Category Archives: Moon Colonization

In a new collection of poetry, Open Zero, Pakistani-American poet Sophia Naz explores her grief over the loss of her Glen Ellen, California, home.

In 2017, dangerous wildfires raged across California, burning forests, businesses, and houses, including the one where Naz lived with her husband and son.

Yale Climate Connections talked with Naz about how she uses poetry to process her personal tragedy and to reflect on the consequences of climate change.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Yale Climate Connections: Tell me a little bit about your home.

Sophia Naz: Glen Ellen is a tiny little village. Its nestled in the beautiful valley called the Valley of the Moon. Its also part of the wine country of California. And we fell in love with this house because it was kind of a tree house. All the trees were growing all around it, and some of them were growing through its decks, so we were attracted to it. And so we bought this place in 2010 and then in 2017 is when the wildfires struck.

YCC: Can you tell me what happened when the fires came through?

Naz: I usually work at night, and I had built a little office cabin across from the main house where I was sitting and working. And around 10 oclock at night, when I opened the sliding glass doors, there was a very strong smell of smoke in the air. But I couldnt see any smoke. And I checked my phone to see whats going on, but there was no alert. Sometimes there are wildfires, but theyre far away, and the smoke comes from far away. So in the absence of an alert, I didnt know what to do, so I didnt do anything. I went to bed, but I couldnt really sleep, felt a bit restless.

And then around 2 oclock in the morning, the fire truck came up our lane with the megaphone saying, The fires coming at your home, and you need to leave. You need to evacuate right now. So I woke up our son, whos 14. And then we piled into the car and we left, and that was the last time I saw my home.

YCC: When you went back, was there anything left?

Naz: No, not of the house. I work as a healer. I work in traditional medicine from India. So we had renovated our old barn into a wellness center. So that was untouched by the fire. And we had a yurt on the lower part of our property. That had not been burned. And the swimming pool was there. But that was all that was left.

We did decide to, out of sheer necessity because our workplace was not burnt, to move back. And we bought a trailer. And living in the destroyed landscape was really instructive as well. Because then you realize that its not just your home thats been destroyed, its the home of all the living beings. The loss of one life form ripples out and destroys the habitat of all the other life forms.

Left: Nazs home in Glen Ellen, California, before it was destroyed in a 2017 wildfire. Right: The aftermath. (Photos: Courtesy of Sophia Naz)

YCC: Did what you were seeing around you after you moved back begin to work its way into your poetry?

Naz: Absolutely. One part of my book Open Zero is about the everyday ground realities of loss, the changed landscape the burned redwoods, the destroyed manzanitas, all of the ecology that has been so devastated. And in a way, Open Zero, part of it refers to Im living on ground zero of the loss.

YCC: Can you talk about the emotions you began wrestling with after the fire?

Naz: The immediate emotion that one feels is grief, and then the grief gives way to the feeling of loss. And those two are not exactly the same things, because grief is an immediate emotion, and loss a larger perception.

So losing my home to the wildfires, it crystallized the linkages between topics that I had written about previously as separate things like geography, history, politics, migration, racism, feminism, power structures. When you lose your home, it gives you this immediacy, an urgency, and it broadens your perspective.

These things are inextricably linked, because without the colonization of North America, and without the view of the Earth as simply a resource to be plundered and then the idea that you simply needed to remove the obstacles to that plundering, that is, the Native inhabitants without this world view, and without the enormous wealth that white settler colonialism accumulated, you wont have the current dispensation, right? So all of these things are inextricably linked.

YCC: Was writing Open Zero cathartic?

Naz: Of course. Writing is an absolute cathartic process. [Another writer] has said that writing is a way to avenge the loss. Because there are many ways in which one can avenge loss. Some people do it by singing, some people do it by painting. But if youre a writer, one of the most potent means of doing it is through writing, because it is through writing that one can recreate, as if conjuring out of thin air, a landscape that no longer exists. Because it does exist in your mind. And you can bring what exists in your mind, in your memory, and you can put it down on paper and resurrect it again in a way.

Listen: Poet Sophia Naz grieves after a wildfire took her home

YCC: Its been a few years since the fire. Has the landscape recovered?

Naz: In my home, there were 32 large trees. Im talking trees that were over 100 years old. This is not something that can be replaced and certainly will not be replaced in my lifetime. And that is just the devastating truth about climate change, the climate crisis. Behind me, as I speak, is a hillock or mound of earth where my previous house stood. The earth was rendered too unstable to build where it was built before. So we built slightly below it. So as a result, I see this pile of earth, rubble, every day. Theres a few scattered pieces of scrub growing on it, but its a perverse kind of thing. Its only partially covered by the scrub and a few grasses, but it stubbornly remains as a reminder of everything that has gone.

YCC: And knowing that youre still in the midst of this drought, and that climate change is only likely to bring more severe droughts and fires, you still made the choice to stay there. What is it like living there now?

Naz: Honestly, I dont know how long I will be able to sustain this choice, because it is getting more and more worrisome by the day, really. For now, were here and I do love being here, even though its traumatic.

Weve evacuated twice since the initial fire, and its been absolutely terrifying. There is definitely PTSD in in my life at the moment. And honestly, I do think about moving away, because Im not sure that Ill be able to sustain it literally, physically, and psychologically. It continues to take a toll on me, because every time theres a fire alarm, you can imagine what happens to my heartbeat. Its a palpable reality.

It would be a very strange thing to say that loss is a gift. But I think the gift is the realization that every day of your life is enormously precious. And in a way, its all that you have. All that you will ever know is right this minute. And as a poet, that is an enormous gift, because it changes the way that you view everything around you, and your own being, and all your relationships with the environment, with people.

YCC: Is there a poem from your book that youd be willing to share?

Naz: This poem is called After, Math.

Go here to see the original:
A conversation with a poet whose home burned to the ground - Yale Climate Connections

In Australia: European settlement

South Wales in 1786, and colonization began early in 1788. The motives for this move have become a matter of some controversy. The traditional view is that Britain thereby sought to relieve the pressure upon its prisonsa pressure intensified by the loss of its American colonies, which until that timen

establishment of the first permanent European settlement on the continent of Australia. On January 26, 1788, Arthur Phillip, who had sailed into what is now Sydney Cove with a shipload of convicts, hoisted the British flag at the site. In the early 1800s the date, called Foundation Day, was celebratedn

South Wales in 1786, and colonization began early in 1788. The motives for this move have become a matter of some controversy. The traditional view is that Britain thereby sought to relieve the pressure upon its prisonsa pressure intensified by the loss of its American colonies, which until that time

establishment of the first permanent European settlement on the continent of Australia. On January 26, 1788, Arthur Phillip, who had sailed into what is now Sydney Cove with a shipload of convicts, hoisted the British flag at the site. In the early 1800s the date, called Foundation Day, was celebrated

Read the rest here:
colonization of Australia | Britannica

NASA's Artemis Project has some big plans:it's going to land the first woman and first person of color on the moon by 2024. The Artemis crew would also be the first humans to set foot on the moon in over 52 years. The project is also going to "explore more of the lunar surface than ever before,"according to the space agency. Those plans, however grand, are just the tip of the iceberg. One of the main goals of Artemis involves building a permanent base on the moon. That base, along with a so-called gateway in lunar orbit, will allow robots, astronauts, and scientists to "explore more and conduct more science than ever before,"NASA explains.

The eventual goal is to use what NASA and the agencies it is working with learn on the moon to propel humanity to Mars. There is even talk of deep-space exploration for the benefit of humankind. However, permanent bases need power and NASA has decided nuclear fission is the best way to provide that energy. The fact it will be based in space and on the moon does present unique challenges. Weight is a major concern when blasting anything into space, the moon itself may be difficult to resupply, and power may be needed in areas where things like sunlight can't be relied on. To help meet these challenges, companies were invited to pitch ideas to the space agency. Now three companies have been told they can move forward with their designs.

Go here to read the rest:
NASA Reveals Three Design Concepts For Nuclear Power On The Moon - SlashGear

An artist's rendering of NuScale Power's small modular nuclear reactor plant. Photo courtesy of NuScale

Even before Chernobyls RBMK reactor became the standard design of the Soviet Union, it was known to have inherent safety flaws but kept unchanged because it was cheaper that way. Historians later found that more than economic and technical considerations, it was social, regulatory, political, and cultural factors that contributed to the RBMK becoming the standard design. More, it was the RBMKs capacity to embody a vision of the future of the Soviet Union that led to this decision. A few years later, this vision fell apart when the RBMK design suffered from the worst reactor accident the nuclear industry ever hadonly to find itself in the middle of a war zone some 36 years later.

Over the past decade, we have witnessed similar hype for small reactors proposed as a potential game-changer for the future of nuclear power. Small modular reactors, or SMRs, are much smaller than the current standard 1000- to 1600-megawatt electric output reactors. Mini-reactors have been heralded as nuclear champions by their promoters, able to meet safety and regulatory requirements, tackle security and nonproliferation concerns, and even embody sociotechnical visions of what a world of abundance powered by SMRs might look like. Such visions have included cheap, risk-free energy that eliminates reactor accidents, an end to energy scarcity, with SMRs powering remote communities and developing economies, a plentiful world where water needs are fulfilled by SMR-powered desalination stations, and an environmentally friendly energy source embedded in a virtuous fuel cycle, with SMRs producing carbon-free and waste-free electricity. Small reactors even have their place in visions of space exploration, assisting future societies in the colonization of the moon, Mars, and possibly other extra-terrestrial worlds.

Scientists have started working on independent reviews of those claims. The results showed that SMRs do not necessarily perform better than gigawatt-scale reactors on a variety of measures. A recent Stanford-led study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) provides for the first time a comprehensive analysis of the nuclear waste generated by small modular reactors. The study concludes that most current SMR designs will actually significantly increase the volume and complexity of nuclear waste requiring management and disposal when compared to existing gigawatt-scale light water reactors.

Here, Bulletin associate editor Franois Diaz-Maurin talks with Lindsay Krall, the lead author of that study and a former MacArthur postdoctoral fellow at Stanfords Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) who is now based in Sweden.

Franois Diaz-Maurin: Before we start, most of our readers wont know what a small reactor is, to begin with. So, lets help them here. What are small modular reactors, and how do they differ from conventional large-scale reactors?

Lindsay Krall: Sure. A small modular reactor is defined as a reactor with less than 300-megawatt electric output. So small modular just refers to the size and the construction strategy, the latter being that the reactors are fabricated as modules in a factory and then shipped on-site by truck where they are assembled. Thats what modular means. Small refers to the energy or the electric output. Sometimes developers call these reactors plug-and-play. SMRs can include a huge variety of reactor types depending on the coolant and moderator that they usefrom light water to molten salt, sodium, graphite, gas-cooled graphite-moderated reactors, to even lead-cooled reactors.

Diaz-Maurin: In your study, you say that almost half of the SMR designs listed by the IAEA are considered advanced reactors that can employ chemically exotic fuels and coolants

Krall: Exactly. Another way in which SMRs differ from current reactors is that, in some of the designs, reactors are passively cooled. That is, instead of having pumps that circulate the coolant, these reactors rely on internal, natural convection around the reactor core. Because they are passively cooled, developers consider these reactors to be inherently safe. So, if there is a loss of electricity on-site, the reactor will continue to stay cool through this natural convection flow, because they are not relying on external electricity to run a pump.

Diaz-Maurin: Great. Lets turn to your research findings now. Most SMRs are said to adopt an integral design, in which the reactor core and auxiliary systems are all contained within a reactor vessel. Now, because of their smaller size and compact design, one can expect that SMRs will generate less waste than larger reactors that operate at the gigawatt scale. But you have reached the opposite conclusion in your study, that SMRs will produce more voluminous and chemically/physically reactive waste than light-water reactors. And this by factors of 2 to 30. How is that? It seems counterintuitive

Krall: Well, one thing thats clear from the analysis is that the waste output really differs depending on the type of coolant the reactor is using. If its using water, then we have processes to treat that water and decontaminate it and hold it so the water coolant itself does not become radioactive waste. However, for a sodium-cooled reactor, for instance, that sodium coolant is likely to become low-level waste at the end of the reactors lifetime, because it becomes contaminated and activated during reactor operation. So, the up to 30 times more waste thats been driving the headlines, its mostly the sodium coolant. Another aspect is that things in a small reactor do not scale intuitively compared to other forms of energy. For instance, one thing I went into was neutron leakage.

Diaz-Maurin: Lets stay here for a moment. In the paper, you attribute the higher volume of waste generated mainly to an intrinsically higher neutron leakage associated with SMRs. Can you explain what neutron leakage means and how its driving your results?

Krall: Sure. To put it simply, neutrons are released when theres a fission reaction. Then, those neutrons are supposed to go forth to propagate the fission chain reaction and help the reactor sustain criticality. But in a small reactor, due to that smaller core size, youre having more of these neutrons that leak out of the periphery of the fuel. Its essentially due to the fuels surface area to volume ratio, but not exactly. Still, one big issue is that this neutron leakage is then leading to lower fuel burnups. [Fuel burnup or fuel utilization is a measure of how much energy is extracted from a given nuclear fuel. The higher the burnup, the more efficient the reactor is.] So thats what I mean by more physically reactive waste. Say, you start at the same enrichment level, as in a large reactor, the small reactor will have a lower fuel burnup. And due to that lower fuel burnup, youll end up with a higher concentration of fissile material in the spent fuel, which can increase the likelihood of recriticality in the spent fuel. [Recriticality is a measure of the potential for fissile materials to spontaneously start a sustained fission reaction.] If a storage or disposal canister fails and becomes flooded with water, recriticality is a bigger risk with the spent fuel from a small reactor and that needs to be mitigated. An effective way to mitigate that risk is to avoid putting a critical mass inside a spent fuel canister.

Diaz-Maurin: Now lets go back to the wastes themselves. What type of waste are we talking about, anyway? In the paper, you mention spent fuel, high-level waste, and long-lived and short-lived decommissioning waste Can you walk us through the waste streams from SMRs and how they differ from large reactors?

Krall: Yeah, so SMRs, just like standard commercial reactors, produce spent fuel. And that spent fuel has a particular burnup based on its initial enrichment and how the reactor operated. So, its not, you know, like these claims, oh, were going to reduce the mass of spent fuel by 90 percent. It turns out that a lot of those claims assume that there are several rounds of reprocessing. But based on the license applications of the vendors to the [US Nuclear Regulatory Commission] for these reactors, theyre not. The reprocessing isnt factored into the reactor design. So, I just use the burnups that are being stated in these reactor applicationswhen they are stated, because oftentimes, theyre redacted. So just like a large reactor, small modular reactors produce spent fuel. And that spent fuel has a lot of different characteristics that need to be taken into account when youre storing, transporting, and disposing of it.

Diaz-Maurin: In the paper, you say that compared to large reactors, SMRs will increase the volume and complexity of those wastes. I get the volume part. But what is this complexity about?

Krall: Its what I mean with different characteristics of the spent fuel, not least being this fissile isotope concentration. It also produces heat. It has a particular radionuclide composition, including fission products, which can be both short- and long-lived. And so, I employed four different metrics to measure the spent fuel. And then the long-lived low- and intermediate-level waste in the article is the activated waste. This waste is so close to the reactor core that it absorbs the neutrons that are being leaked and becomes activated. In current reactors, the activated waste is mostly steel from the structural components that keep the core intact. This steel will also become activated in SMRs and, as a result, it will contain short- and long-lived nuclides that need to be dealt with during decommissioning. Reactor decommissioning will require radiation shielding and that steel, the activated steel, will also need to be disposed of in a geologic repository.

Diaz-Maurin: Whats the difference between short-lived and long-lived waste from the perspective of waste management?

Krall: Long-lived waste should be disposed of in a permanent geologic repositorya passively safe, rock cavern with multiple engineered barrierswhere the radioactive materials discharged from the reactors will be contained over long periods of time so that they can decay. Short-lived waste includes mostly the reactor structures that have come in contact with a primary coolant that was circulating around the reactor core and through the steam generators. This waste also should go to some sort of disposal site. Sweden, for instance, has a 50-meter-deep repository, whereas some countries just dispose of it in shallow landfills.

Diaz-Maurin: I think I get the complexity too now. And, so, because of that complexity, I see why you need to use several metrics like the chemistry of the spent fuel matrix, its radionuclide content, the heat generated, the radioactive decay, etc. Yet, in the paper, you mention that nuclear technology developers and advocates often employ simple metrics, such as mass, volume, and radioactivity. Indeed, most critics of your study that Ive seen tend to focus on the waste volume part. Do you think nuclear engineers dont understand how the chemistry and physics of the spent fuel will affect waste management and disposal?

Krall: I think nuclear waste management is a pretty niche field. Its a small community of people that think about very bizarre things on a day-to-day basis, like, the 100,000-year evolution of the hydrology at this random location in Sweden. So, I think, theres definitely a disconnect between the people working on the back end of the fuel cycleespecially with geologic repository developmentand those actually designing reactors. And, you know, there is not a lot of motivation for these reactor designers to think about the geologic disposal aspects because the NRCs new reactor design certification application does not have a chapter on geologic disposal. So

Diaz-Maurin: Thats interesting, because some developers of SMRs claim they already include a waste disposal program as part of their design program. That would be indeed a much-welcomed development, compared to how conventional reactors have been deployed

Krall: Well, yes, if they had a chapter on geologic disposal, that would be helpful because at least their proposals could be reviewed in some way or another. Ive heard reactor designers propose a number of left-field ideas, for instance, were going to dump this sodium reactor in a deep borehole. People can just shout random thoughts because theres no accountability for them in proposing an unworkable idea. But if they wrote these proposals down on paper in an NRC application, then at least there might be some way to regulate these unconventional waste management ideas.

Diaz-Maurin: Lets assume for a moment that license applications of SMRs do include a chapter on waste disposal aspects. Still, things would not be that straightforward. There would still be the problem of the public acceptance of geologic repositories as a possible limiting factor.

Krall: Yes, the public acceptance I dont know if thats anything a reactor designer is going to achieve with geologic repository development. As I said, these nuclear waste management companies are a very niche community. And there are good reasons for that. The most successful geologic disposal programs are those that have best managed to decouple themselves from reactor construction. So, waste management organizations have intentionally separated themselves from the larger nuclear industry as part of their strategy to work towards public acceptance. It would not be beneficial for these organizations to promote reactors and get dragged into the pro- vs. anti-nuclear politics. The best way we can approach it is as: The waste is here, and it needs to be disposed of in a long-term safe way. I dont think that somebody who is promoting these reactors will achieve public support for a geologic repository.

Diaz-Maurin: Since it was published on May 30, your study generated a lot of responses, including harsh ones, from the nuclear technology developers and advocates. I guess you knew the conclusions of your article would cause some controversy in the nuclear community. But were you surprised at the level of those reactions?

Krall: Yes, there have been a lot of responsesboth positive and negativeand Ive been surprised at everyones reaction. You know, for me, coming from the science area where nobody reads the stuff I writeI mean, I cant even get my supervisors to read it. [Laughter] And then to go to something thats making headlines this was a bit shocking for me. And then to see that those headlines focused so heavily on the volume estimates. You know, like, Small nuclear power projects may have big waste problems, Mini nuclear reactors have an outsized waste problem, and all of that Obviously, its an exciting headline. But thats not exactly the point I was trying to make in the article. Another issue, I guess, is that I didnt really know how the article would be released. There was a copy of the paper circulated to the media or to the press some five days in advance of the articles publication. So, reactor developers were contacted by the press about the article before it was even published. As a scientist, I was just thinking, Oh, thank God, this paper got accepted, and I dont have to work with it anymore. But then the release of the paper shocked me.

Diaz-Maurin: Some critics say you used outdated information in your study. For instance, NuScales chief technology officer, Jose Reyes, wrote a letter to the PNAS editor-in-chief where he says your analysis focused on the NuScale 160 megawatt thermal (MWt) core, but that they had already implemented another reactor design, the NuScale 250-MWt core. Reyes then adds that this new design does not produce more spent fuel than existing light water reactors. Does this contradict your findings?

Krall: It doesnt. Its actually exactly in line with my findings. We used the certified NuScale reactor, the 160MWt because, with their application to the NRC, there was enough technical data to perform our analysis. Its interesting to note that their larger 250MWt reactor is going to have to undergo a whole new licensing process. Theyre submitting that license application, I think, in December. So, its a bit surprising that theyre now marketing a reactor that isnt licensed. It does seem that this larger reactor will have a higher burnup, of 45 megawatt-days per kilogram, according to NuScale. Well, first of all, thats still lower than existing full-scale reactors. So, theyre still going to produce more waste, which is a far cry from the general belief that all SMRs will produce less waste. It would be good if they had a higher burnup. But, the higher burnup and consequently lower waste volume, I will guess, is partly driven by the fact that the new design is a larger reactor. So, just as our paper argues, smaller reactors generate more waste.

Diaz-Maurin: So does it mean we should expect future designs of small reactors to be up to, say, 999-megawatt electric output?

Krall: Yeah, I think on the larger side of the SMR spectrum, the waste will be more similar to those of existing reactors. So, an important point of the paper is that you need to choose an SMR design carefully, with insight from the back end, so as to avoid disrupting the spent fuel management system too much. In countries with active waste management programs, itll be easier to get insight from the back end. But in countries that dont have such programs, how are people purchasing these reactors going to get insight from the back end? That is not clear to me, especially when its not part of the NRC license application.

Diaz-Maurin: In his letter, Reyes also says that you did not contact NuScale for information or clarifications regarding data, such as fuel burnup, that he says they had made publicly available. Is this true?

Krall: We are being accused of not discussing the study with reactor designers. This isnt true. We did seek information from them, I mean, usable information about their actual design being submitted to the NRC. That information was not given to us. Instead, designers would only speak in generalized terms about an ideal SMR fuel cycle, which is not necessarily what is actually being licensed. And, even this generalized information would be marked as proprietary, not something that I could publish. As scientists, we prefer to reference peer-reviewed analyses. But there is a scarcity of peer-reviewed information in this field.

Diaz-Maurin: The development of SMRs has been around since about the early 2000s. Why are there still only a few studies that analyze the management and disposal of nuclear waste streams from SMRs?

Krall: Well, first, theres not a lot of funding for it. In my case, for instance, I did most of the research during these fellowship positions where I had funding for it. But I ended the fellowships before the paper was published. So, I spent some time editing the manuscript, submitting it, and revising it all on my own time. And there arent a lot of motivating forces to get funding for independent analyses of the waste streams. Since the dominant narrative is that the waste is manageable and similar to what we currently deal with, it results in a lack of funding for independent technical reviews of the nuclear fuel cycle. And its a real problem.

Diaz-Maurin: As you know, at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, we are committed to reducing manmade threats to our existence. And we are also dedicated to one clear goal of advancing a safe and livable planet. Do you think SMRs could help make our planet a safer place, as their developers tend to suggest?

Krall: I think it depends on the SMR design. For certain SMRs, especially the larger ones, I dont know where the sweet spot is, but I think they can be viable as long as you choose to construct the right design. But how are you going to choose the right design without any insight from the back end? I think SMRs can be viable if you have insight from the back end when youre both designing and selecting a design.

Diaz-Maurin: Let me play a little devils advocate here. Nuclear waste disposal is becoming reality. Finland just authorized the construction of its deep geological repository for spent nuclear fuel. And other countries are following closely, like France and Sweden, where you work. So why would a little more waste from small modular reactors necessarily be a problem?

Krall: In a country that has a spent fuel management program, whatever design theyre choosing to construct, developers will have insight from the back end, both for decommissioning and for geologic disposal. So I think, SMRs can be deployed safely, as long as the back end is being managed responsibly. But in countries where thats not the case, I think its a bit more like the Wild West.

Go here to read the rest:
Interview: Small modular reactors get a reality check about their waste - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

In January of 2022, I traveled to ancestral Wazhazhe land in Belle, Missouri, where an arts organization had invited me to do a residency while assisting in giving the land back to the Osage Nation.

The terms were such:

The owners would not leave their land;The arts organization there would still double as a small ranch;The administrators were not open to collaboration with Wazhazhe people on any of their operations or programming;And the organization wanted me and any Wazhazhe artists I involved to instruct them inthe manner of giving the land back.

I spoke with Wazhazhe women, and we decided that it would be better to wait until the upcoming election cycle was over to return the land, so that no communication would be lost in a potential change of administration. The women I asked are ones who use the word decolonial and who prioritize life by moon cycles over the Roman calendar. We are Wazhazhe women who have begun a process of reforming ourselves, transforming our womanhood amidst norms of scarcity mindset amongst our people and a generational inheritance of dysfunction.

My own process of transforming began with the reception of my work in graduate workshops. When I first attended a creative writing masters program, I was told, in short, that my characters represented an ongoing Indian problem. My women characters were too contradictoryboth Christian and Native, tribal but living in diaspora, not cultural enough, and additionally, excessively vain, in denial, conservative, and mentally ill.

I first learned to write on the East Coast, at a top-rated public university with an excellent creative writing program. There, I formed my characterization. Did my characters affirm patriarchal notions of womanhood? If they did, then that was good. But in California, my writing came off as critiquing patriarchy. I was impressed, as though my renderings of women suggested what was wrong with men, proving that patriarchy made women go insane. My autobiographical characters continued to garner critiques, but my recursive sentences, emotionally reflective summary, scenic details, and ruminative pacing were praised. It was only the women who needed to change, and not just by a little.

My West Coast assimilation had me revising both my personality and beliefs. Tribal connection did not challenge my worldview; I was encouraged to do whatever my father told me, or in some cases, to listen to others peoples fathers speak on through the mouths of their daughters. I was encouraged to protect men.

When teachers critiqued me, they were also critiquing my tribe. My Southern Christian, colonized Native mind was not my friend, and the informed were eager to correct me. Teachers worried aloud to me about my blood quantum. Was I at least a quarter? In workshop, conversations highlighted cognitive dissonance: how could one ascribe to a faith which held that ones own culture was pagan, and yet still be a Native person? Boarding school history did not matter; it was my responsibility to heal and reform myself, and white people wanted to help me.

In the end, I did lose my faith. Not in the classroom, but when a Christian in a band I was in told me that no one cared about the Osage language, and to stop writing in it. Other Christians like to speak on how Christs followers are fallible, and sinners; but I had never really felt that the ka^ of a leaf related to the Christ. Ideological gymnastics were taking up space in my life.

In turning against the world view with which I had been raised, I searched for ways to relate to my parents while also distancing myself from them. The word healing functions as a euphemism for the reorganization of concepts broadly to create new neural networks, and thus habits, thoughts, opinions, friends, and goals. It is a self-directed re-brainwashing.

As a child, my mother worked full-time and I worked at my fathers construction business, cleaning paint brushes with paint thinner and sweeping the floor under what seemed like a continual rain of sawdust. My father took pride in making me tough, though it didnt make me tougher to inhale paint thinner and sawdust. My father was raised by an Osage single mother who attended Boarding School, and I thought of them when I read Terese Mailhots characterization of self-worth in Heart Berries.

Mailhot describes self-worth as a construction white people designed to give a false sense of separation from each other for the sake of identity capitalism. My father would agree. I was embarrassed that he wanted to be a writer and yet did not publish work, so I worked to become a writer in order to help him. When it became clear that the strange ideas Id inherited from him were foiling my attempts to pursue the writing profession, I chose to transform. Ironically, my transformation left me without my obsessive fixation on my father and his needs and problems.

Reading and self-education were the first sight of my transformation. Besides Heart Berries, I read Louise Hay, Esm Weijun Wang, Jean Gnet, astrology blogs, Brandon Hobson, Toni Jensen, Linda Hogan, and N. Scott Momaday. Some people I observed stopped their transformation when they were able to find what their prior dysfunctionality had prevented them from obtaining. For some, this was a man, or even stability. For me, it was publishable writing.

When I moved to Oklahoma for a job at a tribal school, I encountered a different way of viewing the world, accessible through studying our language, Wazhazhe ie. It took me twelve years of serious engagement with every best practice I heard of the writing life to make publishable work, but this language would have solved my world view problem. But I am an Indigenous woman in America, and I have been told repeatedly that the way this country formed me historically is not good enough. We are not taught Wazhazhe ie in school, and this is our land. There is something gravely wrong with this situation.

Wazhazhe people have a need to reimagine ourselves, but on a governmental level, weve only just adjusted to our 2006 Constitution, which is meant to reflect both syncretization of the Western world we live in and what we think is best to govern ourselves in the ongoing conditions of colonization now. Under our current tribal administration, I could not even participate in repatriating ancestral land, and the reason was because of division in our tribe.

I wanted to call our chief about giving the land back. Hes known for calling people to yell at them frequently, as well as making threats. The arts organization told me their land repatriation was not connected to any of the arts organizations activities, or even their occupancy of the land. I did not want to help them. I wanted the chief to help us. The settlers would remain on the land until death, and they had told me so to my face. I was angry. Alone in my studio, I tore up a document theyd asked me to read and to endorse as a Wazhazhe woman artist. I screamed and wept.

Later, I asked the arts administrator if he knew of his ancestors. He said that had never heard of any of them, and instead considered himself to be from Egypt in his past lives. The spiritual sidestepping of his ancestral connection was problematic; his disconnection absolved him of responsibility to his mother land, and by extension, to my own as an earth keeper. I could do little but witness his guilt.

When a person rejects a Christian framework but replaces it with appropriation, one is still functionally inside the legacy of Christianitys westward expansion, and does nothing to protect the land. Although the contemporary culture has dissociated itself from its origins, our origins remain, in the exact conditions in which they were abandoned. The Land back administrator was able to make so-called separations between deeply connected things such as his arts organization named after our tribe, and the land on which it sat.

The land and the organization theyre not related, hed said.

This was a man who claimed to hear my own ancestors speaking to him day in and day out, and who said they shot arrows at him whenever he entered or exited a house on this land.

He felt the enmity between our ancestors. So did I.

In Earth Keeper, N. Scott Momaday writes that a pioneer woman and her ancestors experience belonging on this earth. I asked my students at the Institute of American Indian to vote, as though on a committee, on whether settler people should stay or go (if Natives had a choice). After discussion, we agreed that we did not believe European people would ever leave, and if they became earth keepers, it would be possible for us to collaborate. We thought, if more Native people go into leadership, like Deb Haaland has, then our views will gain real credence.

Every morning, I sit cross-legged on a pillow by the cracked window and imagine the sides of my body turning two opposite colors, one red, and the other blue, to represent balance between earth and sky, and the way that I contain both body and spirit. Every person has this duality within them, but many people are invested in a sense of victimhood. We forget our motherland. Among my ancestors are European people, and as a mixed Indigenous person, I am forced into leadership.

Before my European ancestors were in England, as Normans, they were in Northern France. Although I have no current place there, I do believe that I have a responsibility to this land, even if I have not yet ascertained how. Part of my spirit rests in that land, and my responsibility to it also lies in its waters. My time on Wazhazhe land is only a part of my total rematriation.

On my mother and her mothers side, my ancestors are from New Orleans. They are mulatto according to the census, which is generally defined as an erasure-based mix of Indigenous, African and European ancestry. My mother did not acknowledge her matrilineal lineage, but immersed herself so wholly in her faith that, to me, it seemed like an addiction: it provided a false solution, and prevented her from having to transform. The concept of sanctification seemed like absolution to me, and the delay of a so-called perfection into eternity. I looked for matrilineal reconnection but it seemed a betrayal of my mother and her mother.

I do not consider any person separate from the responsibility of our own generational trauma; rematriating to the lands from which we first came; honoring as well as mourning the actions of ancestors; and resolving our part in conflicts. Without these four actions, we lose connection. I prefer to maximize connection, in the way of Rainer Maria Rilke, who writes, Everything that makes more of you than you have ever been, even if your best hours, is right. Sometimes this means syncretization, or the blending of Indigenous and Western culture, as N. Scott Momaday has advocated with the building of metaphorical bridges between our worlds.

When it comes to the Land Back movement, how will our pragmatism play out in keeping the earth? Our Indigenous tenure is more legitimate than that of settlers, but if we choose to work together with those make earth keepers of themselves, will we be able to protect this land? I am inspired by a radical Black farmer who told me that its not ones identity, its what one believes. I dont like any erasure of ancestral work, but I understand that the land itself may support this work better than any book, ideology, or education. Though I did not call the chief, I stay in conversation with ancestral water. The river absorbs my rage.

__________________________________

A Calm & Normal Heart by Chelsea T. Hicks is available now via Unnamed Press.

See the article here:
Of Wazhazhe Land and Language: The Ongoing Project of Ancestral Work - Literary Hub

My research on the tongue was divided across the equator, the exhaust offset. In the northern winter I hurtled south towards the summer, to Split Point | Wathaurong land. The cabin lights will be dimmed for landing. Research comes from Old French recercher which means to search closely, from cercher to seek for, through Latin circare, to wander, traverse, from circus, for circle. Returning to that divided kingdom a few weeks later, London glinting below as bared teeth, over the speaker would come the refrain: this is customary when flying in the hours of darkness.

The roads were icy that February morning and the sky overcast, and the temperature scarcely rose inside the library. I was following a lead on a pamphlet popular in 19th-century New York called The Tongue of Time. It covered the natural and spiritual worlds, disease, witchcraft, trances, dreams, death, diet, serpents, opium use, the childbearing of older women, mouth care and hygiene, accounts of people with two souls, and the universality of deception.

With each flight the stairs narrowed, spiraling inward until I stepped out into clouds of my own breath. Through the slat on the landing a hard sunless light, livid in color, was moving along the floor, over drifts of books known as the overflow. The landing felt as though it were shifting ever so slightly from side to side, doubtless a psychological effect of the spiraling staircase and the narrowness.

And I had been told that, so close to the tower, the sound of the wind alone could produce that effect, the effect of an edge, vertigo, as standing on the end of a pier. It felt familiar, the volatility that pervaded everything I read about the organ. What was the human tongue? The last animal of the faces reserve. Through the slat I saw a sail of white birds lift and fall up and beyond the brickwork.

I had until that morning been looking for stories of women, saints or otherwise, whose tongues had been cut out at the root. In many of these tales, speaking again after the violence is the point of the story (its a miracle) but I was redirected when I came across The Tongue of Time. The archive boxes were arranged in dim rows extending from a main corridor, strings of dormant cells. The light there was controlled by a timer, itself a bone-neon more commonly found in hospitals and apartment complex stairwells. I turned the dial and the minutes began to run down.

Some of the boxes had ink markings from previous systems, disintegrated letters and numbers the color of sandstone. I found The Tongue of Time and sat on the floor with the overflow to read it. When I finished I made a brief note for reference, in case I needed to revisit the work in a year or two: Stories, mainly allegorical, myths, moral directives. The tongue is employed as a metaphor for the extension and consumption of aeons, the way time laps at ones heels. It contains conflicted and disparate worlds, confessions, issues and arguments of all kinds. I placed the pamphlet carefully back in the box and returned it to its cell.

My relationship with the tongue began with an incision made on my fathers body. He was leaning on the drip looking bad enough to be redeemed. The hot purple wound ran from his solar plexus to the base of his gutin medical terms, an incision from the xiphoid process to the pubic symphysis. To the eyes of a child he had been opened along his length and stapled back together. And I felt it then, soundless, the stuck muscle in my mouth become stone. This was a long time ago.

Towards the end of his life my father would sit in the garden and I brought him things he could eat. The last thing he could eat was soft bread. Break it into pieces, he said, and I did as instructed. What voice would I have needed (were there words I could have used?) that might have opened a final kindness between he and I. But here are his arms in sheets of skin outstretched for the bread, our faces set. And the vapor of my voice held for so long it alchemised into feeling: the relief of his becoming weaker.

Break it into pieces. They were the last words he said to me. The word archive comes from arkh () Ancient Greek for beginning place or point of origin. Meanings evolved to written records and the public buildings in which they are kept. Archives are patient, dependent on care and active listening for creation and survival. To assemble an archive is to piece things together. But its parts gesture to how much we cannot know, to how much is missing and may not be recovered. Go far down into the word and you find water. The root comes out at the ocean, or rather the cosmic oceana yawning elemental chaos from which all supposedly emerged.

In the library caf, on my break, I read in a magazine that our oldest and most primitive vertebrate ancestor Saccorhytus coronarius was a big mouth with no anus. Fossils from around five hundred and forty million years ago reveal its mouth-body was no bigger than a grain of black rice. This first creature was covered with a thin skin and lived in the sands of the seabed. It is unlikely that Saccorhytus coronarius is a direct human ancestor, but the creature tells us about the early stages of our evolutionit had bilateral symmetry, two symmetrical halves.

Of womens mutilated tongues, I had a particular interest in stories where the breakage was self-inflicted. Self-muted and deeply bitten, sacrificed in order to save something else. In effect, self-censored to prevent what could come to light. Like the story of Tymicha for example, in the Syrian philosopher Iamblichuss Life of Pythagoras which dates to the sixth century BCE. Persecuted under the tyrant Dionysius, she bites off her tongue when threatened with torture. Tymicha then repurposes the organ as a physical weapon and spits it at him in defiance. The story makes it clear that, being female and prone to talkativeness, she breaks her tongue because she might not be able to govern it, and may instead be compelled to disclose something that ought to be concealed in silence.

For years, being quiet, I felt clear. Clear and cool. I tended the lies of othersI packaged them like cold cuts and offered safe keeping, or gave them safe passage onward to fortify other stories. And this was care-work, a craft even, with its own bruised grace inside a culture that could not be changed, a familial system that needed to be preserved for a kind of survival.

Later, I gathered pieces of information about the tongue. The rare books and documents smelt delicious, like old-growth foresta rich earthiness rose from their pages. Others of vellum were salty in scent, soft to the touch and made no sound, the membrane silent when turned over. I thumbed metaphorical bodies: The Anatomy of the Soul, The Anatomy of Melancholy, The Anatomy of a Womans Tongue, The Anatomy of Abuses. I ran the tip of my index finger along the spines, letting the timer that controlled the light run down, shut off, working in half-light. No longer minding, no longer noticing.

The treatment of the tongue revealed cultures of violence and fear, and the organ required special thought and care in its use. But in the negotiation of this contested site, writings on the tongue also demonstrated, by virtue of their moralizing, how closely care and control could be interwoven.

The following spring I presented an extract at a seminar to share some initial findings on the historical treatment of the tongue.

Extract.The organ itself is longitudinally separated into symmetrical right and left sides by a section of fibrous tissue, the lingual septum, that results in a groove or furrow on the tongues surface called the median sulcus. This is the line that scores the tongue through the middle.

The philosophy of anatomy housed an assumption that the truth of a moral blueprint within could be excised an old logic that married physiological markers with divine design. Moral topographies were written in sinew and bone. The view inside the tongue at its dividing line provided a glimpse of what stuff lay under the inscription at the surface. For moralists, the line evoked the anatomical duality of the flesh, and recalled an inherently deceitful organ. The tongue was mapped morally long before the organ was laid out on the slab, and it has been read and written over long after. My interests lie here, in the dissection. The sixteenth-century Belgian anatomist Andreas Vesalius made an incision down the median sulcus, butterflying the tongue, opening it out. The dissection revealed its shape when cut from the body, giving it a physical presence beyond its relationships with the palate, teeth, lips, and larynx or voice box. The tongues dual physiological landscape was examined where it cleaves, displayed according to the fissure.

Tongue | Language || Lingua

After the seminar a man who had made a comment disguised as a question approached me at the wine table. He was a historian by trade and had I read Latour? (I had not.) Thank you for your question, I said. We chatted for some time until I noticed the room had thinned out. He leant toward me and confided that he hears voices in the archive, the voices of the dead asking to be heard. Did I hear them too? No, I said. I dont hear voices exactly. What then? he asked. Its more like the presence of things I cant remember, I said. Words rarely came to my aid like that and although what Id said made little logical sense, he nodded as though it made sense to him. He was looking down, eyes on his empty glass. I asked him if he felt they were actual voices, the voices he heard. He nodded again and put his glass with the others. Tell anyone and Ill kill you, he said.

It was very important to him, he explained, that his work in the academy was serious work. He was known in particular among his colleagues for the scientific rigor he brought to his field of historiography. I touched my left collar bone at the indent and found the strap of my bag slung there. I said I had to go. SALIVA! he cried suddenly, with an intensity that seemed both haphazard and precise. And he bubbled something about how spittle is a portal to the past. All your ancestors back to the Neanderthals are contained inside your saliva! he said, the room now empty but for the two of us.

The tongue had been made to wear its apparent proclivity for slipperiness and deceit (readings were made into its ecosystem and appearance). It was simply the best instrument we had for our projections. Interesting to consider, too, that words often have their genesis in the material. Mendacity comes from the Latin word mendax (lie) and has the root stem mend, meaning physical defect, fault. This is also the source of the Sanskrit word minda, physical blemish, and the Old Irish mennar, stain. The lie carries these residues: a mark, a taint, the fleshly defect as sign. On another branch, the root stem -mend leads to amendto free from faults, to set right, to make better.

Among the rows of boxes, with one bar of reception, my mother and I sent each other messages. I asked her about her day; I asked her questions about the past. She was often forthcoming, but equally often I felt like I was tipping a Magic Eight Ball upside down, shaking it, asking it to prophesy a pathway back instead of forward. I waited for her reply as though watching the triangle emerge from the watery murk with its abrupt, perplexing message.

Why did you make me lie about the violence?

No answer. It was not the right question. I tried a different one.

What, in your view, did my father lie about? She came online. She was typing Everything.

And then she disappeared again, to last seen.

Different kinds of silence have their own idioms; they are passed down in family cultures. The wound on my fathers body concealed a tumor the size and shape of a fist. Deep in his abdomen it sprouted and metastasized until the evidence of its presence broke the surface, necessitating the line that divided his body into a right side and a left. That a text can be read allegorically does not make it an allegory. Allegory, by definition, contains instructions for its own interpretation.

I read my fathers body as confession. I traced words to their roots, I traced words for lying, for different kinds of lie in different languages. I believed if I went back far enough I could find understanding, or rather an answer would be there, waiting for me. Leaving the library after dark, walking past the rows towards the stairs at the end of the corridor, I saw my father, stapled crudely along his length, the drip drip drip of the saline solution, the riddle of him trying to work itself out of itself.

Before this, during my first year of research, I became concerned that my interest in the tongue was devolving into obsession, even addiction, and I told Theo I would not be continuing. She just frowned and said nothing. The next time I saw her she pressed a copy of Augustines Confessions into my hand. Who takes care of the past? she said. Her words felt like a contract signed under duress. I laughed (fear; grief?). Until that point I hadnt considered the past to be something that needed looking after.

In his essay A Plague of Mendacity, the Egyptian-American cultural critic Ihab Hassan wrote that lying may be a riddle deeper than language itself. It is wise to remember that the most adroit methods of innate deception have evolved for survival. Animal pretends to be plant, plant pretends to be animal. Mimicries of shape, color and scent saw some flowers outlive dinosaurs. In the temperate waters where I was raised, a crab decorates its carapace with algae and seaweeds to move undetected by predators. In the desert, a tongue orchid tricks a wasp into sex.

I met Theodora in a line waiting to hear Judith Butler speak on the topic of vulnerability. I held my place in the queue for an hour or so when it began to rain and my eyes fell on her back, on her sweater soaking up each droplet, until I could make out the spectres of two shoulder blades. She glanced back at me and smiled. I looked up and let the rain fall over my face. People ahead were being turned away at the door; the hall had filled to capacity. When this news filtered along the line a man behind me broke down at volume. I have thought often of him since, of his loud crying and how no one said a thing to him, how everybody left him there like he carried a taint, as though we might catch the thing that makes one reveal too much.

Etymologically, the lie contains residues of fault, but it is also the case that a truth can feel tainted, necessitating a lie. The truth of his needof our needfelt marked, raw and vulgar the moment he stopped pretending he was fine. Saturated, I walked back to my attic room and thought about the Janus face of this problem, the messy truths we lie for, and the ways that those lies afford us a gritty shroud in less-than-ideal systems.

When I got home, I dried off and watched a YouTube clip of Butler talking about queer alliances. A queer alliance, they told a happily seated audience, is unpredictable and improvised, and might be a response to crisis. It is also, they said, a response to historical necessity. I would go back, see if he was okayhe might be gone, I thoughtwhen there was the woman in the white sweater on the other side of my door. Im Theo, she said. She was out of breath, and wet. She had followed me back and let herself in to the building.

I lived those college years in an attic with rising damp, listening to creatures moving in the walls, eating them out. The foundations of that place were rotted to the core. After Theo left I prepared coffee for a night of work ahead, and I read about protocols and devices used to enforce breakage. The bit and bridle had its inception in the British Isles in the Middle Ages. Records show it was principally used on those accused of gossiping, women who were thought to be outspoken or vying for power, or wives who moved beyond the boundaries of what their husbands and communities deemed suitable for them. The bridle held the head and face in iron and a two-inch rod was inserted into the mouth, clamping and flattening the tongue to prevent movement.

Learning by mouth was visceral. The bit and bridle would reshape the tongue, a technology that saw a violence upon the mouth-site designed to bring it into line and change the organs muscle memory. The device was repurposed for the long project of colonization, used to break the will of people taken to the Americas from their African homelands. What began with preventing speech was used as an index for the entire body. By going inside the mouth, body and mind could be silenced and reordered, reorienting a person towards anothers will.

I thought about what tongues are used for and what they can do, from the tip to the root. There is a habit of weakened use, a soft inheritancea muscle trained in how not to move, how not to work. This habit may be rehearsed to non-use; rehearsed. The French naturalist Lamarcks first law: more frequent and continuous use of any organ gradually strengthens, develops and enlarges that organ, and gives it a power proportional to the length of time it has been so used; while the permanent disuse of any organ imperceptibly weakens and deteriorates it, and progressively diminishes its functional capacity, until it finally disappears.

So, if a speaker stops using their tongue (not knowing why, or having chosen to stop using it, or having been violently forced to do so) over time eventually it seems like it was never meant to be used in that way. The idea here, the misbelief so pernicious and arresting, is that your tongue was never yours to use.

Theo helped me to remain present, remain focussed on what mattered. One night as we lay in bed she turned to me and smiled and touched her thumb to my cheek bone, my temple. In the country where I grew up, we could be jailed for what we just did, she said.

There are many ways to break a tongue, and there are many ways to recall its power, not only as an instrument of speech that shapes sound within its home of the mouth and palate, but as an organ involved in knowledge acquisition, sense making, flights and figment. In one 15th-century record from Europe, under the right moral and structural conditions, the tongue itself was believed to be a portal to hidden knowledge. The moon had to be in the right position, and the tongue and mouth needed to be washed clean, then certain precious stones placed under the tongue at the tie would allow visions of the future to be revealed. Ordinary people carried out the ritual. The organ was a threshold, a line or pathway bridging temporal and spiritual mysteries.

What did those everyday folk feel or hear or see, I wondered? With all the parts in their right places, the precious stone under the tongue, and the moon up there on full. Those people believed in the tongue as a piece of psychic apparatus, as an organ that could bring fortunes to light. I spent a lot of time thinking about those people. I wondered, when everything aligned, if they saw the very day and moment they were in: where the past had brought them and where their future was being made. When what one had known, and what one would come to know, opened inward to unfold the present, imparting oneself to oneself like an actual miracle.

In the life of Saint Christina, her pagan father has her flesh torn off with hooks, her legs broken. Christina throws her flesh pieces at him: eat the flesh that you begot! The story spirals downward in this vein. He has her rocked in an iron cradle of hot oil and resin like a newborn babe. She is then paraded through the city naked with her head shaved, but when thrown in a furnace with snakes for five days they only lick the sweat off her skin. At the end of all this her tongue is cut out and, never losing her voice, she throws the severed thing at her tormentor, blinding him in the eye. Tongue flesh as pice de resistance.

I assembled some pieces as instructed, gathering evidence for a confession I could not make or that Id forgotten how to make or amend, make amends, make good, make it good, rehearse, rehearsefrom rehersen, to give an account, to report, to tell, to narrate a story; to speak or write words; repeat, reiterate; from Old French rehercier, to go over again, repeat, literally to rake over, turn over soil or ground, to drag (on the ground), to be dragged along the ground; to harrow the land; rip, tear, wound; repeat, rehearse, from hearse: a framework hung over the dead. From herse, a harrow, from hirpus for wolf, in reference to its teeth (Oscan language, extinct). An avowal I held down like a job.

The night after I read The Tongue of Time, I dreamt that the scar on my fathers body was on my body. Waking to the taste of blood in my mouth, left incisor lodged on my tongue, a pain gradient revealed my jaw locked like a door. In the dream I am in the library trying to cram my organs back inside my body. I dont have any staples, so Im attempting to close the skin of my torso like a winter coat. This approach is reasonably effective but the experience of having my guts spill into my hands has been embarrassing.

Im glad no one really visits this wing of the library. I hear the familiar turn of the timer and feel a thin light shiver through the gaps. When I reach the row and look at the dial it reads zero. I know that when I peer down there I will see a chair against the far wall with a box on it and although I want to pretend this is safe, if I walk down the row holding myself and reach the box I know the light will cut, in other words, a trap, and then Im here.

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From the new issue of HEAT, Australias international literary magazine.

Since its inception in 1996, HEAT has been renowned for a dedication to quality and a commitment to publishing innovative and imaginative poetry, fiction, essays, criticism and hybrid forms. HEAT remains committed to featuring established voices alongside new ones, with the overarching aim of gathering literary perspectives that traverse geographic, cultural, and generational borders. With its minimalist, tactile aesthetic, Series 3 aims to throw light on a carefully curated selection of writers, inviting deeper focus and intellectual intimacy. Subscribe to follow the series as it grows and evolves, with each installment designed to be loved and preserved for years to come.

More here:
The Oddest of Organs: A Brief History of the Tongue - Literary Hub

Season 3, Episode 2 of For All Mankind continues to focus on the Mars mission. While the Soviets and the United States are invested in being the first ones to put a human being on the red planet, a private company announces its decision to be the first to reach the planet. After the Polaris mishap and Sams demise, Kate Baldwin sells the company, but through the process, she gets another chance at exploring her dreams. Margo and Molly continue to disagree on who should be the first commander on the Mars mission, and Molly goes behind Margos back and announces Ed as the commander when Margo was away on a trip. This worsens the relationship between the two women. Aleida is on the moon, a dream come true for her and her family. She fixed the engine that would be crucial for carrying astronauts from the moon to Mars.

Kate Baldwin reaches out to the man who wants to buy Polaris. After the accident, Kate had assumed that she would not get much value for her company since it was in shambles. But Dev Ayesa offered Kate a generous sum of money, which took her by surprise. She tried to evaluate the reason for the high price and proposed a theory. She knew that his company, Helios, was testing methane engines, which indicated their intention to travel to Mars. Helios did not have a ship, and building a ship would take years; therefore, they planned to take Polaris and attach their engines to it. This was what she believed the companys plan was. Dev agreed that the theory was indeed fascinating. Kate was overjoyed to think that it could be a possibility, but she, at the same time, expressed her doubt regarding the plan. To be the first on Mars meant that he was fighting two of the most powerful nations, and that could be tricky. Dev retorted that it was important to break the cycle of us vs. them. He did not wish for Mars to be divided into two parts like the moon was. His company was all about mutual responsibility, and only that could lead to man colonizing Mars. After sharing his dream with Karen, he promised to send the paperwork, and the deal was finalized.

Molly received a notice stating that the selection of the commander would be based on the decision of a new selection committee. She refused to accept that a committee would get to decide on which candidate was the most suitable for the Mars mission. She knew that her powers were being taken away, and that was not something she was ready to accept. She decided to go ahead with her decision regardless of what the committee thought. She informed Danielle Poole that she would be sent as the commander on the second mission to Mars, set to take place in 1998. Poole was surprised that even after having a doctorate in robotics and a vast experience, she was not chosen to be the first on the Mars mission. She assumed that it was Mollys friendship with Ed that led her to make the decision. Though Molly strongly disagreed, she believed that Poole, with her knowledge of science, would be great for building the infrastructure of the base on Mars. According to her, Ed was meant to be the first commander on Mars since he was always a test pilot, and he would know better what decisions to take on the first mission. Poole had no other option other than to agree with Mollys decision. She was ready to head the backup crew if any need for it arose.

Meanwhile, Ellen Waverly is busy planning her presidential journey. She has to choose a vice president to fight the election, and her husband, Larry, pushes her to elect someone who would bring in the evangelical votes. He believed that it must not be about with whom she was most comfortable to work but rather who would bring an added advantage. A moderate Republican would not have cut the deal; it had to be someone with a strong opinion, albeit different from Ellens worldview. He proposed she interview Governor Bergg, the founding member of the Conservatives of Jesus Christ. Even though Ellen thought it was a bit extreme, she gave it a thought and agreed to meet the man. Governor Bregg expressed that he did have a few strong beliefs, but if need be, he would make sacrifices to support his President, and he was proud of Ellen and wanted to support her on the journey. Ellen announced Bregg as the Vice President to run the Presidential election with.

After Margo returned, she was shocked to learn that Molly had already announced the commander of the Mars mission. She reminded Molly that NASA was not the same, and she had to abide by the protocols and, in this case, the decision of the committee. Molly refused to accept it and announced that she would be the one to decide who went to space. Noticing Mollys adamant behavior, Margo fired her from her job. She later called Ed and informed him that he would not be sent on the Mars mission. Ed was devastated. He always regretted not being the first man on the moon, and now he had lost his opportunity to be the first man on Mars.

He sat down with Poole at The Outpost and discussed how NASA has completely changed and how the good old days are gone. During his conversation with Poole, he expressed that the reason she was selected was because of various factors that he could not control, indicating that she was selected because she was black. Poole was hurt, and she left, saying that she did not expect Ed to say something like that. Ed got drunk that night and visited Karen. Even though they were not married anymore, they continued to be great friends. She was the one who could understand what Ed was going through. Ed said that he did not wish to go this way, and sadly, that was how his life was taking shape. The next day, Karen met with Dev at the Helios office. She discussed how they might need a commander for the Mars mission. He agreed that they required a reputed astronaut for the mission. Karen proposed that Ed Baldwin could be their man to travel to Mars. Dev was excited by the prospect and asked the members of his company to share their views. Most agreed that Ed Baldwin would be the perfect man for the mission, and they would be more than happy if he came onboard.

The next thing we know is that the news of Edward Baldwins joining the Helios mission was broadcast on television. Everyone watched Karen and Ed join hands with Helios for their Mars mission, and what was all the more shocking was that Helios was targeted to reach Mars in 1994 and be the first to step on the planet. While NASA and the Soviets planned to land on Mars in 1996, there was a private company challenging them and announcing how they would do the mission two years before the rest aimed to do it. Dev believed that every great innovation was possible only by private companies, and he was confident that Helioss journey to Mars would lead to the ultimate colonization of the red planet.

The ending indicates that the race will only get tougher and more competitive. Also, Dannys obsession with Karen is shown in For All Mankind Season 3, Episode 2, where he discusses how he continued to be in love with Karen even though he was now a married man. Danny is jealous of Karen and Eds friendship, and the Mars mission will only add to the hate. Poole chose Danny to be her right-hand man, whereas Helios chose Ed to be their commander. The two are aiming for Mars, though who finally ends up there is where the question lies. The private company stepping into the space game is an interesting addition to the series. How the dimension and planning of the two government organizations will be affected by it is what we are yet to witness.

See More: For All Mankind Season 3: Episode 1 Recap And Ending, Explained How Did Polaris Go Astray?

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First lunar phase, definition varies

In astronomy, the new moon is the first lunar phase, when the Moon and Sun have the same ecliptic longitude. At this phase, the lunar disk is not visible to the unaided eye, but its presence may be detected because it occults stars behind it.

The original meaning of the term 'new moon', which is still sometimes used in calendrical, non-astronomical contexts, is the first visible crescent of the Moon after conjunction with the Sun.[3] This thin waxing crescent is briefly and faintly visible as the Moon gets lower in the western sky after sunset. The precise time and even the date of the appearance of the new moon by this definition will be influenced by the geographical location of the observer. The first crescent marks the beginning of the month in the Islamic calendar[4] and in some lunisolar calendars such as the Hebrew calendar. In the Chinese calendar, the beginning of the month is marked by the dark moon, the last visible crescent of a waning Moon.

The astronomical new moon, sometimes known as the dark moon to avoid confusion, occurs by definition at the moment of conjunction in ecliptical longitude with the Sun, when the Moon is invisible from the Earth. This moment is unique and does not depend on location, and in certain circumstances it coincides with a solar eclipse.

A lunation, or synodic month, is the time period from one new moon to the next. In the J2000.0 epoch, the average length of a lunation is 29.53059 days (or 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 3 seconds). However, the length of any one synodic month can vary from 29.26 to 29.80 days due to the perturbing effects of the Sun's gravity on the Moon's eccentric orbit.[6]

The Lunation Number or Lunation Cycle is a number given to each lunation beginning from a certain one in history. Several conventions are in use.[7]

The most commonly used was the Brown Lunation Number (BLN), which defines lunation 1 as beginning at the first new moon of 1923, the year when Ernest William Brown's lunar theory was introduced in the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac.[citation needed] Lunation 1 occurred at approximately 02:41 UTC, January 17, 1923. With later refinements, the BLN was used in almanacs until 1983.[8]

A more recent lunation number (simply called the Lunation Number) was introduced by Jean Meeus in 1998.[9] defines lunation 0 as beginning on the first new moon of 2000 (this occurred at approximately 18:14 UTC, January 6, 2000). The formula relating Meeus's Lunation Number with the Brown Lunation Number is: BLN = LN + 953.

The Goldstine Lunation Number refers to the lunation numbering used by Herman Goldstine,[10] with lunation 0 beginning on January 11, 1001 BCE, and can be calculated using GLN = LN + 37105.

The Hebrew Lunation Number is the count of lunations in the Hebrew calendar with lunation 1 beginning on October 7, 3761 BCE.[citation needed] It can be calculated using HLN = LN + 71234.

The Islamic Lunation Number is the count of lunations in the Islamic Calendar with lunation 1 as beginning on first day of the month of Muharram, which occurred in 622CE (July 15, Julian, in the proleptic reckoning).[11] It can be calculated using ILN = LN + 17038.

The Thai Lunation Number is called "" (Maasa-Kendha), defines lunation 0 as the beginning of Burmese era of the Buddhist calendar on Sunday March 22, 638 CE.[citation needed] It can be calculated using TLN = LN + 16843.

The new moon, in Hebrew Rosh Chodesh, signifies the start of every Hebrew month, and is considered an important date and minor holiday in the Hebrew calendar. The modern form of the calendar practiced in Judaism is a rule-based lunisolar calendar, akin to the Chinese calendar, measuring months defined in lunar cycles as well as years measured in solar cycles, and distinct from the purely lunar Islamic calendar and the predominantly solar Gregorian calendar. The Jewish months are fixed to the annual seasons by setting the new moon of Aviv, the barley ripening, or spring, as the first moon and head of the year.[12] Since the Babylonian captivity, this month is called Nisan, and it is calculated based on mathematical rules designed to ensure that festivals are observed in their traditional season. Passover always falls in the springtime.[13] This fixed lunisolar calendar follows rules introduced by Hillel II and refined until the ninth century This calculation makes use of a mean lunation length used by Ptolemy and handed down from Babylonians, which is still very accurate: ca. 29.530594 days vs. a present value (see below) of 29.530589 days. This difference of only 0.000005, or five millionths of a day, adds up to about only four hours since Babylonian times.[citation needed]

The messianic Pentecostal group, the New Israelites of Peru, keeps the new moon as a Sabbath of rest. As an evangelical church, it follows the Bible's teachings that God sanctified the seventh-day Sabbath, and the new moons in addition to it.[14] No work may be done from dusk until dusk, and the services run for 11 hours, although a large number spend 24 hours within the gates of the temples, sleeping and singing praises throughout the night.[15]

There is a whole movement to restore the calendar as it was from the time of Creation and through the Messiah's death and resurrection. This is the true Hebrew calendar in the Hebrew Scriptures. New moon begins with the first dawn after conjunction. (The day begins at daybreak, contrary to how Judaism's calendar teaches.) The new moon phase is not complete until the first visible crescent is sighted. It will take one day or two days for this to occur, and it is only seen in the evening after the sun has exited the sky directly above. The first visible crescent signals the work week is about to begin (the next morning). There is a light signal on the moon 28 days, this signals each of the 4 work weeks' days, and the ShaBaT at the end of each of those four weeks. The Hebrew calendar has a concealed new moon /dark moon. But, the first visible crescent does come on the moon on the evening of day 1, according to Philo. The Hebrew Scriptures indicate new moon is a worship day and a non-commerce day, but necessary work can be performed. It's a great time to thank YaHuWaH the Creator for His provision and protection for the last month and to ask Him for provision and protection for the new month. See [16] and.[17] The day begins at daybreak and the light portion of the day is over at dark time. New moon day is observed, therefore from the first dawn after conjunction until the first visible crescent is sighted.

The new moon is the beginning of the month in the Chinese calendar. Some Buddhist Chinese keep a vegetarian diet on the new moon and full moon each month.[18]

The new moon is significant in the lunar Hindu calendar. The first day of the calendar starts the day after the dark moon phase (Amavasya). [19]

There are fifteen moon dates for each of the waxing and waning periods. These fifteen dates divided evenly into five categories: Nanda, Bhadra', Jaya, Rikta, and Purna, which are cycled through in that order.[20]Nanda dates are considered to be favorable for auspicious works; Bhadra dates for works related with community, social, family, friends; and Jaya dates for dealing with conflict. Rikta dates are considered beneficial only for works related to cruelty. Purna dates are considered to be favorable for all work.[20]:25

The lunar Hijri calendar has exactly 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or 355 days. It has retained an observational definition of the new moon, marking the new month when the first crescent moon is actually seen, and making it impossible to be certain in advance of when a specific month will begin (in particular, the exact date on which the month of Ramadan will begin is not known in advance). In Saudi Arabia, the new King Abdullah Centre for Crescent Observations and Astronomy in Mecca has a clock for addressing this as an international scientific project.[citation needed] In Pakistan, there is a "Central Ruet-e-Hilal Committee" whose head is Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rehman, assisted by 150 observatories of the Pakistan Meteorological Department, which announces the sighting of the new moon.[22]

An attempt to unify Muslims on a scientifically calculated worldwide calendar was adopted by both the Fiqh Council of North America and the European Council for Fatwa and Research in 2007. The new calculation requires that conjunction must occur before sunset in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and that, in the same evening, moonset must take place after sunset. These can be precisely calculated and therefore a unified calendar is possible should it become adopted worldwide.[23][24]

The Bah calendar is a solar calendar with certain new moons observed as moveable feasts.In the Bah Faith, effective from 2015 onwards, the "Twin Holy Birthdays", referring to two successive holy days in the Bah calendar (the birth of the Bb and the birth of Bah'u'llh), will be observed on the first and the second day following the occurrence of the eighth new moon after Naw-Rz (Bah New Year), as determined in advance by astronomical tables using Tehran as the point of reference.[25] This will result in the observance of the Twin Birthdays moving, year to year, from mid-October to mid-November according to the Gregorian calendar.[26]

Easter, the most important feast in the Christian liturgical calendar, is a movable feast. The date of Easter is determined by reference to the ecclesiastical full moon, which, being historically difficult to determine with precision, is defined as being fourteen days after the (first crescent) new moon.

Link:
New moon - Wikipedia

A study published in "Earth-Science Reviews"revealed in October 2020 that lava tubes on Mars and the moon could be used to build safe habitats that protect humans from radiation. The study recognizes that the existence of lava tubes on the moon and Mars are not scientifically proven facts, and have been a "matter of debate for more than 50 years." However, when scientists compared the lava tube features on the moon and Mars, they found strong resemblances with the morphological characteristics of lava tubes on Earth.

More than 300 "skylights," or "cave entrances," have been identified on the moon, and more than 1,000 of them have been found on Mars by NASA orbiters. The study calls for robotic technologies to examine the tubes and collect data. "Intact, open segments of lava tubes could provide stable shelters for human habitats shielded by cosmic radiation and micrometeorite impacts," the study claims. Lava tubes could also provide better access to resources, including water trapped as ice in caves. Additionally, the dimensions of lava tubes are "suitable for permanent housing design," the study says. Lava tube skylights could also provide easy access to the surface.

While missions to Mars are undeniable and probably inevitable, and while NASA, ESA, and other space actors will continue to develop the technology necessary to make trips to the moon and Mars safe for astronauts, a city on Mars where millions of normal citizens live a "normal" life is highly unlikely. If a base on Mars is ever constructed, it will probably be an underground facility dedicated to scientific, and perhaps industrial, activities with an intense deployment of Mars robotics to do most of the jobs.

Read more:
Why Neil deGrasse Tyson Is Skeptical About Mars Colonization

This article originally appeared in Bitcoin Magazine's "Moon Issue." To get a copy, visit our store.

Energy money is the catalyst and tip of the spear for an intelligent sentient species transition from a Type 0 into a Type 1 civilization on the Kardashev scale, which measures the energy and technological mastery of a society.

ALL intelligent sentient species are on this path, whether consciously or unconsciously, and must reach this point before they are eliminated by:

This is known as the Great Filter. Energy money initiates a step change in how organic intelligence can operate and forms a critical step on the journey beyond the Great Filter.

Enrico Fermi was a mid-20th century physicist and Nobel laureate who, upon reflecting on the vastness of the cosmos, famously asked, Where are they?

With the practically infinite number of stars and planets in the universe, it seemed like there should be other intelligent species or civilizations capable of developing radio astronomy or interstellar travel, yet to this day, no evidence actually exists.

The Fermi paradox is the term used to describe this lack of evidence for extraterrestrial life in the face of a universe that should be, by the numbers, bursting with it.

While many have proposed solutions as to why this paradox exists, in the 1990s, Robin Hanson postulated a theory that has become known as the Great Filter.

The Great Filter theory suggests that intelligent sentient lifeforms must realize a series of critical steps on their way to becoming an interstellar race and at least one of them must be highly improbable, or their interrelated, path-dependent nature means that they must occur in a particular order and must all happen before a major cataclysm.

Hanson suggested some basic hurdles (or steps) paraphrased below:

But I believe that he was missing crucial elements. I believe that the discovery of energy money is the prerequisite for this grand goal. Energy money initiates a step change in how organic intelligence can operate, because the map truly represents the territory, in high fidelity.

Bitcoin is our energy money. It is our zero-to-one moment. An incorruptible scorecard in the grand game of life. A time and energy superconductor enhancing economic (human action) and behavioral feedback loops, enabling coordination across time and space in a way never before achieved.

It is our tool to get through the Great Filter and we need to remember that so we dont get lost in the minutia.

Ive taken the liberty of adapting Hansons work into what I believe is more accurate, with an emphasis on what Ive added to his general list.

I am convinced step 12 is not only the one most missing from any analysis by physicists all throughout history, but it is the most important and difficult to achieve in light of the technological advancements of an intelligent species and its propensity to want to control the uncontrollable.

Physicists have mastered the empirical study of matter and, through that success, have forgotten to account for the very real and very significant complex, random process of life; humanity perhaps being at the tip of this process.

As a result, they blindly believe that we can just fit reality into a series of models or equations, and as such, engineer our way through the Great Filter without accounting for the complex nature of human consciousness and intersubjective reality. Along this path, they sanitize the very life out of life.

In our dimension and in our timeline, weve had warnings from both sides of the academic spectrum, from Newton to Einstein, Huxley to Orwell, Nietzsche to Rand and Schopenhauer to Oppenheimer. Theyve all reminded us that false actions, arrogance and flying with wax wings can only lead to disaster.

Unfortunately, modernitys vanity and desire for comfort and control, all which stem from its collective fear, have conspired to drown out those voices of reason and replace them with a never-ending stream of meaningless noise designed to conform its constituents by numbing them into submission.

In a bid to control everything, fearful humans and the institutions they make up seek to sterilize the variance and randomness out of life so they can reduce it to a set of repeatable empirical processes. They abstract everything to the point that things are neither physical nor metaphysical, and everything is relative. Only then can they feel empty enough to be comfortable. Huxley explores this phenomenon in Brave New World Revisited, a series of essays written 27 years after his seminal novel by the same name.

The blind pursuit of sterile empirical ends at the expense of life, at the hands of collectivist megalomaniacs, is humanitys greatest threat and the only way to fix that is to reintroduce consequence to human action. To fix this, the map must accurately represent the territory so were all playing the same game, by the same rules.

When you finally become powerful enough to enslave, obsolete or blow yourself up, perhaps an asteroid is the universes way of pressing the cosmic reset button.

The discovery of energy money marks the point at which the science of matter is able to speak to the study of what matters. In this way, it enables, if not a unification, at least a direct relationship between physics and metaphysics.

I call it energy money not because its some literal battery thats storing energy in containers full of miners. I call it energy money because its the only form of scorecard (money) whose validity is priced in actual energy expenditure. The feedback loops between the cost of validation, the risk of fraud, and the demand in the market by humans seeking to cooperate on a functional standard all tie into work.

When resources, energy expenditure and the input of time are tethered to something that cannot be faked, co-opted or cheated, intersubjective value can be accurately measured and market signals, that is, prices become real. We begin to discover once again what things actually cost, and as such we as individuals and societies can make more accurate value judgements.

The behavior at the level of individual realigns toward natural order (arguably the definition of morality) and, at scale, results in functional, useful coordination among members of a society.

Without something like Bitcoin, intelligent sentient species cannot utilize their resources effectively or efficiently enough to become a meaningfully spacefaring species before wiping themselves out!

They cannot reach the point of energy mastery required to actually reach for the stars because 99% of what they do is wasted.

Reconciling physics and metaphysics means an intelligent, sentient species can make accurate value judgments and thus precisely measure and use the scarce resources it has toward maximizing energy output and minimizing time wastage.

Without such a high-fidelity transmission mechanism, the quantum wastage is not only too high but completely unknown. As a result, the road to serfdom via the incessant fear of loss and the knee-jerk reaction to control it all will prevail.

Bitcoin fixes this.

Many, including myself, have called Bitcoin the second Renaissance. As I wrote in a previous article for Bitcoin Magazine, "Bitcoin, Chaos and Order":

By tying the physical to the metaphysical, Bitcoin reunites matter to what matters. As such, it has the capacity to heal the world in the most deep and meaningful of ways.

This is both right and wrong.

Rightbecause Bitcoin will do this, and we will experience a renaissance of thinking, creativity, science, art, exploration, philosophy and more.

Wrongbecause it diminishes the magnitude of this discovery. It implies that it is another cyclical event similar to the Renaissance of yore. The reality is far more grandiose.

I would venture to say that every major enlightenment event along our timechain of human history was a pre-echo of sorts, culminating in Bitcoin.

Whether its the legends of Atlantis, the philosophy of the ancients, the gods of Egypt, the rise of Christianity, the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution, they all represent life reaching for this point of Aufklrung, through the vessel of humanity.

This may be the first or millionth attempt at crossing the Great Filter and I cannot but find myself in awe of the sheer gravity of this moment.

An incorruptible, fixed supply of money is as close to perfect not because of the number of transactions per second it enables, but because of how closely it resembles or embodies the physical laws of nature and the universe.

By enabling humans to effectively measure, manage and transact the product of their labor, it means value can be created, transformed and transmitted with minimal distortion, and it trends toward the elimination of waste and falsehoods.

One cannot celebrate fake facts in the face of an economic reality tied to the physical laws of thermodynamics.

Bitcoin permits maximum fidelity in human action to permeate society,and as a result, feedback loops are shortened so that trade-offs are more evident, consequences are inescapable, and risk can no longer be hidden and subsequent losses socialized (moral hazard). Everyones skin is now in the game, and we all play by the same rules.

This framework unifies matter and what matters because the lies necessary to separate the two can no longer exist.

The study of what matters, the pursuit of truth, of principles and of meaning can once again be anchored to reality, and vice versa. The study and evolution of matter can operate within the framework and toward the ends that matter.

This will have profound implications for humanity and marks what may be the most important fork in the road since Homo sapiens separated from other hominids.

Bitcoin fixes this means we fix the money, to fix human behavior, to fix the world in time to progress beyond the Great Filter.

On a sound foundation, we can know what things truly cost and we can make accurate value judgments in order to engineer and innovate our way forward.

With Bitcoin, the next chapter in humanitys timeline can truly commence.

As Scarface wouldve said, had he been a Bitcoiner: First we fix the money. Then we fix the world. Then we get the galaxy.

Original post:
Bitcoin And The Great Filter - Bitcoin Magazine