February 16, 2017 Our Correspondents Zonies, Part 5: Sky Glow By Mike Powell Mike Powell’s column is about living in Arizona. Chip Simone, Universe, 2005. Courtesy the artist and Jackson Fine Art. Anyone who’s been here will tell you all about the light: its force, its starkness, how shadows seem to cut everything in two. I gather it’s a cowboy thing, the way hard light fosters fantasies of the desert as a place where all existence struggles against an unforgiving sun. Light here doesn’t just light, it judges. A pamphlet from the EPA says roughly 171 Arizonans die of melanoma each year. Only about twice as many go by homicide. But the real remarkable thing about this place isn’t the light, it’s the darkness. In some neighborhoods, you can walk three blocks between streetlights, losing sight of even your hands. Those short on material could build some rudimentary stand-up: I heard Tucson is so dark that … This is, they will tell you, for the benefit of astronomy, something Arizona excels in, but also for us other people, who buy into the idea of being that much closer to the stars in a romantic, chamber-of-commerce way. Read More
February 15, 2017 Our Correspondents I Must Enter Again the Round Zion of the Water Bead By Anthony Madrid An illustration from Struwwelpeter. It is not my habitual practice to go toe-to-toe with Mark Twain. I revere him, have made lengthy extracts from his works, have read aloud many times from Life on the Mississippi and Huckleberry Finn. I find Twain much funnier than [insert the name of your favorite humorist here]. But. In 1891, stranded in Berlin, Twain set about translating the most famous children’s book ever written in German: Struwwelpeter. It is not a lengthy work. The whole thing is just ten medium-size poems, mostly in rhyming iambic tetrameter couplets. The German is hardly esoteric; it was originally composed (1844) for the benefit of the author’s three-year-old son. Twain, too, had the benefit of a young audience for his translation: his three daughters, Jean, Clara, and Susie (ages eleven, seventeen, and nineteen, respectively) were with him at the time, suffering in Berlin. There are several narratives here, all worth the telling, regarding Twain’s deal with the German language, the Germans’ deal with Struwwelpeter, Twain’s surprising his family by unveiling and performing his translation of the poems on Christmas morning, und so weiter. But we have a great deal of more essential ground to cover. Read More
February 8, 2017 Our Correspondents An Elegy for Stringbean By Jane Stern Stringbean Akeman. I never saw the Grand Ole Opry, though I did stay one night at Nashville’s Opryland Hotel, where housekeeping left a Goo Goo Cluster candy bar on my pillow. For people who lived south of the Mason-Dixon Line, the Grand Ole Opry was what the Ed Sullivan show was to us Easterners: a big vaudeville hodgepodge of comedy skits, pretty gals, and hot musical acts. Read More
February 7, 2017 Our Correspondents Flamingo Love Story By Elena Passarello Elena Passarello’s column is about famous animals from history. This week: two flamingos escape to the Gulf. Design by Kristen Radtke. It is a black eye, to be honest. It was basically an error. We are not fond of this story. —Scott Newland, Sedgwick County Zoo Jay points the boat in the direction of a couple of large pink dots. And as we approach closer, the dots start developing long necks and legs. —The birder Neil Hayward Every once in a while they’d walk 10–15 feet apart, but then they’d just come back together and move as one. —The birder Nate McGowan Names: 492 and HDNT Species: Phoenicopterus roseus and Phoenicopterus ruber, respectively Years Active: 2005–present Distinguishing Features: yellow ID tags, monogamous tendencies Skills: escape artistry, international travel, standing on one leg Habitat: The Gulf Coast (by way of Tanzania, Kansas, Wisconsin, and the Yucatán) Additional Notes: On June 27, 2005, a ten-year-old flamingo escaped the confines of its Wichita zoo with another pale-pink inmate. Zookeepers hadn’t properly clipped either flamingo’s wings—a regrettable error, they later confessed—and the birds simply took flight when no one was watching. The fugitives, members of an “old world” species called the greater flamingo, had recently arrived in Kansas from a colony in Tanzania. They hadn’t even been named yet and were only identified by the numbered tags on their right legs; their sex was also undetermined. Despite this lack of human knowledge, the flamingo known only as 492 would soon join a long list of headline-making runaway animal celebrities, thanks to its bold escape. Famous animal fugitives are legion; this past year alone has featured the viral jailbreaks of Inky the Octopus (who squished across an aquarium floor to slip out a drainpipe); Ollie Bobcat, reported missing from her enclosure in the National Zoo last Monday (but found near the bird exhibit Wednesday); and Sunny, a red panda that ghosted from the Virginia Zoo (and is still at large). We humans thrill over the creatures that outsmart us—those that go on the lam and rewild themselves into the free world. Perhaps we see in them a covetable wiliness, or maybe the escapees just make our planet—so much of it now cultivated, mapped, and conquered—feel vast again. And as long as these runaways have no taste for humans, we tend to support their newfound freedom. Read More
February 2, 2017 Our Correspondents Finding the Light By Wei Tchou How studying the Enneagram can expand one’s empathy. Sufi Enneagram. Last month, right after the New Year, on a day I was feeling distracted and listless at work, my friend Ella mentioned a personality-typing system known as the Enneagram over G-chat. She described it as Myers-Briggs but better, and though I was skeptical, I clicked around the Internet until I discovered a test at the Enneagram Institute that would produce my “full personality profile.” It had been independently scientifically validated in El Paso, Texas. I didn’t take the test because it costs twelve dollars and consists of 140 questions. (It felt too early in the year for impulsive wastefulness.) But I became absorbed in learning about this theory of self-discovery anyway. I read the website, then I borrowed a book from Ella, then I gave in and ordered The Wisdom of the Enneagram: The Complete Guide to Psychological and Spiritual Growth for the Nine Personality Types, via overnight mail. Read More
February 1, 2017 Our Correspondents Whitman, Stevens, & Co. By Anthony Madrid I haven’t checked, but I’m confident someone before me will have remarked on the similarity between the beginnings of Walt Whitman’s “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” and Philip Levine’s “They Feed They Lion.” Exhibit A: Read More