250 Words on Dexterity

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

I used to be ambidextrous. When I was a kid, I wrote the left half of a page with my left hand, then switched the pencil to my right hand to write the right half of the page. My third-grade teacher declared that the laziest thing she’d ever seen and made me write right.

My handedness hardened into a hash. I write and draw right-handed but play most sports left-handed and left-footed, although I bat and golf (if I golfed) right-handed. I can paint with either hand; I think my left just lacks the muscle memory and fine motor control of my right. My left eye is dominant—good to know for archery and astronomy. My wife, Karen, marvels that I can flip pancakes both ways.

That ambiguity makes me flexible but can also lock me up. I once stood frozen in the kitchen trying to remember how to open a jar. Neither hand felt correct.

Because I’ve enjoyed, studied, and worked in both science and art, people sometimes speculate that the right and left halves of my brain are more interconnected than most. Maybe, but I’m doubtful. As I understand it, the “rational left brain/creative right brain” generalization is overblown. There’s a lot of slosh and overlap between the hemispheres’ functions. 

It is true that doing science and art feel similar to me. Both involve discovering patterns and expressing new connections using the tools in your toolbox, whether those are math and scientific instruments or ink, paint and paper. 

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The Ides of March Already?!

The Ides of March are a noteworthy date in world history and an even more important date in our family's history: it's when my daughters changed my life by going to the trouble of being born. Happy Birthday, Chiquitas! Dinner, cake and presents are waiting.

(Photo taken when they were 18 months old. They're all grown up now.)

Whose Story Is It?

My friend Matthew Noe pointed me to this thoughtful essay on what a writer's obligation should be to real people who appear in their stories. I've faced that question myself so I left this response on his post, which I thought worth sharing in a post of my own.

It's an interesting and important question, especially for those of us who occasionally tell nonfiction stories. 

As mentioned in the piece, I think the first responsibility a writer owes to all the real people in their story is to get it as right as you can. I treat everything I do as journalism (even my fiction), and aim for accuracy while understanding that objective truth in human interactions can be impossible to know and everyone has their own perspective. Sometimes people tell me I got it exactly right; other times they say, "Well, that's not how I experienced it, but I understand how you did." I can live with that.

Also, to put it coarsely, you have to decide who and how much you're willing to betray. People live their lives in your presence with no expectation you'll be recording and broadcasting the details. Nobody is always at their best. I believe Alison Bechdel has talked about that in relation to her mother and family.

I often cite the example of my graphic novel "Mom's Cancer," in which I was not willing to betray my mother. If she hadn't supported the story, or it had caused her a moment of concern or anxiety, I would have killed it and no one would have ever seen it. On the other hand, I decided to include my stepfather in the book regardless of what he thought of his portrayal, which wasn't entirely complimentary. So you have different levels of pain you're prepared to inflict and take, and I urge memoirists to think that through before publication. It's one thing when it's on manuscript pages in your desk drawer, quite another when it's printed in thousands of books around the world.

With both "Mom's Cancer" and "A Fire Story," the predominant response I get from real people who appear as characters is some measure of gratitude for telling their story. Many are indifferent, a few are even sort of proud of their "celebrity" and brag about it to their friends. I can't recall anyone getting upset. Partly that's because I'd never use a book to deliberately make someone who's peripheral to the story look bad or settle a score. Villains (incompetent doctors, bureaucratic insurance weasels) are anonymous composites.

That's a line I draw that other nonfiction writers or memoirists wouldn't. Everybody's got to figure out where their lines are and ask themselves, "Can I live with the consequences?"

If it helps you sleep at night, there's always the quote by Anne Lamott: “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

250 Words on Life Drawing

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

People sometimes ask how much art I’ve studied, and the answer is as much as possible in high school and college. Art was hard to fit into a university schedule because studio classes were three hours long, but I did what I could. Otherwise, I’m self-taught.

The best, most useful art class I ever took was life drawing. That’s drawing naked people. I strongly encourage anyone interested in visual arts to do it.

For me, the value of life drawing was breaking bad habits and learning to draw what I actually saw rather than some preconception I imagined. It was the sort of environment where on Day One the instructor looked over my shoulder and said, “Ah, you’re a cartoonist.” Not a criticism, just an observation. Cartoonists draw contours, the outlines of things. That can be a start to good art but is far from the end.

The lasciviousness of sketching nudes evaporates fast. A body quickly becomes interesting shapes and shadows connected in challenging ways. In fact, the best models are those who don’t fit stereotypical beauty standards. Scrawny, fat, or wrinkly people are a delight to draw. 

It’s also an artistic legacy stretching back centuries. Artists have always depicted nudes, through the Renaissance to the Greeks and earlier. How do yours stack up against Michelangelo’s or Rembrandt’s? (Not well.) Good life drawing reveals us to ourselves.

I believe the real trick to art is seeing what’s truly there. After that, all you have to do is capture it. 

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Genius/Time

My Top Three List of History's Greatest Explosions of Genius in the Shortest Amount of Time:

1. Isaac Newton, who in 1666 (while hunkered down at home avoiding the Great Plague) invented calculus, optics, the laws of universal gravitation, and basically most of what's now called classical physics.

2. Albert Einstein, who in 1905 published papers on the photoelectric effect (which won him the Nobel Prize), Brownian motion, E = mc^2, and the special theory of relativity in a span of six months.  

3. Dolly Parton, who in 1972 wrote the songs "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You" on the same day. 

Other candidates are welcome in the comments!

Recommended for Women's History Month

Mom's Cancer got a nod as recommended reading for Women's History Day/Month from a blogger and English literature teacher from the Philippines, A. Eleazar. I love the breadth of his other selections, ranging from Jem and the Holograms to Pride and Prejudice. That's fine company to be in. 

Eleazar and I corresponded a bit, and I appreciate his passion and wide-ranging interests. I was also struck again, as I often am, by how worldwide the worldwide web really is. I routinely talk to people in the Philippines, India, Japan, all over the planet about my books. Take a second to reflect on how remarkable that is. 

Thanks for thinking of me, A.!

The Intellectual Life #26

Photo source: Potterymakinginfo.com

A Peek into the Intimate Intellectual Life of a Long-Married Couple, Part 26:

Karen and I were watching TV last night when we saw a commercial for the weight-loss drug Wegovy. Karen noticed that one of its fine-print side effects was "clay-colored stool."

Karen: What color is "clay-colored?"

Brian: I don't know. Clay comes in a lot of colors.

Karen: Brown.

Brian: Gray.

Karen: Beige.

Brian: Yellow.

Karen: Terra cotta.

Brian: Naturally.

Karen: What are you supposed to do if you have clay-colored stool? Call your doctor?

Brian: Glaze and fire it.

This has been a peek into the intimate intellectual life of a long-married couple. I'm not proud of this one. 

Crossing the Streams

Since Trump's inauguration, I've been watching poll aggregator 538 for just this milestone: a larger percentage of Americans now disapprove than approve of him. Individual polls report a scattered range of results, some more positive or negative than others, but 538 weights and averages a lot of polls to reach something like a consensus. 

Trump has crossed the streams.*

Although smart readers who are politically astute and well informed may marvel that Trump's numbers are anywhere near this high, I accept them as a clear snapshot of the electorate's mood. Inexplicable, but clear. Democrats are a minority party in Congress, powerless to do much more than inform, protest, persuade (which I wish they would do more of) and occasionally filibuster, so it's evident to me that little is going to change until Trump's own people--both voters and legislators--start to sour on him.

Which won't happen until they feel the pain.

I don't wish misfortune on anyone, but I think it's more likely than not. If prices rise, if unemployment soars, if the Stock Market tanks, if farmers can't sell their soybeans or afford new tariff-inflated tractors, if VA hospitals close, if Medicaid is cut, if budget battles shut down the government, if Social Security is threatened, if an epidemic or natural disaster hits and no one comes to help, if a Russian cyberattack takes down the power grid, if more of the factories scheduled to create thousands of local jobs under Biden's Inflation Reduction Act are canceled, if Red States finally realize they rely a lot more on government handouts than the Blue States that pay for them, if Republican politicians continue to be jeered out of their own town hall meetings, then maybe things will change.

Some folks, especially those low on compassion and empathy, simply won't care until trouble hits home.

Good people just have to hold on, resist, and help each other until they do. I don't really see any other way around or through it. 

Trump's numbers will bob around and may even float back up momentarily, but in the long run I think he has nowhere to go but down. He will never be more popular than he is right now. 

In Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, a character described how he went bankrupt: "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly." I wouldn't dare hope, but also wouldn't be surprised, to see Trump's political fortunes do the same.

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* Ghostbusters reference. Crossing the streams is bad.

250 Words on Little League

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

I played Little League baseball when I was around 7 and 8, a stereotypical right-fielder distractedly counting the clover while balls rolled past me.

My handicap in baseball was that nobody ever taught me the rules. Coaches just assumed we knew how to play the game. 

One of my first times at bat, I didn’t understand how I could be called out on strikes when I hadn’t swung at the ball. Another time, I managed to make it to first base when the next batter hit the ball to second, so I turned around and headed back to first. I saw no reason two players couldn’t share one base. Why not? The coach had to drag me off the field to laughter and red-faced humiliation.

I grew up convinced I was uniquely terrible at baseball. My awfulness at the sport colored my entire self-image. 

Then, as an adult, I found myself in a neighborhood ballpark with time to kill, so I watched a bit of a Little League game. In a flash, I realized that almost all 7- and 8-year-olds are terrible at baseball. They ran the bases backwards and toppled over as balls dribbled between their feet. They stunk!

It was an epiphany. I realized I hadn’t been a uniquely terrible baseball player at all. I’d been ordinary. Average. It’s not an exaggeration to say that watching those kids bumble about the diamond recalibrated how I thought of myself. A weight lifted. 

“Ordinary” and “average” were a big relief. 

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The Planets Align

There's much talk about planets lining up these days, because they're all in the same half of the sky and make a pretty sight. The arc of Venus to Jupiter to Mars is cool. You might also catch Mercury and Saturn, although they're faint and near the western horizon (beneath Venus). In addition, Uranus and Neptune are in the line-up, but you won't see them unless you have a fairly hefty telescope.

So that's neat and worth a look if you care. But I'm also seeing online predictions of doom, as the combined gravitational force of all those planets rips the Earth apart. Earthquakes, volcanoes, dogs and cats living together . . .

Don't be stupid.

Here's a page on the subject from a book I wrote but don't expect to ever be published. It was a book-length science comic; we hadn't quite settled on a title, but in my mind its working title was Don't Be Stupid. 

I still think the book has good information and an important message, so why do I consider it dead? I was just finishing it in 2017 when the firestorm that destroyed my neighborhood also destroyed all the original art, reference material, and permissions to reprint copyrighted material that I'd compiled for it. In the years since, some of its content has become obsolete.

I also emerged from the fire with a different attitude toward my work. I wasn't the guy who wrote that science comic anymore. I did A Fire Story instead. And truth be told, I had no public reputation as an expert whose opinion was worth listening to. A science comic by famous physicist Brian Cox would get a lot of attention, one by cartoonist Brian Fies would not. I also suspect it wouldn't have sold well, mostly because the people who'd need a book whose theme is "Don't Be Stupid" would be too stupid to know they needed it.

I expect I'll still do something with it someday. Maybe in occasional dribbles like this. 

250 Words on Hope and Squirrels

 

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

Friends and readers know that my neighborhood burned to the ground in the 2017 Tubbs wildfire. For quite a while, the place was a sterile gray ruin. Then, slowly, life returned.

Deer appeared, venturing up from a nearby creek. They were regular callers even before the fire, but we also got rarer visitors: rabbits, foxes, coyotes. Crows were the only birds for a while, except for the hawks and vultures wheeling high overhead.

We rebuilt, as did many of our neighbors. Gradually, streetlights turned back on and fences went back up. Commensurately, wildlife sightings went down. But as we landscaped, other life returned. Bees and hummingbirds to the flowers. Finches, juncos and towhees to the saplings. Quail to the shrubs. 

We still have no squirrels.

In the pre-blaze days, squirrels were common enough to be nuisances. Rats with good PR. They need trees of a certain size to nest and scamper in, preferably in large thickets. More than seven years after the fire we still have none, and probably won’t for at least a decade. I see squirrels in nearby neighborhoods that survived the fire and try to convince them to follow me home. None have yet accepted my offer.

The first day I see a squirrel back in my yard will be a joyous one. I wonder if I put too much weight on it, as if that will be the final sign that both the land and we are healed, when I know very well neither will be.

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250 Words on Gluten

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

My wife, Karen, has to eat gluten-free. It’s not always easy, but there have been unexpected benefits.

It made us better cooks. Gluten, in the form of wheat flour, is hidden in many prepared foods, so we cook from scratch much more than we used to. The result is invariably tastier and fresher than whatever we might have pulled off a shelf.

Mexican and Indian restaurants are a dream, Italian and Asian are a challenge (soy sauce has gluten). We’ve found many good pasta options—look for noodles made from a blend of rice and corn flours rather than straight rice or oddball substitutes such as chickpea. Boil it al dente so it doesn’t get gummy.

Gluten is the protein that gives yeasty dough its stretchy, airy quality, and there is no decent alternative. We’ve had some tolerable pizzas with gluten-free crusts, but none great. Likewise, palatable breads are difficult, but not impossible, to find. 

We judge gluten-free foods on a scale. The gold standard are those so good we’d eat them even if they weren’t gluten-free. We have favorite brands of pretzels, pancakes and muffin mix that fall into that category. Next are foods that are adequate enough, like pastas and cookies. Anything worse, we don’t bother.

I do not eat gluten-free. Indeed, I am an enthusiastic savorer of gluten. But whenever I go without for a while, and then scarf down a couple slices of bread or pizza, my gut feels the difference. If I’m gassy, blame gluten. 

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Wasting Dam Water

I've just returned home from a quick trip to and from southern California via Interstate 5, a flat straight freeway through some of the most productive farmland in the nation. Dotted along the route are many signs like these, reading "Newsom: Stop Wasting Our Dam Water!" and suchlike.

I expect all those parched farmers will be editing their signs to read "Trump" after he recently ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to release 2.2 billion gallons of water from California reservoirs to fight fires in Los Angeles, despite the fact that there was no way for that dam water to get to L.A. It just flowed out to the Pacific, where it will do the farmers' crops no good during the hot dry summer to come. Trump literally did the thing on the sign. 

Yes, they'll be rewriting them any day now . . .

I am 99% sure that Trump believes water somehow flows downhill from the Pacific Northwest to L.A. because Canada is above California on the map. I am completely serious. 

(Photo credit: KBAK-TV in Bakersfield, because I thought it imprudent to take photographs while driving 75 mph.)