The Marci Rating System

Several of my phone apps offer up a quote of the day, and this one's been bringing me some comfort lately:

"Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

For reasons I don't entirely remember, I receive a daily email from the New York Times (it's called "The Morning"). It's generally a roundup of headlines, and since I'm not subscribed to the NYT, I can't actually read any of them, but that's fine. There's also a puzzle at the end which is A+ great.

More importantly, on Saturdays the email includes the full text of whatever op-ed article got selected -- generally something calm and Saturday-worthy, like 'making a summer playlist' or 'why I love daylight savings time,' that sort of thing. (LOL when I went to link the author's page on NYT [Melissa Kirsch] I realized that apparently they are always the Saturday writer. WELL THAT EXPLAINS SOME THINGS!)

And THIS week (September 7, 2024), the article was about tennis. Or more accurately, tennis fandom. (I was much more interested when I realized it was more the second than the first.) It's a conversation that comes up again and again in fandom -- how much are you a fan of the thing itself, and how much are you a fan of the community that builds up around it. It was also about the joy of enjoying things -- not uncritically, but enthusiastically nonetheless.

I can't actually link to the article itself, but this is the concluding paragraph, and I thought it was worth remembering.

If we define ourselves by who and what we love, and I think we should, then it’s valuable to love as many things as we can, to accumulate enthusiasms and lean into them, to hold onto passions when we discover them and not let them fall away. This way, our identities become rich, multidimensional, expansive. Sometimes it feels like there’s more to dislike than to like, more to disdain than to embrace. My longing for tennis feels like an opportunity, a reason to open my arms wider, to take more of the world in. I’m going to seize it.
-Melissa Kirsch, "Love All"

Time to hit the road to see the sky event of the year!

The New York Times included an article (editorial?) by Melissa Kirsch in their 'The Morning' email today (it's also on their site, but requires a log in, which I don't have). This is my favorite bit:

I asked my friend Ali what she hoped to get out of her eclipse trip this year. She’s hoping to leave with a deep sense that we aren’t in control of everything, and that that’s OK. “Sometimes, the things that we’re not in control of are really beautiful,” she said. “It’s not just bad things.”
-Melissa Kirsch, 'Eclipse Mania'

(I mean, I saw it on a tumblr reaction post, but the post attributes it to Robert Fulghum, "All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten.")

Did you have a kid in your neighborhood who always hid so good, nobody could find him? We did. After a while we would give up on him and go off, leaving him to rot wherever he was. Sooner or later he would show up, all mad because we didn't keep looking for him. And we would get mad back because he wasn't playing the game the way it was supposed to be played.

There's hiding and there's finding, we'd say. And he'd say it was hide-and-seek, not hide-and-give-UP, and we'd all yell about who made the rules and who cared about who, anyway, and how we wouldn't play with him anymore if he didn't get it straight and who needed him anyhow, and things like that. Hide-and-seek-and-yell. No matter what, though, the next time he would hide too good again. He's probably still hidden somewhere, for all I know.

As I write this, the neighborhood game goes on, and there is a kid under a pile of leaves in the yard just under my window. He has been there a long time now, and everybody else is found and they are about to give up on him over at the base. I considered going out to the base and telling them where he is hiding. And I thought about setting the leaves on fire to drive him out. Finally, I just yelled, "GET FOUND, KID!" out the window. And scared him so bad he probably wet his pants and started crying and ran home to tell his mother. It's real hard to know how to be helpful sometimes.

A man I know found out last year he had terminal cancer. He was a doctor. And knew about dying, and he didn't want to make his family and friends suffer through that with him. So he kept his secret. And died. Everybody said how brave he was to bear his suffering in silence and not tell everybody, and so on and so forth. But privately his family and friends said how angry they were that he didn't need them, didn't trust their strength. And it hurt that he didn't say good-bye.

He hid too well. Getting found would have kept him in the game. Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found. "I don't want anyone to know." "What will people think?" "I don't want to bother anyone."

Better than hide-and-seek, I like the game called Sardines. In Sardines the person who is It goes and hides, and everybody goes looking for him. When you find him, you get in with him and hide there with him. Pretty soon everybody is hiding together, all stacked in a small space like puppies in a pile. And pretty soon somebody giggles and somebody laughs and everybody gets found.

Medieval theologians even described God in hide-and-seek terms, calling him Deus Absconditus. But me, I think old God is a Sardine player. And will be found the same way everybody gets found in Sardines - by the sound of laughter of those heaped together at the end.

"Olly-olly-oxen-free." The kids out in the street are hollering the cry that says "Come on in, wherever you are. It's a new game." And so say I. To all those who have hid too good. Get found, kid! Olly-olly-oxen-free.

— Robert Fulghum, "All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten"

Yesterday I thought to myself 'I shall do Actual Research for this nanowrimo fic, and find out how Star Trek's stardates work.' I've been curious how much time was supposed to have passed during Strange New Worlds' season 1, and I figured understanding the stardates would be useful.

Ahahahahahaha I was so wrong!

Memory Alpha was very informative, except that the information was mostly 'yeah, they made it up.' Any article that starts with "covers information from several alternate timelines" is bound to be a wild ride, and it 100% was.

Important takeaway:

*According to the article, all the Strange New Worlds eps took place in the same year.

Absolutely fantastic quote from Gene Roddenberry:


"In answering these questions, I came up with the statement that "this time system adjusts for shifts in relative time which occur due to the vessel's speed and space warp capability. It has little relationship to Earth's time as we know it. One hour aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise at different times may equal as little as three Earth hours. The star dates specified in the log entry must be computed against the speed of the vessel, the space warp, and its position within our galaxy, in order to give a meaningful reading." Therefore star date would be one thing at one point in the galaxy and something else again at another point in the galaxy."

"I'm not quite sure what I meant by that explanation, but a lot of people have indicated it makes sense. If so, I've been lucky again, and I'd just as soon forget the whole thing before I'm asked any further questions about it."

What You Can: Happy New Year to you. I’m glad you made it.

by Hanne Blank Posted on December 31, 2012

Happy New Year to you. I’m glad you made it.

I’m glad, because I know what that means.

It means that every time you thought “I can’t,” you figured out some way that you could. Oh, not a way that you could always do the exact thing that made you stop in your tracks and go “I can’t.”

Though sometimes you did exactly that, ’cause you’re that kind of rockstar badass.

No, you figured out some way you could get close enough for jazz. Or some way you could change the conversation, or finagle things so that something to which you could say “I can” could fit where the thing that made you say “I can’t” had been.

Some days that means that you just find somewhere to sit still and keep breathing while your world falls to ashes and the minutes pass.

Some days you do that with your eyes closed. Sometimes that’s what you can.

But you do it. You did it. Every time, all year, you did it, whatever it was.

You found “I can.”

You did it while you found out that the Beatles lied to you and love isn’t all you need. You did it while you bled and while you cried.

You did it while you wondered where the money was going to come from. You did it while you learned the hard way that a loss you choose is still a loss, not just the losses you didn’t choose.

You did it in line in bureaucratic offices and medical clinics and at the post office. You did it while you made an impossible decision. You did it when you were beyond caring. You did it when you cared so much that doing anything at all was terrifying.

You did it while you did things you knew were going to hurt. You did it while you hurt yourself, on purpose.

You did it while you were exhausted, while you absorbed that news, while you listened to that diagnosis, while you waited to hear something that would change things you weren’t going to be able to ever change back. You did it while you rode the train. You did it while you drove home. You did it while you dialed that phone number that time, and waited for “hello?”

You did it in the dark and you did it by your wits and you did it alone, because all of us ultimately do. You also did it in broad daylight and with the help and love and strong backs of others helping to make it possible, because all of us ultimately do that, too.

You did it the way only you know how. You did it. You found “I can.”

You did it as many times as necessary.

We both did.

Well played, my friend.

Thank you.

Happy New Year. May the worst day of the upcoming year be only as bad as the best day of the one just past, and may you always find the way to “I can.”

I saw this poem on ye olde facebooke with no author attribution, but some (admittedly not difficult) internet sleuthing turned up Danielle Doby's book 'I Am Her Tribe' which appears to be the source.


Let your heart break daily.
In conversation. Over song lyrics.
During the pause right before the sun rises.
While you’re sipping coffee + looking into
the eyes of someone talking about something they love.
For it’s when we break a little – we come alive.
It’s in this space of healing,
we get to expand.
And it’s here, in our vulnerability and openness,
we step into our greatest selves.
-Danielle Doby

And so begins our second week in our new home!

A fun birding story: the former owners of the home gifted us with their bird feeder, and I've been filling it with just some plain sunflower seed-type bird seed I got at the grocery store. We've had a rose breasted grosbeak visiting regularly (a beautiful bird!).

According to the former owners, they NEVER saw a rose breasted grosbeak at the feeder. It's new, apparently. Feeling very honored by this avian welcome!

from 'Animal Speak' by Ted Andrews

"The Rose-breasted grosbeak can help us to heal all of the old wounds and hurts of family origin and reminds us that the pain will pass. Healing through music and sound therapy.

"The grosbeak has a beautiful melodious voice. This is significant. A melody is formed by a relationship between notes. A single note does not make a melody. The grosbeak can help us to see our family relationships as a true melody - each note separate but part of a larger whole.

“We can smile, breathe, walk, and eat our meals in a way that allows us to be in touch with the abundance of happiness that is available. We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive. Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. We need only to be awake, alive in the present moment.”

-Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step

This quote shows up on my tumblr dash a lot. (Probably, like the icy tree, I've accidentally followed a tag with very little content. Since I tend to go to tumblr only on my phone, and then only when I need a distraction, it's never felt like a big deal to fix it.)

And part of me is all 'yes, that describes me; I should do something to change that.' But also part of me is like -- hey, play to your strengths! Because I feel like there is a lot that can be done within the 'preparing' that helps it be an experience of peace and joy. (Also aren't our brains wired to be good at preparing for things? I thought that was the whole concept of signing up for a 5K to motivate yourself to do the preparation part.)

ANYWAY my thoughts on this seemed a lot clearer before I tried to write them down but there it is. Thinking thoughts for a snowy weekend morning.

"The point is, I think it would be good -- for you to be in the world, around kids your own age. It might help."
"Help what?"
"...Honey, you're wearing a boa around your neck."
-Elena, Dora

"Well, be careful. That's what we want to say. I should have just said that."
"I think it would have been easier."
-Cole, Elena

"And if I don't talk to you, don't take it personal, okay? We're all just trying to survive high school. It's a horrible nightmare."
-Diego

"Am I a weirdo?"
"No more than the rest of us."
-Dora, Abuelita

"This best not be some wild goose chase."
"I sure hope it is. I love chasing wild geese. Until you catch one. Then it is not fun. A caught goose is just the meanest."
-Sammy, Dora

"Why did I take Mandarin? What are you guys saying?"
-Randy

"Oh look, Dora brought a knife on the field trip, everybody."
-Sammy

"I was just kidnapped, and chased by bad guys! And a fox, with a mask! Everyone saw that, right? Like, why does that fox need to remain anonymous? Who is gonna recognize one specific fox?"
-Sammy

"I mean, in a way, every place is the kind of place where people die."
"Okay, well, that's a bummer notion."
-Dora, Sammy

"Dora's my cousin. I can't just let her go off with some strange and anxious man we just met."
"Thank you, Diego."
-Diego, Alejandro (the strange & anxious man)

"She knows this monkey? Of course, she knows this monkey."
-Sammy

"Sometimes a song's the best idea. But not often. Oh, and don't tell anyone I did that."
-Sammy

"I did something epic! I'm basically a superhero!"
"Oh. Hi, Dora's parents."
"Okay, honey, who are all these people?"
-Randy, Sammy, Elena