Running Commentary 9/9/2024

Derek Edwards -

Hello,

It's still officially summer, even though it's cooling off and socially it's early Fall. I have two more weeks of my summer of Bird of the Week re-writes: this week, which features what's still the best drawing I've done (in my opinion, at least), and next week, which will feature another milestone bird. After that, I'll be back to featuring new drawings.

Anyway...

Reading...

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

In Ascension is a book about first contact, sort of. It's literary sci-fi; that is, it has a sci-fi premise but otherwise focuses on interpersonal issues between the characters. The premise isn't really anything new but the book isn't relying entirely on its premise. It's worth reading just for how well-written it is.

The book focuses on Leigh, a Dutch microbiologist tasked with developing an algae-based food supply for a multi-year space mission. The biological science here is enough to make the story work for a layperson; an actual algae scientist might have some quibbles, I don’t know. The spaceflight is nonsense, but deliberately so. The thrust and the power are unknown science being utilized by the overeager people of ICORS, the semi-privatized spaceflight organization who hires Leigh. As Leigh gets drawn more and more into the mission, she is further and further drawn away from her family. She's not especially close to them, but that makes each time she has to stay and work while something big happens to the rest of them all the more tragic. You can tell that the same is true of her colleagues.

In Ascension is not a terribly long read, and it doesn't drag. I'd recommend it to anyone willing to read a book without a pat happy ending (not to spoil too much). I would say avoid reading the final bit, the epilogue, which I think rather ruins a big part of it. Getting into why is a huge spoiler, so I'll hide my thoughts under a toggle:

Spoilers for the ending

The ending, the very ending, when Leigh returns to Earth and (maybe?) becomes the first life form on the planet, I seriously could have done without. It probably was foundational to MacInnes’s early concept of the book, but this sort of recursive time-loop paradox thing comes off hackneyed in a book not otherwise about time. Up to that point, In Ascension was quite a good look at how the modern world exploits the talented, with Leigh leaving her family for her career (as her parents had, somewhat, before her) and dying in deep space, her life’s work literally causing her to waste away. The Oceana epilogue ruins this by giving, if not exactly a happy ending, a somewhat meaningful end to her life and work.

Bird of the Week

“REPENT, HARLEQUIN!” SAID the Ticktockman.
"Get stuffed!” the Harlequin replied, sneering.
“You’ve been late a total of sixty-three years, five months, three weeks, two days, twelve hours, forty-one minutes, fifty-nine seconds, point oh three six one one one microseconds. You’ve used up everything you can, and more. I’m going to turn you off.”
“Scare someone else. I’d rather be dead than live in a dumb world with a bogeyman like you.”
“It’s my job.”
“You’re full of it. You’re a tyrant. You have no right to order people around and kill them if they show up late.”
...
“You’re a nonconformist.”
“That didn’t used to be a felony.”
“It is now. Live in the world around you.” 1

In Harlan Ellison's classic tale of a world governed by a totalitarian scheduler, the force of social chaos who dares to make the world seven minutes late one day is given the name "Harlequin". In doing so, Ellison imbues his futuristic story with a name from some very old ones. The Harlequin is a character in old Italian stage-plays, a mischievous servant who wields a wooden sword and pines for a woman named Columbina. The character became a popular sort of clown, but this seems to be a means of making light of a darker, earlier figure: the Erlkönig, a Germanic folk character, a wood elf who led the Wild Hunt, a frenzied troop of dead warriors. When the Germanic peoples were Christenized, the Erlkönig came to be associated with Satan (hence the demon Alichino in Dante's Inferno), but originally he seemed to be a more ambivalent wilderness force.2,4 In all cases (on the Italian stage, in Teutonic myth, in Dante, and in Ellison) the harlequin is a figure who embodies defiance of the rational and the controlled, not even because he hates order, but because the world is not entirely orderly.

We like to think it is, that we can understand the world by understanding a few basic rules. For instance, as the seasons change, we know that many birds will be moving from nearer the poles to nearer the equator in search of more hospitable habitat. We see a bird from the north Canada forest arrive in a Michigan yard, we see the hummingbirds disappear as they head in search of still-blooming flowers, and we nod. This is the natural order of things. And yet, as I write, today's bird, the Harlequin Duck, is preparing to migrate...west.

Harlequin ducks are quite a unique sort of sea duck. In the summer, they live in fast-flowing streams and rapids in rugged inland territory; in the winter, they live in the breaking surf of rocky seacoasts. They are a diving duck, feeding on aquatic invertebrates and on the eggs of fish, when available. There are two distinct populations: one in the North Atlantic and one in the North Pacific. The Atlantic harlequins breed mainly in maritime Canada, though some also live in Iceland and Greenland. These behave normally for sea ducks, travelling either immediately out to the nearest shore or going to the more southerly coasts of New England. It's the Pacific population that moves so strangely, specifically those that spend their summers in the Rocky Mountains. These migrate for a thousand miles or more, east to west.4 It's understandable why; they're just moving to the nearest coast, and the ducks in the American mountain west are already far enough south. But, even still, they seem uniquely in defiance of that natural order we're all familiar with.

Harlequin ducks are not so named because they impishly migrate perpendicular to other birds; rather, it's because the high-contrast white markings on the breeding male are reminiscent of the Harlequin's piebald costume. In Iceland, they're known by the less evocative name "stream ducks" (straumönd). Linnaeus called them Anas histrionica, the "stage-actor duck".5 Since then, the duck genus Anas has lost many of its members, including this duck, which is now called Histrionicus histrionicus. (The term "histrionics", meaning deliberately visible, overplayed, affected emotions, comes from the same Latin term for a stage actor.)6

  1. Ellison, Harlan. “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman.” Galaxy Science Fiction. (December 1965): 135–45.
  2. Lieberman, Anatoly. “Harlequin’s Tricky Name.” OUPblog, September 1, 2020. https://blog.oup.com/2020/09/harlequins-tricky-name/.
  3. Lieberman, Anatoly. “Harlequin’s Black Mask.” OUPblog, September 15, 2020. https://blog.oup.com/2020/09/harlequins-black-mask/.
  4. Cassirer, E. Francis, and Craig R. Groves. “Ecology of Harlequin Ducks in Northern Idaho.” Boise, Idaho: Idaho Department of Fish and Game, May 1994. Accessed September 7, 2024. https://www.idfg.idaho.gov/ifwis/idnhp/cdc_pdf/U94CAS01.pdf.
  5. Jobling, J. A. (editor). The Key to Scientific Names in Birds of the World (S. M. Billerman et al. editors), Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Ithaca.
  6. “Histrionic.” In Merriam-Webster Dictionary, August 4, 2024. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/histrionic.

Moleskine Mania | Roland Allen, The Walrus

A history of Moleskine, the prestigious notebook brand. Moleskine are not (despite their claims) the maker of Hemingway’s notebook, nor are they makers of notebooks considered “fountain-pen friendly” (meaning that they’re seen as a bit poser-ish among hardcore analog enthusiasts), but they are by far the top brand of premium notebooks, due in large part to not marketing themselves along other notebooks.

Allergy Labels: This May Contain Peanuts (Or Maybe Not) | Carolyn Beans, Undark

The FDA requires that packaged foods deliberately containing certain common allergens be labeled clearly as a warning to those eating them. These guidelines, however, are vague. Some manufacturers will label anything that ever could come into contact with their product, others will not label for anything not also listed in the ingredients. The allergic among us are left with more confusion than answers.

Slugs in Paradise | Helen Sullivan, Smithsonian

I feature a lot of stories about birds and birding; this isn’t, but almost is, one of those. Nudibranchs (small, colorful, numerous, distinctive) are something like the wood-warblers of the undersea world, a favorite of in-the-know scuba divers. Sullivan profiles Gary Cobb, one of the top sea slug lovers.

In the Pound, Near Breaktime | Kent Brewster

[FICTION] A 1996 Nebula Award for Best Short Story Finalist. The story of an animal control worker in a world where many animals can talk.

See the full archive of curations on Notion