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.

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.