorating the time that Taft went back for a third helping and realized there was no more food, so everyone chipped in to top him off).
Managing a frenetic child alongside appetizers and wine while having pleasant conversations is surprisingly easier than doing it alone. As I discussed the finer points of the future of journalism while holding a child by one leg who was wildly swinging a lightsaber, I heard an interesting comment.
“We don’t need National Geographic anymore. I get the same information and sense of adventure from blogs.”
Until last week, I’d never heard of the Broomway. Now I long to walk it.
The Broomway is a paradox: a path through the ocean, a six-century-old walkway that disappears each day. It begins on the southeastern coast of England and heads straight out to sea, crossing about three miles of sand and mudflats until it washes up on a marshy island called, picturesquely and appropriately, Foulness.
Known as the deadliest path in Britain, its walkers have been swept away by tides, lost in thick white fog, and stuck in sucking mud when they strayed from the Broomway’s relatively stable ground. Accounts of Broomway adventures lean heavily on moonless nights and crab-nibbled corpses.
IF ONLY. But no, my prep drink didn’t make me feel like this.
Back in September 2014 I wrote about my colonoscopy. Guess what, folks? I’m deep in the “prep” once again! (People with IBD have to do these things more often than most, unfortunately.) And that means I’m not feeling up for writing much, so instead I’ll share my previous review of the pre-test experience. Thankfully, this time around I’m using a tasteless powder in good-old Gatorade to prepare, and it’s much less awful than the 2014 version. Anyway, enjoy! I know I did!
Oh, and also: Stop procrastinating and get one. I’m looking at you, over-50 and full of excuses.
—-
So, today I’ll be writing about my colonoscopy.
Now wait, please don’t close this page! I promise not to dig too deep…er, I mean, I won’t get too mired in…oops, well, let’s just say I’ll try not to say a whole lot about poop. My real interest right now is actually in the “bowel prep.” Specifically, why does this particular prep drink taste like bubblegum flavored vinegar with two cups of salt and a bad egg? I’ve had this test before and the prep, while icky, wasn’t as foul as this one. With some ice cubes, a slosh of ginger ale, and a straw, I could almost pretend it was a new summer drink that I wouldn’t be ordering again.
Meanwhile, what the heck is it doing in there in order to leave a person empty as a kid’s Halloween bag on November 2? (I could make a tootsie roll joke, but I won’t.)
The SUPREP kit contains two 6-oz brown bottles that look benign enough. I’m supposed to drink one in the evening and one the next morning (mixed with 10 ounces of water each time)—that doesn’t sound too bad. And then, for the next hour after I down the stuff, I’m to drink 32 ounces of water every 15 minutes, in four 8-ounce servings. There’s even a little chart on which I can mark off each one as I go. That’s so helpful!
Now, let’s talk about the “drink” itself. The label reads: sodium sulfate, potassium sulfate, and magnesium sulfate, oral solution. I want to make an observation here, based on recent experience. This is not something anyone should be taking orally, and the only thing it solves is the problem of not being nauseated. I felt so ill after drinking it that I thought maybe I should have just accepted my gut problems as a part of me I didn’t like, like my nose. It was truly that awful. Sour, bitter, sweet like fake sugar, medicinal, heavily salty. Sort of like Red Bull. And (my fault) room temperature. Undrinkable.
But in the midst of all this unpleasantness, trying to ignore the nausea, reminding myself that colonoscopies save lives and all that, I am wondering what all these sulfates are and what each one does. I want answers. Can’t help it—that’s how my brain works in a crisis.
Before I get into those details, though, let’s talk about the water requirement. I’m no whiz with numbers, but I find out quickly that 32 ounces is a lot of liquid for a petite person such as myself, and 15 minutes is a blip in time to get it all down. I usually save my roaming-the-desert thirst for roaming the desert. Plus, I’ve been on a liquid diet all day, which makes me cranky, not thirsty.
My eyeballs are floating after the first two glasses—remember, I already drank the 16-ounce prep—and suddenly the timer is going off and I realize how behind I am. (I said behind.) The second 15 minutes has started and I’m barely halfway through water round #1. Already I’m a balloon. And I’m oddly nervous. Its like having pages to go of a test and the teacher calling out “pencils down!” (We used to use pencils in school.) But failure isn’t an option: To start this test over another day is unthinkable. I keep drinking.
Meanwhile, how about those sulfates? Here’s what I find out in between visits to the WC. (And yes, this is from Wikipedia because, as you can imagine, my time at the computer is limited.) Sodium sulfate is the white salt of sulfuric acid. It is used, among other things, in making detergents, explosives, dyes, batteries, and in the paper pulping process. It also has laxative effects, though how someone at the detergent, explosive, or paper factory found that out is unclear.
Potassium sulfate is another crystalline salt mostly used in fertilizers, which makes it sound toxic, but as a nutrient, which makes it sound almost healthy. One of its roles is to help regulate water flow in the cells and leaves of plants. That seems relevant.
And finally, magnesium sulfate, another inorganic salt. It contains magnesium, sulfur, and oxygen and, like its potassium brother, it is mostly used in agriculture—as a drying agent. Maybe, then, it balances out the effects of the sodium sulfate. You find it in Epsom salt, so feel free to take a bath in it. (Apparently it makes crops grow better and can be used in the removal of splinters.)
Together, this salty chemical slurry that is clearly inedible unless you are a fern is dynamite at regulating water in order to transform and get poop out. Really, really fast. It’s like it scares it out of there. Poop, be gone! Very effective.
I’ll leave it there. (I wouldn’t want to muddy the waters.) Maybe it’s for a good cause, but the Suprep prep kit really, really ruined my day. And as a new morning approaches I look forward to a second bottle of solution, another gallon or so of water, and then the test itself—for which I will be asleep, thank the bowel gods. Good times.
On a positive note, I learned a little chemistry and, better yet, I’m back to my high school weight!
