Watch Clouds, Touch (Prairie Dropseed) Grass
Do you look at the sky much? Sometimes I find it startling—was the moon that red when I walked out my front door an hour ago? When did the clouds get so dark? Other times it’s downright bewildering, like when we went to New Mexico and the clouds were more like geological formations or UFOs than clouds I’d seen before (photos above and below; I feel like the banner photo offers some insight into Georgia O’Keefe too). Too frequently, I don’t think to look up at all.
“We see clouds so often, and in such abundance, that it’s easy to forget what marvels they are. A cloud is ethereal, yet astonishingly heavy; a levitating lake, typically weighing more than several blue whales. A cloud is aerial alchemy, at once liquid, vapor, and crystal: an enigmatic yet inevitable outcome of atmospheric physics. As I now know, however, clouds are also biological, sprinkled with microbes and pores, strewn with the remnants of life, forming in the ancient exhalations of living creatures. A cloud is Earth seeing its own breath.”
—Ferris Jabr, Becoming Earth
Of all Jabr’s lovely writing in Becoming Earth, it was his words on clouds that made me want to go outside, throw a blanket down, and appreciate the earth under my back. Let’s share a blanket and watch the clouds awhile.
Do you have a favorite type of cloud or cloud-watching memory? If you read Becoming Earth, what impacted you the most?
Above: New Mexico, Alaska, Illinois. Want more clouds? Check out The Cloud Appreciation Society’s gallery.
Not everything in Becoming Earth is “aerial alchemy.” Some of it will land far heavier than several blue whales. But the book lives up to the promise of its title, even if humanity was involved more than I expected. (In retrospect, given what I learned in the book, it makes perfect sense.) The way various lifeforms have developed the Earth we know today is a pretty amazing tale. I was especially stunned to learn about ice-seeding proteins, how they make hail and impact rain, and how we use them to make artificial snow. After I read the first few paragraphs of the ice-seeding section, I made Lucas read them, then I read further, and I made Lucas read that too, and… eventually he just had to read several full pages. Finally he said, “I should really just read the whole book, shouldn’t I?” So now it’s on his ever-growing audiobook TBR (to be read) list.
A more random aside from Becoming Earth is how otters “use kelp as a kind of toddler leash, wrapping their pups in seaweed to prevent them from drifting away while they track down a meal.” I love this image. I’ll be stowing it away for some future story, but it also reminds me of visiting Disney World when I was in elementary school with my parents and sister. My sister is a natural explorer and odd-couple sibling to my high-strung “keep your hands behind your back so you don’t break a rule and get banned forever” mentality, and my parents had a cherry red leash attached to her wrist so she couldn’t wander off to pet a Florida panther or bring home a flamingo.
P.S. Seriously, touch some Prairie Dropseed. It think it deserves the description of “ethereal” as much as Jabr’s clouds, yet it’s as grounding as sinking your bare toes into the soil.
Great Lake Winds
We ran away to Milwaukee in early September and let the lake wind push us along. We stumbled across an art festival and a traveling poet (poem above), ate delicious green dumplings because we went hunting for a particular book at a Barnes & Noble, and twice indulged in Discourse Coffee for artful beverages and reading time. And I had a dairy-free Pink Squirrel ice cream cocktail while we considered that the painter of the portrait by the At Random bathroom must have been very distracted by his muse’s half-exposed chest, since he gave her an extra shoulder or extra-long arm, and this made up for the lack of PB&J cake from Cafe Manna (they’re closed on Sundays). Thanks, Milwaukee!
Have you had a chance to explore anywhere lately? What did you find?
October’s Book(s)
Fall has arrived, sepia-toned and gold-edged. Choosing a book about refrigeration for October seems a little strange when I think about it, but maybe it’s just right, given that the (Midwest) growing season is ending. Our upcoming book is Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, Ourselves by Nicola Twilley. I’m planning to pair it with Extra! Extra! Eat All About It! Recipes and Culinary Curiosities from Historic Wisconsin Newspapers by Jane Conway and Randi Julia Ramsden (a book I picked up after announcing the official schedule) because it looked too fun to resist.
My novel is a fantasy, but borrows from a late 1800s/early 1900s aesthetic. Refrigeration is not an option for my main characters, even magically created refrigeration, because they either can’t use magic or refuse to use magic. While I’ve researched a bit of how things were once done, I’m hoping reading these books will add more authenticity to my world-building (and maybe yield some tasty recipes).
Substack Newsletter
Starting this month, I am also publishing my newsletter on substack to engage with the writing community there. I will continue to publish here, so nothing is changing for you unless you prefer to go to substack and engage with my newsletter there. If you like, you can find the substack version at leighannegray.substack.com.
See you next month!
