The Tonguska Event
...a dispatch from bewilderness
In 1908, a massive explosion occurred near the Tunguska River in Siberia, flattening thousands of square kilometers of forest and releasing energy equivalent to 185 Hiroshima atomic bombs.
The exact cause of the Tunguska Event remains unknown, with theories ranging from a meteoroid or comet impact to mere extraterrestrials. Meanwhile closer to home, and way closer to now brings A New World Disorder followed by another New World Disorder we quickly forget.
Just because our collective short-term memory includes just about nothing, doesn't mean nothing important has happened. For example, Greenland is melting, the moon is littered with golf balls, and a whale suspected of spying for Russia has been shot dead in Norway. You can’t make stuff like this up. Or rather, you can, but I’m not.
Did you ever hear the line, you’re not getting older, you’re getting smarter. What a crock. I’m too old to think certain things, do other things, NOT do still other things, wear certain things or NOT wear them. The Earth’s oldest fossil isn’t me, but I have gotten old and stayed old, which way beats the alternative.
I am older, way older than any operating system. When I began writing at Time Magazine, nothing was frontloaded, nothing was print-adjacent, no one scrubbed meta data. There was no metadata. This was before our post-fact present. Back then, we didn’t toggle between browser tags. Pages didn’t crash.
Back then, nothing was Uber shocking or genre-bending or post-apocalyptic. No one was trying to beat a bot. My back wasn’t out then. It was out and about. My brain was pretty good, too.
I write two quirky posts each week about things I care about and add a sprig of surprise. We live in a moment that is so baffling and extreme that any insight by someone who’s not selling anything (that would be me) might just be useful, sweet, sparkly, kind.
And now to wings and rings. In the last 20 years, the population of Monarch butterflies has plummeted by 90%. This planet needs Monarchs to pollinate. I believe in pollination and in Planethood. Plus Planted Planethood. P.S. As if things weren’t crazy enough, Saturn is losing its rings.
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As ever, Judith, your writing refreshes my mind; where else in the world can I learn about Greenland’s melting, a Russian spy whale, the the littering of our previously pristine moon by golf balls? Will too many
golf balls affect the moon’s orbital path?
Your creative imagination plus your pellucid prose make reading your twice-weekly posts a distinct pleasure.
Thanks as always Judith - it is a sign of your professional drive to be able to keep writing into the "void" of hoped for readership. Your belief in us readers is a powerful imaginative knack you have in your toolbelt - to believe that we are drawing value and that "sprig of surprise" that makes us keep coming back. Another sprig which might not have been part of your newspaper days are glimpses into who you are - this is the age of the memoir and readers (like me) want to see you as a whole person - like concern for your daughter and your truck and your brain. And your passion for writing.