Snowden's Globe Holds Creatures Great and Small
Little and high, big and deep, we got the range of animals here! Also: the time a Jew met with Himmler, Clowning self-help, Black Pirates, a note on resilience, and a double shot of the 70s.
Hello, and Happy Friday everyone! This week’s offerings are a variety of light and heavy. This past week has been a particularly rough one for many of us, and hopefully the weekend is a point for rest and getting ready to rebound.
First and Pen’s look back at the history-making of The Black Nine of the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates is really satisfying. Roberto Clemente is one of the great heroes of sport, and any chance more folks can learn about what he did for baseball, you gotta take it.
Folks, we have a new “highest-dwelling mammal” record, coming in at over 22,000 feet above sea level(!). The record breakers, the Patagonia leaf-eared mouse, are cute as heckfire. This is as close to an astronaut as any mammal is probably going to be, if we’re being honest.
Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Consent is the Wrong Framework for Experiencing Art piece at Gawker gave me much to think about, and seems like a very nice grounding antidote to the current moment’s pop culture panics:
“The trigger warning, a hot-button topic entrenched in liberal and progressive circles by years of sneering neoconservative mockery, has become a cudgel in the hands of people who view their own knee-jerk upset as a moral imperative for those around them, and even the people who make the art they engage with.”
George Bonnano’s old 2004 essay, “Loss, Trauma, and Human Resilience” seems like a good thing to share in these times.
“In this article, I challenge this view by reviewing evidence that resilience in the face of loss or potential trauma represents a distinct trajectory from that of recovery, that resilience is more common than often believed, and that there are multiple and sometimes unexpected
pathways to resilience.”It is a little disconcerting to read something that is so hopeful, what with *gestures all around* this going on, but I think it is important for all of us to build up models of resilience in our lives and communities. This paper does a good job of distinguishing resilience from the more well-known idea of "recovery.”
In the grand scheme of things, I think China completing a rail to Myanmar, and finally building a contact point with the Indian Ocean will be seen as one of the bigger moments in the 21st century. The land that they traversed to build the rail line is some of the hardest and most unaccommodating geography on Earth, and connecting China to the Southeast was a great dream of many empires.
Researchers are noticing that humpback whales’ communications have changed since we shut down the Cruise Ship industry. I don’t anticipate the quiet and the retreat of industry to last much longer, but I am curious if other wildlife scientists are taking measurement of the pause, if only to get a better grip of what kind of damage or impact we are making.
You might think you don’t need a What You Learn In Clown School essay that ends up being more about self-discovery and redefining ourselves, but trust me, you do. Beautifully written, and I learned a surprising amount about the psychology and theory of clowning.
My Meeting With Heinrich Himmler, which is the personal account of the time Norbert Masur, the Swedish representative to the World Jewish Congress, snuck into Nazi Germany for a secret meeting with the leader of the SS, under Hitler’s nose. It is absolutely riveting reading.
A Roman Army Knife. Imagining little Roman children in the 3rd century stealing these from their fathers to go out and have some old-fashioned fun.
Finally: enjoy 50 songs from 1975 in 3 minutes.
Thank you everyone! We’re one week closer to God’s Season, also known as autumn.
Snowden