A Tale of Death at Sea and Two Songs

From Wikipedia, image of The Edmund Fitzgerald underway in 1971.

I just finished a book that I’d recommend to any fellow history buffs: “The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by John U. Bacon.

I’m a history fan—I majored in history (and communication-journalism) as an undergraduate. There are, for me, times and events that are particularly fascinating and that I have read a fair amount about. For example, my father was a WWII veteran, and the two big wars of the 20th Century, World Wars I and II, have long been of interest to me. The moon landing is in my living memory, and I’ve read some about the early space program. If you grew up in the U.S. and are into history, it’s hard to avoid the twin giants of our national narrative: the two American revolutions, the first one when we told the king to go to heck and the (un)civil one when we almost tore apart our union to protect inhumane human property rights that are clearly wrong.

Image from Amazon.

And big events of my own life, of course, draw my attention. I was a senior in high school in November of 1975. I don’t remember tuning into news of the Edmund Fitzgerald at the time, although I was in the habit of paying attention to news (my family subscribed to three daily newspapers and watched the evening news most nights), so it’s likely I heard about it.

But what I clearly remember most was a tune from the next year. I certainly heard on the radio Gordon Lightfoot’s song about the shipwreck that became a big hit in the autumn of my high school graduation year, 1976. And I bought the album that the song is on on as a result of my enjoying the song.

Anyway, I am not sure Bacon’s book title is entirely accurate, since the story was told at the time and then retold in popular music—but I thoroughly enjoyed his detailed exploration of the story of the end of one of the largest freighters ever to ply the waters of our enormous northern lakes.

I’ve seen Lake Michigan, but have not traveled to the other lakes much yet. I hope to visit Duluth sometime this year and view the largest of these inland seas, the mighty one that they call Gitche Gumee. The fresh, cold, deep waters there aren’t for swimming (too cold, year-round), but I would like to stand on the shore and contemplate life at the edge of something vast, dangerous and beautiful. You can feel small when you stand beside the ocean, but from all accounts, Lake Superior will do, too.

Anyway, the book has all kinds of fascinating tidbits. The nature of taconite, not something that I was aware of, for instance. The danger of Superior, and how many thousands of mariners it has claimed since large-scale commercial shipping began in the 19th century. Most of all, the personal stories of the men who chose (and choose) a life of wandering those waters, fueling America’s old iron-based industrial base with their labor.

It's a story of fundamental elements, of water and iron and weather and humanity.

Bacon tells the story well. We get to meet the 17-year-old pregnant girlfriend of a sailor and worry for her future. Spoiler: Her child is born a healthy girl who has a son who, to the delight of one family of the 29, looks like his departed grandfather.

We learn the story of Ernest McSorley, a 63-year-old ship captain from Toledo, Ohio, who struggled unsuccessfully to bring his ship and crew to safety. We learn of many other engineers and oilers and wipers and porters who crewed the mighty Fitz.

We learn of the competitive instincts and machismo culture and corporate greed that contributed to the tragedy.

Yeah, as a history major, I try to understand that history in school can seem dull, but I never have shared that attitude. History is ours and everyone else’s collective story, and I don’t quite get humans who aren’t fascinated by other human’s experience. Sharing a collective knowledge by telling our shared stories is one of the few things that makes us unique and uniquely human.

Anyway, another thing that makes us human—sure, many animals make musical notes, but we have the combination of abstract language and both resonate sound chambers in our bodies and instruments that we construct to create musical works, to translate our experiences in a resonate way that touches our emotions as well as our minds.

We sing. And we write songs.

Two of those songs feature prominently in the tale Bacon tells. Great Lakes sailors back in the 1970s were pretty much all men, and during breaks in their journeys, those men congregated in dive bars in rough harbor towns and put some of their coins into juke boxes.

They played “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl),” a pop song written by Elliot Lurie and performed by the group he fronted, Looking Glass. The 1972 pop song was common ground between the country-western older sailor crowd and the young rockers who also worked on the ships.

 

I’ve never been in love with that song, but I didn’t hate it either. It was just interesting to read how that particular song, which I was aware of but didn’t seek out, took on a special life for a special group of lonely seafarers.

So it goes, I suppose. Music doesn’t just mean what the writer or performer intends—like all art (music and books), it takes new form as it is invested with significance by an audience.

Of course, where the Edmund Fitzgerald is concerned, the main song in any book about the shipwreck isn’t the one written in the early 1970s, but another one written in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy.

It’s only an aside in the book, yet I really enjoyed learning more about “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Gordon Lightfoot—how the Canadian troubadour had been noodling for a while with a melody related to old sea shanties. How a half-page report in Newsweek captured his attention and caused him to seek out every news article about the ship that he could find. How he carefully crafted lyrics to both fit his melody and be as accurate to history as he could.

And the recording of the song was fascinating, too. He and the musicians he was working with had a week to lay down the final tracks to Lightfoot’s “Summertime Dream” album. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday—according to Bacon, Lightfoot had a strong work ethic and put in full shifts those workdays with his bandmates, but he ended each session by playing a bit of his sea shanty melody.

The singer and band worked so hard that they completed the album tracks in four days although they had the studio reserved for the full workweek. At the end of the session Thursday, one of the other musicians strongly encouraged Lightfoot to dig into the song that they had all heard all week but had never performed—the sea ditty Lightfoot composted based on a recent real shipwreck.

The song begins with low key instrumentation, and the drummer was waiting for a signal from Lightfoot before joining in. After almost two minutes, the signal hadn’t yet come, and the drummer was worried that he’d been overlooked. Then, after the slow initial two verses, Lightfoot gave him the nod. And that iconic stormy drumming right before “the wind in the wires made a tattletale sound” became part of music history.

Of the two songs, I have always enjoyed “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” more. It’s a deeper, sadder, truer song. It’s long for a pop song at 6 minutes, and musically very repetitive—but it works for me.

In that recording session, Bacon reports, the band came back and played it multiple times on Friday, their final day of working on the album. However, in the end, their first recording, the one that they made without much rehearsal on Thursday, was the track used on the album and for the single that played so much on the radio during my high school graduation year 50 years ago.

Lightfoot had mixed feelings about the song, which is understandable. He didn’t want to seem like he was taking advantage of a raw tragedy. In the end, his tune kept the memory of the event alive, and helped the families of the 29 come to terms with their deep, tragic loss.

I’ll let Elizabeth, The Charismatic Voice, who knows a lot more about music than I do, unpack a bit more about the song:

Again—tell me once more how history is boring? Sorry, you’re wrong.

Back to Bacon’s book. The later chapters when the ship is taking the northern route across the big lake and facing an increasingly powerful storm are bit like the movie “Titanic.” Not a spoiler alert: In “Titanic,” something bad happens to the ship. So, too, the story of The Edmund Fitzgerald doesn’t have a happy resolution.

Still, there’s a lot to take away from this book. One positive note—since that tragic night on Nov. 10, 1975, exactly zero additional large ships have gone down on the lakes. Reforms made in the wake of this event have saved many lives.

Another story in the book: How families of the sailors worked to protect the site of the wreck. However, they allowed the ship's bell to be recovered. Image from Wikipedia.

Disturbingly, we’re in the wake of a global pandemic that struck us six years ago and cost the U.S.A. more than 1 million souls. We’re not coping that well with the story of that time, partly because powerful politicians seem intent on re-writing pandemic history in an inaccurate way.

Maybe we’ll learn our own history better in the long run. After the Edmund Fitzgerald sank, the way captains think about the Greak Lakes, the way communication about weather is handled, the nature of radars and forecasts—things have changed for the better.

That’s what knowledge of history can do for you, if you let it--it can make things better. Also when you feel it appropriately, in your bones and in your music.

Water on my Mind During a Walk After a Rain

Droplets shimmer on a Ginkgo Tree July 31.

It’s been a sometimes hot and dry, sometimes stormy July in Iowa. Today, the last day of July, we were lucky to have some rain during the night that continued until this morning.

The rain wasn’t always gentle—in fact, the county was under a tornado warning for a while late in the afternoon, although the area of concern was south and east of me.

It was muggy and in the 70s today. I’ve been on limited activity as I recover from a minor medical procedure this week, and I was feeling a little stir crazy. Since I can’t yet ride a bike or trike (although I will be able to in a few days), I took a little stroll around the damp yard after the rain eased up by midday.

The lawn hasn’t needed a lot of mowing lately due to hot, dry weather, but I suspect that will change. However, the growing grass will have to wait a few days, just like the bike and trike will.

I try not to walk around the yard too much after a rain. After all, in my shady yard, grass has enough trouble holding its own without a heavy mammal stomping on it when the ground is mushy. That, and insects abound in summer here. So, the walk was quick.

To me, it was a wonderful time to be out in this tiny spec of the world. The post-rain lawn sparkled with watery jewels. Droplets shimmered on grass and tree leaves. Of course, I took my camera with me and made some images—I am enjoined to not lift anything heavier than 5 pounds while I recover, but I think my Nikon qualifies as lighter than that. A picture is worth 1,000 words, but a modern camera is less than 5 pounds, typically.

Beside a giant Maple stump from a tree destroyed in a derecho storm in 2020. Here, six years later, the stump is sending up one root sapper. Droplets on a leaf July 31. Is it a young tree or a very old one? It's both.

I only spent a few minutes outside, but it was good to get out of the house. It was cooler than it’s been lately, but still felt heavy and muggy. It’s not a surprise that rain is returning this evening.

Water is very basic to our lives. Nonetheless, in “Project Hail Mary,” the fictional scientist Dr. Ryland Grace, through author Andy Weir, says that life and water aren’t the same.

Hosta flower July 31.

“There’s nothing magical about hydrogen and oxygen! They’re required for Earth life, sure,” Dr. Grace says. “But another planet could have completely different conditions.”

Well, it’s an interesting point, but I live on Earth and I feel a deep connection to water. In the November election, it’s a key issue to me. A local opinion writer, Todd Dorman, has written many columns on the topic, to his credit, including this one from Sunday, July 26. Water quality is an important issue, and one that’s big and complex and thus not easy for the media to consistently focus on and write about. Kudos to Dorman.

The issue of water quality is also front and center in at least one race—a Democrat, Chris Jones, is running for state Secretary of Agriculture and is a former University of Iowa researcher.

Unfortunately, Jones will face a heavy battle, I’m afraid. Iowa is a very Republican state these days. Still, the weather in Iowa changes quickly—as this cool, wet day during a dry, hot summer shows. Maybe the political climate will be as volatile and changeable. And maybe water can lead the way.

Why Doesn’t Reality Actually Win?

July 17--Low late day sun illuminates seeds on plants near Lily Lake. The real world can be a pretty place.

Recently in my life, there were strong reminders that our large human brains are both a species-defining asset and possibly our downfall, too. We think of ourselves, individually, as being much smarter than we actually are, and we’re convinced our take on life, our reality, is “the” reality.

When, in reality, the universe doesn’t care what any of us individually thinks of it, it just is. And our brains, flawed organic computers that they are, are wired to reach quick conclusions via limited data and to lock those conclusions in.

That’s good if you’re an early human living on a savanna evading a pride of lions, when hearing and reacting to a sound might save you and allow you to pass on your genes.

In our constructed modern culture, unfortunately, our innate human ability to reach conclusions quickly on limited information and to form narratives can lead both to self-delusion and group delusion.

Dragonflies near Lily Lake. Maybe not too brainy, but just about the most efficient predators in the animal kingdom. And they don't waste any time online.

To me, the reminders of this complex reality, in the chronological order in which I encountered them, were “Toy Story 5,” “Dear Evan Hansen” and “A Bunch of Crazy Nonsense from President Trump” (I came up with the title of Trump’s election speech myself). Technically, the speech was given the night before Theatre Cedar Rapids presented “Dear Evan Hansen,” but I didn’t watch the speech live, so for me, it was experienced after the play.

First, the new Pixar movie. In “Toy Story 5,” we see Jessie struggle with the reality that her girl, Bonnie, is becoming distant due to an online life using Lilypad, an internet-enabled learning device. Bonnie attempts to form friendships via the device, only to have girls online turn on her and bully her for playing with toys.

For context, the Bonnie character is age 8. I found it sad that the fictional reality portrayed by the movie is all too plausible, that such a young child would fall into an online delusional attack—but I’m sure that’s close to truth. In the end, Bonnie manages to form a healthy friendship with a slightly older girl named Blaze—who lives in the house that Jessie’s original owner grew up in.

It was not the strongest movie of the Toy Story franchise. Woody shows up for Buzz and Jessie’s wedding, but he’s there basically because it’s a Toy Story movie, and Woody has to be around. The story was creative, but somehow didn’t hit my emotions as strongly as other movies in the franchise have. I did find it poignant when Jessie discovers that her original owner, who gave her away, still found her favorite toy so important that she used the name for her actual daughter—but that was the one heavy emotional hit in a movie with too many swings and misses.

It wasn’t a bad movie. It covers an important topic and did present many ideas on the big idea of what online childhood means—but, to me, it lacked a central message. It didn’t know what to say about the problem it correctly displayed. For example, the fact that online devices and sites are deliberately designed by corporations to be addictive and that the young are particularly vulnerable to that resulting allure was implied but not tackled head on.

Images from Pixar site for movie--Bonnie, Blaze and Jessie. Source: https://www.pixar.com/toy-story-5

Still, “Toy Story 5” was a decent movie, and a movie of its time. It didn’t give us a clear formula on how to make real life more compelling than the electronic lives we all get sucked into—yet perhaps that’s because there is no simple answer. At least the Toy Story franchise, decades after its first appearance, still has something to say.

In “Toy Story 5,” the issue is having a healthy childhood in a screen-heavy world. In “Dear Evan Hansen,” Evan has to deal with how the online world can magnify a lie—told for humane reasons—until things get wildly out of hand.

The musical was performed in 2015, but Theatre Cedar Rapids chose to place their production in today’s universe. Honestly, even if 11 years seems like eons ago, the underlying dangers and struggles of a social media world are still relevant and the play worked as a story of today.

In the play, a troubled boy named Connor signs a troubled boy named Evan’s arm cast at school, and then later takes his own life. Connor has also taken a note that Evan wrote to himself as part of his therapy, and which Evan had printed in the school library—a note that mentions Evan’s feelings for Zoey, Connor’s sister.

Image posted on Facebook by Theatre Cedar Rapids of "Dear Evan Hansen."

Connor’s parents find the note after Connor’s demise and mistakenly think it’s a note Connor wrote to Evan. It leads them to conclude that Evan was Connor’s friend and confidant—and Evan plays along, inventing a false narrative of a relationship that never was.

Nobody liked the abrasive and troubled Connor when he was alive, but our human brains often rewrite history at a time of loss, and the departed often acquire halos that they didn’t always earn in life. So a group to remember Connor is created at school and starts posting materials online. Evan gets to be “co-president.”

Inevitably, Evan’s ruse is uncovered, and it all falls apart.

I realize that it can be unfair to compare an animated movie to a live stage musical. It’s like comparing a book to a movie. The different narrative forms don’t serve completely the same function and thus the comparison can be flawed.

Part of the reason TCR’s “Dear Evan Hansen” worked so well for me, better than “Toy Story 5,” is a prejudice I have in favor of live theater. When it works, it works so well because you know you’re experiencing a shared reality that you co-create with a living set of other humans who are performing their magic right in front of you.

It's not such a fixed, mediated experience, even when it’s an experience about social media.

“Toy Story 5” was about young children. “Dear Even Hansen” concerns humans on the brink of adulthood—and how the adults also react. Maybe that’s another reason why the play worked more for me.

July 5--The day after America's 250th birthday, a Monarch butterfly named "Dodger" emerged in our dining room. We had brought the caterpillar inside from Milkweed in front of our house. It's a girl, and it's real and not an Internet hoax.

And then we have the third key lesson, a demonstration of delusion. To me, both the play and the movie I watched were partly about the struggle to distinguish what is real to us and what exists in a weird, constructed online reality. And President Donald Trump’s July 17, 2026, speech seems like a cautionary tale on how even the oldest amongst us are not necessarily the wisest when it comes to separating fakery from reality.

Donald Trump is a unique, and uniquely terrible, character in many ways. He’s a norm-busting president, and partly how you feel about him depends on whether you think the busted norms are useful or constraining.

But our president has a long history of self-delusion parlayed into flawed government policy. Think of his insistence that he won reelection in 2020, although he did not. And he often gets his false narratives via internet sites and amplifies them via social media. Our oldest president is enamored of our newest communication technology.

Image from Whitehouse.gov of President Trump giving an interview to Fox News a couple of days before his election speech.

The 2020 election took place at a strange time in global history, a year that will always be defined by a novel respiratory virus infecting us and many other mammal species, and our struggle to deal with it. Trump’s false claims that the election that year was stolen are a part of that weird time. 

And last week’s national address on election security seem to fit into that long-standing Trump pattern of trumpeting self-delusion. I not only watched the speech—I also read a transcript of it that is available on CNN.com. Let me ruminate for a minute on how much reality and our president’s thoughts on it diverge from each other.

Take the start of the speech, in which Trump claims the world was ending before he was reelected, and only he saved us: “We had transgender for everybody, men in women's sports, crime ravaging our cities, and the whole world was laughing at us as a nation, but not anymore. Two years ago, our country was dead. Now, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world.”

“Transgender for everybody?” Say what you will, even transgender people recognize that the transgender community is hardly “everybody.”

And today in Iowa, it’s very hot indeed, and the air is barely breathable because of wildfire smoke. Our country is indeed “hot,” but maybe not in the way President Trump means.

Two years ago the whole world was “laughing at us” and they aren’t now? Yikes. Maybe they are crying now more than laughing, but our standing in the world has been severely degraded by our current dysfunctional dear leader.

In the speech, the main villain, besides Barak Obama, was China. China, it seems, didn’t want Donald re-elected in 2020 and Trump darkly hinted, although he never stated, that explains the cheating that led to the fake outcome (we’re in Don’s LaLa land, I don’t mean that there was widespread cheating that led to a fake outcome, that’s just the Big Lie that Trump trumpets). What did China do to the 2020 election? Go on, tell us, Don.

They downloaded “sensitive” information, he said. “That information includes names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences and other sensitive data.”

Names, addresses, phone number and party affiliations associated with our elections are part of public documents. The Chinese didn’t hack that data—they bought it, and not on the dark web. It’s available to anybody to purchase legally. True, maybe a foreign actor would put that public data to nefarious use, but Trump never alleged that—merely that the Chinese had that data and it was “sensitive.” So what? It’s a way to make what’s mundane seem dark and dangerous—creating an alternative reality, the kind of weird conspiracy that our brains can embrace and that can spread in the cyber world.

And I’m not sure Donald’s speech didn’t at least partly work. There is no guarantee what the Senate will do, but it’s in Republican hands, and a weird, dangerous federal takeover of elections promoted by Trump passed the House after the speech. Plus, the speech seems like pretext for later rejecting the mid-term election results should Trump, as seems likely, not care for those results.

Our democratically elected president is setting the stage to discredit and deny our democracy. That’s rather chilling. It’s July of 2026. The mid-term elections are still some months away. But our President is casting aspersions on our election system and preparing us for emergency federal action to topple the table if the game doesn’t go his way.

Dragonflies and setting sun at Lily Lake. I hope it's not twilight for our democracy, but our capacity for delusion has me worried.

And all because he can’t come to grips with reality. He lost the election in 2020. Frankly, he lost the popular vote in 2016 but was still elected due to the quirks of the Electoral College. Re-writing history is one of Trump’s specialties, and one of the features of our human mental weaknesses.

Our memories are always interpretations of what has gone before, our brains are not video recorders but rather filters that distort our past and present. We excel at creating narratives—which is useful if we’re writing thoughtful movies or plays about the cyber world but less useful if we construct fake narratives that misguide our collective political actions.

Hopefully, there are enough smart people that the president’s election lies won’t work. Yet it remains to be seen. The nature of our smarts is sometimes our flaw. Just ask Evan Hansen how easy it is to slip by accident into a web of lies. Or, in Trump’s case, to spin and promote such a web.

Last week, my wife and I took a mini vacation to the Amana Colonies, which are located nearby. During a two-day stay, we took a warm late-day stroll around Lily Lake, a swampy body of water between Amana and Middle Amana. Despite the heat, it was a pleasant outing, featuring many birds and dragonflies around the lily-filled pond.

The two-day break was nice. I didn’t get online as much as I usually do, which is probably good for me. It’s healthy to connect to world that’s actually outside my door and not spend too much time in the constructed, constrained reality that is created online.

Another dragonfly. They were just too pretty, I had to make and share images of them online. At least they're not AI.

I wish President Trump would go for a refreshing walk around a lake rather than a golf course now and then. Most of all, I wish MAGA America would get away from its screens and see the world for what it is. It’s troubled and troubling, but not because Chinese hackers have already hijacked our elections. They might try, but have not yet.

I have met the enemy, and they are us—our attraction to and ability to create the fake, comforting narratives that we spread online. I pray that in the end, reality can win.

Sundown at Lily Lake.

The World Unites: Clearly It’s Fiction

Recently, my wife and I went to the local cinema to watch “Project Hail Mary.” It stars both Ken (Ryan Gosling) and a pile of rocks (James Ortiz), and both play their parts well.

And, subsequently, I’ve read the novel that the movie was based on. I enjoyed them both, just as I enjoyed “The Martian,” book and movie. Both books were written by Andy Weir. And, as if you didn’t already know that, there may be spoilers in this post. You are warned.

From https://www.mgm.com/movies/project-hail-mary

I found “Project Hail Mary” to be well done in both movie and book form—which is something, given that there are differences between the two stories in the two media. The movie simplifies the story and leaves out much of the science details, some of which I wish that they had hinted more strongly in the film. For instance, in the book Eva Stratt had planned for Dr. Grace to be a backup science officer all along and had quietly ensured he had all the necessary science insight. Or that Ryland Grace had to be the one to go partly because of a rare genetic trait that made him unusually likely to survive a long coma.

Most of all, I wish that the way that the breeding of nitrogen-resistant Astrophage worked in the book was in the movie. I liked the slow progress through generations of microbes; it’s a reminder of how evolution and deliberate breeding actually work.

But I understand that it’s almost always necessary to leave details out of movies—they are a different, simpler narrative medium than books.

At least one change from the movie to the book improved the story, for me. In the movie, Eva was businesslike and determined, just as she was in the book. But film Eva has a bit more humanity—the karaoke scene, for instance, softens her. In the movie, she forces Dr. Ryland Grace to go on the mission by inducing his coma early, as she does in the book—but Sandra Hüller’s excellent acting shows the conflict Eva feels despite her compulsion to have the project succeed at all costs.

The book.

Well. I like my science fiction with rivets, and “Project Hail Mary” is science fiction with plenty of plausible, interesting science conjecture—it has got its rivets on. Yet any story is better if it has both factual depth and human heart—and like Sam and Frodo in Lord of the Rings, the deepening friendship between Ryland Grade and Rocky provides a lot of heart. Meanwhile, the themes of what bravery is and isn’t, and whether it’s ever OK to remove another person’s agency to save others—those, added to the science, gives great depth to the story. I also like that Dr. Grace is literally the “chosen one” who isn’t chosen for some magic or innate superpower—he’s chosen for his science background, built over years of study. Score one for graduate school.

He is definitely the reluctant hero. “Some people are failures,” as he says. “Some people don’t rise to the challenge.” And yet, in the end, Dr. Grace does.

Partly due to Rocky. While the designated astronauts are training, Dr. Grace comments to Yao Li-Jie, played by Kenneth Leung, that Grace doesn’t think he has a bravery gene that the crew has. Leung’s character replies that it’s not a gene—you just have to find someone to be brave for. Ironically, Dr. Grace finds an alien to be brave for—I like that the film shows even a coward can sometimes do incredibly brave things.

If anything, the most fantastic, unbelievable part of the book and movie isn’t that mysterious bugs are eating Sol and most nearby stars—it’s that the humans of our world would so quickly unite behind such a complex project. Our current leaders would probably deny that Astrophage is real and refuse to be part of Project Hail Mary because it sounds too Catholic (or is a Chinese hoax). Would that we respected science a bit more in this reality.

There are many stories that work as both books and movies and many that don’t. In my life, my earliest experience with such a working pair was “To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee—great book, great film. Also, both the book and movie “The Princess Bride” are wildly entertaining.

Sometimes, one part of the movie-book dyad is superior. I admire Stephen King as a writer, but enjoy many of the movies adapted from his works more than the original books or stories. “Stand by Me” is way more satisfying to me than “The Body,” for example.

Anyway, I’m glad both book and movie work so well for “Project Hail Mary.” It’s an uplifting tale, with troubling elements, which adds to its charm—it can spark endless discussion, as deep stories do. Yes, I am also among those who appreciate that the alien was so “alien,” but in important ways, so much the same as us, too. Even some surprising similarities are explained—Rocky “sees” with sonar and has much better hearing than Ryland Grace, and in the book Dr. Grace wonders why their hearing should overlap so much. Rocky raps on the floor and asks if Dr. Grace could hear that—their hearing overlaps because important physical sounds in both of their worlds overlap in sonic frequency. Well, cool.

So, in summary. I rate the movie “Project Hail Mary” 10 of 10. Or, in other, more musical, words: "Amaze, amaze, amaze."

In the Charlotte Tradition: Lily Sheep & Flock

For many, myself included, one of the seminal reads of our youth was the traumatizing, tantalizing and entertaining story of a writer, surrogate mom and spider, Charlotte. EB White’s “Charlotte’s Web” is indeed a masterpiece, and recently I watched two movies that are in its tradition.

Like “Charlotte’s Web,” both “The Sheep Detective” and “Project Hail Mary” feature nonhuman characters who reveal a lot about humanity. It’s a common modern narrative device, used in novels and movies and TV shows, to have the non-human commentator observe humans and remind us of how weird we sometimes are. Think many Pixar or Disney sidekicks, Leonard Nimoy as Spock on the Enterprise or Alan Tudyk as the resident alien in Resident Alien.

Anyway, I’m sure Charlotte isn’t the first example of this trope, but she’s one of the ones who has the power to awaken new ways of looking at the world. Selfless love, mortality, empathy—it’s all there in that arachnid. And, for that matter, in that lovable bundle of stones in “Project Hail Mary.”

By the way, I appreciate the humor of Andy Weir, who wrote the book and named Dr. Leland Grace, even if someone else had to point out to me one of the obvious puns: Dr. Grace is the only human to survive on the spaceship Hail Mary. Hail Mary is full of Grace. I’ll write more later about that particular movie after I finish the book it’s based on. Don’t hold your breath—I’m a reader, but I read like I ride a bicycle or tricycle. Very slowly.

For now, back to the town of Denbrook and the intrepid ewe Lily and her flock, who work with a bumbling local police officer to solve the murder of the flock’s beloved shepherd. Obligatory and probably unnecessary aside: Yes, as I reflect on this tale, there will be spoilers—such is the nature of commentary. You have been mildly warned.

To anthropomorphize animals (or humanize aliens) is a  common narrative tool that doesn’t always work. That’s the way with character tropes in any story, I suppose. If the animals are two-dimensional stereotypes, the story may be entertaining but ultimately fails. It’s the “Penguins of Madagascar” trap—you can have action sequences, witty quips and still come up with a stale tale that’s flat and forgettable.

“The Sheep Detective” is anything but flat. Through the eyes and ears of ewes and rams, the film ruminates well on prejudice, bullying, murder, mortality and the role of memory.

I appreciate the ensemble nature of the flock. The murdered shepherd, George Hardy, has spent each evening reading murder mysteries to his sheep, and Lily has taken in the nature and “rules” of such stories. She’s not alone—there is the hapless Winter Lamb, the excluded and abused Wilbur of our story. There’s the sometimes-sad Mopple, “cursed” with the ability to remember when other sheep can easily forget. There’s Sebastian, the Aragorn of our tale: the rugged, masculine outsider with his own tragic back story.

And like Fern in “Charlotte’s Web,” another aspect of this pleasing story is that the humans also have complex layers. For a while, I suspected the harsh lawyer—Lydia Harbottle, who is excellently played by the wonderful Emma Thompson—but it turns out she’s just a really tempting red herring. There’s Tim Derry, played by Nicholas Braun, the bumbling small-town cop who, despite his limits and awkwardness, in the end is smart enough to figure it out (led by the sheep, of course).

The comedy is partly what keeps this movie moving through it’s darker thematic elements. Like many entertaining mysteries, it both keeps you on your toes and tickles your funny bone. Lily, voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, undergoes genuine growth. She learns to remember even the painful past as the way to be fully alive, and ends up embracing the outcast Winter Lamb.

Several main characters die, and their deaths have impact. The killer is satisfyingly caught. The lost daughter returns to read to the sheep and keep the now enlarged flock going.

It’s a satisfying, well-done animal story that made this viewer feel more fully human, and that’s the mark of storytelling that’s not baaaaaad.

Hoping a Meeting Sparks More Journalism

Jada Veasey, adjunct advisor to the MMU Times.

The cookies were exceptional and the energy was good. I hope it picks up and something comes of it—the energy, that is.

On March 12, I was invited to speak with a small number of Mount Mercy University students in the newsroom of the Mount Mercy Times. For various reasons, the Times, which had been a student newspaper in years past and now is a student online news source, has been inactive this year, and some at MMU are hoping to change that.

I retired in May 2025 as a communication professor at MMU, and was the faculty advisor to the Times for two decades. This year, a relatively recent MMU graduate, Jada Veasey, was named as the adjunct advisor to the Times. I was speaking with the students at her invitation.

The main reason to bring me in, I think, was to give the students a sense of what journalistic writing is—how a news story is structured. But I started by asking the students what they were doing in the room—what they saw as the role of journalism at MMU.

The questioned stumped them, a bit, but that’s OK. I wasn’t seeking a quick answer nor a “correct” answer, I was more interested in prompting them to think about the “why” of the MMU Times. If you know why you’re doing journalism, the “how” has something to drive it.

Lainey Henley, sophomore English and political science major.

Anyway, we had a bit of a broad-ranging philosophical discussion, and then I went over a bit of newswriting 101. I reviewed, briefly, what a lede is, what a bridge is and how to proceed form there.

It was way too quick to turn aspiring writers into journalists but I guess the whole point of the meeting wasn’t to cover a semester’s worth of intro to journalism. It was more to try to feed the spark, prime the pump, get the students to get out there and get started.

Kade McPherrin, sophomore social work major with a minor in sociology.

Meanwhile, Jada, the advisor, also has her own cooking blog and had brought in a set of chocolate chip cookies to test our reactions.

I don’t know how the open-ended ramblings of the old man would be rated. I did leave the meeting feeling good about the potential for student journalism at MMU and hoping that the students, who were only a day away from Spring Break, would feel now is the time to dive in and get something done. As for the cookies, my rating was simple. They were 10 of 10.

Keira Carper, senior English major and creative writing minor.

Jada, a registered nurse in her day job, was an excellent student journalist at MMU. As a nursing student, she had a difficult, time-consuming major, yet managed to make time to be a guiding light at the Times. She seems to viscerally understands that a community, even a student community, is richer and more informed with journalists active in it.

I think the students there sensed that, too. I hope that they live it.