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Christmas tip jar!

As a team we had a Secret Santa last week; and after the exchanges were done, we sat down to serious work: recording how Ukrainian- and English-speaking people represent farm animal sounds verbally.

You might suggest that this is a cunning way for us to avoid writing an extensive, deeply-reported article during the holidays.

To that I would say: how dare you. ;)

Merry Christmas,
Tim and the rest of the Counteroffensive team.

shoku-and-awe:

This screenshot from a gardening Facebook group has been on my phone for several years and I’m not sure I’m ever going to be able to delete it. Apparently it comes from a British gardening book from the 80s. I know we all joke that the English are afraid of flavor, but I assure you, you are not prepared for this.

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The complex derivative guys are given AAA ratings then surprised that they still sink.

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In this season of plenty, this time of excess – lights, music, cookies, candy, wrapping paper, bows, turkeys…

It is easy to forget that there are some who have nothing.

And for them, instead of a season of joy and song, this season is one of cold. 

It’s easy to forget them.  And for some, sometimes easier to ignore them. 

Because acknowledging them means acknowledging the inequity in our country.  The sad reality that some have much, and some have none. 

We live in the 7^th wealthiest county in America, Arlington, Virginia.  The average median income here is $132,380.

Yet, there are people who come to the Little Yellow Free Pantry outside our home 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 

Some of our visitors have housing.  They may rent an apartment for their family.  Perhaps they are working 2, maybe 3 jobs.  But still that is not enough income to pay the rent, the utilities, the gas, and put food on the table.

Some of our visitors rent a room in a house.  They have a bed, a bathroom, but no access to a kitchen, only a small fridge, microwave, or hotplate in the room.

Some of our guests live in their cars.  One lives in his van – lost his home in a fire and had no insurance.  With these people, we see the back seats filled with all of their belongings – coat, pillow, food, toilet paper.

And some of our guests have no indoor place to call home.  They live in the woods, on the street, in a bus stop, in a store front after the business closes for the night.

It is COLD these days.  Tonight the low is 36 degrees, tomorrow 32.  Some people go into the shelter for the night but others brave the weather and stay outdoors.

During these cold spells, sometimes I quietly complain about having to go out and put food in the pantry.  On days it is raining, or the steps are icy, I sometimes get cranky.  Then I think, “Susan, you will be outside in the freezing weather for 5 minutes.  The people who need this food may be out in it all night.  Get to work”.

One of our guests is a very mild mannered, quiet, polite person who is experiencing homelessness.  They immigrated to America, and I am quite certain that living on the street is not what they imagined when they dreamed of a new life here.  They come for food and if I see them, I make sure to go out and talk and make a special bag for them.  You see, they collect food not only for themselves, but for another person who does not have housing and lives outdoors but is not healthy enough to come to the pantry. 

Yesterday when they came I noticed they had no gloves, no mittens.  “Your hands are cold!  Do you have mittens?” I asked.  “No ma’am, I do not,” they told me.

I had just given them a holiday gift – one for them and one for their friend.  And inside it – gloves.  They didn’t know it yet, but they had gloves…

You see, last month I begrudgingly took on a project.  I didn’t want to do it, just like sometimes I do not want to brave the cold to fill up the pantry.  But someone from a local synagogue reached out and asked if there was something they could do to help Kindness Activist.  They wanted to do a mitzvah.  But they had specific parameters and if it was to happen, it would be me who would have to organize it.

Only, I was in the midst of the Santa Project.  And the advent/countdown calendar.  And work.  And the usual tasks of life like paying bills and replying to emails.  And I didn’t think I could add another thing to my already full plate.

But I took a step back and looked at it all.  Here was a group of people who really wanted to help, they just needed a prompt, a mission.  Like so many, they wanted to get involved and give back but they weren’t sure how to do it.

So, I set about planning.

I decided that gifts for people experiencing homelessness would be perfect.  And not just any gift.  At the holidays many people are generous and hand out food or stocking hats or socks to people who are homeless.  But no – these needed to be PROPER PRESENTS.  Respectful gifts.  Gifts that would be useful but also acknowledge the recipient’s humanity, not just their need.

I asked the person from the synagogue if they would be willing to wrap the gifts.  Kindness Activist would supply everything – wrapping paper, boxes, tape, presents – they simply needed to provide the effort (and the scissors).

On December 15^th they set to work making gift bags for 20 people.  In the bags are:

A stocking hat

A flashlight

Extra batteries

Lip balm

Beef jerky

A Starbucks canned drink

A deck of cards

Nail clippers

Tic Tacs

A chocolate bar

A pair of socks

Hand warmers

A pen

A notebook

A bag of Hershey kisses

And a holiday note or drawing from a local child

The volunteers wrapped each of the items so that the people who got them would have lots to open.  They lovingly put them into big, beautiful bags. 

And this week I got to hand out the first 2. 

The person was happy to receive them.  They didn’t have any idea what was inside and used the pretty bags to carry all of the other groceries they got – soup, meat, fruit, drinks, cookies.  I like to imagine what they must have thought when they got back to their spot and took a peek inside.  Did they open all of the gifts at once?  Did they savor them and open one per day? 

We have 18 more bags to hand out today and tomorrow.  I know one goes to the person who has no housing who comes to the pantry and I make coffee for – no sugar, just milk.  Last time they came they, like the other guest, had no mittens or gloves.  But in the freezing cold we saw that their hands were covered in nylon men’s socks.  Those could not provide much warmth but they are better than hands exposed to the frigid air.  It is not easy holding a piping hot cup of coffee and a cup of hot soup with socks on your hands, but they managed.

I am grateful.  Grateful for my home and my pillow and my running water and my mittens.

And I am embarrassed.  Ashamed to have so much when some have so little.

So I will share these gifts.  I will spread a message of happy holidays. 

And I will hope for better days ahead for these friends.

Special thank you to Congregation Etz Hayem for reaching out, wrapping many gifts, and helping make the holiday season a bit more bright for some members of our community.  And special thanks to the children who made artwork to be included in the packages.

Kindness Activist funds used:  $320.75 ($16.04 per gift)

The reminder that we all deserve joy and a little gift: priceless

writing-relatedactivities:

People will try to tell you history is boring, and then you open up a history book and it hits you with the sentence, “Among the inheritors of great names and great fortunes in America it is difficult if not impossible to find a living man who has given a dinner party at which nude chorus girls leaped from the innards of lamb potpie”

“In light of later developments, it would have been better for the Canadian Pacific if all aviators had been strangled at birth.”

Welcome back to the Abstract! 

In the spirit of catching up with relatives over the holidays, I’d like to introduce you to a member of your extra-extended family: The Saber-toothed Gorgonopsian from Mallorca. Get acquainted with your great-great-great (insert about 100 million greats here) grandmother’s cousin. It’s probably not going to behave well at the dinner table. 

Then, the grim prognoses of Disney princesses are outlined in one of the world’s premiere medical journals. Next, I’m back on the cannibalism beat; I just can’t help myself. Finally, an archaeological adventure a world away.

Happy winter solstice to all who thrive in darkness. If you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, say hi to the Sun for us.

Wet Hot Pangean Summer

Matamales-Andreu, Rafel et al. “Early–middle Permian Mediterranean gorgonopsian suggests an equatorial origin of therapsids.” Nature Communications.

If you trace your lineage far back enough, you will eventually reach therapsid ancestors. Mammals sprouted out of this ancient group of creatures some 225 million years ago, around the same time that dinosaurs were ascending to world domination. But though therapsids were abundant during the Permian era, the period before the emergence of mammals and dinosaurs, gaps in the fossil record have made it difficult to reconstruct the origins of this ancestral group.

Enter: DA21/17-01-01, a fossil specimen that dates back at least 270 million years, making it likely the oldest therapsid ever found. The dog-sized animal was a “gorgonopsian,” a group of therapsid carnivores with saber-like teeth reminiscent of later mammals, but that still maintained more reptilian features, including oviparity (they laid eggs rather than birthing live offspring). 

Paleontologists were surprised to discover this gorgonopsian on the Spanish island of Mallorca, which was located in the equatorial region of the supercontinent Pangaea during the Permian. Almost all other gorgonopsian remains are preserved in locations like Russia and South Africa that would have been at higher latitudes, nearer to the poles. Previous work has suggested that therapsids originated at higher latitudes and then radiated into equatorial regions, but DA21/17-01-01 hints that the reverse may be true.

“The gorgonopsian from Mallorca provides the first unequivocal evidence that therapsids were indeed present in the summer wet biomes of equatorial Pangaea during the early–middle Permian transition, suggesting that the group may have originated in lower, tropical latitudes, rather than in the higher latitudes where nearly all of their fossils are known,” said researchers led by Rafel Matamales-Andreu of the Museu Balear de Ciències Naturals. 

“If therapsids originated in the tropics, this has implications for metabolic evolution in the clade,” the team added.

First off, let’s acknowledge that “the gorgonopsian from Mallorca” is a sublime phrase. It should be the title of a Criterion Collection classic. But more importantly, the discovery of this “unambiguously early” therapsid in the Pangean tropics offers a fleeting glimpse of a “ghost lineage” of mammal precursors. Ghost lineages are branches of the evolutionary tree that are presumed to exist based on circumstantial evidence, but that didn’t leave direct traces in the fossil record. Therapsid fossils proliferate in the middle and upper Permian, but scientists have long suspected that they originated much earlier, more than 300 million years ago.

“We confirm the traditional understanding that there was a relatively long ghost lineage of about 15 million years between the origin of ‘total-group’ therapsids and the radiation of the major therapsid clades,” around 278 million years ago, the team said. 

“This discovery opens the door for findings that may fill in the early therapsid fossil gap in the lower Permian, not in high latitude sites as traditionally thought, but in the so far poorly explored lower–middle Permian areas of palaeoequatorial Pangaea. Those locations hold the potential to elucidate the early evolution of therapsids and the origins of mammalian features.”

In other words, it’s worth searching for more of these early therapsids at overlooked sites, like the Balearic Islands. Some features that distinguish us as mammals today have their roots in what the study describes, somewhat luxuriously, as the “ancient summer wet biome of equatorial Pangaea.”

Death Becomes Disney Princesses 

Van Dijk, Sanne et al. “Living happily ever after? The hidden health risks of Disney princesses,” The British Medical Journal.

Every December, the British Medical Journal publishes a Christmas issue filled with parody studies and light-hearted editorials. My favorite example this year confronts the pressing health problems of Disney princesses, such as Cinderella’s risk of respiratory illness, Belle’s exposure to rabies, and Pocahontas’ bone-shattering penchant for diving off high cliffs.

But perhaps the best case study is Jasmine, whose social isolation is described in these devastating terms: “While the Genie might sing ‘you ain’t never had a friend like me,’ the truth is that Jasmine has no friends at all,” according to researchers led by Sanne van Dijk of the University of Twente. 

Wow, the medical consensus about Jasmine is pretty harsh. To add insult to injury, the editorial notes that Jasmine’s one companion, the tiger Rajah, “poses a risk of zoonotic infection as well as craniofacial and cervical spinal injuries” adding that “although Rajah seems like a sweet tiger, its natural instincts could lead to a dangerous and potentially fatal situation—a true Arabian nightmare.”

Please Disney, listen to these experts and start showing the real-life consequences of the princess lifestyle. We need a rabid Belle foaming at the mouth, Pocahontas in a full body cast, and Rajah brutally mauling Jasmine. Otherwise, we are sending a message to young people that it is safe to hang out with captive tigers and chimeric beasts while jumping off Niagara Falls. 

I will note that the study has nothing to say about Moana, who I will hereafter conclude is the healthiest Disney princess. We salute a physiologically robust chief.

Massacre at Charterhouse Warren

Schulting, Rick et al. ‘The darker angels of our nature’: Early Bronze Age butchered human remains from Charterhouse Warren, Somerset, UK.” Antiquity.

Steel yourself for some bad vibes, because this is a story about an unhinged cannibalistic massacre that occurred 4,000 years ago. Archaeologists working at Charterhouse Warren, an English Bronze Age burial site, have discovered evidence of a grotesque attack designed to “other” its many victims through butchery and consumption of flesh.

“Some 37 men, women and children—and possibly many more—were killed at close quarters with blunt instruments and then systematically dismembered and defleshed, their long bones fractured in a way that can only be described as butchery,” said researchers led by Rick Schulting of the University of Oxford. “Body parts were deposited in what was probably a single event between 2210 and 2010 BC, in a partly infilled shaft that was still 15 meters deep.”

“While evidence for interpersonal violence is not unknown in British prehistory, nothing else on this scale has been found,” the team noted.

It’s unlikely that these acts were motivated by either “culinary cannibalism,” embodied by Hannibal Lecter, or “survival cannibalism,” the desperate acts of starvation typified by tragedies like the Donner Party. The cruel and unusual treatment of the victims, even after their deaths, suggests a deliberate attempt at dehumanization.

The events “may be best interpreted as an extreme form of ‘violence as performance,’ in which the aim was to not only eradicate another group, but to thoroughly ‘other’ them in the process,” according to the study. “While the remains themselves seem to have been removed from view soon afterwards (to judge from the paucity of carnivore scavenging), an event of this scale could not be hidden, and no doubt resonated across the wider region and over time. In this sense it was a political statement.”

My advice is to steer clear of political statements that demand ritualistic cannibalism, but I’m open to the marketplace of ideas.

It Belongs in a Marseum

Holcomb, Justin A et al. “The emerging archaeological record of Mars.” Nature Astronomy.

Let’s close out with an archaeology story that doesn’t involve dehumanizing bloodbaths; we will need to travel to another planet to accomplish this task. No massacres have occurred on Mars at the time of this writing, but the red planet is home to plenty of archaeological sites and artifacts, which I shall hereafter refer to as Martifacts. 

Technological relics on Mars, such as dead rovers or spent heat shields, are part of the human archaeological record, raising questions about the culture and heritage value of Martifacts.      

“Some scientists have referred to this cultural material as ‘space trash’ or ‘galactic litter,’ implying that it may have limited scientific value and could cause environmental problems and put future missions at risk,” said researchers led by Justin Holcomb of the Kansas Geological Survey. 

“We agree that these concerns warrant further investigation, but we argue that the objects need to be evaluated as important cultural heritage in need of protection because they record the legacy of space exploration by our species,” the team said. 

The article reminds me of the heartrending xkcd comic that portrays NASA’s Spirit rover coming to terms with its abandonment on Mars. Space archaeology can seem esoteric but it is relevant to consider values about our off-Earth heritage at a time when visions of Martian colonization are culturally ascendent. There is more to this extraterrestrial archaeological record than the sum of its dusty metal parts. 

Also, I’m calling dibs on the remains of the Opportunity rover right now and we all know that dibs are legally binding.

Thanks for reading! See you next week.