I hate flossing. My mouth is small, my teeth crowded, the spaces between them difficult to reach. Twice a year, my dental hygienist entreats me to floss more frequently. Sometimes I assent, and mean it, and actually manage to make it work for a few months until I invariably get sick or injured or burned out and jettison all nonessential tasks. Sometimes, especially during hard times, I just tell her no.
I left my last visit determined to try again. At home, I got out markers and paper and drew a shaky grid (see Fig. 1), then affixed the chart to the back of the bathroom mirror. I told myself that I would start small, flossing two days a week, and reward myself by adding a little heart sticker to the chart each time I actually did it.
It’s been months now. I haven’t missed a flossing day since.
The heart stickers are identical and plain, yet I derive tremendous satisfaction from affixing one to its messy square on the chart. The package of 1,810 stickers cost $4.99, or about $0.002 per heart. For less than two cents a month, I’d tricked my brain into actually wanting to do something uncomfortable, boring, and gross.
Lately I’ve been lingering in Bortle 1 zones, rare dark places untroubled by human lights. On the scale, 1 is where your eyes discern the faintest satellites and the fuzzballs of nearby galaxies. When you wake hours before dawn, the atmosphere lacks the flashing planes, and sometimes satellites seem to have fallen asleep. The stars appear numberless.
Bortle scale, measuring night sky darkness, goes from one to nine. Nine is mostly starless, and city-lit, lemon-colored or blazing white. Among the many celestial bodies up there – about 5,000 stars visible to the unaided eye at most, along with nine galaxies, and thirteen nebula – the only dependably visible ones are the sun and moon. Think Las Vegas Strip. On the other end of the spectrum, a Bortle 1 reveals a faint blue glow of sunlight scattered across space by interplanetary dust, called zodiacal light, or ‘false dawn’. Clouds form a black vacancy as they pass against stars. The darkness seems as if it casts a shadow.
In September, I rowed through Cataract Canyon on the Colorado, a blob of Bortle 2 in southern Utah with a Bortle 1 center. For eight days we passed below desert buttes, no town or settlement on any horizon. We camped in cliff bends where sandbars gathered at the outside sweep of bowknots, and around the fire told stories and talked about the sky.
As the river carried us southwest, about 65 miles from Moab, Utah, and out of range of its most distant glow, we entered the Bortle 1, though from the canyon bottom, a couple thousand feet down through tiers of boulder slopes and sandstone palisades, I don’t know if I could tell the difference. A few of us were left at the fire, then two, then none. Instead of going back to my camp, I walked alone to the river, and as my eyes adjusted, I took off my clothes. We’d entered the new moon, sky as dark as it gets. Cool, muddy swirls of river came up around me as I waded under a ribbon of stars and the zodiacal light filtering from space. The canyon seemed to hum with darkness, cliff walls pure black.
Recently I had cause to doubt someone’s credentials in a situation where credibility was key. Not to worry, I thought, That’s what university registrars are for. You simply call them up and verify that said person is a graduate, right? Not right. It turns out—and maybe everyone else already knew this—you can’t verify a job applicant’s degree without having that same alumnus/alumna fill out a form to request the institution release the information. Academic privacy, and all that.
I might as well not have bothered going to college, it turns out. I’ve never had a fateful call from my college registrar, which means nobody in 20 years has ever factchecked my resume, apparently. Hmmm…I’ve always fancied a PhD in philology: perhaps today is my day. The post below, published in 2012, deals with the way society functions more on trust and discretionary lenience than we imagine, even in areas that are supposed to be strictly regimented. I guess in my paperwork negligence I could have been even more ambitious.
New Year’s being a time for getting on top of all the administrative crap cluttering my carry-over to-do list, I’m getting my papers in order. Yesterday’s hoop-jumping mission was my Canadian passport application. It’s a really straightforward process – I fish out my recently-unearthed citizenship card, featuring a blobby baby photo of myself propped up by mum’s arm (my height is listed as 61cm) and pose, unsmiling, for more up-to-date ones. I don’t even have to track down unrelated engineers or college professors anymore since they changed the guarantor requirements.
The application would have been easier still had I not let my old passport lapse for something like six years, but every time I thought about dealing with the long-expired – and now, long-lost – document, it’s been hard not to shrug and just put the $90 toward the cost of my next flight.
Yesterday’s report that this guy had entered the US with only a scanned version of his passport, displayed on an iPad, was quick to be denied by the authorities, but I wouldn’t doubt it. At least he had some evidence of citizenship. I, on the other hand, have been a frequent global traveler, reentering Canada dozens of times as a Canadian with no proof – or even evidence – of citizenship beyond my Toronto accent. In fact, my only ID, a UK passport, clearly states my birthplace overseas. The first time I did it, I expected to be admitted as an English person, but apparently this is impossible if I also claim to be Canadian.
It adds approximately 15 seconds to my reentry. “You really should have something that shows you’re Canadian.” “Yeah, I know. I really should.” <blank stare refusing to make it my problem> <three seconds of awkward, face-saving paper shuffling> “Welcome home.”
Stone bull’s head rhyton used for libations, from the Little Palace of Knossos (1600-1450 BC). Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Carole Raddato.
This post first ran in December 2020. Since then, I’ve carefully monitored our community listserv for any bull-related news.
This year I was rewarded with the following:
“We have a nice heifer bull prospect almost done mowing in the front yard. Straight Back, Small Head, Big even balls – nice confirmation… Gentle fellow trained to come – working on sit and roll over…. Only experienced cow folks please.”
What was this bull’s name, you ask?
Lover Boy.
Just down the road from my house, there lived a bull. He had a massive, muscular neck and a glossy black coat that rippled as he strode around the pear orchard that served as his pasture. In fall, when the pears ripened, the bull rubbed against the old trees, shaking their trunks until the fruit fell to the ground. Other animals came to eat pears too; wild turkey, geese, and deer. But the bull was my favorite to watch, so fat and majestic.
One day it occurred to me that the trees were so full of pears that the bull could never eat them all. For a moment I contemplated what might happen if I (ever so quickly and quietly) jumped over the fence to grab one.
As if reading my thoughts, the bull lifted his enormous head and fixed me with his inscrutable brown eyes. I froze. Would he charge? Would I get smushed? Maintaining eye contact, he rubbed his enormous flank against a pear tree, using so much of his weight I thought he might snap the tree in half. Pears fell by the dozen, thumping in the dirt around him. As the bull bent his neck to the ground, picked up a pear, and started to chew, he held my gaze, seeming to ask:
Humans have worshipped bulls in various forms for more than 10,000 years, when they first domesticated bos taurus. There’s the humped white bull Nandi, beloved vehicle of the Hindu god Shiva; Apis, a fertility god of Egypt; the Bull of Heaven, from the Epic of Gilgamesh. In one creation myth from ancient Iran, the bull was the first animal; in a Christ-like parallel, the sacrifice of his blood and flesh renews the world.
Statue of Nandi, a patient deity, wearing a necklace, pearls, and hanging bells. Hari Krishna/Wikimedia commons.
Humans being humans, they’ve also used bulls as symbols of control and brute force (see Zeus and the rape of Europa; Minotaur the man-eater; the Wall Street Bull; the bulldozer.) When the Pope wants something done, he writes a papal bull, sealed by the bubble of official papal wax known as a bulla.
One of my favorite bull stories, The Story of Ferdinand, is about a young Spanish bull who does not enjoy fighting, but prefers to sit under a cork tree and smell the flowers. The simple power of Ferdinand’s story, I think, is that it unravels the old conflation of male strength and violence, revealing such macho projections for what they really are: bullshit. (Disliking what he deemed its pacifist message, Hitler ordered the book to be burned.)
Hercules performing one of his labors as he forces a bull to the ground. Engraving by B. Picart, 1731, the Stapleton Collection/Wikipedia.
In 2009, a red and white Hereford named Dominette became the first cow to have its genome sequenced; since then, the cattle industry has invested millions in efforts like the 1000 Bull Genomes Project, which aim to optimize the modern bovine from rump to udder. Last year several outlets reported that nearly all US dairy cows are descended from just two bulls, dangerously narrowing their genetic diversity. Today, most bulls are owned not by small farmers but by genetics companies; the San Diego firm Illumina promises that their patented genetic screen, the BovineHD Genotyping BeadChip, will ensure cows with “exceptional tenderness” and “better marbling.”
Breed success, their brochure croons. Join the revolution.
A few weeks ago I noticed that the bull next door was gone, along with all the cows in the orchard. I’ve never met the neighbors who keep him, but even in normal times I’d have had to screw up a fair amount of courage to walk up their long driveway and ask where they took him. It would sound a bit odd under the best of circumstances — Hello, I’ve been watching your house, where is the bull? –but it feels odder than usual, wearing my mask, to knock on a stranger’s door and ask after their livestock.
“Where do bulls go in winter?,” I typed into Google instead, fearing that after fattening himself on autumn pears, the bull had been sent to the slaughterhouse. Thankfully, I learned his owners have probably just moved him somewhere warm, to protect his valuable, vulnerable testicles from frostbite. Scrotal frostbite is a serious threat to bull fertility, not only damaging the quality of semen, but a bull’s desire to mate, I learned: In one study, Beef magazine reports, “some refused to service cows for six months following the blizzard.”
Minoan bull leaping fresco, detail. Wolfgang Sauber, Archaeological Museum of Herakleion.
Every morning now, I look at the ice crystals sparkling on the empty pear orchard, and hope the bull is cozy in a barn somewhere, wearing a thick winter coat reminiscent of his wild predecessor Bos primigenius, the auroch.
Wherever he’s gone, I hope someone is appreciating his majesty and mystery, and not just his meat or his gonads. I wish I could trace his head in graceful sweeps of red chalk, like the cave painters of Lascaux, or carve his bust out of serpentine and mother of pearl, like the Minoan sculptors of the Bull’s Head rhyton. Instead, I built this tiny version out of modeling clay, a talisman until the bull returns.
The 17-year cicadas emerged here in the D.C. area two years ago and I haven’t gotten over it yet. Everyone knows this, and that’s why Our Kate texted me on Monday with a link to a new paper in the journal Science about the effects of cicadas on the food web.
The researchers looked at birds, cicadas, trees, and caterpillars. In a normal year, caterpillars eat trees and birds eat caterpillars. But, in a cicada year, the researchers have put together a pretty compelling case that birds abandon caterpillars for big, juicy, easy-to-find cicadas. As a result, caterpillars have a great year – they’re released from predation, as the ecologists say – and the trees suffer.
Interestingly, other studies have suggested that the trees get the last laugh, as the corpses of countless cicadas decay and return their nutrients to the soil. That massive pulse of decaying cicadas appears to even set the timer on the masting schedule of oaks, which is the thing where oak trees have a really big acorn year every now and then, presumably to overwhelm the squirrels and other animals who eat acorns, so even if they eat every acorn they can, some will make it through to grow into new oak trees. And the cicadas play a part! The circle of life!
I wrote this post when I had young kids who were scared of Halloween decorations. This year, the frights have been different–the decorations have lost most of their power, but we’ve been haunted by a gang of preteen bullies who have been causing trouble and new evening anxieties. I feel lucky to have such good neighbors, who rallied our street when I asked them for help. Wishing all of us nights free of tricks, and filled with treats.
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I forget this every year—in October, there are places where it is no longer safe to walk. If we want to go to our friend Peter’s house, we can’t go up the street and around the corner as we usually do. If we need to get to daycare, we have to turn and walk in the exact opposite direction first, before U-turning around the block. And Ezzy’s house? Forget it. That street is riddled with danger.
The Halloween decorations are out again, and some of them are scarier than others. Some houses have cheerful pumpkins. Others have black cats. Then there are the skeletons, the witches hanging from trees, the bloody severed body parts. On Ezzy’s street, there is a demonic baby with red eyes crawling on the rooftop. That’s why we can’t go over to Ezzy’s until November.
Every year, I forget how much terror these decorations create for my children. Sometimes we can protect ourselves by crossing the street. Sometimes they close their eyes and I hold their hands until we pass. Sometimes riding a bike really fast helps. But there are some houses, some days, where we can’t pass by at all.
I love Halloween. Sure, I feel weird about my kids getting a lot of candy, and worry about things that might be even more creepy than the demonic baby. Still, it seems like a generous thing, to make your house look sparkly and spooky, to show a brave face to tiny trick-or-treaters, to come up with creative ways to celebrate, six feet apart. One of our neighbors has dozens—many dozens—of pumpkins, skeletons that are dressed in witch costumes, a giant statue with a pumpkin head, purple and orange lights around their yard. Another creates an elaborate structure—some years a castle, others a dungeon, and hangs dummies from the trees. (I confess that this part makes me nervous—I’m worried someone will get in a car accident, thinking that there is actually a person hanging in the elms.) And there’s a family near the elementary school that every day in October—every day!—re-positions a pair of skeletons into a new scene.
My kids love those skeletons. They love seeing the creative things that the family comes up with. It’s a gift to the neighborhood, all the decorations, even the scary ones.
It’s a gift to me, too, because it reminds me that even during the rest of the year, there are houses I cross the street to avoid, places that bring back memories, whether they be skeletons or something more like a blow-up candy corn. Sometimes there’s a specific reason—the man there had once shouted at you to get out of a tree, or there is a large, unfriendly dog. Other times it’s just a feeling: do not linger here. Other times, houses give off a friendly vibe, whether or not you know who lives within.
Neighborhoods are maps of these feelings, and the longer you’re there, the more they layer over each other. There was that couple who lived in the house with the wisteria and bougainvillea since it was built in the 50s, the large family of caretakers that moved in to help them, and now, the retired officer who had to re-pour the foundation to make everything level again. There’s the other house that was blue, and then was a pale brown, and now is white clapboard with succulents in front. With each iteration, the houses draw me in, push me away, invite me to step a little closer to the fence. There is the sadness of friends’ houses that are now filled with strangers. And then there is the welcome of houses that used to look like empty haunts, homes that are now filled with friends.
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Top image by Flickr user Vivian D Nguyen under Creative Commons license
This week I’m in Madison, serving as writer-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin, a gig that’s introduced me to many wonderful faculty, staff, and students. Among my favorite encounters, however, has been with a university resident who’s been dead for around 13,000 years. On a tour of the zoology museum, I had the opportunity to hold the skull of Castoroidesohioensis — a species of beaver, nearly as large as a black bear, that went extinct during the Pleistocene. (This individual was found in a peat bog, hence the dark stain.) You’d think that such a gargantuan beaver built Hoover-sized dams, but, unlike its modern cousin, Castoroides likely wasn’t a dammer or tree-feller at all, subsisting on aquatic vegetation instead of bark. In fact, research suggests that that’s why Castoroides died out: While the diminutive but industrious Castor canadensis was engineering ponds in which to survive a hotter, more arid late-Pleistocene climate, giant beavers were wallowing futilely in vanishing wetlands. What Castoroides possessed in mass, it lacked in architectural aptitude.
Regardless, holding this specimen was quite the thrill. Beaver bucket-list item checked!
