Steve’s Newsletter 1(4)

Steve’s Newsletter 1(4)

Comédie des Toilettes

I find my cross-cultural comparisons spend a lot of time on issues related to the bathroom. This isn’t out of an overtly crude sense of humor; it is merely that, from my experience, failure to quickly understand local cultural mores on waste disposal will inevitably result in disaster. Whether it is navigating the ravages of giardia in Mexico or confusedly contemplating a portable squat-a-potty in Afghanistan at 2 AM, I’m your guy

France has a reputation as a highly-cultured society—so cultured that they seem to have transcended the need for something as mundane as the everyday excretory function. Public restrooms are rare and facilities in most bars and restaurants seem to be nothing more than afterthoughts—bathrooms shoved into forgotten utility closets, so small that you might need to get undressed before entering.* (I am not exaggerating. I once had to stood outside a bathroom to hold my wife’s purse and jacket because with her knees touching the door, there was simply no margin of error.)

Once one understands the relative unavailability of bathrooms, any ventures into cities are oriented around when and where we can go wee. (As noted in a previous writing, men are wont to pee on the sides of walls, especially after dark but it is more difficult for those with less pliant urethras.) So, for example, when I drop my son off at his English-speaking theater program on Wednesdays, I make sure I use the facilities there. Then I might take a walk to any of two shopping malls to grab a coffee. One has a bathroom that costs 80 Eurocents, and the other is free. Neither ever seems to be occupied and the latter often doesn’t even have running water. (You learn to carry hand sanitizer in France.)

The only saving grace is that I am slowly mastering some of the language and no longer have to worry about my search for the bathroom being disrupted by things lost to mistranslation and false cognates. That was the once case at a fairly high-end local restaurant with ample seating and only one, single-use bathroom tucked away at the end of a labyrinth. The host had said something about a door on the left, but I didn’t quite understand it. So, alternately looking for a door with either the letters WC or the word toilette, I began my search. Confused, and possibly under a slight influence of alcohol, I considered the curiosity of the English loanword of WC (water closet) to French. It was in this state, that I stumbled through a door marked “privé” under the assumption that privé was another English loan word. (Because… privy, is an antiquated British term for public facility.) Here, it is merely the French word for private and I interrupted a thoroughly confused accountant who politely but firmly gestured me further down the hallway.

With such a state of bathroom scarcity, I have become convinced that the French obsession for bread is ultimately a matter of survival. With entire meals consisting of nothing but bread, cheese, and cigarettes, the average person has ensured that their rectum will remain as tight as a drum until more opportune times. This refined culture, simply doesn’t poop, or only poops in the home bowl. Those hapless foreigners who subscribe to the medical advice that one should consume 30 grams of fiber daily are shit out of luck when that second cup of coffee hits.

I have tried to adopt the French diet and their love for terroir—the idea that the local ecosystem and land gives a certain saveur to the food. After a month, of soft white cheese and artisanal loafs, I began to accept the fact that not only did I no longer need public restrooms, I might never need a restroom again. But… eventually digestion occurred and with it the room-clearing clouds of twice-aged cheese.

As my wife evacuated the kids from the house for the umpteenth time, I wryly noted that it was merely the terroir. She doesn’t find me funny, and I was resigned to sleeping on the couch until my affliction clears.

So, I am back to a modified diet, loving the organic and locally sourced vegetables of France while viewing with trepidation the plugs of baguette and brie that are cradled lovingly in the early morning light by the working class market goers.  

Perhaps I should just take up smoking.

*Incidentally, the etymology of Water Closet is because when older buildings got running water, they would literally convert utility closets into bathrooms. My notion of bathrooms being an afterthought are correct, even if I didn’t realize it when I sat down to do this essay.

Untimely Observations

Me accounting for random thoughts on pop culture in a way that is moderately insightful but entirely irrelevant.

I have been reading Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary and was struck with a sense of its impossibility.

As with all science fiction, the reader is required to have a certain suspension of belief. We find out that our protagonist has a PhD in Molecular Biology, so it tracks that he might be able to grapple with a civilization-ending plague. He’s also an insufferable nerd with all the worlds written knowledge on his ship’s hard drive (along with every computer program ever made). If he doesn’t know the answer, he can find it out through trial, error, and the occasional explosion.

I am okay with all of that. A species that eats cadmium? Sure, I mean, there are cultures that eat poop wine and partially gestated birds, so why not cadmium. Speaking in chords? Humans have all kinds of interesting speech mechanisms—Khosian clicks, silent French consonants, and extra syllables in the deep south just to name a few. As for all the physics defying science, my eyes glaze over for the lectures on mitochondria and intergalactic propulsion. I am sure there are humorless scientists who take issue with it, but it’s a fun read and I am willing to let it go.

My one issue? The name of the actual project which serves as the book title—Project Hail Mary.

If you want to unite all of humanity behind saving the world, you pick something a little less divisive.

From a USian perspective, it is a mostly secular term; it came into mainstream pop culture after an unlikely playoff victory by the Dallas Cowboys against the Minnesota Vikings in 1975. Roger Staubach (a devout Roman Catholic) had 32 seconds left in the game and was down by 4. He claimed to have said a Hail Mary before launching the ball 50 yards for a game winning touchdown. Since then, the term “Hail Mary” is used regularly in sports and business to describe any unlikely, last-minute attempt at success.

Outside the United States? It does not have that secular anesthetization and is still a very religious term associated Roman Catholicism. If it were used for the title of a mission to save planet earth, it would rile up protestants, Eastern Orthodoxy, Muslims, and pretty much every other world religion with past papal prangs. World leaders would be compelled to sit on their hands and demand a name change before liberating all the world’s scientists and resources to combat the problem.

Don’t believe me? Well, my litmus for the recalcitrance of humans would be the proposed peace talks to end the Vietnam War. Everything was good to go until it came time to decide what kind of table would be used. The North Vietnamese wanted a circular table and the South Vietnamese wanted a rectangular table. The debate over table shape continued for ten weeks until Richard Nixon took office, ended negotiations, and escalated the war. A dispute over table shape would prolong US involvement in the war for another four years and cost another million lives.*

Ultimately, it’s a fun science fiction with just enough cultural chauvinism to be implausible. If the Vietnamese were willing to prolong a war for another four years over the shape of a table, certainly, all the world’s leaders would not allow a happy ending to a project named Hail Mary.

In any case, a movie version starring Ryan Gosling is supposed to be out next year. Based on the opening scenes of the book I suspect he’ll be shirtless in a lot of it. Something to consider.

*Accurate numbers of total killed in the war are nearly impossible to come by. Total estimates including civilians and accounting for the war spilling into Laos and Cambodia come to somewhere between 1.3 million and 3.4 million. More than half of those would fall under President Nixon’s escalation.

Be Nice to Wasps

This was originally published on my Facebook page in September of 2023, but not many people saw it at the time.

Not long ago, I was startled by a friend describing her afternoon of knocking down wasp nests. I would describe this person as left-of-center, concerned about climate change, sustainability, and otherwise living within the earth’s carrying capacity. It didn’t compute that knocking down wasp nests would be part of the day’s agenda. On the other hand, most people knock them down or call an exterminator. After all, they are scary murder bugs that serve no purpose.

Here’s the problem. They are actually a fairly vital part of the ecosystem.

First and foremost, wasps are pollinators. Okay, that’s a broad brush, MOST wasps are pollinators. Yellow jackets aren’t great pollinators, but wasps you would see on the side of your house are, including the fairly ubiquitous paper wasp and the Guinea wasp in the image below. Bees and butterflies get all the love, but worldwide there are hundreds of plants that depend at least partially on wasps and 164 who wouldn’t exist without wasps.

They are important bugs.

The second reason why wasps matter is pest control. Without chemical pesticides, wasps are actually quite good at patrolling crops for aphids, caterpillars, and other crop-destroying bugs. You can’t have organic gardening without wasps.

I get it, wasps hurt. However, they only hurt when we surprise each other. Once acclimated, wasps become quite tame and tolerant of human presence. (An exception to this is the bald-faced hornet that never learns to coexist in my experience.) I’ve been working with wasps most of my life, compliments of my dad’s three-acre organic garden and we learned to get along with them most of the time, even relocating a few nests here and there.

Don’t believe me? Here’s how my afternoon went.

We just moved into a house with an unmaintained outside space. Vines had grown up the side of a shed and into the attic allowing for a potential infestation of carpenter ants. The vines needed to go as soon as possible.

The only problem is that some Guinea wasps had made their home on the side of the shed, right in the middle of the offending vines. I found them the hard way with the sacrifice of a pinkie finger. They gave me a warning and I backed off.

That’s it.

Be nice to wasps