The Nature of the Mundane Part 3. Darwin and I Take a Walk

Posted on December 5, 2021 by Liza Blue

I recently took a walk alongside a herd of big-horned sheep in the Rio Grande valley north of Santa Fe, where I couldn’t help but notice tiny fecal pellets scattered all along the trail.  How could such an enormous animal produce such diminutive scat, so different from the messy pies of their ungulate cousins, horses and cows?  I decided to channel my hero, Charles Darwin, whose unfettered and determined curiosity about the natural world is my delusionally aspirational goal.  Could I puzzle this out?

I have often imagined taking a walk with Darwin, wondering if we would go more than a few paces before he would stop to investigate a worm, a beetle, or a fecal pellet.  After Darwin returned from his epic voyage, he spent 23 years before publishing the Origin of the Species, checking every odd specimen sent to him in order to ensure that our wondrous diversity could still be explained by natural selection.  He needed his theory to be bullet-proof from his detractors, i.e., the church afficionados promoting intelligent design by some celestial sky daddy. 

So surely he must have thought about pellets.  The sheep must have a different intestinal design than the big splat herbivores, relying on rhythmically coordinated intestinal contractions to squeeze every drop of water out of the undigested bolus.  The first question Darwin might consider was the evolutionary advantage of such an excremental strategy, and then work backwards from there to see if he could find evidence of intermediate forms.  I rushed home to consult my “Origin of the Species.”  No mention of feces, defecation, excrement, or anus in the chapter headings or index.   However, at 686 pages, the 20-page index was woefully inadequate.  A complete on-line copy of the book on Project Gutenberg allowed me to do a thorough word search.  All key words came up negative, although I did find “anus” embedded in the word “manuscript.”

This seemed like a huge miss on Darwin’s part, not only the isolated example of the big horned sheep, whose limited access to water could explain the dry scat, but also the role of fecal management in the predator-prey relationship.  Olfactory hunters, such as the big cats, follow their noses to track down prey.  Animals use feces to mark their territory.  Prey animals conceal their scat to throw off their predators. Such voluntary defecation among both predators and prey suggest higher brain functions are involved, along with the anatomic factors that allow animals to choose where and when. 

Diagrams of the anatomy and reflexes to control defecation look like a Rube Goldberg invention,[1] a tangle of nerves creating a delicate dance between inhibition and stimulation, involuntary and voluntary muscles taking their cues from each other.  The whole operation is an evolutionary miracle essential to species survival. 

In “The Origin of the Species,” Darwin studiously avoided any mention of human evolution for fear of the wrath of the church, but it couldn’t have been far from his mind.  As humans evolved a bipedal gait, the anus migrated from the great outdoors to the deepest depths of the intergluteal cleft.  Walking upright was a precursor to our handy opposable thumbs, but the new dank, dark location of the anus produced hygiene concerns, intensified by shared living quarters.  Defecation became the provenance of the private sphere, creating a whole spectrum of psychosocial issues, including, but not limited to, an anal personality at one end of the spectrum and the joys of potty humor at the other. 

In 1871 Darwin gathered his courage to address human evolution and published his companion volume, “The Descent of Man. ” Here he focused on sexual selection as an evolutionary force.  Evidence was all around him.  As a pigeon fancier Darwin could directly see how deliberate breeding could produce wildly different appearances.  Natural selection was an identical concept playing out over a longer period of time.  A collection of his domestic pigeons, bred in his garden, are found in various museums.

The top picture shows a variety of Darwin’s pigeons.  The bottom is an archived pigeon specimen with the original tag in Darwin’s handwriting.  Various authors have credited his observations on pigeons as more influential to his theory of natural selection than his eponymous finches collected in the Galapagos.

The book describes the various “armaments” animals have evolved to demonstrate their physical prowess to drive sexual selection, and most visibly among birds, the role of beauty in sexual selection.  Here is another of Darwin’s missed opportunities  – the role of hygiene in sexual selection.  The discerning female will seek out a partner who is sanitary and will not pass on fecally-transmitted parasites, a particular hazard among carnivores and blood imbibers.  In fact, Darwin might have recognized this factor in his own marriage.  In the forty years following his return to England, Darwin was plagued with a chronic illness that included nausea, vomiting, headaches and skin lesions.  He was frequently bed ridden and able to work for only a few hours a day.  The cause was never identified in his lifetime, but modern doctors, reviewing his diaries, have suggested that Chagas disease is a possible diagnosis.  Chagas disease, common in South America, is caused by a parasite transmitted through the feces of a “kissing bug,” one of which was kept as a “pet” on the Beagle.  This parasitic disease limited Darwin’s fitness and might have made his long-suffering wife reconsider her choice.     

In 1899, Darwin published “The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals,” which provided descriptions of facial expressions.  This was his first book to provide photographs, including one of disgust.

Darwin provided a detailed description of the tongue movements, facial musculature and nasal valves to produce the characteristic snorting.  He comments that disgust is similarly expressed in both man and beast, suggesting an evolutionary role rather than a learned behavior.[2]  Darwin does not take the final leap, noting that the evolution of human disgust and the accompanying avoidance reaction has protected us from the dangers of rotting food and feces.[3]   

Am I crazy to think that I have glommed onto a useful framework to describe the anatomic, sexual selection, psychosocial factors that contribute to the survival of the fittest?  Finally, a determined Internet search reveals a short 2013 article by two Italian authors, published in the obscure journal, Techniques in Coloproctology, titled, “The Control of Defecation in Humans: An Evolutionary Advantage?”  The authors conclude, “Thus, the conscious recognition of the importance of controlling defecation may have represented a further weapon for early human beings, not only in the fight for survival, but also to improve hunting strategies and therefore to increase the evolutionary advantages.” 

Darwin must have known this, but simply chose not to record this insight in his voluminous written work.  He lived at the height of the staid and pious Victorian age, a culture that revered the human body as an unsullied temple.  He did not need to descend into the unsavory depths of everyday life to showcase evolution when there were hundreds of palatable examples to choose from.   He wrote at length about the uncanny (and some said God-given) ability of the bee to make a perfect hexagonal hive and waxed poetically on the beak of the shoveler duck, “whose beak is a more beautiful and complex structure than the mouth of the whale.”    

I like to envision my walk with an elderly Darwin, perhaps holding his bony elbow as we take his habitual and contemplative walk along his sand path.  I might gently broach my pet subject by praising the vast scope of his research, but also suggest that natural selection is so pervasive that additional evolutionary levers could be at play. Darwin might look at me quizzically, and in that small pause, I might whisper, “defecation.”  Darwin would stop suddenly, grab both of my forearms, and say, “Yes exactly, finally someone who is willing to talk about this.”

We excitedly exchange our ideas as we walk back towards his greenhouse. Tea is approaching and I do not want to take more of his time. As I leave, he again grabs my arms and says, “I have never felt comfortable about addressing such a distasteful subject, so I am most grateful that you have taken the initiative.  Here is my gift, a basic truth I will share with you alone.  I will claim no ownership as I do not want to besmirch my reputation.  But you might find it useful.  Do what you wish with it.  Become famous if you dare.  These six words say it all.

“You cannot shit where you live.” 

Darwin chuckles as he heads into his porch where his wife waits for him. 

[1] A Rube Goldberg invention essentially uses the tools at hand to create an overly complicated invention.  In fact, this is similar in concept to evolution where existing mechanisms are multi-tasked to other purposes, producing a serviceable, though not the most efficient design.

[2] Darwin describes the facial expression of various tribes around the world, which he unfortunately refers to as “savages.” 

[3] Darwin wrote, “The most common method of expressing contempt is by movements about the nose, or round the mouth; but the latter movements, when strongly pronounced, indicate disgust. The nose may be slightly turned up, which apparently follows from the turning up of the upper lip; or the movement may be abbreviated into the mere wrinkling of the nose. The nose is often slightly contracted, so as partly to close the passage; and this is commonly accompanied by a slight snort or expiration.”

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Nature of the Mundane Part 2: Fruit Flies

Posted on September 17, 2021 by Liza Blue

The Nature of the Mundane.  Part 2.  Fruit Flies

It took me decades to make the connection between the annoying insects hovering above the fruit basket and Drosophila melanogaster, the inspiration behind six Nobel prizes over the past 100 years.  They are one and the same. 

I first heard about Drosophila in the context of genetics, some fifty-five years ago in high school.  I imagined the bugs to be as big as my thumb nail or even my big toenail. How could something so insignificant and squishable, so negligible, be simultaneously celebrated as evolution’s great gift to basic science research?

In the early 1900s Thomas Hunt Morgan was looking for a model organism for his embryology research, something simple and easy to care for in his cramped lab.  .  Monkeys, chickens, and mice took up too much room and bred too slowly.  Plus they smelled.  Morgan was drawn to the attractive attributes of the fruit fly.  They reproduce rapidly – the years required for vertebrate research can be condensed into months.  Fruit flies’ dietary needs are simple, i.e., rotten bananas.  They live in small odorless vials.  Although small, they can be easily sorted using a dissecting microscope, the type used by high school students in their biology lab.  Males have dark rounded genitalia and females have light pointed genitalia. 

Mutations are easily identified based on such things as the shape and abundance of bristles, eye color and wing shape.  The fruit fly offered everything Morgan needed. 

I imagine Morgan in his lab, sifting through the thousands of flies he teased out of his vial onto a petri dish permeated with an anesthetizing gas.  (Even the evolution of all these steps is remarkable to consider.  Who makes it their life’s work to develop a reliable anesthesia for a fruit fly?)  Morgan snacks on a banana, which would have been fly food in a few days.  He startles, drops his banana.  “Holy shit,” he thinks.  “Look at that fly.  All the others have red eyes.  That eye is white.”


That observation might have been sloughed off by a less prepared mind, but it was Morgan’s AHA moment, one that pivoted his career from embryology to genetics.    Morgan isolated that white-eyed fly, bred it (recall that it is easy to separate male and female fruit flies) and discovered that white eyes showed up in the next generation.  They were inherited.  And even more interesting, only males had white eyes (check out that rounded genitalia on the right), so the white eye was a sex-linked trait.  From that modest beginning, Morgan established genetics as a modern science.  He received the Nobel prize in 1933.  (See appendix A for all fruit fly inspired Nobel prizes.)

Genetics exploded from there.  Fruit flies conveniently only have four chromosomes which are vastly expanded in the salivary glands (a fruit fly has salivary glands in that tiny body?) Visible mutations, such as eye color or wing shape, could be tracked to a specific chromosome location based on alterations in its banding pattern.  Morgain relied on infrequent spontaneous mutations, but his colleague Muller discovered that radiation reliably produced mutations, accelerating research.  Muller received the Nobel Prize in 1946. 

As proof that fly people are not all nerds sorting flies in a Petri dish, scientists came up with cute names for mutations.  The Tin Man mutation, for example, resulted in a fly without a heart, the Ken and Barbie mutation resulted in an absence of external genitalia, similar to their namesake dolls.  The annual fruit fly convention, in San Diego in 2022, could be a lot of fun.

The initial attributes that attracted Morgan at the beginning of the 20th century are now available to high school students.  Flinn Sciences offers everything you need to set up a fruit fly lab.  For the low price of $10, a school can receive a vial of fruit flies with a specific mutation, such as eye color.  The Lull-a-Fly anesthesia kit, complete with a plastic container labeled “Morgue” is a bargain at $11.00.  I called Flinn Sciences full of enthusiasm but was told that for safety reasons, they only sold their products to “certified schools.”  They were unmoved by my claim that I was home schooling my 4-year-old grandson who is besotted with fruit flies.   

I decided to vicariously share Morgan’s AHA moment; a packaged fruit fly kit would be too easy.  Maybe I could use my magnifying glass to spot a white-eyed mutant in my compost bin.  I saw fruit flies everywhere on the melon rind, on the corn silk, the rotten tomatoes.  The opportunity was thrilling.

I plunged my head into the bin and felt the gentle brush of the fruit fly swarm.   They didn’t bite, they seemed innocuous, assuming they weren’t attracted to the odor of my own over-ripened flesh.  I quickly realized I needed a whiff of that Lulla-fly anesthesia if I wanted to spend quality time with the jittery flies. 

Plan B involved a make-shift fruit fly lab in my kitchen.  I put a splash of vinegar in a jar and stoppered the top with a funnel fashioned out of scrap paper (the first draft of this essay).  The fruit flies would follow the tempting odor into the bottle, but once in, they either would either lack the desire to leave, or lack the smarts to find the exit through twould be a suitable work-around for anesthesia. 

My trap showed initial promise.  The flies hovered around the funnel, but few entered the bottle and the ones that did presumably experienced a rapturous death immersed in intoxicating vinegar – i.e., they all drowned. That was okay, dead flies suited my purpose since I had no desire to breed them.  I poured the vinegar into a dish and moved in with my magnifying glass. 

I saw no white eyed mutants, but that was a stretch goal.  Morgan screened thousands before he found his first.  But I did experience my own deeply satisfying AHA moment – I spotted the obvious pointed tail of the female and the rounded tail of the male.     

The genitalia of fruit flies have inspired generations of “fly people.” I am pleased to join their ranks in celebrating Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism providing critical insights into human physiology.  Sixty percent of our DNA is shared with the fruit fly and 75% of human genetic diseases have models in this humble creature.  I thought of Jeffrey Hall, one of the recipients of the 2017 Nobel prize.  When informed, he replied simply, “I’m very pleased for the fruit fly.”  

——————————————————————————————————-

The missing words in the following poem are a set of anagrams (i.e., share letters such as spot, stop, pots, etc.)  The number of asterisks indicates the number of letters.  One missing word at the end of a line will rhyme with the preceding or following line, providing a good hint.  Your job is to solve the missing words based on the above rules and the context of the poem.  Scroll down to Appendix E for answers.

Thanks to Thomas Hunt Morgan who studied a petri dish full of anesthetized *****

And exulted when he realized that some males had atypical white eyes.

A less prepared mind might have brushed this off as a meaningless quirk,

But Morgan realized its importance; genetics became his  ***** work. 

Now, the ***** of Drosophila research are thick, wide, and deep.

Congratulations to six “fly labs,” the Nobel prize is theirs to keep.

——————————————————————————————————————–

Appendix A:  Nobel Prize Recipients based on Fruit Fly Research

1933 Thomas Hunt Morgan used drosophila to uncover the role played by chromosomes in heredity

1946 Hermann Joseph Muller used X-ray irradiation to increase mutation rates in fruit flies

1995 Edward B Lewis, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, and Eric F Wieschaus used drosophila to understand genetic control of embryonic development

2004 Richard Axel concentrated on odor receptors and the organization of the olfactory system

2011 Jules A Hoffmann was given the award for his research on the activation of innate immunity

2017 Jeffrey C Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W Young won the prize for uncovering the molecular mechanisms that control circadian rhythms

Appendix B:  Scientific Foundation of the Following Based on Fruit Fly Research

  • Genes and chromosomes
  • Regulation of gene activity
  • Nature of mutations
  • Dangers of irradiation
  • Information processing
  • Understanding of circadian rhythms
  • Principles of embryonic development
  • Biology of stem cells

Appendix C. 

Follow this link to see the heartbeat of a fruit fly.

Appendix D.  Sarah Palin’s monumental ignorance

In the 2008 presidential campaign Sarah Palin took issue with wasting federal research dollars on “pet” projects.  She offered the following example in a campaign speech:

“You’ve heard about some of these pet projects, they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.”

Richard Wolffe, the senior White House correspondent for Newsweek commented:

“I’m going to be as restrained and measured as I possibly can about this. But this is the most mindless, ignorant, uninformed comment that we have seen from Governor Palin so far, and there’s been a lot of competition for that prize.”

The following link will take you to a video, if you have the stomach to watch her smug smirk as she disses fruit flies.

Appendix E.  Answers to word game poem

flies, life’s files

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Cicada Summer

Posted on September 8, 2021 by Liza Blue

John was pleased that the woman sat next to him on the commuter train, even though it was the only open seat.  She could have stood in the vestibule, he thought.  The next day there was a vacant seat.  She wasn’t forced to sit next to him, but she did.  John trembled, his pulse quickened, and he sat up straight.  Nobody had ever made an explicit choice to sit next to him.  He knew why.

     He was ugly, a brutal combination of the worst features of his parents – large bulging eyes and sloping chin that barely accommodated a mouth.  His long gangly legs and arms gave him a peculiar gait.  Even as a kid, he sensed that people startled at his appearance.  Besides his mother told him as much.   

     “Your father was not a handsome man, but he made up for it with his smarts.  You look him.  You walk like him.  But you’re smart like him.  You’ll be fine.  You know that men are the ones who choose, women are chosen.  Your sister is the one who needs help.” 

     Over the years, any extra money was devoted to tinkering with his sister Gloria – a nose job, a chin implant for sure, and probably other adjustments done on the sly.  John accepted his appearance and considered himself luckier than his classmate Lucy, who had a horrible stutter, or that kid a couple grades below with a withered arm.  Besides, he always made the honor roll.  His mother was right.  He’d be fine, and he could see that Gloria, who was a such a poor student, needed some upgrades. 

     The next day on his way home from work, John waited on the platform as the commuters streamed onto the train.  He saw the woman approach and also noticed others turning their heads to look at her.  He supposed they were looking at her tall thin figure, her glistening black hair, and long legs.  The woman looked directly at him and motioned for John to follow and sit next to her.  

     John never expected that any woman would seek him out.  The thought of dating and marriage held no interest for him.  Every birthday, Gloria teased him by asking if he was a “leg man or a breast man.”  He always said he was a breast man since magazines and movies suggested that this was the key attribute.  In reality he had no idea what she was talking about.      

     Her intense stare confused him.  He was most accustomed to people quickly glancing and moving away.  He reflexively touched his nose and chin to make sure he was the same person.  He knew his mouth had a way of sagging down into a grimace, so he tightened up his cheeks.       

     “I can’t believe we keep bumping into each other,” she said.  “We get off at the same station, don’t we?”

     John sat dumbstruck, staring into his newspaper, unable to fill the uncomfortable silence.  As the train shuddered forward, her shoulder briefly touched his, and one foot brushed his calf.  John swallowed hard and stared out the window.  The crossword puzzle lay untouched on his lap.   

     Over the next week, she sat next to him every day.  John switched his seats around, sometimes in the back, sometimes in the front, and even in the upper tier, the last place anyone wanted to sit.  She always found him, so he knew that she was seeking him out.  She began to sit closer to him so that their thighs touched when the train lurched.  Perhaps he felt a flicker of a spark.     

      He summoned the courage to say the first words.   

     “Hello, I’m John Dawes.” His voice rasped from disuse. 

     “I’m Cecilia.  I’ve noticed that you like crossword puzzles.  Shall we work on them together?” 

     They started to save the morning crossword to work on in the evening as the train inched into the suburbs.  To impress Cecilia, he bought two copies of the paper so that he could practice during his lunch hour.   It worked.  She expressed amazement at his grasp of word play.   

     Cecilia’s interest remained mysterious, but now John thrilled to her touch.  He didn’t question it.  One night as they pulled into their destination, Cecilia asked if he wanted to grab a drink at the corner pub.  John could only nod.   

     The dim light in the bar bolstered his confidence.  They exchanged basic pleasantries.  She was a biologist at the Natural History Museum, he worked in the IT department of a financial services company.  Her apartment was a couple blocks away.  When she asked where he lived, he stammered that he had a house twenty minutes away. 

     “Wow, you got your own home.  Must be doing well.  That’s a pricy area.  I could barely afford to rent a one bedroom.  Good for you.” 

     John changed the subject to the weather.  He didn’t want to confess that he lived in his childhood home. He had no idea of what Cecilia thought of him, but at age 27 he did know that living with your mother and sister was not an asset.  They settled into a comfortable routine sitting next to each other on the train, then going to the bar for a beer.    

     John began to arrive home late for the dinner.  His mother stood in the doorway, wearing her apron, hands on hips, flummoxed by his new schedule, disrupting her precise schedule of dinners.   

     “Call me when you work late.  Your dinner’s cold.” 

     “Mom, I’m sorry. I met a friend on the train, and we go out for a drink.” 

     “A friend you met on the train?  Why don’t you bring him home for dinner?  I never meet your friends.” 

     “It’s a girl, I mean a woman, a female.” 

     “A girlfriend?  It’s about time.  Oh, thank God.”  She clasped her hands in prayer across her ample breasts, leaned back and yelled for his sister.   “Gloria, guess what, our Johnny finally has a girlfriend.” 

     The bathroom door slammed open, and Gloria came bustling into the kitchen tying up her bathrobe, her hair flecked with suds from her interrupted shower.  “Who is she, what does she look like, where does she work, has she been married before, does she have children, does she want children?” 

     “She’s not a girlfriend, she’s a girl who is just a friend.  We sit around and talk.” 

     “A friend who’s a girl?  What the hell is that?” asked his mother. 

     “Mom, it means Johnny’s not having sex or anything. Right Johnny?” 

     He nodded, and wondered, not for the first time, why sex had to be so important.  He only wanted companionship from Cecilia, but the last time on the train, she put her head on his shoulder.  Her other touches could be construed as the result of random lurches in the train.  When they worked together on the crossword, their thighs were plastered together along their entire length, but you couldn’t share the crossword without sitting close together, could you?  But Cecilia’s head on his shoulder was so deliberate that John was sure she wanted more.     

     “Well at least it’s a start, ’bout time.” Gloria turned and tromped back to the bathroom. 

     The next day at the bar Cecilia said, “Hey why don’t we order dinner.  Let’s split a burger.”      

     His mother was pacing in the kitchen when he got home.  “What’s going on?  I cook for you and now it goes untouched.  Bring your friend here for dinner.”      

     At the bar, he’d noticed other diners looking at him, probably wondering, just like him, how such an ugly man could attract such a woman.  He reveled in those moments.  He imagined people were thinking, “he must be a really interesting guy, there’s no other reason she’d be sitting with him.”  Even so, he kept putting his mother off.  He couldn’t bear the thought of her peppering Cecilia with questions about marriage and children.      

     “A friend who is a girl,” she sputtered, “never heard of such a thing.  It’s time you thought about starting a family.  You’re smart.  You’ve got a good job.  What more could a girl want?  That was enough for me.”     

     Over the next week, John and Cecilia worked their way through the bar menu, often sharing an appetizer and an entrée.  They talked of their ambitions.  She wanted to go back to school and get a PhD in biology, he wanted to start his own IT consulting business but didn’t know how.      

     “Oh, I can help you with that,” she said, “We’d make a good team.”      

     This must be another sign of a relationship, thought John, indisputably confirmed when she squeezed his thigh.       

     “Let’s go back to my place, finish the evening with some wine?  Okay with you?”  

     He flushed as Cecilia cradled her hand in his.  She moved in closer, her lips brushing his cheek.  “What the hell,” he thought.  “I might as well give it a try.”  He had no idea what might come next but felt his slight flicker of a flame burn brighter.  He was willing to be surprised.    

     “Hear that sound?” she asked as they walked along.  “That’s Brood XIII of the 17-year cicadas.  Have you ever lived through a cicada summer?”       

     He shook his head and let her keep talking.  “The nymphs emerge from the ground after a 17-year hibernation.  They quickly molt into adults that crawl up the trees and mate.  Nobody knows why the cycle is 17 years exactly and how they keep track of time, but you’ll see, in a couple of weeks, there’ll be millions coating the trees.  After they mate, they die and fall to the ground.  They crunch when you step on them.   Here’s my apartment.  Come on up.”      

     She led him through the small kitchen and living room and out onto her balcony.  “This is my second cicada summer here.  I was about 12 years old for the first one, so I couldn’t take full advantage.  Now, I figure I’ve got three or four Brood XIII’s left in my lifetime, got to make each one count.  This is a biologist’s dream.  Do you hear that thrumming noise?  It’s just starting.  That’s the sound of pure sexual energy.  It will last a month a more.  This will be an exciting month.”    

     As he strained to hear the noise, she stroked his arm, clasped her leg around his, unbuttoned his shirt and pulled his head down for a probing kiss.  She led him into the bedroom, ripped off his clothes, climbed on top and took over.  He was pleased his anatomy functioned, but beyond that he was unimpressed, confused as to why people made such a fuss about sex.  Cecilia climbed back on top.  By the third time that night his flickering flame had erupted into a blazing torch.  He joyously succumbed to the ancient forces of lust and blind passion.        

     The two became inseparable.  Cecilia constantly called him at work and sometimes showed up unannounced.  Once she insisted that they take a long walk in the woods where they joined the cicadas in their sexual orgy.  When he returned to work several hours later, he basked in the knowing looks from his colleagues.  One leaned over his cubicle to pluck crushed leaves from his sweater.  And then his hair.    

     He abandoned his usual summer wardrobe of short sleeved shirts.  Long sleeves were required to hide the bitemarks on his arms. His work colleagues commented on his odd choice of turtlenecks in the middle of summer, but he needed something to cover his vivid array of ripening bruises.  The bathroom became the venue for their most acrobatic performances.  Some were frightening.  Cecilia liked John to struggle and thrash his way out of her tenacious embrace.  One time he staggered backward and smacked his head on the sink.  The tender knot lasted for more than a week.  He didn’t care.  Fear transformed his pleasure to rapture.          

     One evening they went to an outdoor symphony concert.  The lawn was deserted; nobody wanted to sit among the cicadas. Their thrumming drowned out the music.   Cecilia was delighted by the sparse crowd and spread her blanket beneath the coated branches of a maple tree.   

     “Don’t move” she said. “I can feel them coming up underneath us.”  She was right, the blanket burbled and quivered as the seething mass of nymphs emerged.    

     She peeled back the corner of the blanket to look for the exit holes as they struggled to the surface.  “Look at this one, it’s halfway through its molt.”  She used her long fingernail to peel the covering off the emerging adult.  Once the cicada spread its wings, she tenderly carried it over to the tree trunk and reached up as high as she could.   

     “John, can you help me give this cicada a boost?  Help him get started farther up.  He needs to get moving if he wants to mate.  He’s only got a couple of weeks left.”  John held the cicada gingerly between his thumb and index finger as he looked into their bulging red eyes.  He struggled to appreciate the creepy and prehistoric beauty that so inspired Cecilia.          

     Cecilia’s interest in cicadas intensified as the thrumming reached its peak.  She started every day by playing a recording of the landscape service mowing the parkway.  The cicadas mistook this sound as a mating call and were attracted to Cecilia’s outstretched arms.  Dozens landed on her arms as she played the recording in a continuous loop.     

     John didn’t share her enthusiasm for cicadas, but he feigned interest to make her happy.  It wasn’t hard.  All he had to do was smile and nod when she talked about cicadas.  Moments later they would be breathlessly pawing each other.  She didn’t talk about anything else and she talked constantly.  

     John told his family he’d found his own apartment, though he suspected his mother knew he was living with Cecilia.  She began to call him every day, insisting that she be introduced to his new friend.  He knew a meeting was inevitable, but Cecilia kept putting him off.   “You’re all I want.  I’m not ready to share you.”        

     Finally, he got her to agree to a luncheon.  Cecilia insisted on a restaurant that had a large patio beneath overarching elms.          

     “Do you really want to sit outside under the trees?  The cicadas are so deafening my mother won’t be able to hear.”      

     “But they’re beautiful and we won’t have another chance for 17 years,” she said.   

      His mother’s and sister’s eyes widened when he introduced her.  He wasn’t surprised, he had come to appreciate Cecilia’s cropped shirts and taut skirts.  John just wished she hadn’t kept stroking his leg while she prattled on about cicadas – the significance that the 17-year cycle was a prime number, the total weight of dead cicadas accumulating around them, and the sounds they made.

     “It’s hard to notice but they make two different sounds,” said Cecilia.  “The male makes that obvious droning noise with special vibrating organs called tymbals.  With a magnifying glass, I can sometimes see them underneath their wings.  The females are harder to hear.  They don’t have tymbals, they snap their wings back and forth.  If you listen closely you can hear this.”  Cecilia made a clicking noise with her tongue.  “The wing clicks signal that the female is receptive.  She’s pumped and prime, ready to mate.” 

     John didn’t like the direction of this conversation.  Cecilia was poised to give a first-hand account of the pulsating sexual energy the two of them shared with cicadas.  He was relieved when a cicada dropped into her mother’s soup, distracting Cecilia.  Its delicate legs dimpled the surface of the bisque.  Cecilia extracted it, the golden liquid coating the wings.  A pendulous drop hung briefly from one of the cicada’s wings.  It stretched and then fell, splotching her silk shirt.  She didn’t notice.   

     “Isn’t this lovely?  Have you ever seen anything like it?” Cecilia asked, thrusting the cicada towards John’s horrified mother.  “Did John tell you? I’m collecting cicadas.  They’re a terrific source of protein that shouldn’t be wasted.  I put them into my bird feeder.”  She pulled a Tupperware container from her purse and popped the soggy cicada in.             

     Another cicada landed next to Gloria, who shuddered and pushed her chair back.  Cecilia picked up the cicada and balanced it on her arm.  “Cicadas don’t bite, they just suck juice from tree sap.  The like to lick the salt off my arm.  There’s nothing to be afraid of.  Their little feet tickle. “  Cecilia giggled.  “Give it a try, you’ll like it.”  

     John was used to this behavior, but it had always been just the two of them.  Now he realized it could be off-putting to the less motivated, but he also knew that when Cecilia launched into cicada stories, he couldn’t stop her, nor did he want to.   He couldn’t wait to get back to their apartment.  

     Cecilia tried to place the cicada on Gloria’s arm, but she’d had enough.  She pushed her chair back, “I’m sorry.  I’ve gotta leave. Now.  It was lovely to meet you.  C’mon Mom, let’s go home.”  Cecilia had taken her  magnifying glass from her purse and was staring at the cicada on her arm.  She didn’t notice them leave.       

     John tried to talk with her that night. “Cecilia, I’d really I’d like you to get to know my family, it’s important to me, but it’s hard when you’re so obsessed with these bugs.”

     “They’re not bugs, they’re cicadas.  They’re marvelous creatures.  Here help me sort them.”

     John took the magnifying glass and examined their genitalia the way she’d taught him.  The males with the dome shaped abdomens went into one bin, the females with the pointed abdomens in the other.  “Why do you want to sort them anyway?”

     “It’s an experiment.  I want to see if there is an exact 50:50 ratio of males to females.” 

     “Why wouldn’t there be?”  Cecilia didn’t answer.  “Never mind, but I do need your attention.  Please, can I have just a moment of your time?”  She still hadn’t looked up.  He pressed ahead.  “How about another luncheon with my family in the fall?  It would probably be more relaxing when all this racket dies down.” 

     “It’s not a racket, it’s mating.  They live underground for 17 years and only see the light of day for about a month and then they die.  Don’t you think they deserve their moment in the sun?” 

     Cecilia grabbed a handful of cicadas with one hand, with the other she stroked John’s abdomen and clicked with her tongue.  John knew what this meant, but he was ready to take a break.  An afternoon of uninterrupted sex had left him raw and bruised.  He broke away from Cecilia’s ministrations and headed to his mother’s house.  He needed to explain Cecilia’s fascination and that the fall would be a better time to get to know the real Cecilia.  

      His mother brushed her behavior aside.     

     “It’s you I’m worried about.  It’s not the cicada thing, like you say it’s every 17 years.  I’ll be dead the next time they come back, so it’s not my issue, is it?  All I want is to see you happily married.  I want you to give me some grandchildren.  But is she right girl for you?  It’s that she’s so pretty.  Don’t you think you’d be better matched with someone, I don’t know, someone who…”         

     “Mom, what are you saying, that I should try to find someone who shares my same scale of physical beauty?”       

     “Yes, that’s it exactly.” 

     “I’ve heard what you’ve said about me, that my eyes stick out, that my scrawny legs make me walk funny.  Your words exactly.  But guess what, Cecilia likes the way I look.  I can’t explain it, but why does it matter?  Maybe it’s pheromones.” 

     “What are those?” 

     “I don’t know, it’s an odor that floats in the air or something, it causes an attraction that can’t be explained.” 

     “I don’t smell anything.” 

     “That’s just the point, there’s no explanation.  Who cares anyway?  You always tell me that men are the ones that choose.  Yeah, so Cecilia chose me first, but I chose her right after.  And here’s something else.  We have sex, a lot of it.” 

     She flattened her hands over her ears.  “John stop that talk.  Right now.  We don’t talk about sex in this house.”   

     “Guess what else, I’m really good at it.  Maybe that’s what Cecilia finds attractive.  You should be happy for me.” 

     “Stop, stop.  I can’t be hearing this.”  She flustered out of the room before John could tell her his other revelation, that the combination of sex and fear are exhilarating, propelling pedestrian pleasure to celestial rapture.       

     The thrumming subsided over the next week.  So did Cecilia’s sexual appetite.  Conversation dwindled.  Cecilia had always done most of the talking, mostly about new positions and feats of sexual agility.  John tried to engage her, but their exchanges consisted of perfunctory discussions of schedules and grocery lists.  Cecilia began to sleep on the living room couch.   Their libidinal torches subsided to a flame, then a flicker and then nothing.  It was over.     

     She disappeared in the fall.  Packed up all her clothes and took off without any goodbyes or a note.  Her cell phone was disconnected and when John went to find her at the Natural History Museum they’d never heard of her.  He stayed in her apartment in case she came back.  When the lease was up at the end of the month, he renewed it.     

     John was not unhappy to return to his old life of work and a few close friends.  He didn’t miss Cecilia and he didn’t miss the sex.  He assumed that the pheromones had simply dried up and blown away.  His friends encouraged him to use an online dating app, but he wasn’t interested.  He didn’t care if people thought that, as a single man, he was probably gay.  He assumed that he was asexual, or that it took a special woman to torch his libido.  If it happened once, it could happen again.  He could wait. 

     He told his family things hadn’t worked out.  His mother patted his hand and said, “I’m so glad you’re happy on your own, I mean with your own apartment and all.  You don’t need a looker.  They’re more trouble than they’re worth. I’m glad you got out before it was too late.  You need somebody steadier, someone you can have children with.”   

     For years he still found scattered cicadas in the apartment, one wedged deeply in the couch cushions, one behind the washing machine, another in the toaster tray.  He kept one cicada on his bathroom counter as a memory of his cicada summer.  Occasionally he’d get a postcard from Cecilia, always in the summer around their anniversary, always from a different place in the United States, always promising to see him again “sometime soon.”  She never included a return address. 

     One day John noticed a cicada tapping against his bathroom window.  His hand jerked and he cut himself shaving.  Blood dripped down his neck.  He picked up the cicada from the counter and held it up in front of the mirror next to his face.  He shuddered at the similarities – his bulging eyes, red rimmed from spring allergies.  The pattern of his trickling blood matched the veins in the cicada’s cellophane wings.  

     “Oh my God,” he said.  “I look like a cicada.  I’m a human cicada.”       

     The phone call finally came.  “Hello John, it’s Cecilia.  I’m back.  Are you ready for me?  It’s our summer again.”   Her tongue clicked twice.   

     “Where are you?”  John shook off his long hibernation and reveled in the ancient pulse of the thrum.  # 

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The Day I Burned a Piano

Posted on September 8, 2021 by Liza Blue

I stand in the empty living room, staring at the piano.  The gathering cold of autumn seeps into the unheated farmhouse, the temperature penetrating and raw.  After my parents died, first my mother, then my father, I have sold both their suburban home and now this weekend getaway.  I had asked Phil, the caretaker who lives at the end of the driveway, to get rid of all the furniture and housewares.  I thought the job was done, but then he calls me about the piano.  Nobody wants it. 

“Whatcha wanna do with it, Missy?” asks Phil.  The closing is in a couple days, ain’t it?  Gotta get it out of here.”  He stands next to me, wearing a stained Carhart jackets and cracked work boots.  His cheek bulges with a tobacco chaw.  Phil lifts a cup to his lips and spits a brown swill into his cup.  Its splash makes me flinch. 

The piano isn’t worth anything.  It’s a  player piano my mother got for my father so he could participate in music, do more than just sing in his beautiful tenor voice.  He’d insert a paper roll of music with punched holes corresponding to the vented holes in the motor.  The motor turned the roll and blew through the aligned holes to activate the piano keys.  The keys would dance along on their own, and my father would lustily sing his favorite country tunes while his fingers hovered over the keys. 

The player piano was the family joke.  Everyone sang along as we took turns at the piano bench pretending to play Darlin’ Clementine or On Top of Old Smokie.  The ruse wasn’t so amusing when my mother died and then my father’s thoughts began to falter.  And then the paper rolls got misaligned with the motor.  The  piano began to spew out musical gibberish that matched my father’s deteriorating mind.  

Heavy seconds tick by.   Phil breaks the silence, “Let’s burn it.”

His voice echoes in the room emptied of life.  Weak afternoon sun animates a veil of drifting dust motes.  A tendril of clumped lint hangs from the overhead fan.  One moth and a couple of flies lie dead on the windowsill.   I wonder why flies always die with their little feet in the air.  The moth lies flat on its stomach.

Phil coughs.  “You got a better idea?”

Who burns a piano?  I reach out to run my fingers up and down the keys.  Some have yellowed, some are cracked and one of the black keys sits at an odd angle, like a bad tooth that has to come out.  I plink away at chopsticks, the only song I know, and even I can tell the piano is hopelessly out of tune.  When did my father last play it?  Five years at least.    

“How can you burn a piano?” I ask Phil.  “There’s wire, metal and rubber in there.” 

I’m stalling.  Phil would certainly know how to burn a piano.     He works at a nearby factory, but on weekends he helped my father learn how to farm.  Phil knows how many cows to buy, what kind feed to buy, when to send the cows to the butcher, how to back up a trailer.  When a cow dies in the barn, Phil knows how to get rid of the bloated corpse.  He can snake a toilet but also knows how to fix the snake.  He is a boots-on-the-ground problem-solver. 

“Hell, there ain’t nothing that gas won’t burn.”

“Phil, my father loved that piano.”  A couple of months ago when I first started to clear out their possessions, I was an enthusiastic thrower.  Old yearbooks.  Gone.  School artwork. Gone.  Family photo albums.  Sent to my brother.  The piano is the last item on my check list.  I thought I was ready to start fresh, but now, maybe not yet.

“I don’t get you fancy folks.  This piano don’t work no more.  It’s worthless piece of shit.  What’s your plan?”

Phil is always one for the practical point.  My father loved working with Phil, had grown to love his rough language, and was in fact proud that he unleahsed a string of expletives in his presence, a sign of acceptance.  Something Phil never did with my parents’ suburban friends.  Something he never did with me.  When my father arrived on the weekend,  Phil would hand him a list of chores.  I remember my father wearing his trademark crisp khakis and cable knit sweater, shoveling manure out of the barn while Phil supervised from the fence.  “Ralph, put that shit over there,” he’d bark and then spit.

After a career as a salesman with demanding clients, my father appreciated uncomplicated physical labor.  After his life of physical labor, Phil relished his role as supervisor. 

I stare at the piano, reliving memories of rollicking family sing-alongs alternating with the painful dissolution of an active mind.  To salvage the first, I have to banish the second.  

Who burns a piano?  Well why not?  I turn to Phil and nod agreement.         

Phil yanks the piano from the corner, not realizing it’s plugged in.  The cord whiplashes from the wall hits him in the thigh.   “Fuck,” he yells and then turns to apologize.

“Phil, just let ‘er rip,” I say. 

Phil waltzes the piano across the room.  “Phil be careful,” I warn.  “Don’t scratch the floor.”

“Ah hell, that scratch was already there.  Another one ain’t gonna make any difference.  Rug’s going to go there.  Get those piano rolls, they’ll be good kindling.  I’ll bring the truck around.”  Phil shimmies the piano through the kitchen door and then onto the ramp between the back steps and the truck bed.  I help him push, close enough to smell him, but he smells earthy and good, not what I expected.

I gather up piano rolls as they fall off the top of the lurching piano and follow Phil’s tire tracks across the newly frosted field, up the rise just beyond the barn.  The setting sun splays orange and crimson over the horizon, bracketed by banks of cobalt clouds.  I watch Phil wrestle with the piano, waiting to see if he needs my help.  Back and forth, it is stuck on something at the lip of the truck.  On the count of three, he gives it a grunting, expletive-laden heave.  It somersaults in the air once, skids down the side of the hill and rests perfectly, peaceful in the pasture.  Phil reaches for the gas can.

The angled sun hits the piano just right, gives it a burnished glimmer, as if it sits in the spotlight waiting for the concert pianist to walk out on stage.  I tiptoe down the hill and place the bench in front of the piano.  

Phil unscrews the gas can.  I imagine seemy father walk from backstage, take his seat, flick his coat tails, and settle in on the bench.  My mother beams from the front row.  The gas sloshes.

“Phil, can you hold off for a minute?”  Phil has started to swing the can. 

“Why ya want this thing for anyway?  It’s a fake piano, ain’t it?  A plug-in piano.”

“It’s just that…”

“I got something better than a shit piano.”  Phil puts the can down and points to the barn.   See them stones down there at the base?”

I have forgotten the foundation, my parents prized project.  They covered the cinderblock with stones, different shapes and colors, some grey, some white and shades in between, arranged like an interlocking jigsaw puzzle.

“You father did that, your mother helped too.  Dug up all the stones from the pasture, lugged them back over here.  I might’ve helped them a little bit, taught them how to mix cement to glue them in place.  Never seen a pair work like that, digging and lugging.  That’s the kind of shit work I even turn down.  Just to make the bottom of a barn look better.  Thought it was a dumb project.”

I see my parents, each wearing a straw hat, bending over in the field, doing work they would never do in the suburbs, the kind their friends thought peculiar.

“Now I like them stones,” “says Phil.  “Told them it was better than some pansy-ass garden.  Must be a ton of stones in that wall.  It’s permanent.  Will be there forever.”

I nod at Phil, then raise my hand as he starts to swing the gas can again.  I go down to the piano, open the bench, rustle around inside and am pleased to find the roll for Tennessee Waltz.   When my father played this song, he would sing the first verse at the piano and then spring up to waltz with my mother. One time a dance party erupted.  I danced with Phil, awkwardly  He put up his hand to guide me and I felt his rough, corrugated hands.  When I danced with my father his suburban hands felt just as calloused.  One fingernail was missing.   

I tuck the roll of music into my purse and pat its side. 

“Phil, Okay I’m ready now.  Let’s put on a fucking good show.”

We smile at each other as Phil hands me a gas can.  He sees me looking at two plastic chairs sitting at the top of the rise.  “Yeah,  the wife thinks I’m a pyrotechno-maniac, but hell, she likes a good fire.  Tried to burn those mattresses that you wanted me to get rid of, but then it started raining, so it wasn’t much of a show.  Let’s get this piano burnin,’ put up a hell of a blaze and it’ll finish off the other stuff.  Whatever doesn’t burn I’ll bury with the backhoe.“

I help Phil stuff music rolls inside the piano.   I unspool some and wrap the perforated music around the legs of the bench, around the music stand and then around the whole piano.  I want a good blaze.   I jab some of the rolls under the piano and arrange others in pyramids at the base.  I find the piano roll for Red River Valley, another favorite, and add it to my purse. 

Phil works alongside me, drenching the piano.  The smell of gas is overwhelming, and I look up to brush back a strand of hair.  The setting sun is reflected in the windows of the house.  The dank, dismal house glows golden. 

Phil’s wife arrives carrying another bucket so we’d all have a place to sit.  Phil works quickly around the piano, flicking matches toward the gas-drenched paper.    The fire leaps upwards.  Phil holds his wife’s hand, and I see his foot nestled against hers.   Sparks blossom into the air and gently flow down like a fountain.   Phil flicks one out of my hair.  We move our buckets back from the edge. 

I stretch my hands to the fire’s spreading warmth.  A plume of black smoke rises from the side.  “Phil, the keys are coated with some sort of plastic.  Lots of felt in there too.  Don’t know how that’ll burn.”

“More gas.   Mother, did you bring them milk cartons?”  He turns to me. “She collects the empties from her school cafeteria job.  We use them to make firebombs.  You’ll love this.  It’s going to be great.” 

Phil pours gas into the waxed containers and crimps the tops.  I grab one and fill it up.  “Whoa there Missy, don’t overdo it.  You don’t want to blow us up now.  Put two glugs in.  Don’t need no more than that.  When you toss it, you wanna get it to land near the pedals, get the fire going at the base.”

Phil’s first toss goes wide right, misses the piano completely.  I give mine more of an arc and it bounces on the top, then tumbles down the front and lands at the foot of the piano.   Phil matches my perfect toss.   I watch my little carton.  At first there is nothing and then a sudden whoosh as the gas ignites.  The flames lick up the side and climb into the piano guts.  The fire is blazing now.   I hear a pop, a twang, and then a jumble of noise.  “Phil, the piano wires are popping off in the heat.”  

“Best music I’ve ever heard from that piano,” says Phil.  The piano sputters and then collapses, sending up another spray of sparks.  Phil and his wife join me when I clap.    

Embers emerge at the base of the slumping piano.  Phil turns to me and spits a blob that splats close to my sandal, but I let it be.  “You had good parents, ya know?  When I heard rich people had bought the farm, like it was a hobby, when I am busting my ass at the factory, I thought it’d be totally screwed up, but your parents – nobody like them ever respected me.  We were friends.  How ‘bout that?”

“Phil, why didn’t you come to the church service down in Chicago?  I hope you knew you were invited.”

I thought of my father’s funeral in the fancy suburban church with soaring stained-glass windows, overflowing bouquets of flowers, a congregation dressed in coats and ties, a minister intoning a lifeless blessing, listing my father’s accomplishments, that he was a golf champion  and sang in the choir.  He didn’t think to mention callouses and a broken fingernail.  I’d spent days organizing music, flowers, food, housing for out-of-town relatives.  Everyone said the same thing, that it was beautiful, and that I was a good daughter. 

 “Ah hell, the wife and I, we’re not church goers.  Besides, I don’t own a suit.”

He pulls a flask from his jacket.  “Your father gave me fancy scotch in this fancy flask.  I never drank this shit before.  I only ever drink beer.  I’ve been saving it for a special occasion.   Now seems ‘bout right time.  Let’s drink ‘em a toast.  Yes, we was friends.”

He tosses back a gulp and passes the flask to me.  I want to wipe the lip of it, get rid of any residue of his chaw, but I tilt my head back.  The burn in my throat is both raw and comforting. I pass the flask to his wife.  Together we lift the flask, “To Ralph and Fanny.”

The sun sets, the fire sets, and the chill sets in.  We pick up our buckets and walk back to the empty house.  

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My Warbler

Posted on September 6, 2021 by Liza Blue

(Artwork by Maria McNitt – www.mariamcnitt.com)

The blue-winged warbler struggles as I extract him from the fine netting stretched across the underbrush.  Our instructor Caleb assures us that this will only be a tiny interruption in his migration, and the information gleaned from our bird banding will contribute to stewardship efforts. 

I immobilize the bird between my first and second fingers, as instructed, but realize that any flinch or spasm on my part will certainly snap his neck.  I gently slip him into a muslin bag with a drawstring top and take him to the processing station.  Caleb advises us to place the bags inside our fleece jackets to keep the birds warm until we release them.  My warbler’s wings flutter against my beating heart. 

I weigh and measure my bird, fluff his feathers to record his fat reserves, look for lice.  I have just flown back to the Midwest from a bird watching trip in Florida.  My warbler has flown north from his wintering grounds in South America across the Gulf of Mexico and then up through the United States to his breeding grounds along the Great Lakes.  The warblers fly at night, in diminishing numbers, but still in flocks large enough to be picked up by radar, a puckered veil draped over the night sky.  During the day they drop down to rest and eat.  What wild wind has deposited him here, in my suburban backyard?

The last step is placement of the numbered metal band encircling his ankle.  The band number is sent to a central data bank and his movements can be tracked only if he has the misfortune of recapture.  I hold him by his feet in the birder’s pose, suitable for photographs.  The group gathers around for a picture of this stunning bright yellow bird with only vaguely blue wings.   Far more characteristic is a dark black streak through his eyes, looking like a smear of mascara hastily applied in his eagerness to migrate and mate. 

I recall my first sighting years ago on a business trip.  I grabbed my binoculars at the end of the day to investigate the brush circling the immaculate corporate campus.  An unfamiliar song prompted me to wade into the tangled swamp in my business attire.  I struggled to follow the bird as he skittered from one branch to the next.  My shoes were ruined, my fancy silk skirt clotted into a wad by a jumble of burrs.  But suddenly, there he was above me, my first blue-winged warbler, singing lustily, a tiny mote of wildness and wilderness above my head. 

Holding him now, I look directly into his fierce and lively eyes that accuse me of keeping him from his goal of fattening up during this brief stopover. 

Tonight he will again fling himself into the dark sky to head north, guided by an ethereal pull only he can understand.  This spunky spirit is not apparent in any of the pictures and drawings in my guidebooks.

I stare at him with solemn awe.  He leads a harrowing life.  Weighing no more than a couple of pennies, he finds himself on the cusp of tragedy on a daily basis.  When I let go of his feet to release him, he sits motionless on my palm for a moment, as if considering me, wondering about this new human stench that lingers on his feathers, feeling the discomfort of his numbered bird band.  My touch has tainted him, stigmatized him, stripped him of his enrapturing wildness.  I bridle at my smug conceit that I’m the gentlest of stewards and I chafe at the jumbo carbon footprint that envelopes me.          

He flits off into the woods.  Later that morning his wheezy song drifts down from overhead trees.   “Safe travels,” I whisper.

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Twenty Three Pairs of Me

Posted on June 30, 2021 by Liza Blue

T

I stand on a wobbly stool in the pathology laboratory and aim an eyedropper full of cells at a glass slide on the counter below.  The first two drops miss.  The third hits the slide, splitting open the cells and scattering twenty-three pairs of chromosomes.  I stain them with dye to produce the characteristic banding pattern of the underlying genes. 

As a pathologist, I would normally cut out the individual chromosomes from a photograph and organize them in pairs according to size, do a quick head count to verify all are accounted for and then pore over them to detect any abnormal banding pattern suggesting an evil gene.  But this is of no concern with this sample.  This is my vanity project; these are my chromosomes.  I want to see the distillation of my ancestry, the underlying engine that keeps life humming along. 

I don’t cut up my photograph, wrangle my chromosomes into a genetic version of a police line-up.  I leave them just as they land.  As a group, they look like an aerial view of a joyful dance floor.  At the picture’s center, chromosome 9 is bent at the waist, tapping the shoulder, and cutting in on chromosome 2.  Perhaps chromosome 12 is eagerly seeking her better half, isolated at the other side of the dance floor, obscured by a smear of blood.  I am proud of my two stalwart X chromosomes.  One is cozied up against the stubbier chromosome 7, the other next to the willowy chromosome 6. 

My photograph captures my chromosomes as they prepare to divide, duplicated and tightly coiled, ready to be yanked apart when the cell splits into two.  Uncoiled and relaxed in their new cells, they devolve into a gossamer network of filaments studded with genes, bathed in a nurturing cellular soup.  I picture my genes pulsing and thrumming as they direct scuttling messengers, marshal forces, build proteins and fend off attacks. 

My ancestors have bequeathed me this shimmering array of genes.  The solemn portraits of my triple great grandparents, Nancy and Henry, hang in my dining room. Maybe my genes have gotten a bit dinged up through five generations and trillions of divisions, but 1/32nd of my genetic material can be traced back to these people.  How can I connect my chromosomes to this couple, two pioneers who stowed all their possessions in a wagon and headed from upstate New York to a one room house in western Illinois?  How are their genes playing out in my comfortable suburban life? 

I imagine Henry as an expert marksman, relying on his innate hand-eye coordination to bring down a grouse or dove to feed his family.  Have I repurposed this talent into my blistering forehand on the tennis court?  Perhaps Nancy was an expert tracker in the woods, able to spot a freshly broken twig or a blurred paw print, guiding Henry to the wolf that had devastated their chicken coop.   Did I repurpose this gene for pattern recognition into a career as a pathologist, scanning swaths of cells to deftly pick out the rogues? 

Is there more in my primordial ooze that has lain fallow all these years?  Maybe that bleb on chromosome 5, or that little satellite waving atop chromosome 12, remnants of Henry and Nancy’s inheritance that I have not nurtured.  I consider my recent interest in public story-telling, an activity that I never would have considered for myself.  Me, speaking in front of strangers? At bars?  No, never.  But there I stand, microphone in hand.  Maybe I am belatedly channeling Henry, tapping into his talents.  I imagine him attending the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debate in nearby Freeport, Illinois. On his return he entertained his neighbors with colorful stories, including, he claimed without corroboration, an uncanny imitation of Lincoln’s voice and mannerisms. Perhaps Henry became a well-known raconteur, recognized at church picnics and county fairs.  Am I walking in his footsteps?  Once someone in the grocery store recognized me as a story-teller, and then again at a quilting convention. 

I stand in front of Henry and Nancy with my photograph, pondering hidden talents and untapped potential.  The picture has traveled with me for forty years, from city to suburbs, from apartment to house, from fridge to office.  It is a snapshot of an old friend, a touchstone, a story prompt.  Thirty-five years ago, and then again thirty-one years ago, I was proud to bequeath half of my genes, 1/64th of Heny and Nancy’s, to my two children.

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The Nature of the Mundane Part 1

Posted on June 29, 2021 by Liza Blue

TThe clicking sound on my windshield sounds like a brittle cascade of sleet, but this being June, and this being a bluebird sunny day, I consider other sources.  I am driving along the north shore of Lake Michigan just past the Mackinac Bridge.  Perhaps sand is pelting my windshield, but I reject this option when I spot a limp, windless American Flag at a gas station proudly announcing its patriotic support of twice-impeached Trump.

My vision blurs as the clicking persists, and now I look at the road through a dangerously smudged windshield.  This is Memorial Day weekend, the cusp of the mosquito season in these northern woods, and now I am certain that I am responsible for the wanton destruction of a suffocating swarm of mosquitos, arising en masse from their watery origins, reveling  in their brief foray under a welcoming sun.    

As the corpses smear my windshield, I wonder if mosquitos have any concept that their evolutionary strategy focuses on quantity over quality, that vast numbers will die a futile, unfulfilled and potentially violent death, either vehicular insecticide, a provoked slap from a bipedal victim, or sharp swish of a tail.  Only a few of the lucky males will mate, a remarkable feat as it is done in flight.  A smaller proportion of the females will score the blood meal necessary to provide the proteins required to nurture and then lay eggs. 

The clicking intensifies as I accelerate to pass an oversized RV rhythmically swaying across the median strip. More roadkill clutters my windshield.  Mosquitos, so easily sacrificed, still must have a collection of neurons that passes for a brain, allowing them to see, move, taste and detect heat.  In fact, mosquitos make life and death decisions.  Females must detect and chase down a warm-blooded target and then select the most succulent bit of flesh to bite.  Their attraction to carbon dioxide is well-known, but beyond that they have poorly understood preferences for certain odors, an alluring combination of some 340 scents that dot our skin.  My own experience is that mosquitoes much prefer my husband’s BO compared to my mine, for which I am grateful. 

A few miles further, a hint of red appears in the upper left hand corner, a mosquito distended with blood has died.  Normally, I would have no qualms about killing a mosquito, in fact their easy dispatch may be their only redeeming feature.   And I may express vindictive anger when I see a blood smear, wondering if the blood belongs to me or whether, on this muggy day, I have been anointed with the blood of the hairy guy ahead of me at the Piggly Wiggly.  Improbably, I feel a tinge of remorse.  This heavily laden female was one small step from completing her reproductive mandate, really the only goal in her short life, and has been cut down at random.  I imagine a lucky lottery player clutching her winning ticket, only to get run over as she crosses the street to collect her winnings. 

Now I am deep into the plight of the mosquito.  (It’s been a long drive.)  In my world, mosquitos are managed with bug spray and protective clothing, but worldwide there has been an all-out assault on the mosquito, the entirely innocent carrier of a variety of wily parasites (e.g. malaria) and viral diseases, including yellow and dengue fever and West Nile virus.  Mosquitos remain one of the greatest public health challenges.  As a result, research into mosquito biology continues to be well-funded, searching for a chink in its reproductive system that can be exploited.  A release of a swarm of sterile males is one straightforward strategy.    

I delve into this research on my cell phone at the gas station.  I quickly learn that when I swat a mosquito, I am squishing a pair of the female’s oviducts and ovaries, and the male’s testicles and seminal vesicles, anatomies that have been retained throughout the animal kingdom.  I see articles titled, “A Mosquito Sperm’s Journey From Male Ejaculate to Egg,” or the discovery of a genetic switch that can turn females into males.

Tempting rabbit holes of information string me along as I scroll my screen.  I feel the danger of elevating mosquitos to one of the eight wonders of the modern world, boring dinner companions with descriptions of the exquisite choreography of a multi-pronged mosquito proboscis sinking into warm flesh.  I get back in the car and buckle up.  A brief scan of this information is enough, an exhilarating testament to the never-ending, ever-moving human imagination and curiosity that helps me appreciate beauty and wonder beyond a bloody smear on a car windshield.

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A Cherished Eyeball

Posted on December 18, 2020 by Liza Blue

 

 

Family Christmas Letter, 1963

“[Elizabeth] is in the 6th grade, no special interests, is good fun and pleasant company.  Can’t really think of anything special to say about her…”

Family Christmas Letter, 1964

“[Elizabeth] is a Beatles fan, likes to work with a microscope and slices up animals – spreading frog and mudpuppy guts all over the kitchen and has a cherished cow’s eyeball and sheep’s heart in a tub of alcohol in her closet.”

Looks like I became more interesting in 1964.  Yes, I did go through a phase of dissecting pickled mudpuppies that I bought at a very complete hobby shop, and animal hearts gathered from the butcher.

However, in my defense I would like to say that my mother embellished her description with her usual dramatic flair.  No public kitchen display was involved.  I shielded my family’s delicate sensibilities by confining my work to my bedroom.  I prefer the scientific word “organs” rather than the gorier “guts,” and I take particular exception to the word “cherished.”  Yes, I had an eyeball, yes, I stored it in a bucket.  I do recall the humours in that eyeball, vitreous and aqueous suffused with the penetrating odor of formaldehyde, but no, I did not have an emotional attachment to the eyeball.

More intriguing is why my mother reported my peculiar hobby with such delight.  This Christmas letter was sent to a vast network of family and friends, some close, many tenuous, who might have feared that this sweet 12-year-old was on a slippery slope towards an unhealthy relationship with roadkill.  Why was my mother so excited for me?

Born in 1927, my mother grew up in an era of women with limited options.  College was primarily a placeholder until marriage, with no expectation that women would have a professional career.  She graduated in 1949, a few years after her older brother returned from WWII.  Their father, my grandfather, set my uncle up as a stockbroker in his company.  He slotted my bright and creative mother into a job as a secretary for one of his business friends.  She met my father in the summer following graduation, was engaged by Christmas, and married the following March.  Their first born, a son, arrived within the year, followed by a daughter (me) and four more sons.  Her “career” as a secretary was quickly forgotten.  On a bank form filled out to create a safety deposit box, she listed her occupation as “housewife.”

Even as a kid I sensed my mother’s frustration that society undervalued her talents.  She wrote little ditties to sing at birthdays and family occasions.  One memorable song included the lyrics, “What happened to the priceless, precious knowledge that I learned at Vassar college?  All I do is wipe out sinks filled with spit and grit.”  The chorus consisted of multiple rounds of the words  “spit and grit.”

In an earlier Christmas letter she described me as a tomboy “through and through,” an identity she shared.  My mother was the one who taught me how to throw a ball to save me from the humiliation of “throwing like a girl,” taught me the arcane rules of baseball like dropped third strike or the infield fly rule, so that I could compete equally with the boys.  I climbed trees.  I jumped off the roof of our house.  My fingernails were dark with dirt.  I didn’t play with dolls, and I only read Hardy Boy mysteries, never the companion Nancy Drew books.  I was spunky and plucky, qualities she admired.

In the 1963 letter, she included an excited paragraph describing my older brother’s interest in radios and electronics.  Perhaps she could see his future more clearly – not only wide open with a man’s options, but now my brother could march forward with a marketable talent.  I was still a blank slate that year, and my mother might have sensed my uncertain future.  As puberty approached, my socially acceptable rough and tumble days were drawing to a close.  Society considered the spunk of a tomboy endearing in childhood, but adolescent girls were encouraged to shed that identity and become more feminine.  My mother began to replace my unisex wardrobe with gender-specific clothes.  I recall a floral print shirt with a demur Peter Pan collar, color coordinated with matching shorts.  The zipper ran up the side of the shorts instead of in the front like all my other pants.  Dancing school began in 1964 and my mother bought me a dress, stockings, and some sort of “party” shoes.

This was my slippery slope.  How would I become feminine?  Would I follow the expected path and develop an interest in sewing and fashion?  Would I spend hours with hair and make up?  Would I stop having boys as friends?  Would I wait breathlessly for a boy to steal my hat at the winter skating rink, and wear a long tasseled hat just for that purpose?  What were my mother’s hopes for me?

I had already shown early ambivalence toward the traditional path to motherhood.  In my 1958 yearbook, our class was asked, “What would you like to be when you grow up.”  I responded, “I guess I’ll be a mother,” perhaps spoken with a note of resignation.

Now, one year later, my mother sees me blossoming.  My hobby may have been disquieting to many, but that was its charm.  Her daughter’s spunky tomboy spirit wasn’t going to be sucked dry by cultural norms, she was going to dissect things and she wasn’t going to step aside and let the boys do all the fun stuff.  My mother went all in on dissection.  She drove me to the hobby shop, helped me order pickled animals from the science catalog and got the cow and sheep hearts from the butcher.  I used them in a science fair exhibit of comparative hearts that was an absolute sensation.  In 1964, on the cusp of women’s liberation, my mother sees  opportunities for me, up in my room, wielding a knife, ready to puncture a cherished cow’s eyeball.

————-

[1] Fortunately, roadkill never held any appeal, but I did go on to a career as a pathologist, performing many autopsies and dissecting all sorts of body parts removed at surgery.

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What We’re No Good At

Posted on November 24, 2020 by Liza Blue

My husband enjoys weekend pick-up hockey games at the community rink.  He often comes home with stories of Joe, who is simultaneously the most enthusiastic player and the most inept player ever to grace the ice. His transition from forward to backward skating, which should be second nature to even a marginal hockey player, is labored and dangerously herky jerky.  He is epically slow.

The game is noncompetitive with only a vague idea of the score.  Exercise, camaraderie, and the joy of the game are the driving forces.  However, Nick and I often discuss how people can enjoy something that they are so spectacularly bad at.  Ineptitude cannot be hidden on the ice.  Passes go awry, Joe might slip and fall, goals are scored in a flurry when he is on the ice.  Yet he persists, always the first to show up.  I envision a spectrum of athletic competence with total ineptitude anchoring the left end and elite world class athlete on the far right.  Nick and I are both comfortable with our spot on this scale, perhaps a skosh to the right of the midpoint of pedestrian competence.  Joe is mired deep into the left side of the scale.  Doesn’t he realize this?

Perhaps pick up hockey is his first judgment-free sports experience, his only opportunity to enjoy the embrace of a team. Now in his sixties, he presumably grew up in an era where boys’ athleticism was the gateway to coolness and popularity, both amongst his peers and the girls in his grade school.  How many times must he have endured the humiliation of being the last one picked?  There is no judgment in Nick’s pick-up league.  Everyone enjoys Joe, agrees he is a great guy and welcomes his presence.  Can that be enough?

Yes maybe, but the question still remains.

How can you enjoy something you stink at?

Could the Kruger Dunning effect be in play here?

In 1999, the psychologists Kruger and Dunning published a seminal paper titled, “Unskilled and Unaware of it:  How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessment.”

Their premise describes a vicious circle, “Not only do [the incompetent] reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it … In short, the same knowledge that underlies the ability to produce correct judgment is also the knowledge that underlies the ability to recognize correct judgment.  To lack the former is to be deficient in the latter.”

I shuddered when I read this.  Where have I been deluding myself?  Have I been blithely pursuing something I stink at?

Music comes to mind.  It formed the core of my mother’s identity.  My siblings inherited her gift, and I assumed that I shared this birthright.   I ignored the steady signals that emerged in grade school.  At try-outs for the grade school choir the director interrupted my singing after only a few bars.  My delusional interpretation was that my musical talent was so transcendent that further performance was redundant.  I was astonished to be omitted from the choir list, publicly posted on the hall bulletin board.  Redemption came when I was assigned to the chorus in the 8th grade play, though I did not realize this was merely damage control.  My lack of dramatic talent superseded my dismal musical talent.   One year when I was Christmas caroling, I was pointedly asked not to sing, but I brushed this aside as difficulty hearing the melody in the breezy outdoors.

In seventh grade I was pleased to join the school band as a clarinetist, ignoring the fact that there were no try-outs.  When I got to high school, the band director gently told me there were no openings for clarinetists in the chamber music group, which I rationalized as having to wait my turn as an underclasswoman.

I set aside any musical ambitions throughout college, medical school and into early child-rearing years.  But lurking in the back of my mind was the desire to enjoy music along with the rest of my family.  I was in the same position as Joe the wannabee hockey player.

A carillon bell choir offered an opportunity.  I thrilled to the idea that I would only be responsible for only four notes, the remaining 84 were someone else’s problem.    Surely this could be doable, like asking a hockey player to cover only 1/22nd of the ice.  Even better the director assigned me the lower bells, which absorb more errors than the tuneful higher bells.  Another example of a damage control strategy that I ignored.

I color coded my notes and then counted like a fiend to ring my bell at the appropriate moment.  What I didn’t realize was that there is a difference between steadfast counting and rhythm – actually it is a chasm of a difference.  I thought I had nailed it but truthfully, I wouldn’t be able to tell if I was off a fraction of a beat, a particular challenge for dotted sixteenth notes.  A showcase for Kruger and Dunning’s circular theory.  I lacked the skills to recognize my lack of skill.

Despite my marginal abilities, the choir welcomed me, in part due to nostalgia.  My mother had formed the original bell choir.  Besides, they were short players.  I did nurture my one useful talent.  I could recognize when I was totally off, for example if I inadvertently turned two pages of the score instead of one.  I would quietly set the bells down and wait for the choir director to whisper the measure number to get back on track.  The absence of sound, even a gaping hole, is more pleasing that a discordant and wincing wrong note.

I knew I wasn’t the best, but thought I had a niche, contributing more than just showing up.  Everyone else made mistakes, didn’t they?  Most mistakes went unnoticed, didn’t they?  Classic Kruger and Dunning.

I enjoyed the camaraderie of the choir, which is essentially a team sport, everyone pulling together for a common goal.  One day, Nancy, who is an elite musician (for starters she knows the names of all the notes), mentioned that another bell choir was short a player and would anyone like to sub in?  I volunteered.  Nancy said thanks but no thanks, implying that she would rather go without than have me, but I carry on.  The bell choir is kind.  They have never fired anyone.

Kruger and Dunning acknowledge that training can overcome the lack of insight, though they also note that “even if people received feedback that point to a lack of skill, they may attribute it to some other factor.”  I have had a lifetime of both subtle and very pointed negative feedback that have left me bowed but not broken.

I envision another spectrum, one focusing on the psychological underpinnings of incompetence.  Anchoring the left end is the Kruger and Dunning effect, jokingly referred to as a “mountain of stupidity,” i.e. that you are so stupid you don’t even know you’re stupid.  At the right end of the spectrum is a brutally honest and unbiased self-assessment, a status rarely achieved.  The midpoint is willful ignorance and a thick skin.  That’s where my musical abilities lie.  Maybe Nancy has nudged me a skosh to the right towards reality, but I’m not budging another inch since a sobering self-assessment would kill my enthusiasm for bell ringing.   I’m grateful for the psychological contortions that have allowed me to reside here.  On the other hand, Joe’s hockey ability must lie at least a skosh or two to the delusional left.   I maintain that I am a better bell player than he is hockey player.  Regardless, we have both found ways to enjoy what we’re no good at.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hair Today

Posted on October 28, 2020 by Liza Blue

As Nick and I entered the restaurant, I knew the food could not possibly meet our expectations. “Pig,” a farm to table restaurant located in the countryside near Bath, England, had been recommended by a local friend when she heard that we would be staying in the Cotswolds. “Best meal of my life,” she said, “We stayed for hours.”  When my husband mentioned the restaurant to a business colleague in London, he expressed jealousy at our reservation.  We both flushed with pride at our insider’s knowledge.

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