March 8, 2017 Our Correspondents Zonies, Part 6: Fissure By Mike Powell Mike Powell’s column is about living in Arizona. Courtesy the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The other day, I drove out to a vast expanse of desert just south of Eloy, Arizona, where geologists recently observed a fresh, large crack in the middle of the earth. The crack is one of dozens in the region, caused by pumping for water at rates faster than the aquifer can recharge. A 1949 news item from the Arizona Republic shows a Mrs. Vince Taylor of Eloy in a nearby spot, staring uncomprehendingly into a lighting-bolt-shaped hole. The report notes that at the time, the cause of the fissure was unknown. Now, people debate whether or not real-estate agents should be bound to disclose the possibility of someone’s yard splitting open, which they occasionally do. I had gotten a map to the crack from a local scientist, having lied about going out there with company. I pulled off the highway and took, as one often does in the desert, a series of progressively narrowing, informal roads, until I was driving on tracks that only a couple of other cars had driven on before. I followed my odometer carefully to the point and parked. Contrary to an image I know many visiting friends have carried in their heads, Southern Arizona is not a biblical desert, not a desert of swirling dunes shaped like soft serve, but scrubby and lush, with strange, skeletal trees, little patches of orange and yellow wildflowers, spiny grass that cracks under your shoe and plants a green so pale and yet so vibrant they look fluorescent. Read More
March 3, 2017 Our Correspondents Golden Cicada By Wei Tchou Drinking at Jersey City’s baijiu bar. Photo by Dave Cook, 2011. When my date suggested grabbing a drink Sunday night at the Golden Cicada in Jersey City, I thought that I’d discovered a kindred spirit. But as we scurried from the PATH train down the blowy, open sidewalk, I became less confident. It was only a second date, and when I told him I’d moved to New York City “to follow my dreams,” he asked if my dream was to ride the PATH train to a bar in Jersey City. I laughed. “My dream,” I said, pulling up the hood of my coat against the wind, “was to ride the PATH to a baijiu bar in Jersey City.” We paused at a crosswalk. “Wait, it’s a baijiu bar?” he said. “You didn’t know?” I asked, pulling my hood down to look at his face. “I just Googled the address after you mentioned it the other day,” he admitted. We started walking again. It was too late to make new plans. Read More
March 2, 2017 Our Correspondents Geronimo Takes Flight By Elena Passarello Elena Passarello’s column is about famous animals from history. This week: Geronimo the beaver takes flight. Design by Kristen Radtke. The plane makes a careful approach, ready for the drop. Now into the air and down they swing! Down to the ground near a stream or a lake. The box opens and a most unusual and novel trip ends for Mister Beaver. —from Fur for the Future Poor fellow! He finally became resigned, and as soon as we approached him, would crawl back into his box ready to go aloft again. —Elmo Heter, Idaho Fish and Game Department Name: Geronimo Species: Castor canadensis Years Active: the late 1940s Distinguishing Features: four orange front teeth, impressive work ethic, pungent odor Skills: landscape architecture, family planning, no detectable fear of heights Habitat: The Idaho backcountry Additional Notes: I’ve spent the past week wondering how this country might have turned out differently if, two hundred years ago, we’d made our national symbol the North American beaver. Thomas Jefferson reportedly selected the bald eagle for its visage—that focused, Gregory Peck glower. The beaver face, on the other hand, is much more comically designed: it’s myopic and weak-chinned, with Paul Giamatti cheeks. Though graceful when swimming the depths of the ponds they help dredge and fortify, on land (where most humans observe them) beavers only waddle through the mud, cutting quite the opposite figure than certain iconic birds of prey gliding on canyon updrafts. Read More
March 1, 2017 Our Correspondents Rumi, Machado, and Co. By Anthony Madrid A guide to “getting” Rumi. A number of my poetry-loving friends have asked me over the years what Rumi’s poetry is really like. They’re all coming from the same place: they want to know if his stuff is as New Agey in Persian as it is in the translated quotations they’ve seen on the Internet. Is Rumi really such a sweetheart. Is he funny. Would he really use a construction like “I caught the happy virus.” It’s easy enough to answer the question as to whether Rumi is funny.—No.— Or, I would say … he’s about as funny as the protagonist of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. (Perhaps someone with superior gifts, both of ingenuity and of defiance, would be able to wring some measure of hijinks out of both Rumi and Jesus, but the rest of us muggles have to content ourselves with conventional sublime holiness.) As for “the happy virus,” what can I say. I doubt it. On the other hand, Rumi really was a sweetheart, and his poetry does have a certain self-help aura. He loves to traffic in homely metaphors, and he definitely does have “designs on your understanding” (or whatever it was that Keats said was preeminently resistible to him). At the same time, he’s friendly and encouraging. He does not get up in your face. He is seldom grumpy. Read More
February 22, 2017 Our Correspondents Sentinel Species By Megan Mayhew Bergman Meditation on a life of birding. Every fall, thousands of snow geese descend on Addison, Vermont, stark-white birds with black wing tips falling to the fields and ponds near the Dead Creek Wildlife Management Area. Every fall I intend to drive north to see them, and every fall I forget and am left with the worry that I will miss the last great season. Last November, in Butte, Montana, a flock of snow geese touched down on what appeared to be a lake, but was instead a pool of toxic, bright-red mine waste called the Berkeley Pit. Bystanders remarked that the scarlet-hued lake, or more precisely the Superfund site, was “white with birds.” Thousands died from exposure to sulfuric acid and heavy metals, dropping lifeless onto roadsides and Walmart parking lots, earthbound heaps of feathered flesh. Birds are sensitive to toxicity, often more so than humans. Parakeets die when exposed to fumes from hot nonstick pans. I think of the bright-yellow caged canaries taken deep underground to warn miners of carbon-dioxide levels. For me, the mass death of birds is an early indicator of future human welfare, a bad omen. Margaret Atwood, in an interview, said, “An involvement with birds is a reliable hook into the state of the planet.” Read More
February 17, 2017 Our Correspondents Sour, Sweet, Bitter, Spicy By Wei Tchou An installation at the Museum of Chinese in America documents a quickly shifting American culture. From “Sweet, Sour, Bitter, Spicy,” an exhibition at the Museum of Chinese in America. There used to be a restaurant at Fifty-First and Lexington, a relic of white-glove Chinese fine dining, called Mr. K’s. Its interior was all baby pink and Art Deco with high-backed plush seats and gold flatware, gold chopsticks, and gold soup bowls with little clawed feet. They served sorbet in between courses and kept a tea candle lit beneath the entrées, which were mostly plated versions of classic take-out fare: hot and sour soup, sweet and sour pork, eggplant in garlic sauce. The Peking duck came out prerolled in flour pancakes painted with hoisin sauce and scallion ribbons. Near the front entrance, there were glass cases of chopsticks inscribed in red with the names of celebrities and politicians who frequented the restaurant. Ruth Reichl panned it when it opened in 1998—her central critique was about the restaurant’s authenticity. She describes the food as “not-quite-Chinese” and lamented that “unfortunately, Mr. K’s is serving Chinese food from another American era, a time when people had not yet experienced the real thing.” Read More