A Sinéad-shaped hole in the world

Warning: This post includes mentions of abuse, suicide and abortion.

I must have been 14 or 15 the first time I heard Sinéad O’Connor’s voice, howling and crooning “Mandinka” from our television in the hours after school let out for the day. Her debut album was brave, challenging, feral. I wasn’t sure what to make of her, this bald-headed siren on the screen. But I never forgot her. 

It was through interviews with O’Connor that I learned that abortion was illegal in the Republic of Ireland. Pregnant people who wanted not to be pregnant had to travel, and I knew, even then, that wasn’t possible for many people. When I heard the bare grief in “Three Babies,” in 1990, I assumed that’s what the song was about. (I didn’t learn until much later that it was about O’Connor’s miscarriages instead.)

Even so, that’s what went through my head when I watched her shred her mother’s photograph of Pope John Paul II that night on Saturday Night Live. In that moment, my chest filled with admiration — at her courage, at her willingness to put the Catholic Church in its place. And I was confused when she was crucified for it. 

Many of us didn’t know then that the Catholic Church was lousy with sexually abusive clergy, and many others knew but thought hiding and denying it would keep it from being true. That was the real force behind O’Connor’s gesture, and even after the truth came out decades later, the world failed to adequately apologize to her. 

O’Connor’s music came in and out of my life at key moments, including in 1997, when she released the “Gospel Oak” EP about a year and a half after my mom’s death. The whole album is a healing balm, in particular the opening song, “This Is To Mother You.” At the time, it felt like an umbilicus nourishing me from beyond the veil. Now, I suspect she wrote it in part for herself, to heal from the abuse she experienced at the hands of her mother when O’Connor was a child. 

That abuse launched O’Connor into her life’s trajectory in so many ways; she went to live with her father at 13, but soon fell into risky behavior, including shoplifting, which landed her in a Magdalene asylum (laundry). Run by Catholic nuns, these institutions claimed to be “reform schools” at best, but functioned as prisons and labor farms for girls and women. 

O’Connor was imprisoned in the An Grianán Training Centre, in northern Dublin, for 18 months. “We didn’t see our families, we were locked in, cut off from life, deprived of a normal childhood,” she told the Irish Times in 1993. “We were told we were there because we were bad people. … “We were girls in there, not women, just children really. And the girls in there cried every day.” 

That experience contributed to her SNL protest, she said. “It wasn’t the only reason, but it was one of them.” The last of the Magdalene laundries in Ireland didn’t close until 1996. 

I wasn’t raised Catholic, or even especially Christian. The Irish ancestors I know by name were Protestant, but I know I have others who were Catholic. They found great comfort in their faith, I can feel it in my bones. But they were also hurt by its restrictions, particularly for women and girls; I feel that, too. That’s part of why O’Connor’s protest ripped straight through me. It made me recognize a kindred spirit in her, even before I knew we both endured PTSD and mental illness, and would become mothers to suicidal children. That fury that rose up from her life and DNA? It was in mine, too. 

Sinéad O’Connor was so much more than her trauma and pain. She was a stunning singer, a gutsy and honest songwriter, a woman daring enough to go about the world without her mask. The news of her death tore right through me, and through so many of us, as though we were no more than paper. 

She said and did what so many others were afraid to. She was punished for it, and I can’t help but think she might have enjoyed a longer life if she hadn’t been. Today, the world is a little less brave, a little less honest, without her. 

Edible plants of my childhood

I know it’s been a while since I shared anything here. I’ve been busy with book promotion, freelancing, family stuff, end-of-school-year obligations and health maintenance. It’s been A Time. 

But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the roots of my foraging knowledge, how I learned about edible plants and trees and herbs. It was sparked, in part, by a conversation with Cailleach’s Herbarium over on Instagram, after they posted about a kind of honeysuckle that we used to have growing on one of our fences in Forestville. I remember sitting by the fence for hours, picking the flowers and pulling the stigma out from the back of each blossom to snack on the drops of flower nectar that would come out. The yellower the flower, the sweeter the nectar. 

On that same fence, blackberry vines grew, bursting with fruit in the late summer. They were great just to eat out of hand, but often, enough ripened at one time to make a pie or blackberry jam. I once made a blackberry galette and brought it to San Francisco, where I interviewed Primus and fed them pie. (Some of them were suitably wary, and others dove right in). 

Nearby, we had a trio of purple-leafed plum trees, which we called cherry plum trees for the size and flavor of their fruits. The cherry plums are delicious if you can catch them at the peak of ripeness; a little early and they’re pretty tart. These trees often grow as street trees in San Francisco, and I’m always surprised to see that people avoid the fruit or say it doesn’t taste very good. 

In late winter, after the rainy season, the ground would become blanketed with oxalis (also known as common yellow wood sorrel). We called it “sour grass,” because the stems and flowers have a refreshing, lemony flavor. As a kid, I chewed on it randomly when the mood struck. As an adult, I’ve made soup and sorbet with it; the soup was good, if time-consuming to harvest the individual leaves; the sorbet never set properly but it tasted delicious, like a herby lemon sorbet. 

We also had more obvious sources of food, like the Gravenstein apple trees I would climb and sit in, eating still-green apples even when my mom swore they’d give me a stomachache. We had nectarine trees and a garden with corn, green beans, zucchini and cherry tomatoes (I was guilty of stealing cherry tomatoes right off the vine). 

I still have fond memories of grazing on cherry plums, blackberries, honeysuckles and sour grass, and wish I’d realized, back then, that the wild garlic and lilacs that grew in our yard were also edible. But the whole experience gave me a kind of confidence about foraging and eating wild plants that still thrills me today. 

My next book: "San Francisco’s Forgotten Cemeteries: A Buried History"

You're looking at Sen. David Broderick's monument (the pointy one in the far distance) in Laurel Hill Cemetery, near where the Trader Joe's on Masonic Avenue  is today. In the foreground is Calvary Cemetery, on the slopes of Lone Mountain. Credit: Lawrence & Houseworth, publisher, Library of Congress.

I’m excited to share that my next book, "San Francisco’s Forgotten Cemeteries: A Buried History,” will be out August 28, 2023, with The History Press. I’ve been working on this book for almost two years, digging through newspaper articles, history books, master’s theses, archaeological documents and photo archives to tell this story, and I’m excited to be able to share it with you all soon.

Here’s the info from my publisher: “San Francisco is famous for not having any cemeteries, but the claim isn’t exactly what it seems. In the early 20th Century, the city relocated more than 150,000 graves to the nearby town of Colma to make way for a rapidly growing population. But an estimated fifty to sixty thousand burials were quietly built over and forgotten, only to resurface every time a new building project began. The dead still lie beneath some of the city’s most cherished destinations, including the Legion of Honor, United Nations Plaza, the Asian Art Museum and the University of San Francisco. Join author Beth Winegarner as she maps the city's early burial grounds and brings back to life the dead who've been erased.”

Caroline Paul, author of the New York Times bestseller “The Gutsy Girl,” writes: “Beth Winegarner’s book traces the history of San Francisco through its forgotten cemeteries: their beginnings, their relocations, and the bodies that often remain. I thought I knew my beloved city but I wasn’t looking deep enough – literally. Unique and eye-opening, I won’t be able to walk these San Francisco streets without wondering what may still be buried just underfoot."

The book includes a foreword by Roberto Lovato, author of “Unforgetting,” in which he writes, “‘San Francisco’s Forgotten Cemeteries’ is an act of restorative justice.”

“San Francisco’s Forgotten Cemeteries” isn’t available for preorder yet, but you can add it to your “want to read” list on Goodreads if you follow this link. I’ll share more news about preorders, events and other news on this page for the book when I can.

What if the mushroom-infected people in “The Last of Us” are the good guys?

Hear me out. 

In the past several years, mushrooms’ mycelial networks have become demystified and celebrated, both as a key component of healthy forests and as an inspiration to human organizers and activists hoping to spark societal change. 

“Mycelium mushrooms have been one of my greatest teachers of trust,” says Nigerian healer Adaku Utah. “The mycelium organism is a dynamic root system of mushrooms that utilizes trust as a mechanism to build and sustain a vast, reciprocal, underground network that connects the roots of trees and plants and skillfully shares nutrients and resources to support the health of the entire ecosystem with which it moves. … The network process also fosters intergenerational relationships that welcome the myriad of ancient wisdom and connections that reside in older trees to benefit younger trees. These mushrooms affirm a commitment to building relationships of trust that encourage all life to bloom.”

[Warning: Spoilers for episodes one through four of “The Last of Us” beyond this point]

Right now, thanks to “The Last of Us,” the excellent video-game adaptation airing on HBO, many of us are feeling uneasy about mushrooms and their subterranean networks. The zombielike monsters in the show are infected by a strain of cordyceps mushroom that forms mycelial connections; brush up against one of these beings, and you alert dozens or hundreds nearby. And these suckers are fast. 

As I write this, I have not played the video game, and I don’t know how the story goes past episode four, “Please Hold My Hand.” But I have a theory: Although the infected humans are depicted as scary and ruthless (except, perhaps, for the one who tried to tenderly kiss Tess), I think the show is trying to tell us that these mycelial connections are superior to how many of the human characters are trying to operate.

In discussing the infected’s connections, podcaster Joanna Robinson points out, “There are no lies in something like that. You see something, I see it. You feel something, I feel it. There are no walls. That is a connected, thriving organism. By contrast, we get the hard shells that are around these various [human] characters because of their trauma.” 

Even before the cordyceps outbreak began in 2003, the United States government (along with those other parts of the world) was dipping its toes into fascism. After 9/11, the U.S. further militarized its police force and stepped up security measures, particularly in airports and government buildings. In the show, after the outbreak, many surviving humans are rounded up in military vehicles and taken to quarantine zones, where they can be punished with public hanging for trying to leave. Many others are exterminated. The QZs are policed by FEDRA guards with rifles. Newly infected people are euthanized and burned. 

In episode three, “Long, Long Time,” Frank accuses his partner, Bill, of mentally living “in a psycho bunker where 9/11 was an inside job and the government are all Nazis.” Bill correctly and hilariously shouts back, “THE GOVERNMENT ARE ALL NAZIS.”

He’s right, but his approach – for the first many years after the outbreak – is to hide out in a real bunker wallpapered with guns, in a neighborhood that he cordoned off with chain-link fences and barbed wire. It’s only when Frank falls into Bill’s trap that Bill realizes he needs connection and companionship more than he needs safety. Many years into their relationship, Bill says, “I was never afraid of anything until I met you,” but he says it with reverence. 

Some viewers felt that “Long, Long Time” was a distraction from the main story, but I think it was trying to tell us something about connection – the human connection that Frank and Bill found in unlikely times, and the connection Joel fights so hard to avoid, even with Tess, who was his romantic companion for many years. Even with Ellie who, he tells her, is no more than cargo.

“The Last of Us” offers glimpses of mycelia-like networks among humans, including the resistance group known as the Fireflies, and the Kansas City community introduced in episode four, but they are few and far between. And even these clusters are walled off, protecting their own against outsiders. The infected humans, by contrast, welcome all comers. Their network is much more democratic, much less hierarchical. 

Patrick Somerville, a writer for “Station Eleven,” another HBO adaptation that takes place in a post-outbreak future, commented on these human organisms on a recent podcast with Robinson and Mallory Rubin. “The people who survive in [‘The Last of Us’] are the people who do away with vertical power structures. And instead don’t have to be the alpha. They’re members of a community, together.”

He reflects this back to the community design in “Station Eleven,” which centers on a traveling theater troupe with a horizontal power structure. “No one has a trump card. You communicate. You humanize each other, remember how everyone’s feeling, and you solve the problem together. Group genius is bigger than individual genius.” 

What Somerville is describing is mycelial network. A true community of equals.

We humans, we’ve been taught that we are superior to animal and plant kingdoms, despite the brilliant ways in which hives of bees, colonies of ants or networks of fungi communicate and work together without conflict or friction. That’s part of where the fear comes in, watching a show like “The Last of Us.” We fear the infected, in part, because they would strip us away from what makes us individual, what makes us separate. 

But, to quote from “Station Eleven,” “To the monsters, we’re the monsters.”

I’m going to be watching “The Last of Us” with compassion and curiosity toward the infected. How about you?

11 books I'm excited to read in 2023

Often, I like to do a recap of what I’ve read and watched over the course of the year, or I try to pick some of my favorites. This year, I find myself more excited by what’s on the horizon, particularly in terms of books. 

For one thing, I’ll have a book of my own coming out in the fall of 2023, about San Francisco’s cemeteries and just how many were left behind in the great relocation to Colma. 

And for another, many of my friends and acquaintances have new books arriving in 2023. In the list below, several of the authors are people I have some connection with, and I’m excited and proud to see these books birthed into the world. It’s by no means a complete list, just some things I’ve been recommending a lot lately.

If you’d like, you can see: 

• What books I read in 2022

• What movies I watched in 2022 (the first row, plus the second row to “The Conjuring”)

• (I watched a lot of TV in 2022, but my tracker doesn’t have a way to show you which programs they were! Still, you can check out my profile here.)

11 books I'm excited to read in 2023:

1. "Ashes and Stones" by Allyson Shaw: “‘Ashes and Stones’ is a moving and personal journey, along rugged coasts and through remote villages and modern cities, in search of the traces of those accused of witchcraft in seventeenth-century Scotland.” (January)

2. “‘You Just Need to Lose Weight' And 19 Other Myths About Fat People," Aubrey Gordon: “In ‘You Just Need to Lose Weight,’ Aubrey Gordon equips readers with the facts and figures to reframe myths about fatness in order to dismantle the anti-fat bias ingrained in how we think about and treat fat people.” (January)

3. "Hood Vacations," MJ Jones: “Michal “MJ” Jones’ debut ‘Hood Vacations’ is a rhythmic & quiet rumbling—an unflinching recollection of Blackness, queerness, gender, and violence through lenses of family lineage and confessional narrative.” (January)

4. "Don't Fear the Reaper," Stephen Graham Jones: “Four years after her tumultuous senior year, Jade Daniels is released from prison right before Christmas when her conviction is overturned. But life beyond bars takes a dangerous turn as soon as she returns to Proofrock. Convicted serial killer Dark Mill South, seeking revenge for thirty-eight Dakota men hanged in 1862, escapes from his prison transfer due to a blizzard, just outside of Proofrock, Idaho.” (February)

5. "Womb: The Inside Story of Where We All Began" by Leah Hazard: “​​A groundbreaking, triumphant investigation of the uterus—from birth to death, in sickness and in health, throughout history and into our possible future—from midwife and acclaimed writer Leah Hazard.” (March)

6. “Enchantment,” Katherine May: “Craving a different path, May begins to explore the restorative properties of the natural world—from a pebble in the hand to the humbling effects of the sea, the pleasure of the ground beneath her bare feet to the magic of a moon shadow. Through deliberate attention and ritual, she finds nourishment and a more hopeful relationship to the world around her.” (March)

7. “Cacophony of Bone,” Kerri ni Dochartaigh: “Cacophony of Bone maps the circle of a year—a journey from one place to another, field notes of a life—from one winter, to the next. It is a telling of a changed life, in a changed world—and it is about all that does not change. All that which simply keeps on—living and breathing, nesting and dying—in spite of it all. When the pandemic came time seemed to shapeshift, so this is also a book about time. It is, too, a book about home, and what that can mean.” (April)

8. "Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea," Rita Chang-Eppig: “For readers of ‘Outlawed,’ ‘Piranesi,’ and ‘The Night Tiger,’ a riveting, roaring adventure novel about a legendary Chinese pirate queen, her fight to save her fleet from the forces allied against them, and the dangerous price of power.” (June)

9. “All the Right Notes,” Dominic Lim: “Quito Cruz might be a genius piano player and composer in New York City now but it doesn’t mean that he’s any closer to his Broadway dream. Although Quito knows what the problem is. Or rather who. Because ever since that night in college—with pretty-boy jock Emmett Aoki—his inspiration has been completely MIA. Now Quito’s dad wants him to put on a charity performance in his hometown. And there’s one hella big string attached: convince Emmett—now one of Hollywood’s hottest celebrities—to perform.” (June)

10. “I Would Meet You Anywhere,” Susan Ito: A memoir, told through connected essays, about growing up as a biracial (Japanese and European) adoptee. (Fall)

11. “Right Hand,” Natalie Zina Walschots: The sequel to “Hench:” “A sharp, witty, modern debut, ‘Hench’ explores the individual cost of justice through a fascinating mix of Millennial office politics, heroism measured through data science, body horror, and a profound misunderstanding of quantum mechanics.” (Fall)

And, if you’d like to see everything that’s currently on my “to-read” list, you can view that here.

Dreaming of an accessible world

In their newest book, “The Future Is Disabled,” Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha asks readers to dream up what a fully accessible world would look like for us. I’ve been thinking about that a lot in the weeks since I read this fantastic book, but have also found myself reluctant to write it all down. First off, it’s a LOT. And there are things that would make the world more accessible for me but would make it less accessible for some people. And I’ve had a lifetime of people calling me “high maintenance,” or saying I’m asking for too much. When I think about making a list like this, my stomach clenches and hurts. But I’m going to try it anyway. 

Big picture: 

• End fat-shaming/fatphobia. 

• End misogyny and all of its offshoots (transphobia, homophobia). 

• End ableism and disableism.

• End racism. (We all suffer because of it!)

• Make it possible to work part-time and earn enough money to be self-sufficient. Or establish universal basic income that’s enough to live on.

• Make wide-ranging medical care, both physical and mental health care, as well as dental and vision care, free to the public. 

• Make sure doctors have time to listen to patients, and to respect their patients’ perspectives. 

• Make it possible for people to live in rural/natural environments but still get all their needs met. 

• Efficient, comprehensive, low-cost public transportation. 

Details: 

• Make almost every environment quiet enough that you can hear a conversation at normal volume, or the sound of a large bird’s wings flapping as it passes overhead. (There could be exceptions for immersive experiences, like concerts, and for emergency vehicles).

• Create lots and lots of places to sit down, ideally with back support. Along sidewalks, on park and hiking trails, on beaches. 

• Lots of opportunities for shade/shelter. At bus stops, along sidewalks, in parks and so on. 

• Make massage therapy cheap, free, or covered by insurance. (But make sure practitioners are paid well.)

• No heavy colognes, perfumes or other scents, especially in enclosed spaces (I’m looking at you, Uber and Lyft) or when trying on clothes. 

• Unscented soap in public bathrooms.

• Public bathrooms would have towels for drying hands, or ultra-quiet air dryers. 

• No beeping, especially vehicles when they’re backing up (gentler noises are OK). 

• One sound at a time. This has been a problem for me in a variety of spaces, but I’m especially thinking of video calls, where someone is speaking while there’s music or clapping or something at the same time.

• Good ventilation. I’ve been in so many indoor spaces in the pandemic where windows were closed and air filters were turned off. 

• Fewer reflective surfaces, especially outdoors. (I am often in pain or can’t see outdoors because of sunlight reflecting off windows or cars.)

• No bright LED or fluorescent lighting, unless it can be filtered/frosted in some way or turned off. 

• Make window shades or curtains available for bright, sunny windows and skylights. 

• Warn theater/concert patrons about bright and/or strobing lights before they purchase tickets. 

• Elevators in every building that has multiple stories.

• All stores: Make it very easy for customers to find what they’re looking for. Visual clutter and bad signage make this difficult. Also, chain stores should all be laid out the same way to make it easier for customers to orient themselves. 

• Restaurants/cafes/etc: Make your ingredients lists readily available for customers with food sensitivities/allergies. 

• Chairs/sitting areas would fit people with a wide range of hip sizes. None of these narrow chairs with arm rests that bruise my hips and thighs. Ow. 

• No walkie-talkies or overhead announcement systems in stores (I’m looking at you, Target, Home Depot, Walgreens, etc). 

• Make sure lines move quickly, or that there are ways for people to sit down if lines are long and slow. 

• Give people options for how they want to be contacted (phone, email, text, etc.) and honor those wishes. 

• Allow people to opt out of group activities/icebreakers that involve speaking aloud, or being physical (dancing, e.g.) in front of others.

• Provide accurate closed captioning on everything. TikTok, Instagram, movies, TV, everything. 

• Provide accurate transcripts for podcasts/radio shows/TV/movies/YouTube etc. 

• Invite me to events at least a month in advance, and then remind me a few days beforehand. 

This is by no means complete, and I might come back and add to it as I think of more. 

Leah’s book also got me thinking about what might be on my access rider for public speaking and events, both online and in person, but I haven’t put anything together yet. For those interested, you can read Leah’s accessibility rider for events here, and fellow chronically ill writer/performer Johanna Hedva’s access rider here. 

Real-life plant medicine in a video game?!

Earlier this year, my partner started playing “The Long Dark,” a post-apocalyptic survival game set in the Canadian Arctic. I began watching him play, and was quickly drawn in by how beautiful and thoughtful the game is.

I’m easily frustrated and stressed out by video games; I don’t like it when there’s a short time limit or you’re constantly in danger.  “The Long Dark,” at least in “story” mode, mostly isn’t like that. You have all the time you need to find what you’re looking for or get where you’re doing, as long as you can stay warm and reasonably well-fed and hydrated. The snowy, mountainous landscapes are gorgeous, and even the most run-down shacks where you might spend the night feel cozy. (Okay, possibly not the ones that have frozen corpses in them.) There are occasional attacks by wolves, moose and other animals, but the story is the main thing. 

One aspect that drew me in was the use of real-world plant medicine. Oh, sure, the game warns you not to take anything in it as real survival advice, and some of the healing properties of the plants are beyond what their real-world counterparts can do. But with a little additional research, these plants can actually help us heal from common ailments and injuries.

Rose hips

Rose hips are a well-known and long-used plant medicine, both for their anti-inflammatory qualities as well as the fact that they’re rich in Vitamin C. The interior seeds are covered with irritating hairs, and should be scooped out before eating or cooking with rose hips. 

In “The Long Dark,” rose hips (like most of the other plants in this game) also have to be prepared before using, and can be made into a tea that helps with pain, burns or broken ribs. I’m not sure if real-life rose hips can do any of those, except perhaps pain relief, but they can keep you from getting scurvy from your mostly-meat diet.

Reishi mushrooms

Researchers are looking into a variety of mushrooms for their potential healing benefits, and reishi is no exception. Like many mushrooms, they can help boost our immune systems and help us fight off viruses, infections and possibly even cancer. In “The Long Dark,” they function more like antibiotics, helping you recover from food poisoning, infections, dysentery and intestinal parasites. Hmm. 

Birch bark

Birch and willow trees contain high levels of salicylates, which make up the principal anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving medicine in aspirin. (Willow’s latin name is salix.) Before medicinal companies began synthesizing aspirin, people the world over used birch and willow for pain relief. In “The Long Dark,” birch bark is pretty rare, and its main benefit is helping to “restore condition” by 5 percent, a perplexing and vague outcome. 

Old man’s beard

Old man’s beard is a kind of long, stringy lichen in the usnea family, often found dangling from trees (Spanish moss is in the same family). All lichens have antibiotic and antimicrobial properties and have been used for millennia to treat wounds and infections. In “The Long Dark,” the function of this plant matches closely with real-world uses; your character turns it into bandages that reduce the risk of wounds becoming infected. 

(If you’d like to see me preparing some usnea oil and other herbal items, check out my latest video on YouTube.) 

Cattails

If you’ve read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s popular book “Braiding Sweetgrass,” you may recall her reverence for the cattail plant. On Facebook, she writes of its many, many uses: “Food from the roots, vegetable from the stalk, pollen for flour, edible flower stalks, seeds for tinder or diapers, leaves for cordage and mats and baskets, torches from seed heads, aloe-like medicine from the goo which looks slimy but feels great on bug bites … and more.” For this reason, I was especially excited to see cattails in “The Long Dark,” even if their usefulness is diminished. You can eat the stalks for a small amount of nourishment, and use the heads for tinder. 

Unfortunately, the final chapter of “The Long Dark” isn’t out yet, so we won’t know how it ends until late 2023, and that’s if the ending comes out on schedule. Have you played it? What did you think?

Recent things I can't stop talking about

“Interview with the Vampire”

Last weekend, I finished season 1 of the new “Interview with the Vampire” series on AMC+ (I know it hasn’t aired on cable yet, so I’ll try to avoid spoilers), and it has no right being as good as it is. I read Anne Rice’s first two vampire novels when I was in my teens, and they mattered a lot to me (they still do). And, much as I love director Neil Jordan, the 1994 film adaptation disappointed me, largely because of the casting; Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas felt hideously wrong for their roles. 

This time, I couldn’t be happier with the casting. And, although the writers made substantial changes to the setting (Jazz Age New Orleans vs. 18th century), the racial dynamics of the main characters (both Louis and Claudia are Black), and the relationship between Louis and Lestat (they are romantic partners, an idea hinted at in the text but never openly depicted before), all of those changes are for the better. It’s beautiful, smart and sexy. 

I also just reread probably my favorite Anne Rice novel, “The Witching Hour,” to prepare for AMC’s adaptation, which launches in January. I’m anxious about this one; the trailer makes it look substantially different from the book, and they somehow haven’t cast anyone for a main character, Michael Curry. And I wish they’d cast Mackenzie Davis as Rowan. And for Michael? Maybe Henry Cavill or Ian Somerhalder (the latter of whom is from Louisiana). 

“Blood Upon the Snow”

It’s been almost four years since Hozier released his last album, “Wasteland, Baby.” He’s got another one cooking, but he surprised us this week by unveiling “Blood Upon the Snow,” a collab with composer Bear McCreary for the new “God of War: Ragnarok” game. Regular readers know that I fell hard for Hozier’s music last year. I discovered McCreary through his soundtrack for the Amazon “Rings of Power” series; his music is a key component, a character in its own right. And this new song brings us the best of both of them.

Hozier fans often joke that he’s some kind of fae creature, calling him Forest King or Forest Daddy. In part, this is because of how deeply his lyrics feel rooted in nature and the otherworld. As the name suggests, “Blood Upon the Snow” falls right in line with those ideas. It’s sung from the perspective of someone who has spent a lifetime surviving in nature, beautiful but harsh. There are moments where it sounds like a mournful ghazal, but the music also evokes Celtic folk and Nordic elements, including what I believe is McCreary playing a hurdy gurdy. There’s also what feels like a Russian men’s chorus. It’s sublime.

Hozier also recently released “Swan Upon Leda,” a song about women’s bodily autonomy through the ages. It’s the first taste of his next album, “Unreal Unearth,” release date yet unknown. In one verse he describes a grandmother smuggling birth control pills across the Northern Irish border, which felt of a piece with some of my other recent cultural touchstones: the final season of “Derry Girls,” and “Thin Places,” by Kerri ní Dochartaigh, about how she survived the trauma of growing up in Derry during the Troubles. Many of my ancestors came from Ireland, including Northern Ireland, in and around Derry, and I’m drawn to art that connects me to those places.

“Enter the Day”

Patrick Wolf, one of my longtime favorite musicians, dear to my heart, is finally unearthing new music for the first time in more than a decade. Today he released “Enter the Day,” a hopeful ballad about emerging from difficult times to land in the places we belong. It touches on the death of his mother as well as the landscapes of eastern Britain, along the North Sea, where he now lives. 

As with Hozier, nature is a constant companion in Wolf’s work, particularly the geography of Cornwall and other coastal climes. So much so that I could hear his music in my head when I read, this year, Katharine May’s “The Electricity of Every Living Thing.” In it, she comes to terms with her autistic mind while walking the 630-mile South West Coast Path through Devon and Cornwall. I recommended the book to Wolf a few months ago; I have been a member of his Patreon this year, where he has answered listener questions, reminisced on old photos and songs, and played monthly live concerts from his home by the sea. He sang a capella version of “Enter the Day” for us recently, and one line stuck with me more than any other: “Deep in your disorder is a sleeping symmetry.” Gorgeous. 

Alcest live at Hellfest 

I love Alcest, the French black metal/shoegaze band that sings about otherworldly encounters. I especially love seeing them live, but they haven’t come through San Francisco in several years, and live music hasn’t felt safe in Covid times anyway. They just released their live set from this year’s Hellfest, performed in June in Clisson. Seeing them again is emotional, cathartic, and transcendent. 

Lacuna Coil, “Comalies XX”

Italian metal band Lacuna Coil recently re-recorded their landmark album “Comalies.” The original is a forever classic, but the new version is fresh and alive. I love the harder riffs, and the fact that Andrea Ferro is now leaning all the way into harsh vocals. As much as I love the 2002 album, I also associate it with someone who turned out to be horribly toxic. I’m grateful for this chance to love it all over again.

'Places only hold us; they only let us in.'

I’ve just finished reading Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s memoir “Thin Places” and I can’t stop thinking about how she describes being “held” by certain places in nature. 

Her book is partly about the trauma and PTSD she suffered as a result of growing up in Derry during the Troubles, and how those experiences made it impossible for her to feel safe in most places. And it’s about how she discovered áiteanna tanaí, caol áit – “thin places” – in the landscape (which Duolingo has recently taught me is tírdhreach in Irish), where the distance between the earthly world and the world of spirit is shrunk to nothing. “They are places that make us feel something larger than ourselves, as though we are held in a place between worlds,” she writes. 

“The natural world in the wilderness on both sides of that unseen border [between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland] dragged me back to the land of the living, and it held me there,” ní Dochartaigh writes. She describes the Atlantic as her favorite body of water, “the one that held me over the last three years.” 

I know this feeling, this sense of belonging and deep safety in certain places, when it’s rare for me to feel that way among people or in urban environments. In wild spaces the land practically vibrates with energy, often a welcoming one. But I’m rarely able to visit the places that feel that way to me, and I struggle to find similar ones in the middle of my densely packed urban city. We have beautiful parks, both ones landscaped by human hands and others left to their own devices, but it’s difficult to plug into them while a steady stream of hikers, children and dogs pass by. 

"Places do not heal us; they do not take the suffering we have known and bury it in their bellies. Places do not gather the broken parts of us up and stitch them back together. Places do not make the light shine on crow-black nights. Places do not take away our sorrow; they do not unearth the words buried under frozen bog-land; they do not call the birds back when they have been long gone from our sky,” ní Dochartaigh writes. “Places do not heal us. Places only hold us; they only let us in. Places only hold us close enough that we can finally see ourselves reflected back."

Casting about last night for something soothing, I turned to a recording of Patrick Wolf performing two songs for his Patreon supporters earlier this year: “Penzance,” a B-side from years ago, written about a town near the southern tip of England, followed by a cover of “Ari’s Song” by Nico. The recording is just piano, a loop of ethereal violin, and Patrick’s clear, steady voice. Listening to it felt like coming home. Like being held. 

Like ní Dochartaigh, Patrick Wolf often writes about the wild places that have held him, places where he saw himself reflected back. They’re frequently the landscapes of the southwestern UK: Cornwall, Penzance, Godrevy Point, Land’s End, Teignmouth. Places that felt enchanted, áiteanna tanaí, when I visited them, places captured gorgeously in Katherine May’s book about circumnavigating the southwest of England and coming to terms with her autistic mind, “The Electricity of Every Living Thing.” 

“There were devils in the winds that night, walking fire among the hills,” Wolf sings. “And many voices called me out to the cliffs, but you held me safe. You wrestled me still.” And then, in “Ari’s Song,” “Sail away, my little boy. Let the rain wash away your cloudy days. Sail away into a dream. Let the wind send you a fantasy of the ancient silver sea.” Nico was singing to her son; Wolf sounds like he’s singing to his younger self. 

And, perhaps, to my younger self, too. I grew up in rural northern California, with regular visits to places like the Sonoma Coast and Armstrong Redwoods, and even the feral places near my home. The trees that grew tart Gravenstein apples and the tall silver birches that swayed in the breeze held me. The woodpile, that endless treasure trove of insects, spiders and reptiles, kept me open and curious. The gate to the field behind my house, and the ring of willows beyond it, were a wardrobe to Narnia. As I got older, music began to offer new worlds I could inhabit, in-between places where I could be held and seen just as I am. Music and nature have been my steadfast companions. 

I’m grateful for new music, or new spins on older music, from some of my favorites, like Patrick Wolf and Hozier, who released his gorgeous new song “Swan Upon Leda” Friday. (Like ní Dochartaigh, it, too, crosses that unseen Irish border in one verse.) Their songs are like cozy forts I can curl up inside, escape hatches where I can let my mask slip. But even songs about wild places, about áiteanna tanaí, are no substitute for the real thing. I feel the pull so strongly, but I don’t know where to go. I hope an answer comes soon.

Discovering my "archaic DNA" matches

I recently discovered that GEDmatch allows you to match your DNA against samples from different “archaic” DNA finds, such as Ötzi or the Kennewick man. I thought it would be fun to try it and see what came up.

Before I talk about my results, let me first explain something about how DNA is measured. Bear with me. 

There’s a unit of measure, the centimorgan*, that you may have heard if you’ve had your DNA analyzed by 23andMe, Ancestry or another service. According to Wikipedia, “One centimorgan corresponds to about 1 million base pairs in humans on average. The relationship is only rough, as the physical chromosomal distance corresponding to one centimorgan varies from place to place in the genome, and also varies between men and women since recombination during gamete formation in females is significantly more frequent than in males. Kong et al. calculated that the female genome is 4460 cM long, while the male genome is only 2590 cM long.” 

I know that’s dense, but it’s helpful to understand, because services like 23andMe and GEDmatch figure out who you’re related to based on how much your DNA overlaps with others, and how long your matching segments are. For example, I share 50% of my DNA with my father, across 23 segments (the 23 chromosomes I inherited from him). In total, our shared segments are 3720cM long. By comparison, I share 10% of my DNA with one of my paternal cousins. She and I share 24 segments of DNA, but those shared segments total just 760cM. 

As relations grow more distant, the number of shared segments – and, more significantly, the length of those segments – goes way down. This can be distance across the population (say, how closely related I might  be to Kevin Bacon), or across time (how closely related I am to my 6th great-grandfather, Johannes Harbard Winegardner, who was born in Germany in 1718, immigrated to thee U.S. in 1752 and died in Virginia in 1779). 

Any match below about 10 cM is dubious (Ancestry uses 8cM), less so if you can trace your and your match’s family tree back to a common ancestor. So the fact that GEDmatch begins matching your DNA against archaic samples at a threshold of .5cM should raise some eyebrows. But these matches allegedly don’t indicate direct lineage – a match with Ötzi doesn’t mean he’s your direct ancestor. Instead, it may just be chance, or it may indicate common migration patterns, meaning your ancestors lived in the same place, at roughly the same time, as these people whose remains we’ve sampled millennia later. 

When I looked at my “Archaic DNA” matches at .5 cM, I had lots and lots of matches. Knowing they were dubious, I slowly increased the threshold until I still had some matches with several matching segments, and picked out several of those, the ones with the most overlaps, to research further. Here’s what I found, from oldest to most recent. 

1. Ust-Ishim, Siberia, 45,000 years ago

This DNA comes from a femur found in western Siberia, and is the oldest genome for homo sapiens on record. It belonged to a male hunter-gatherer who likely descended from a group who left Africa more than 50,000 years ago to populate other regions, but later went extinct. About 2 percent of his genome came from Neanderthals. You can see an image of the femur here.

Bichon man’s skull. Picture by Y. André / Laténium. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

2. Bichon, Switzerland, 13,700 years ago

This DNA comes from the skull of a man found in the Grotte du Bichon, a cave in the Jura Mountains on the French-Swiss border. I love all the detail on this one. His bones were found “intermingled with the bones of a female brown bear, nine flint arrowheads and traces of charcoal.” Evidence suggests that the bear was wounded by arrows and retreated into the cave. The man followed, and made a fire to fumigate the bear from the cave, but was killed by the dying animal. 

He belonged to the Western European hunter-gatherer lineage, based on comparisons to other fossils from the European mesolithic period. He was about 5-foot-five, 130 pounds, muscular, probably right handed, and had a mostly meat-based diet. 

3. Kotias, Georgia, 9,700 years ago

This DNA comes from a man who was buried in Kotias Klde cave in the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia. He was one of a previously unknown group of hunter-gatherers in the Caucasus, and their DNA survives in many of today’s Europeans. He shares some DNA with the later Yamnaya culture across Europe, a semi-nomadic people known for burying their dead in pits with stelae and animal offerings, and often covered in ochre. You can see the Kotias skeleton here. 

4. Loschbour, Luxembourg, 8,000 years ago 

This man’s skeleton was found in 1835 under a rock shelter in Mullerthal, in eastern Luxembourg. He was part of European hunter-gatherer culture, and represented a transition between the dark skin of our African forebears and the light skin of many modern Europeans. His DNA reveals an “intermediate” skin tone, brown or black hair, and probably blue eyes. He was 5-foot-3, about 130 pounds, and was lactose-intolerant. He died in his mid-30s. Flint tools were found with his remains, and the cremated remains of another person, probably an adult woman, were found nearby. Her bones showed signs of scraping, suggesting that her bones were defleshed before burning. You can see the man’s skeleton here. 

5. Stuttgart, Germany, 7,000 years ago

This DNA belonged to a person who was part of the Linearbandkeramik (Linear Pottery Ceramic) culture that was prominent in Germany during the Neolithic period. This culture – and this individual – were farmers, growing emmer and einkorn wheat, crab apples, peas, lentils, flax, poppies and barley. They raised some animals, including cows and sheep, and lived in small villages of longhouses near waterways. 

Skull of a Neolithic woman found in Ballynahatty, Northern Ireland.

6. Ballynahatty, Northern Ireland, 5,200 years ago

This DNA comes from the remains of a Neolithic woman found in a tomb chamber in Ballynahatty, near Belfast, in Northern Ireland. Her genes are similar to modern people from Spain and Sardinia, but her ancestors likely came to Europe from the Middle East. She was lactose-intolerant and carried a genetic variant for hemochromatosis, which can cause excessive iron retention. 

7. Rathlin Island, Northern Ireland, 4,000 years ago

This DNA comes from one of two male skeletons found on Rathlin Island, just north off the coast of Northern Ireland. Unlike the woman found in Ballynahatty, these Bronze Age men could digest milk and their genetics are more aligned with modern Irish, Scottish and Welsh peoples. A third of their DNA came from ancient cultures who lived in the Pontic Steppe, a region now divided between Russia and Ukraine. Both men carried a variant for hemochromatosis, but a different one from the Ballynahatty woman. Ireland’s modern population has one of the highest frequencies of lactase persistence, as well as hemochromatosis. I’m partly Irish – 4%, according to Ancestry, and 79% British and Irish, according to 23andMe – and carry both of these variants.

If nothing else, this exploration has allowed me to learn more about some early DNA finds, as well as what they mean for the migration patterns of my ancestors before they turned into the Northwestern European residents I can trace through genealogical records. It’s fascinating, and as always, I’m tempted to visit some of these places to see what it feels like to stand on the same ground.

*Named after American biologist and geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan, born in 1866, part of a line of Southern plantation owners and enslavers on his father's side. He was a nephew of Confederate General John Hunt Morgan.

Top photo: Linearbandkeramik Culture farmhouse, photographed by Hans Splinter. (CC BY-ND 2.0)