Read this article at Defector the other day and came away completely blown away by the whole idea of “reminiscence therapy.”
There’s light-centered therapy or music therapy [. . .] art therapy, which becomes ideal for some patients who might become more reluctant to talk as the disease progresses [. . .] But there’s also something called reminiscence therapy. The idea is that by recalling past events, usually those associated with happy times, dementia patients can be more cheerful and sociable. The phrase used a lot is “come out of their shells.”
Turns out, some enterprising folks associated with the Society for a American Baseball Research (SABR) are leveraging this tool to help dementia patients through the kinds of conversations that pretty much any baseball fan enjoys: ‘remembering some guys’1.
The idea and the events have become so popular that they’ve now got a formal partnership with the Alzheimer’s Association. There’s even a site set up with resources to help start chapters in your area (https://sabrbaseballmemories.org/). Pretty cool stuff.
Which is what about 95% of my contemporary conversations with my old high school friends consist of these days. ↩︎
One of the best purchases we’ve made since purchasing our house a few years ago is a cheap build-it-yourself picnic table kit from one of the big box hardware stores. We brought it home, put it together, and eventually painted it a really cool ocean blue color that we thought looked nice on our deck. It was part of a larger ‘beautification’ plan, which also included a few bird feeders and pollinator-friendly plants and flowers for a little mulch bed, for the driveway-adjacent area where we spent a lot of our time.
It’s not the best or most pristine picnic table—it’s often covered in stuff, the paint has started to chip and flake away, and there’s even some interesting fungus growing out of one of the ends, but since getting this picnic table set up, we’ve eaten outside nearly every day when the weather’s been pleasant (which is a pretty significant percentage of the days for a good chunk of the year here in northeast Tennessee) and I am continuously surprised at how much the practice of eating, together, outside changes our collective moods for the better.
I’ve not given much thought to the reasons for this effect (and really just noticed the correlation relatively recently), but I suspect it has something to do with the change in scenery creating a more ‘mindful’ approach to our meals. Inside, we tend to be distracted by whatever toy or trinket we happen to have nearby[^1]. Outside, we’re similarly distracted by all the goings on of our space, but they’re all shared distractions—when one of the kids points out a nearby butterfly or bug or that the dog has just snatched up a little fallen scrap, we’re all brought into that moment rather than staying in our own separate little worlds.
But the picnic table has created joy even when we’re not using it to eat. We carve our pumpkins each fall on the picnic table. The kids frequently paint or blow bubbles there. It’s a great spot to just sit in the spring when all you want to do is feel the warmth of the sun. So, all that is to say, here’s to you, picnic table. May you continue to bring our family joy for years to come.
🤯 Saw one of these guys crawling around on the dining room table this morning. Had no idea such a creature existed. What a world.
A shocking look at the inner workings at Boeing from Maureen Tkacic at The American Prospect.
Nine days after the stock reached its high of $440, a brand-new 737 MAX dove into the ground near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at nearly 800 miles per hour, killing 157 people on board, thanks to a shockingly dumb software program that had programmed the jets to nose-dive in response to the input from a single angle-of-attack sensor.
What will it take for corporations like this to start putting something–anything! safety! literal lives!–ahead of stock price?
As a kid, we lived out of town and there weren’t really other kids my age in safe walking distance. I had a little sister and we definitely played together a lot, but, like any brother and sister, we needed some time apart and had different interests. As a result, I learned to have a lot of fun by myself. I have vivid memories of tossing a baseball in the air, hitting it as far as I could, then walking after it to hit it back the other direction. The same game worked for throwing a baseball or a football, or for shooting a basketball, or for just walking around and exploring our yard. The common theme for these activities was that I was alone with my thoughts. This inevitably led to various iterations of “narrating” or calling fake play by play for myself. I loved these times and, maybe as a result, I still cherish time alone to think and work through problems or decisions with my inner monologue (or sometimes dialogue) as the only participant.
As a parent, my kids have a much different life. We live in a neighborhood with several other houses very close by with children of a similar age, and they’re all friendly and play well together. A large majority of time outside leads, sooner or later, to group play. I’m super grateful for this. I love our neighborhood. Even though I loved the way I grew up, I’m glad my kids have easy access to friends. They still get some alone time (and sometimes seek it out), but it’s not the default. I’m curious to see how this might affect their individual preferences as they grow and mature, but I think the bottom line, and my ultimate point, is that I don’t think there’s necessarily a “better” way of growing up. I wouldn’t trade my solitary playing as a kid for anything. I’ll bet the house that my kids, when reflecting back thirty years from now, will feel the same about the group play made possible by impromptu neighborhood meetups.
Pretty creepy honestly how faithfully these stories reflect some of my own anxieties, particularly around the 2020 pandemic and other kind of contemporary tragedies. I suppose that’s probably true for a lot of folks around a certain age who grew up a certain way and live a certain kind of life now. These took me a long time to get through, but not due to any fault or flaw in the writing–it was all just kind of a lot so I needed to keep switching back to something else. As stories, they’re not what I would call “propulsive” but they certainly do capture a certain not so pleasant vibe extremely well. Some favorite passages below.
I can’t believe all these animals we have are real and we just take it for granted I said before drinking half of my glass. Growing up our parents tell us there’s no such thing as monsters so we’ll go to sleep but a bear is a monster and a moose is a monster and a bird is a monster too. Every bird in the world would rip your head off if it were somewhat larger and you were somewhat slower.
Imagine if whales didn’t exist and then one showed up out of nowhere? We’d never stop talking about it Joe said. We would never get over it.
It’s probably no coincidence that the most famous novel ever written was about how fucked up a guy got after knowing about one particularly angry whale.
It’s just that we get used to the things that are scary Joe said. The real action is in novelty.
A day is so long but a life is very short.
As they float further and further away from the original dive spot they bicker and blame one another and grasp for something different they could have done that would have sared them from this ordeal.
As if logic is a shield against chaos.
Eventually the realization that there is no order to things and that two people can in fact be left behind like this dawns on them.
It’s never a good sign when your parents ask you if you remember so and so because that dude is fucked.
Then I was thinking about how the video for “Criminal” which came out in 1997 was my version of Puberty 2. Puberty 1 is just regular puberty that we’ve all heard of but Puberty 2 is when your brain unlocks what kind of pervert you’re going to turn into.
I can’t believe all these animals we have are real and we just take it for granted I said before drinking half of my glass. Growing up our parents tell us there’s no such thing as monsters so we’ll go to sleep but a bear is a monster and a moose is a monster and a bird is a monster too. Every bird in the world would rip your head off if it were somewhat larger and you were somewhat slower.
Imagine if whales didn’t exist and then one showed up out of nowhere? We’d never stop talking about it Joe said. We would never get over it.
It’s probably no coincidence that the most famous novel ever written was about how fucked up a guy got after knowing about one particularly angry whale.
It’s just that we get used to the things that are scary Joe said. The real action is in novelty.”
― Luke O’Neil, “Kingston Street” from A Creature Wanting Form
Loved the scope of this and its overall kind of aura. But, man, the back third really dragged ass. Satisfying conclusion and it’s the kind of book that has forever changed my brain in good ways. Really wish I could read The Secret Forest — but maybe The Hidden Life of Trees will suffice.
It could be the eternal project of mankind, to learn what forests have figured out.
Luke O’Neil has a way of putting his finger right on that thing about music or literature or whatever that’s so hard to pin down for so many of us. This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot as I’ve been back into reading so much more and have remembered again the way that the right song or album can completely turn a bad day good. From his newsletter today:
This probably applies to all of you – people in possession of human souls who have at least on occasion felt the divine in a work of art – but everything I write myself and everything I love to read or listen to or watch has one bedrock foundation to it which is this:
Oh my god I am alive right now and you are alive right now and someday we will not be but for the duration of this we are both stupidly and beautifully alive.
Please bear witness to my humanity and take some small portion of it for yourself.
Wonderland Tea Party with the little princess. She was slightly intimidated by Alice and the Mad Hatter who were there to take photos; she was not intimidated by the dance floor. 💃💃💃
And maybe something in every single person is broken, and we just keep moving forward as if it were all normal—all of it—like insects with their heads torn off who keep crawling toward a shadow to hide in. Until that thing that has already destroyed us catches up with us, and we stop moving.
I’ve been on a music nostalgia kick lately. A few weeks ago, we were out with the kids and, for some reason, the phrase “American Girls” worked its way into the conversation and I, of course, immediately needed to listen to the song of that name by a band named “HOMIE1”. Turns out, this song is not part of the available music on any of the three major streaming services. I know I had this song as part of my old iCloud Music Library uploaded via the old iTunes Match service at some point (my collection of random Weezer-adjacent B-sides was, for a few years from like 1999 through 2002 or so, immaculate), but it wasn’t showing up in my library of songs on Apple Music either. Needless to say, it became my personal mission to find and rip a copy of the Meet the Deedles: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack that included the only officially recorded version of this song. Luckily for me, a Goodwill in Racine, Wisc., had a copy of the CD for sale for less than three bucks, shipped, on eBay. It arrived and I’ve since ripped and uploaded it to my Apple Music library and my “American Girls and Boys” playlist is now complete.
Relatedly, sometime in the days between the inciting incident mentioned above and the arrival of my eBay purchase, another song from my Apple Music library uploads came on while I was driving around with my 3-year-old daughter. This song, as far as my records indicate, is named “Hello” by a band I have listed as Planet Janet. My daughter LOVES this song and we’ve listened to it probably six thousand times in the weeks since. I also love this song and remember downloading it from a Weezer message board some time around the turn of the century – it’s filed next to “Dr. Frank Was Right” by The Benjamins in my brain which leads me to believe I was introduced to both of these songs around the same time and probably had them on a cool mix CD together and that song is from an album that came out in 2001. Anyway, this is the only song that I remember ever hearing from this band and I can’t remember if the reason the song was shared on this message board was because they opened for Weezer or opened for Ozma or were just a band that one of the other commenters on the message board liked (or maybe even was in) or something. Weezerpedia does not list Planet Janet as a band that ever toured with or performed with Weezer and the rest of my internet searching has turned up absolutely nothing on this band or the song. It’s a little frustrating because it’s seriously a jam and my daughter and I would both love to hear any other songs they ever did. I’m going to transcribe the lyrics here to the best of my ability just so they exist somewhere on the internet.
40,000 ways to say “Hello”
And I forget how to walk - oh nevermind
How do thirty seconds pass and I give up
And figure “This’ll take another week”
But another week comes and another day
Another awkward silence trying to find a simple way to say
To say…
“Won’t you stop and talk to me?”
Acknowledge my existence
I know I’ve been persistent
But won’t you stop and talk to me
…
Thirty times a day I’ve looked your way
Tongue-tied I fantasize about what I would say
If you were to waste your breath on me
But then I blink and I’m back suffering through my reality
But another week comes and another day
Another awkward silence trying to find a simple way to say
To say…
“Won’t you stop and talk to me?”
Acknowledge my existence
I know I’ve been persistent
But won’t you stop and talk to me
[some words I can’t make out]
And I don’t know what to do
And maybe I try too hard to make you notice me
So I’ll count my lucky stars and look distracted and sleepy
I’ll bet that Kara Beardsley never had to go to such great lengths
But as her bra size grew her brain seemed to shrink
… do do di do do do do do do di do . . .
“Won’t you stop and talk to me?”
Acknowledge my existence
I know I’ve been persistent
But won’t you stop and talk to me
[some words I can’t make out]
And I don’t know what to do
HOMIE (which I realized was stylized in call caps through the process described in this post) was a random, one-off (as far as I can tell) side project of three of the guys who were at that time in Weezer (Rivers, Matt and Pat) along with a couple of at-the-time members of Soul Coughing and Cake – a real supergroup for a certain type of music fan. ↩︎
