If you, like me, have spent the past week wondering how a ship like the Ever Given could get stuck so well for so long, here’s a fun interactive for you:
Navigating the Suez Canal is a high-stress, complicated feat that requires master piloting skills. To demonstrate, we worked with Master Mariner Andy Winbow and Captain Yash Gupta to produce this simulated passage.
Try your hand at traversing one of the most highly trafficked nautical thoroughfares in the world.
Aaaaaand, yeah, that’s a collision. Even in a simplified simulation like this one, it’s like trying to drive a freight train on ice.
And that’s today’s experiment with “walking in someone else’s shoes.” Or wheelhouse, as the case may be. I find this sort of thought experiment useful, both as a writer and as a human being.*
After almost a week and an estimated $60 billion in lost trade, the Ever Given has finally been freed from its unplanned docking site in the Suez Canal. What’s next for this disruptive container ship? Imagine it anywhere in the world with this nifty new map adaptation.*
For today, I give you this highly-personalized, certainly particular list of #ThingsIKnowForSure:
Creativity is what’s important, not how or why or when you do it.
I eat less when I can taste more.
My garden deserves better.
Summer is a montage of awkwardly-placed mosquito bites. Still worth it.
The world needs a better brand of catnip.
Sometimes figuring things out is a matter of a good book and a long afternoon. If that doesn’t work, try a walk. Or a stiff drink.
That thing you don’t want to do is probably exactly what you should do (sorry!)
Sometimes a day just needs a thunderstorm.
Tonic and lemonade are good together. Also gin.
Some days there are just too many choices.
Touch ID hates me.
Sometimes you actually do need that ancient laptop you stashed in the closet.
A good book makes any day better.
I’m pretty much done letting other people define what’s “good” 🙂
Star Wars is the best movie ever (#1, now renamed #4 like a child whose parents changed their mind when she was ten years old. Who does that?)
Lord of the Rings is the best book ever. Even though I don’t read it every year (anymore), the effect it had on my life means that it will remain The Best Book Ever for always and ever and ever.
Kittens are hard to catch.
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Can’t go wrong with a kitten, right? Photo by Henda Watani on Pexels.com
This is a lovely piece about a ship, a bird, and making the most of even trying circumstances. It’s a message I think we could all use right about now:)
She has reminded me that all of us can find ourselves lost. Winds don’t only carry songbirds to sea.
And here, floating atop this undulating unknown, Homeslice reminds me I am still on Earth. There is air and water, light and dark, and there is life in all forms, including restless humans, migrating birds, and the symbiotic methane-fueled fan worms discovered on our trip. Including even the sort-of-living viruses that plague us. We travel the wind, walk on land, float in currents, or remain anchored in sediment. We’re all surviving on this spinning island in the cosmos. And there’s more than one way to survive, even at the bottom of a sea of Mondays.
A few days ago I talked about finding ideas, and even better, how to find good ideas. But what comes after that? After a writer sifts through the mountain of “not bad” and “ok” and even “pretty good” ideas and finds the one that is worth investing in, what comes next?
Because that’s what you’re doing, investing your time, energy, creativity, and care into this little story seed. How can you give it the best chance to grow up healthy and strong?
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Elizabeth Bear has a useful piece out about taking ideas to the next level:
“I used to despair of coming up with A Great Idea. Eventually I discovered that the way to make my not-so-great ideas better is to keep asking more complicated questions about them.”
And when it comes right down to it, this is some of the best advice on creativity I’ve seen:
can’t find the original post/s but here is a screenshot that was living under a digital rock in my computer files, next to many other fascinating and under-utilized resources
What kind of day is it today? Cool, a bit busy, with rain and a chance of taxes. The kind of day where it’s nice to find warmth: a hot beverage, a fleece vest, or kittens, even if they are virtual:
Maybe I should be thinking about new projects and ways to be productive, but I’m about to go get a Covid test and I’ve got work to do and it’s lunchtime, so instead I’m thinking about food.
Today that means I’m thinking about stuffed grape leaves. Our neighbor has a grapevine that has reached out to us and now covers a significant part of the fencing in the back. The vine is starting to bud and soon we’ll have new growth.
My culinarily-talented brother gave me this recipe years ago. I love citrus so I serve these with egg-lemon sauce, but adjust as you like.
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Stuffed Grape Leaves
2 lb. ground lamb 1 large onion ⅓ cup tomato paste ½ tsp. each thyme, basil, garlic powder 1 tsp. each oregano, dillweed, salt 1 cup cooked rice 1½ oz. Pernod Grape leaves (canned or bottled)
Dice onion and sauté in a little butter until tender. Add tomato paste, then lamb, stirring constantly as it cooks.
When lamb is almost cooked through, remove from heat, add spices, then stir in rice and Pernod.
Drain excess fat and refrigerate until use.
To assemble, lay out a grape leaf with the stem pointing toward you. Place a spoonful of stuffing at the bottom of the leaf, and roll leaf around it, working away from you. Tuck in the sides of the leaf as you go.
Heat in microwave for a minute or two just prior to serving. May be dressed with fresh lemon juice or egg-lemon sauce.
(Being me, I couldn’t resist a Hobbit reference, but this post is about migratory birds in general. No Goblins allowed!)
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We’ve still got two feet of snow on the lawn but the signs of Spring are everywhere. Melting ice, the smell of skunk in the night, and Canadian teenagers in shorts and T-shirts (it is above freezing, after all). And soon, the birds will be back. Last evening I heard a flock of Canada geese heading for the river, and they aren’t the only avian adventurers heading our way.
If you are interested in the when and where of bird migrations, you’re in luck. From now through the end of May you can track migration forecasts, get location-based alerts, and learn more about what’s happening in Birdlandia.
And as for those eagles, and other birds of prey? Check out this story about a suffragist and bird lover who established Pennsylvania’s Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in 1934. It’s an incredible place, and is why I am lucky enough to know what it’s like to watch from the edge of a stone outcropping while hawks ride the thermals mere feet away.
The abundance of raptors at North Lookout owes a great deal to topography and wind currents, both of which funnel birds toward the ridgeline. But it owes even more to an extraordinary activist named Rosalie Edge, a wealthy Manhattan suffragist who founded Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in 1934. Hawk Mountain, believed to be the world’s first refuge for birds of prey, is a testament to Edge’s passion for birds—and to her enthusiasm for challenging the conservation establishment. Bold and impossible to ignore, she was described by a close colleague as “the only honest, unselfish, indomitable hellcat in the history of conservation.”
(adapted from The New York Times Large Type Cookbook)
Notes from my father: Here’s the best story I have about this recipe; this happened at Hawk Mountain. We were there to see the raptor migrations in October. We were camping at a nearby state park and it was freezing, in fact it snowed. We were cooking chakchouka for 4 in a big pan over a Coleman stove. Right near the end of the cooking we picked up the pan to serve everyone and it tipped and spilled a large part of dinner into the dirt. You two were off running around in the woods somewhere, so we both looked at each other and then at dinner in the dirt, looked back at each other, then brushed the dirt off and put it all back in the pan. It was actually still pretty good. You know in statistics “robustness” means that you can violate the rules a lot and the results still hold, so you could say that this is a very robust recipe.
3 links Italian sweet sausage, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 Tbs. olive oil
2 onions, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 green pepper, diced
1 tomato, diced
2 potatoes, diced
1 cup water
Salt and pepper
3 eggs, lightly beaten
Sauté sausage pieces in a large skillet until browned.
Add olive oil, onions and garlic and cook 3 minutes.
Add green pepper, tomato and potatoes and cook 2 minutes longer.
Add water and allow mixture to simmer, uncovered until potato is tender. Season with salt and pepper.
Stir in eggs and continue to cook, stirring, until eggs are done, about 2 minutes. Garnish as desired.
“Please bear in mind that Somaliland has no Postal Service”
Think about that.
Forget complaints about the cost of stamps rising by however many cents, or the extra day it took for your first class letter to reach Hawai’i. There are places on Earth with no postal service at all.
Want to mail a letter? Too bad. Want to send in your rent or mail tax forms or vote? Sorry. And if you want to do something crazy like send in a patent application or submit to Fantasy & Science Fiction, you are out of luck.
“Talent is equally distributed, opportunity is not.”
Even beyond the immediate usefulness, I find the concept of a system that ties us all together inspiring. Sure, the internet is obviously taking up a lot of that space (in ways both good and bad) but I also believe that there is also real value in its physical equivalent.
I mean, Owl Post is great and all, but consider the Muggles.
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