After the Disaster: RIP, Prypiat

Prypiat was a Ukrainian city that was born in 1970 (its founding) and died in 1986 (after Chernobyl). Reason for Death: Acute Radiation Syndrome.

In 1995, the Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrukhovych visited the site.

Most unforgettable that day were . . . the catfish in the canal near the Nuclear Power Plant. They were the size of dolphins, or sharks, and this is nature’s categorically harsh answer to man . . .

Gazing at fish in water is one of my favorite and constant activities. I’ve had very few opportunities to do this in my life. One, for example, came in Nuremberg, another — in Regensburg. I think it was in Nuremberg that I came to the conclusion that Europe is a land in which fish live well. I would not have come to this conclusion if I hadn’t been in Nuremberg precisely at that time, in the summer of 1995. If I hadn’t stood on those bridges time and again and I hadn’t gazed down deep into the river to see how fish slowly move just above its bottom . . . I’m not sure if they really live all that well. But they definitely live long: no one catches them or kills them, in fear of the undeniable danger of radiation. How long is Silurus glanis, a normal (non-radioactive) catfish, supposed to live? According to several sources, up to one hundred years. This fish can live longer than any other fish found in our rivers and waters. Only moss-covered carp can live longer . . .

— The Star Absinthe: Notes on a Bitter Anniversary, by Yuri Andrukhovych

The essay, which is quite long, fascinates self with the movement from carp to Ukrainian nationalism.

If Sweden “hadn’t created such a ruckus,” the West wouldn’t have known about the disaster. Also, around that time, “Poland had stopped being a friend and was increasingly turning away, westward. This time it turned away from a radioactive cloud — holding its breath and fastidiously holding its nose.”

Fascinating piece. It’s in the anthology Writing from Ukraine: Fiction, Poetry and Essays since 1965, edited by Mark Andryczyk.

In Honor of World Architecture Day: Renzo Piano’s Living Roof at the California Academy of Science

Self was climbing up the walls after a whole year of pandemic lockdown. California Governor Gavin Newsom lifted the lockdown order in March 2021. The following month, self was taking road trips galore (so were her neighbors: 96-year-old Mrs. C went on a road trip to Seattle! Self remembers standing on the sidewalk and waving good-bye as Mrs. C and her sons and daughters drove off in a huge Cadillac!).

In April 2021, self signed up for a tour of the California Academy of Sciences. The tour was led by an in-house naturalist, everyone was still wearing masks, but oh, what joy to be out in the company of others!

It was self’s first time on the living roof. The naturalist explained that what held the roof together were coconut husks (like the ones we use to scrub our floor in the Philippines!). Six inches of soil were deposited on the roof, and then the naturalists left the roof alone to see what grew there.

The California Academy of Sciences runs entirely on solar energy. The round shapes on the roof are solar panels. It’s wild seeing the ferris wheel pop up across a meadow. Highly recommend this tour, if anyone is thinking of going.

When We Arrived at the Centauri System . . .

A ship, a kind of ark, leaves Earth carrying a small band of humans looking for an alternative home. Among the passengers, the wife of the grieving father who followed his dead daughter’s footsteps to a scientific station in Siberia. The father, working on a 30,000-year-old mummy found buried in the ice, unwittingly unleashed a plague virus on the world. Now his wife and their 17-year-old granddaughter volunteer to be among the first humans put into cryogenic sleep.

The adolescents and children remain asleep the whole voyage, but the adults who have necessary skills are awakened to get to work:

When we arrived at the Centauri system, we received a decades-old message from Earth, informing us that a cure for the plague had been discovered — the comatose woke up and people began to rebuild their lives. Funerary corporations expanded to focus on climate projects, building seawalls around coastal cities, sponsoring the solar shade project until the end of the century. The message bid us good luck and farewell. You always have a home here, it said. On this world or on your new home, we’ll find each other again one day. Personal letters arrived, along with general messages to the crew, and for more than a week the ship was abuzz with news and condolences and statistics from revived sports teams, a snapshot of life on Earth for the past fifty years. The ship’s doctor organized daily sharing circles for those who wanted to celebrate or needed support or couldn’t quite articulate how they were supposed to feel.

— How High We Go In the Dark, p. 196

Looking Back: Granta 133, Autumn 2015

Self has apocalypse on the brain.

She’s reading the first novel of the Gone series, by Michael Grant. Because she’s so ornery, she began with Book 4, then worked backwards. She’s now on Book 1. If she’d begun in proper order, she’d have known it was all about a nuclear power plant in the fictional town of Perdido Beach, California. Thank God for this series, which she discovered in June, when she saw a stack of these books sitting on a table in the lower level of the London Review Bookshop.

She’s also decided to arrange all her literary journals by year. She starts with Granta. She pulls out Issue 133, starts reading the Introduction by Sigrid Rausing. And — damn? Here, see for yourself:

There is an apocalyptic feeling in the air. I write the day after the news that the IS have blown up parts of the ancient site of Palmyra. They had already beheaded the eminent archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad and, according to reports, hung his body from the monuments. Refugees are drowning in the Mediterranean and living in makeshift camps at Calais and in Budapest; the Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov has been charged with terrorism offences by the Russian authorities in Crimea and sentenced to twenty years in prison. “Hang on in there, Oleg,” someone writes. It’s not Darkness at Noon but maybe it should be.

Kwajalein Atoll, January 1565

These islanders were the ultimate ocean dwellers, never staying more than a few feet away from the water and sustaining themselves through the bounty of the sea. “They live a thousand leagues away from the mainland, and their small islands are occupied by coconuts,” marveled Don Alonso. “Anyone seeing these lands would think that they are like floating carpets, they are so small and so low that they would sink under the water in a storm.” He was entirely correct. Typhoons do occur in this region and indeed swamp the low-lying islands. In the worst of such instances, Pacific Islanders had no other recourse but to fill the hulls of their canoes with fresh water, venture into the open ocean, secure the rigging, and wait out the storm, displaying extraordinary aplomb and seamanship. Less apparent to the Europeans was the extent to which these sea people, over the course of two or three thousand years of occupation, had thoroughly transformed the tiny coral islands. Originally no coconut palms had existed there. Early settlers had propagated them purposely to build their houses, clothe their families, weave rugs, and obtain practically every item required for their vessels, from the hulls, sails, and rigging to the food and water conveniently packaged in natural round containers. By cutting open the coconuts, they could also fashion cups and use them to drink the fermented sap and juice of the plant itself. “It is astounding that out of a single tree,” remarked a later Spanish visitor, “these natives can make so many different things and fill all of their needs.

Conquering the Pacific, pp. 106 – 107

Sea of Images 2021

Past Squares 7: A Look Back at This Kickass Reading Year (2021)

This is also today’s post for Life of B’s Past Squares!

Favorite Reads, So Far 2021

The Relentless Moon, by Mary Robinette Kowal (science fiction)

High as the Waters Rise, by Anja Kampmann (first novel)

Ice Walker: A Polar Bear’s Journey Through the Fragile Arctic, by James Raffan (environment)

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, by Elizabeth Kolbert (environment)

Inferno: The Fiery Destruction of Hamburg, 1943, by Keith Lowe (WWII history)

The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman (mystery)

The Fascination of Simulations

Elizabeth Kolbert is very fascinated by simulations of fragile ecological environments, the ones where scientists test out various doomsday scenarios. Under a White Sky is full of such sims.They cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and maintain.

What must it be like to work in one of those? Self would love it. But Kolbert is a straight arrow: she describes the scientific work in such a way that it appears — by design — dull. Kolbert doesn’t think it’s dull, but the scientists are so self-deprecating.

On p. 109, Kolbert is interviewing Paul Hardity, the Director of SeaSim, a simulation of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

She has him saying this:

• “We come from this planet. Anyway, I’m getting a little philosophical. I’m going to have to go home and watch a hockey game.”

HAR HAR HAR!!!!

Stay cool, dear blog readers. Stay cool.

Sentence of the Day: Still Elizabeth Kolbert

Self is on Section 2 of Kolbert’s Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future.

The future of life, Kolbert says, is Extinction.

And no one writes Extinction with a capital ‘E’ like Elizabeth Kolbert.

Kolbert is scary good when she writes about soon-to-be-extinct animal species.

In section 2, Into the Wild, she focuses her tremendous laser-like intelligence on pupfish, whose only known habitat is Devils Hole in Death Valley National Park.

She makes passing reference to Edward Abbey, whose Desert Solitaire made quite an impression on self when she read it, decades ago.

p. 78:

• Though the book chronicles Abbey’s stint as a ranger in Arches National Park, in Utah, he wrote most of it sitting at a bar in a brothel just a few miles from Devils Hole.

A brothel? Really?

Stay cool, dear blog readers. Stay cool.