Between a busy month and the gorgeous—albeit very hot—weather, I’ve decided to keep this edition a bit shorter. A few days on the lake > a few hundred additional words.
Personal Peace
As I sit down to write this month, I’m at a loss. There has been so much “going on,” and yet nothing personal rises to the top of my mind as a topic for the newsletter. Busy as I’ve been, and with much more to come in the months and years ahead, I just feel content.
I’ve now experienced a full New England Spring. The cliché about places with seasons is well-trod for a reason. In a few months time, we’ll have been in Maine for a year and I’m surprised over and again by the effects of the death and rebirth of the natural world on my mind. Of course every place experiences seasons, but in Texas they amount to the cool time, the rainy time, the growing season, and the slowdown. Everything feels closer to baseline.
Juxtapose that with Maine. Even in a year with a mild winter and drier spring, the explosion of growth is humbling. Nature reminds me constantly that I am not apart from it but rather with it. Emotional and physical ups and downs feel appropriate when looking out on our trees and garden. The Earth drinks and breathes and shifts is much the same way that we do because, despite our pretensions as a species, we all grew up together. Walking our dog through parks, along trails, around the yard, it is hard to be anything other than at peace.
And that’s just the seasons. I’ve settled into my new job and I’m enjoying it and my coworkers. The rent board has been hard at work, establishing rules, procedure, and intake requirements. I’ve had the incredible pleasure of participating in an international online class, learning from my comrades and people for whom I have a great deal of respect and regard.
House projects (repainting the deck and scaling a flower bed against flooding) and gardening always present something to do with my hands. I’ve been riding my bike and scooter more and more, learning the city in ways I find much harder from the inside of a car.
Now that we’re fully vaxxed and past out antibodies date, we’ve had our first indoor hangs with family and close friends. A Memorial Day BBQ with the neighbors was washed out by storms and a chill, but no matter. We had a great time all the same. Reconnecting with people has thus far harbored none of the anxiety we were anticipating. To be clear, COVID is by no means over and we will continue to mask and take precautions for a long time to come, but opportunities for connection and intimacy are returning slowly.
I’ve been experiencing a deep calm which has cultivated without my conscious recognition. There is so much to be done, but also so much to let slide. In the absence of anything in particular to speak on, it feels right to take a moment and appreciate this feeling of calm. It won’t last forever—nor should it—and I might just need to think on how to actively create it the next time I find the need.
The Old Tongue
There aren’t all that many words used today that can lay claim to having the same pronunciation and meaning now as millennia ago. The word lox can.
The Indo-European language family was discovered in the early 19th-century (seemingly by a single English polymath named Thomas Young, though tidy stories like that always make me skeptical) from a preponderance of seeming coincidences between Indic (languages stemming from the Indian subcontinent) and European languages. Yoga, a Sanskrit word meaning ‘union’, and yoke, an English word meaning ‘join’, is an example of this distant relation.
About half of modern languages stem from this family, which spreads all across the Eurasian continent.
Core vocabulary words are those which don’t change very often in a language. These words include common terms like ‘mother’ and ‘father’ and verbs for every day activities like ‘walk’ or ‘fall’. These words are often stable in either pronunciation or meaning for long stretches of time, baring extenuating circumstances like disruptions of trade or isolation from a previously aligned population.
The fact that lox has had the same pronunciation and meaning for as long as it has indicates it is such a core language word, as well as the fact that it comes from Proto-Indo-European. It also gives a clue as to the geographic origin of the term (you know, where salmon come from).
Gregory Guy, a linguistics profession at NYU, notes in the Nautilus article linked above that the only significant change to the word lox over the past ~8000 years is that it now means smoked salmon, rather than the fish itself. The whole article is worth a read, as is everything I’ve seen to date on the Online Etymology Dictionary.
Update: the Portland Charter Commission
The results are in and far better than expected. Out of 12 commissioners, 9 were elected and 3 were appointed by City Council. A majority is in general agreement that the mechanisms of power in Portland need to change, to be made more democratic. The Rose Slate, a group of progressives/socialists/intersectional feminists, all won their races. I am absolutely thrilled to be working with comrades to build a better Portland for everyone.
Good things are possible in Portland, but the election was only step 2 (the 1st was opening the charter). There are a LOT of public comment opportunities forthcoming, and any proposed changes will go up for a public vote before the updated charter becomes law. As we take a beat, remember to stand behind those we fought to get elected in the face of pearl-clutching calls for decorum or resignation and be ready for the real work yet to come. With nothing else left to stand on, members of the political establishment have aligned with water carriers of white supremacy to make much hay about a commissioner-elect’s views on the position of city manager.
Pine and Roses, a. new journalistic publication from the Maine DSA, said it best: “Solidarity with Nasreen, fight for a radical charter”. Our next opportunity to show that solidarity and continue that fight is 6pm, June 28th.
No Words, Just Feels
Would you just look at that concentration? Would ya?
The Last Beer You’ll Ever Drink
Torched Earth is a beer not for satisfying a thirst but rather for making a point. It was designed "to illustrate what the future of beer will look like if we don't get more companies to commit to aggressive climate action. This beer uses the kind of ingredients that would be available in a climate-ravaged future…and they're less than ideal.”
(Obligatory: Businesses will not address man-made climate change on their own. We need more public outcry/power and massive scale government regulations around the globe with strong enforcement mechanisms to make that happen.)
Torched Earth uses dandelions—abundant, will grown damn near anywhere—in place of hops, which aren’t long for this world as global temperatures continue to rise. The water used for brewing is smoked to mimic a continuing increase in wildfires. Buckwheat and millet make up the grain bill because wheat is an agricultural water hog. In short, this is the beer that awaits us as the effects of climate change continue to worsen in the face of our collectively milquetoast response.
The reviews are pretty much what you’d expect, though not so bad that I don’t still want to try this depressing taste of the future. Unfortunately, 2 4-packs runs $40. Fortunately, all profits go to Protect Our Winters.
More on this performance art piece over at New Belgium’s site, or you can wait until all beer—not to mention every other aspect of life—tastes just as bad.
Humility, Trust, Vulnerability
Recently, I joined an online meeting which serves as a regular space for a group of likeminded folks to check in on one another’s mental health. While the meeting is one I’ve known about for a while, this was my first time in attendance and I knew only the facilitator.
I was humbled by the openness of the space and the shared expressions of vulnerability shared by all. There was no specific guidance to discuss vulnerability. Instead, the theme emerged from the honest reflections of all involved, something which made the space all the more beautiful and rare. It was remarkable to me that my presence did nothing to dampen this.
The emotional maturity and solidarity necessary to share that which makes one feel vulnerable and afraid with a stranger is something I find awe-inspiring. It gave me the courage to admit that I hadn’t come to the meeting because I felt the need to talk through problems of my own, but rather because I have been feeling much more content and resilient of late. (Had the room felt less safe, this could easily have felt like a weird flex in the face of people suffering, but this was not the case) I know all too well how quickly things change, how depression can well up unbidden and all at once. I don’t take these new feelings for granted, and so I take this time to reflect and find a way to set my own signposts in the future. The best time to build up these abilities is after the dust settles and you can look back on more difficult time with the proper perspective.
As we talked, the theme of vulnerability morphed, again outside of conscious control. At some point, we were no longer talking about things which made us feel vulnerable but rather about embracing vulnerability. Everyone expressed gratitude for their feelings of vulnerability and the opportunity a moment of vulnerability can present. Opening oneself up is difficult, especially for those with trauma, those who’ve had their vulnerability exploited, but the rewards can be life-altering.
Spaces like the one we shared for an hour and a half are so important to support the choice to embrace vulnerability. Community and the mutual trust of one’s comrades are integral parts of the security we need to open ourselves up to more. In additional to vulnerability itself. I’m grateful for that small group and the part I got to play in people coming together to feel stronger, more centered, and whole together.