Three Books: Stones Laid Before the Lord

Three books set in contemplative spaces, two fiction, one non-fiction.

I picked up Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood when I was in London last year (it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize). It is set in Australia, in an isolated monastery. It reminded me very strongly of In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden, both in style and themes. So much so I went back re-read Godden's novel (which I'd first read in high school.) 

Both follow a group of women living in a isolated religious community. Overall the plots revolve around an older woman who comes into the community by a unusual route. There are mysterious deaths. Threads from the past that pull at the future.  A member of the community that doesn't quite fit in, she is a bit too high profile, a bit too polished. The style of the two is also similar, slightly disjoint, jumping in time, demanding that the reader fill in the gaps.

Wood's descriptions of the mouse plague in Australia were epic (and epically disturbing), and track actual event. While cold feet might have been a trial to my vocation as they were to Godden's Dame Phillipa, I think I could have toughed it out. The mice? I think I would have fled in horror.

Aflame, Pico Iyer's memoir of his experiences with silence and contemplative monks (Catholic and Buddhist), takes us inside a non-fictional monastery of men who cling to the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur. I have been to this monastery and stayed in the hermitages there. I recognize some of the people and many of the places.  For all that I love this place and sacred silence in general and appreciate Iyer's writing, the book felt oddly thin. Admittedly it can be hard to wrap words around silence, to reveal what might be moving in heart and soul. Perhaps that why fiction feels more real? 

________________

The title was inspired by Stones Laid Before the Lord: A History of Monastic Architecture, a focus on the buildings, less so on the people who inhabit them. 

More books from my shelf that are related: An Infinity of Little Hours (Nancy Maguire, an anthropologist looks at the journeys of novices at a modern-day Carthusian charterhouse in England); Love on the Mountain: The Chronicle Journal of a Camaldolese Monk (Robert Hale, O.S.B. Cam., just what it says, autobiographical account of life as a monk at the monastery Iyer describes) and The Hermits of Big Sur (Paula Huston, a history of the Camaldolese monastery at Big Sur).

 

Swept clean

I picked up a well-thumbed manual for some of the software I used for my computational chemistry research. It bristled with sticky notes of work arounds and advice. Failing to converge? Try this. Need to queue up a job on the cluster? Here's the standard script. Check your permissions! Asterisks marked material that I used every year to train students. And on every one a plea, please don't take these books: "FRANCL LAB - DO NOT REMOVE" was printed in black Sharpie on spines and covers. 

Once upon a time, if I could have chained them down or written curses in the covers like a medieval scholar, I might have. (Well, ok, I certainly could have, though I imagine my students might have been a bit put off. And the group transitioned long ago to electronic materials, so these manuals were old. Though there was the odd sticky note of advice still stuck to the wall.)

They were irreplaceable and last week I threw them out. Intentionally. Into the big blue recycling bin behind the science building. They made a big thunk as they hit the walls. I could feel that thump in my bones. 

I could have found a spot on the shelves in my office for them, or at home. I could have put them on the library "free books" table, pretending that there might be someone else who would want them. Or packed them up for the local thrift store, spinning a similar tale for my conscience. I pitched them.

Clearing out my research space was hard work, emotionally (and physically — paper is heavier than you think, margins might be paper-thin, but stacks of paper are like bricks). All those irrevocable decisions about things that were once so important to me. I cannot now call back my drafts of journal articles, or jotted thoughts about weird molecular topologies that I and my students might explore. It was a lot.

I hadn't realized how much of a luxury this was. 

A couple of days later, I ran across this article, "I have lost everything," at ProPublica. It's a series of handwritten notecards responding to the question, "What is something that was important to you that was taken away in a sweep?" Unhoused people lamenting was lost when their encampments were swept clear without warning. Wedding photos and a grandmother's letters. A mother's ashes. Irreplaceable things, irrevocably gone. 

Until that moment I hadn't realized that my trundling cart after cart of paper to the recycling bin was an enormous privilege. I still feel the pale shadow of the aching pain of these people.

I had the privilege of choice. I have the luxury of space. Everything in that research space could have been boxed up and brought home to be stored in my garage or attic. (Though I rather think my children would not have thanked me, but still — my space, my choice.)

________

This has sat open on my desktop for a couple of days. I don't quite know how to end it. It feels trite to say don't do this to people. Perhaps all I can do is sit with this uncomfortable knowledge. Advocate when and where I can and continue working to shelter the unhoused in my neighborhood. That feels hopelessly trite, too. 

Fifty ways to leave your lab

 

"...Oh, you hop on the bus, Gus
You don't need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free
Slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan..."

As I headed across campus to the main library this morning to pick up a book I had ordered from interlibrary loan, Simon and Garfunkel's Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover started playing. (Is this an improvement over Cecilia? Not sure.) Midstream, "..you don't need to discuss much, just drop off the key, Lee..."

In the summer of 1986, I opened the door to my assigned research space, next door to my office. My department chair was with me, the task was to see what  needed to be done to make the space usable for computational chemistry research. My predecessor had been gone for more than a year, so the space had become...storage...disarrayed...ugh, a mess. 

There was an old tire on one of the lab benches, and a dead pigeon on the window sill. Two window air conditioners were wedged with plywood into the windows, wheezing as they tried to keep up with the midsummer heat. We stood in the doorway and surveyed the scene. My chair said, "I will take care of it." He cleared the lab out — tire, dead pigeon and all — with his own hands. The space got kitted out with all the modern necessities for mid-80s' computational chemistry. Phone lines and modems to dial into the VAX computer up the hill. FORTRAN manuals. A couple of Mac Plusses which doubled as terminals. Racks to store magnetic tapes.  Tables. Chalk.

Over the last 40 years I have had several labs, this last one tucked into the round floor of the biology wing. And this is — was — the last lab. 

Last week I recycled the few hard copy manuals that remained. Gifted a nice large monitor to a young colleague who does some computational work. Recycled boxes of paper files, drafts of papers long ago published, data from projects that didn't quite bear fruit. CDs of software I will never need again were pitched in the trash. And a desk was piled with tech to be picked up by our IT folk. Including a 1986 Toshiba laptop, that was the computer I started my work on. I packed a couple of boxes to take home, but most everything else went into the trash.

I left no old tires, nor dead pigeons. I dropped off the keys, slipped out the back, and was free.

There must be 50 ways to leave your laboratory. 

____________________

I am moving to part-time teaching beginning next fall, then retiring all together at the end of next academic year. This was the first major step toward that transition.

Chasing Down May

A friend noted in an email that the previous week had gotten away from her. Same here, I said. I was chasing the previous week down the street, too. (If you see it, please send it back in my direction!) That's actually an understatement, it's really all of May that has sped past like one of those rapidly flipping calendars in a movie. What happened to May? The answer is what happened in May:

Week 1: I went (virtually) to a conference in Assisi. There was also the small matter of a papal conclave, which I live blogged for the Philadelphia Inquirer, along with four other local Catholics. Oh - and two tea related events. Motto for the week, most of it spent on Rome time: "All the jet lag, none of the gelato." Math Man did take me out for water ice when all was said and done. Habemus papam!

Week 2: There was a wedding! Math Guy, my youngest, got married. There were dinners and lunches. Philly food (more water ice) and family. Despite travel travails, everyone got here and home. We all celebrated the happy couple, we karaoke-ed (is that a verb?) and danced under the disco lights. There were 30 people at my house on the day after. We ate some more and hugged a lot. I definitely cried more than once.

Week 3: Wedding recovery. Whew - could I fit all the stuff from the reception in my Mini Cooper? Props to the staff person at the venue who did not say, "You can't possibly get all that in." I did, including the enormous disco ball which occupied the passenger seat. I chauffeured people to their flights. There was...laundry. Because there is always laundry.

Week 4: I facilitated two retreat days for staff from Catholic Social Services programs. Respite and reflection for 130 lovely folk, framed around pilgrimages and hope.  Reunion at the college. My students are writing books and talking about them. I talked to alums. I packed up and shuttered my research space after a 40 year run as an independent scientist. I definitely cried again.

It's been a lot. But I am welcoming what I hope will be a gentle June. Hi, June!

________

Photos are of my sibs (The Wookie, The Reverend, The Artisté, my aunt, my sister, Geek Guru, and me. All in our disco best. I am so short.); a plant with a bloom peeking out at the retreat house, hope for sure; and the very first computer I had at the college.

Little changes: papal flower pots

I am thinking of all the little things that will change in Rome, after this big change. In the papal gardens at Castel Gandolfo the terra cotta pots all bear the coat of arms of the pope who reigned when they were made. New pots are made in house (or in-garden?). When a pot breaks now, the gardeners will replace it with one with Pope Leo XIV’s coat of arms.

I try to spot the oldest one when I walk there. This one is for Pope John Paul II. Looking forward to spotting one for Pope Leo when next I am back!

We have an Augustinian pope! What makes an Augustinian?

Our new Pope, Leo XIV, is as he said, a son of St. Augustine, an Augustinian friar. Some years ago, as part of a book discussion, I wrote this about what it means to be an Augustinian. Here is a lightly edited version.  

__________

Since I regularly join the Augustinian community at my parish to pray the Litugy of the Hours (aka the Divine Office), Robin wonders: what makes an Augustinian?

The OSA stands for Ordo Sancti Augustini (Order of Saint Augustine in Latin; this is the Roman Catholic communion after all).  And while the order traces its roots to St. Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430), the foundations of the modern order date to the 13th century.  The Augustinians are one of the major orders in the Church, in company with the Franciscans, Benedictines, Dominicans, and of, course, the Jesuits, founded by St. Ignatius.

The Augustinian friars are monastics who live out the evangelical counsels —  poverty, chastity and obedience — but are not enclosed in their monasteries like the Trappists that Thomas Merton belonged to or the Carthusians of Into Great Silence, but venture forth to minister. Villanova University, just down the road from me, was founded by the Augustinians, and education is a major apostolate for them.  (And for the science geeks among us, Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics, was an Augustinian monk.)

Perhaps more relevant to venturing into The Silent Land, the Augustinians value their life in community, in balance with a serious attention to the interior life.   The rule requires that there be places that the monks can go and give their full undisturbed attention to prayer.  They seek explicitly to encounter God in Holy Scripture.  For me, watching this balance between community life and the interior life and prayer in common and individual prayer play out has been formative in my own spiritual life.  And spending all that time with people who are seeking God in His Word is in all likelihood what drew me to Ignatian spirituality.

In the mornings, the move from bustle and banter to a full and focussed attention on prayer never ceases to amaze me. The praying of the Hours may be required by the Rule of the order, but it is an office of love for these men.  I've been praying the Hours with the Augustinians for 20 years, and through that, they have had the forming of me.  When I made the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, I had a very hard time laying down the Office, and even as the contemplations of the Passion grew more intense, clung to it.  When I washed up in my director's office at the end of the 3rd week it became clear that Hours were not something I said, even in the midst of the taut exhaustion of those final meditations, but prayed from the depths of my heart.  The psalms are in my bones, put there by two generations of Augustinians.

I'm not an Augustinian, so I can't really say what it is like to be one, but from where I sit, I might say that they are men who have a serious interior life, are grounded in scripture and who live out a life of service, drinking from those two fonts.  

Eastertide

Eastertide never rolls in, instead it is storm born, eroding the barriers, the dunes I walked in Lent. 

Last week I plunged into the Triduum for once not juggling work and Holy Week. There was Morning Prayer on Thursday, I walked the path to the Vigil on Saturday night, emerging after an Easter Sunday Mass to a warm and perfect day. I was an acolyte on Good Friday, proclaimed the Epistle from Romans on Saturday night. I sang with the small men's group Easter morning and shook the bells during the Gloria. (I'd been entrusted with that last year, but the not-yet-diagnosed Parkinson's made it a panicked four minutes as my hands refused to obe.) Most surprisingly, I was asked at nearly the last second to step in as a baptismal sponsor for one of our elect. We are not so far apart in age, to call her my goddaughter would be a stretch, say instead I have another god-sister. 

So many memories of Easters past were layered over this Easter's mysteries. The smell of vinegar, newspapers on the table, dying eggs on Holy Saturday afternoon. Plotting where to hide them. Hunting up those eggs. The slightly sulfurous taste of hard boiled eggs. Of finding Easter baskets in the morning, the yellow Peeps bright against the green plastic twirls of "grass", fancy foil wrapped chocolate eggs nestled among the jelly beans, precisely counted out by my mother lest we squabble. 

An Easter fire kindled in the middle of the night, keeping vigil until the dawn, until at last the alleluias broke forth.

The Easter that wasn't quite. A basement vigil, a stiffening as we prayed for the dead that week. a bustling hotel dining room bursting with children in their best and indulgent grandparents and an Easter brunch that I could barely choke down.

"Holy Week," said one of the homilists a couple of weeks ago, "is more of a mood." Or I might say, moods. But Easter, too, is more than unalloyed joy -- at least on this side of heaven. It has its mood swings, too. We shouldn't be afraid to preach precarious Easters, to acknowledge to those mired in pain and grief and darkness that Christ, even risen and glorified as he is, still bears deep wounds. 

That glorious dawn, that burning star rising in the east? It was 4 degrees when I stood on the beach to watch it. I had to trust that eventually it would warm me. 

Joy, wonder, science, and Pope Francis

I always underestimate how much of an emotional rollercoaster the Triduum will be for me. Most years Easter Monday finds me back in the classroom, exhausted but having to climb on the next rollercoaster ride — the end of semester — after a week of working full time and long liturgies. Once, thirty eight years ago I climbed the steps of my parish church behind my young husband's coffin on a blindingly sunny Easter Monday.

So this year, on sabbatical leave, I thought I could take it easy on Monday. I'd catch up on the household chores that went undone on the weekend. Wash a load of towels, make an appointment to get my hair cut, pick up a prescription. Take a walk. Read a book. Perhaps even write a bit about water and Easter and burbling fonts. 

Instead I woke up to texts telling me Pope Francis had died. And I shortly joined the thousands of journalists and pundits scrambling to write against very tight deadlines, writing an op-ed on Pope Francis from the perspective of a scientist who has a Vatican appointment. Two hours and 800-ish words later, I dispatched it, along with photos from my own stash. Another couple of hours and it was live at the Philadelphia Inquirer. I never did get to the towels.

You can read what I wrote here, but the writing of it reminded me how wide the view Francis had of things, including science, from the very start. A few bits follow:

From his very first encyclical, written less than 4 months after his election in 2013:

“Nor is the light of faith, joined to the truth of love, extraneous to the material world, for love is always lived out in body and spirit; the light of faith is an incarnate light radiating from the luminous life of Jesus. It also illumines the material world, trusts its inherent order, and knows that it calls us to an ever widening path of harmony and understanding. The gaze of science thus benefits from faith: faith encourages the scientist to remain constantly open to reality in all its inexhaustible richness. Faith awakens the critical sense by preventing research from being satisfied with its own formulae and helps it to realize that nature is always greater. By stimulating wonder before the profound mystery of creation, faith broadens the horizons of reason to shed greater light on the world which discloses itself to scientific investigation”. Lumen Fidei  [34]

From the words he offered at the private audience where I got a chance to meet him:

"Dear brothers and sisters, scientific research demands great commitment, yet can sometimes prove lengthy and tiresome. At the same time, it can, and should be, a source of deep joy. I pray that you will be able to cultivate that interior joy and allow it to inspire your work. Share it with your friends, your families and your nations, as well as with the international community of scientists with whom you work. May you always find joy in your research and share the fruit of your studies with humility and fraternity."  Address to VOSS in Summer 2016

It's this tiny blessing from a message sent to the 2023 Vatican Observatory Summer School when he was recovering from surgery that sits over my desk at home that I treasure as much as the rosary I have that he blessed.

"May you never lose this sense of wonder, in your research and in your lives. May you be inspired always by the love for truth and awestruck by all that each fragment of the universe sets before you."

I hope to never be less than awestruck at each and every fragment of the universe, and pray that I always have the courage to speak the truth. 

 

Holy Thursday: Fully Immersed

 

I am "preaching" Holy Thursday (Carthusian style — a long ago abbot of that most silent of orders told his confreres that they preach with their hands, by writing, not with their voices). Or maybe I should just say I am preaching today. Period.

Today begins the Triduum, a single liturgy unfolding over some 5o hours. We will come and go, but there will be only one collect — tonight — and one closing prayer — at the end of the Vigil. Holy Thursday is sometimes celebrated as the institution of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, sometimes as the institution of the Eucharist. But either of thsoe two characterizations seems to do justice to the depths of the mysteries at play in this liturgy. It's not an anniversary, it is a prophetic call to the baptized.

Last summer, when Give Us This Day's editor invited me to write the reflection for today, I will admit to being slightly intimidated. I have written many pieces for them over the years (50? I haven't really kept count), including for Christmas and other major feasts, but this day, these days, felt far more freighted. 

I sat down to write this with the powerful readings that direct our attention both inward — take this and drink — and outward — wash the feet of others, but my mind kept drifting to the unspoken, to what lies above and beside and below. Wade in with me to all that surrounds us, and that invites us to become what we receive, that calls us to be the Word made flesh. In the world today, where cruelty seems to be the watchword and mercy and justice are given short shrift, it seems all the more important to gather our strength and go forth as Christ commanded.

"After the starkness of Lent, with its stripped altars and veiled statues, it’s always a shock when I walk into the church on Holy Thursday. The altar is draped in crimson satin, the chapel where the Eucharist will repose is overflowing with flowers and candles. Tendrils of incense wind toward the ceiling, a gathering cloud of prayer above the nave...

Listen! Hear the Word that commands me to wash my neighbors’ feet, that whispers to me, “take up your cross,” that speaks my name and sends me out to make manifest the Good News. Verbum caro, panem verum, Verbo carnem éfficit. Become flesh in me."

The full reflection can be found here, along with a beautiful icon by Olga Bakhtina.

Hard realities to remember

The birth of my second son was fast and tumultuous. Literally heart-stopping. When it was all over, his heart once again beating strongly and all the necessary medical tasks for us both tended to, the obstetrician who had delivered him filled a basin with warm water and brought me a fresh towel to wash. It was unexpected, and like Peter when Jesus knelt at his feet, I was taken aback. I’m fine. I don’t need this done, I thought. Except I did.

I’m always tempted on Holy Thursday to let my attention be seized by St. Paul’s mandate to the Corinthians to break the bread and drink the cup that is Christ’s Body and Blood in remembrance of his death and resurrection. To focus on the incredible gift of the Eucharist that we enact daily on altars around the world. This once-a-year washing of the feet, towels piled on the altar and the choir singing meditatively, can feel like something extra, an embellishment for the Triduum. It’s nice, but not needed. Except it is.

For here is the one moment in the liturgical year when the two dimensions of the Eucharist come crashing together in the same space. The Eucharist is not just the summit of our lives as Christians; it is the font as well. Here, with literal water poured out on the steps of the altar where we will shortly literally encounter Christ, we show each other what we are about, what it means to be Christ. The aching feet I have been standing on to teach, then to rehearse, and now to celebrate will be soothed in the warm water. What I will eat and drink will in truth feed a body that has missed lunch and dinner as much as it will feed my soul. These are not metaphors we are playing out here, but hard realities, the water as much as the bread and the wine. We wash each other, feed each other. We do these things, and so we remember. We remember, and so we do.

How often do I respond to an offer of assistance with a quick, “Thanks, but I am fine.” Too often. I don’t want to think that I need any help, or maybe I think that it would be nice, but really, I could manage. Yet these days I cannot always manage. Yet if we are Christ for each other, why would I reject God’s tender care and help? God knows.

______

A version of this reflection appeared in Not By Bread Alone in 2020.

All the ring tones

Photograph of Alexandra Stepanoff
playing the theremin on NBC Radio

On Friday I spent 7 hours in a tiny waiting room on the 7th floor of a hospital in Philly with what felt like 70 other people . Math Man was having surgery. There were understandably lots of anxious people, and so phones were dinging and ringing in every corner as families got and provided updates. (That’s how I learned Math Man was in recovery, and when I could see him.)

There were at least 3 other Star Trek fans in there, including one who had a theremin ring tone. Theremins sound like anxiety to me, presaging the arrival of an alien with designs on all the salt in your body.

April is the cruelest month

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain...
— TS Eliot “The Waste Land”

This could be one of those posts titled “how it started/how it’s going”.  How it started? A 77oF day, with a glorious blue sky. The cherry tree behind my garage blossomed, and when I looked up from my desk through the open skylight I could see the branches framed, stark against the sky.  Like a James Turrell skyscape. Such tender, ephemeral beauty.

How is it going? A front came through, bringing a deluge of rain. Beating the blossomed trees. Thunder rolled. Lightning made it look like broad daylight. An epic spring storm. Also, I left the skylight open. 

In principle this should not have been a problem. The roof windows are solar powered and have a sensor which detects rain and swiftly closes them. Except when it doesn’t. Which it didn’t. 

I came home from the first night of the parish mission — at which point it had been pouring for more than half an hour — to find water trickling down the wall. And  the bowl I keep on the altar in my prayer space with its (mostly irreplaceable) collection of prayer cards and notes and other spiritual ephemera was also collecting water. 

I hit the close button, took a breath, grabbed a towel from the closet and mopped. Then I picked up the bowl.

I started emptying it, laying the cards and notes out to dry. The beautiful Japanese book of pilgrim stamps that I have collected was dry, but… the cards from friends’ funerals and ordinations. The notes from the kids. Markers had bled. Papers were so soaked there was no way to separate them. I could only wait to see what could be salvaged.

The next afternoon I sat on the floor and sorted. I let go what could not be saved, I spent some time reflecting on the bits of my friends and family’s lives that lived in this liminal holy space. Life and death. Memories stirred by spring rain. I grieved the loss of friends, rejoiced again with others joys - births and marriages and ordinations and professions of their vows. I laughed. I wept.

I washed the bowl and blessed it. And filled it once again, placing it on the altar where it might breed lilacs from the dead and the past.

So how is April going? Well, I am writing this in a 7th floor surgical waiting room in Philadelphia. Math Man is having emergency surgery to repair a detached retina. This is not the first April day I have spent waiting in a hospital for news of a husband in surgery while the world explodes with life. April is a cruel month.

 

Ultraviolet — light on the edge

 

Violet is the canonical liturgical color of Lent in Roman Catholic practice (and in many other traditions as well), at least since the 16th century and the Council of Trent. Much before that there were not universal norms for the colors of vestments and ancillary textiles.

Why violet? Red for martyrs seems obvious - the color of blood. White and gold for feasts is arguably apt. Green for the Ordinary days, mostly in the green summer months of the Northern hemisphere, seems reasonable. But how did purple, an expensive, rare color associated with royalty come to connote penance?

I did a bit of research this weekend, but didn’t surface anything particularly compelling. The most popular theory is it’s the color Jesus wore during the Passion (though the four evangelists do not agree on this point, Matthew says scarlet, kokkinēn in the Greek; Mark gives it as porphyran, purple; Luke merely describes it as resplendent; John, like Mark, has purple). The color points to Jesus as king, and so obviously it signifies penance. Which is not so obvious to me. Another theory is that the blossoms of violets (some, but not all of which are indeed violet) hang their heads, a penitential posture. 

I want to float another theory, violet is on the very edge of the light the human eye can perceive. (Weirdly, most of the light in the electromagnetic spectrum we cannot detect with our eyes, we do not have X-ray vision, or infrared detection.) Once you get beyond violet, as the light increases in energy, we can no longer see it. In Lent we stand at the precipice of Easter, at the edge of the resurrection, facing the mysteries just beyond our perceptions. 

Or perhaps it is because violet is the color of the sky just before dawn?

Fiat and lux

Fra Angelico's Annunciation in Florence;
Mary heavy with the weight of her fiat

Fiat. It brought a universe into being. Fiat lux — let there be light. With a breath an unbearable radiance poured into the darkness. Fiat, said Mary to Gabriel. And with a breath that infinite, unbearable Light poured into a young woman in a small town, until she swayed with the weight of it. Fiat, cried Jesus in the garden of Gesthemane. Once again the universe was borne on a breath, carried across the shoulders of God incaranate.

We hear these assents as “let it be done to me.” Yet the Greek word Luke uses in this Gospel -- genoito -- means more than passive assent. It whispers of birth and growth, of what might we become. None of the events set in motion by these fiats are complete, they were each a “yes” to becoming. The light that tore through the darkness all those billions of years ago is still flaring out, igniting suns whose light will not reach us for a hundred billion years. 

Mary said yes to becoming the Christ-bearer. Even now she bears our prayers aloft, swaying under the weight of our needs.  And with a word ripped from the depths, Jesus became the redeemer of our sins past and present and even of the future. Light still careening through our darkness, moving heaven and earth. 

Light has no weight the physicists tell us. Except when it is in motion. Then it has power that can sweep the dust of dead stars together with enough force to bring the very earth we stand on into being. Dare I take on the weight of light? Dare I say “yes”  to moving toward what God hopes for me?  

Fiat.  Fiat lux. Let me be aflame with the Gospel, heavy with the light of Christ.

_____________

A version of this reflection appeared in Give Us This Day on March 25, 2023.

Socks and the Second Law

 

The second law of thermodynamics can be framed as the desire for the universe for disorder. Things, left to their own devices, will get messier. Sorted stacks of papers gradually get scrambled. Ice melts. Socks become unpaired.

There were a weeks’s worth of socks, 8 pairs, in the laundry. What did I get back? Ten socks total - only 2 pairs. Where did the rest go? Great question. Entropy rules.

This present moment

In some sense it always Advent, even now in Lent. We are pilgrims, ever leaning into the future. To quote Walter Burghardt, SJ, “every tomorrow has it’s own tomorrow”. We are always waiting. Yet. Yet we are living now, in this precise moment. It is all we have. The past has slipped through our fingers, the future is for the moment unknowable. It can feel like we are merely marking time, or enduring the storms that rage. Yet. Yet we can live, not wrapped in our own thoughts, but awake to the needs that present themselves now, awake to each other, awake to God…

Walter Burghardt, SJ in an Advent homily.

“I have one swift answer: live in hope! Both words are important, indispensable, irreplaceable: hope and live. You must be men and women of ceaseless hope, because only tomorrow can today's human and Christian promised be realized; and every tomorrow will have its own tomorrow, world without end. Every human act, every Christian act, is an act of hope. But that means you must be men and women of the present, you must live this moment – really live it, not just endure it – because this very moment, for all its imperfection and frustration, because of its imperfection and frustration, is pregnant with all sorts of possibilities, is pregnant with the future, is pregnant with love, is pregnant with Christ.

If you want to lift Advent from liturgy to life, don't waste your days with sheer waiting. Wait indeed, for tomorrow promises to be rich in life and love. But life and love are here today, because God is here today — because your brothers and sisters are here today.”

 

Shout

 

Shout
Shout
Let it all out
These are the things I can do without
Come on
I'm talking to you
Come on

In violent times
You shouldn't have to sell your soul...

Forty years ago Tears for Fears released "Shout". I hadn't thought of the track in years but today as scientists and others gather to rally for science in the face of the cuts proposed by the current administration's unelected minions I find it running through my mind. Can we shout, make ourselves heard above the maelstrom that we are living through?

I am committed in the current moment to being noisy where I can. Like a great wind blowing, the current events are snatching our voices, drowning out the cries of the poor, the marginalized, the hungry, the sick, and the suffering with their drum beat of lies. The beating drums are meant to frighten, to shock into silence, to bewilder.

I wrote the op-ed that follows, which appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer last month. I woke up at 3:45 in the morning with the question running through my head, "Is this what you voted for?" 

Know a Trump voter? Ask them, be specific. Did you vote for an increase in pediatric cancer deaths? Are you willing to forgo treatment with anything developed using funding by the NIH? Really? Have you have had shingles? No? You got the shot? Great, NIH funded. 

Shout.

The op-ed:

“This is what the people voted for.”or so we hear from the White House with each slashed program. But is it? Did people really vote to tear apart the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and lay waste to the nation’s scientific infrastructure? Perhaps you did, wondering what we get for our $48 billion every year.

I know what I have gotten: my life back. The pioneering work that led to the drug that I take for a neurodegenerative disease was done at the NIH, by a foreign scientist here on a visa. Without that drug I struggle to write on the blackboard, walk down the hallway, or even brush my teeth. It's not a cure, but with it I can work full time — and pay the taxes that help support the NIH.

I also know what others have gotten. When a teen-aged friend died of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in the 1970s, survival rates were about 25%. Now 90% of children with ALL survive thanks in part to research supported by the NIH. 

A study by Ekaterina Cleary, Matthew Jackson, and Edward Zhou published in JAMA in 2023 showed that nearly every drug approved by the FDA between 2010 and 2019 was touched by NIH funding. Shingrix to prevent the misery of shingles. Dulaglutide to control blood sugar in type 2 diabetics. Stelara for Crohn’s disease. Lifesaving drugs for cancer, including Keytruda and aflibercept. My own research into the mechanism by which the anti-cancer drug taxol works was funded in part by the NIH.

Private investment in pharmaceutical research cannot replace the NIH. The work done by academic scientists is not proprietary and can be shared widely, amplifying the effect of our government investment. Commercial companies have a responsibility to shareholders, they cannot take as much of a risk as NIH funded projects can. Not every research project on lizard saliva will lead to a block buster drug (as it did for Ozempic) but some will. We need both public investment and the private sector to continue to be world leaders in health care.

But you voted to get rid of”wokeness” not real science, you say? The US has a high maternal and infant mortality rate, appallingly so for black women. Cancelling the research related to race keeps us from understanding why these disparities exist and what to do about them. Women and babies will continue to die. 

If ending public investment in biomedical research in the US is what you hoped for when you voted in the 2025 presidential election, then I expect you to look me in the eye and tell me you voted for me to be disabled and unemployed. I hope you can explain to your neighbor why her grandchild was stillborn and her daughter dead. Or tell your father that no cure for your mother’s Alzheimer’s disease is coming anytime soon. Because that’s what you voted for.

If this isn’t what you voted for, then I urge you to call your congressperson and your senator and tell them so. Before it's your life on the line.

___________

Photo is of molecular model of L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine, L-DOPA, the standard of care for Parkinson's.

Aging with intensity

 

I love cut flowers, they feel like such a luxury. Right now there are sunflowers on the dining room table, and another vase of them on the passthrough by the kitchen sink. Roses from Math Man have just made their way to the compost, circling back to...tomatoes or basil.

Much as I love fresh flowers, I am fascinated with watching them age. These lilies were in my study at home, fading and drying, in their own way as beautiful as they were fresh cut. The colors intensify as the petals dry. Curves and ridges appear, reflecting the late afternoon light. And at the last there is a barely audible rustle as the petals surrender to gravity, one following another. When I go down for the day, I gather the fallen petals and pull the last few stems from the vase. Dust to dust.

Like the flowers, I am aging, though not that fast. Wondering if my colors will deepen, and whether my wrinkles will be as interesting in the late day sun. Will I rustle as I surrender bit by bit? (I feel more inclined to shout these days, but that's another post.)

I want to age intensely, intentionally. To offer up, rather than give in. 

Heavy metal band: tea edition

"Though we might conceive of scientific language as objective, rather than sensual or poetic, in fact phonesthemic considerations play an important role. We know a science word when we hear it, even if we don't know what it means." Nature Chemistry 3, 417–418 (2011)

About 15 years ago I wrote an essay for Nature Chemistry titled "Neolexia," about how new science words get birthed. What should they sound like, what languages should they draw from, should there be humor. (You can read the whole essay here.) In it, I noted that zoologist Lancelot Hogben (Lancelot?!) had very firm ideas on how new science terms should be built.

Heavy metals and tea have been in the news this week, which made me wonder if I should start a tea-themed heavy metal band. Which of course needs a name. And like science words, we know a heavy metal band name when we hear one: Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Anthrax. There should be some hard consonants, and perhaps a whiff of danger. Herewith....

The Katekins (cat-eh-kins, for the catechin molecules that act as antioxidants)

Agonized Leaves (for the agony of the leaves, the way that the dried tea leaves writhe as they unfurl in hot water)

Redox (so much of tea chemistry is redox)

Tea Scum (IYKYN)

Thoughts?

Radishes and pomegranates

A delightful colleague and writer spoke last week about the different types of writing she does. Scholarly writing, long and deep, layered and expertly crafted. Like slow food from a Michelin chef. Then there are the journalistic pieces, like my op-eds, quickly written for a place and time. Fast food! 

But it is her description of the third space she writes in that I enjoyed. (For her it is long form fiction, for me, my essays and reflections.) It's like a cookbook that you bought to look at the recipes, she said. You cook only one or two of them. But it gives you ideas that simmer. And one day you may say to yourself, "perhaps radishes and pomegranates might work well together. And you try it."

Scrabble and Lenten penances? Will they go together? Read it and see!

So what kind of writing is the blog? In my household we call a meal put together from leftovers in the fridge “scrounge.”  When there's not enough meatloaf for a sandwich, or just a couple of spoonfuls of soup, there's what you can scrounge. Here are the bits and pieces that might or might not make a whole…essay, reflection, thing? And sometimes I scrounge around in this space, like the fridge, to see what I might put together into a whole.

And do radishes pair well with pomegranates? According to The Art and Science of Foodpairing they just might. They have similar aroma profiles: fruity, green and vegetable notes.

Prayers for Pope Francis

 

Pope Francis is very ill and he has asked for our prayers. I am praying for him, for his consolation and his recovery, but I’ve also wondered if we also should be praying for him, that is, for all those he prays for. To take on some of the burden of caring for those on the margins so that he might rest.

So I pray…

For Pope Francis
For all those struggling to breathe
For those who cannot afford medical care
For those laboring in brutal conditions
For those who are starving
For those without access to clean water
For those exhausted by caregiving
For those who have lost their jobs
For those fleeing war and economic disruption
For those denied their human dignity
For those...

Let us pray...

Keep us attentive to the needs of all

There are times when the second half of the Eucharistic Prayer just pours over my head, cascading off the altar, flowing down the aisle. Sometimes it murmurs in my ear, soothing, calming, a burbling fountain in a hidden courtyard. Other times, I regret to say, the grocery list starts jittering. Remember to get eggs and lettuce at Acme after Mass.

Then there are the moments when I really hear the words, battering at my defenses, badgering me long after we have been sent out the door. Ite, missa est? Not so much. We may have been dismissed, but I can’t so easily dismiss what I have heard.

Last weekend, the pastor used one of the Eucharistic Prayers for “various needs” (EP VN 3). Given the current political situation, and the insistence of some that Christian faith does not demand that we have a care for those beyond our immediate circle, those we love and those who love us back, these words struck home:

"Grant that all the faithful of the Church, looking into the signs of the times by the light of faith, may constantly devote themselves to the service of the Gospel.

Keep us attentive to the needs of all that, sharing their grief and pain, their joy and hope, we may faithfully bring them the good news of salvation and go forward with them along the way of your Kingdom."

It’s a potent examination of conscience. Made with the body of Christ right there on the altar in front of us. Can I — can we — constantly devote ourselves to the service of the Gospel in these times? Where are the signs pointing out the needs of the world? What do they say? How are we being attentive to the needs of all? Without exception. Do we think about their grief and pain? Do we share their hopes? Are we willing to walk with them?

I used this snippet of the prayer as the closing prayer for a celebration of the Liturgy of the Word last week, and as we creep toward Lent, I am thinking that I should let this prayer shape my Lenten discipline.

---

Aside: I wondered how VP Vance reconciles the Gospel today, where Luke recounts Jesus’ command to love your enemies, to give more than the bare minimum to those in need with his version of  the “ordo amoris” a preferential option for those you love. Then I thought of the part of the Gospel which says I will be judged by the measure I judge others by…

Other weighty matters

I’ve been writing weighty stuff of late. A piece for Nature Chemistry about the literal stardust that sprinkles the earth every year (10 million kilograms of it). An op-ed on metaphorically weighty matters, what gutting NIH funding might mean for people’s health, from my perspective of a patient who has benefited from fundamental research begun at the NIH. 

It’s 1.5 ounces of mass that’s been almost as much a miracle as the medication I take. A hexagonal weight that slides onto a $0.79 Bic pen. And with it, like magic, I can write a grocery list, scribble a thought down on a sticky note, jot notes on a journal article I am reading. Write a short letter to a friend. I suspect I can write comments on students’ papers again, though on a sabbatical leave this year I haven’t tried. 

Like the new found joy of folding my socks, I imagine that I will be excited about grading again. Who knew?

I feel a bit like Disney’s version of Cinderella. A fairy godmother has waved her wand and turned a pumpkin of a pen into something that can take me to the ball. I love my Japanese gel pens and my fountain pens, but I love more being able to make my mark on a sheet of paper.  And it may be that metaphorical midnight might come — and poof! — this hack will cease to work. But for now, the physical therapy fairy’s magic still holds sway.

Elon's Fermi problem

Elon Musk posted a table on X claiming that enormous numbers of social security payments are being made fraudulently, as much as 83%. That seemed...excessive. I teach my students Enrico Fermi's technique for getting quick estimates, good enough numbers to help direct you toward a more accurate solution. Also great for detecting bullshit. Let's see how it works for Elon's claim!

One way to estimate roughly the number of social security recipients is to say everyone in the US over 65 collects it.  (Not true, but Fermi's approach says look at the big effects.)  In 2023 that was 59.2 million people. The Social Security Administration says that the average annual payment is $24,000. So that means we should pay out 59,200,000 x $24,000 a year. That's about $1.4 trillion. What did Social Security pay out in 2023? Its total budget was...wait for it..about $1.4 trillion. Just what you'd expect. So, BS, Elon.

This may be the biggest fraud ever, but I don't think the payments are the problem.

Reality check

I have an op-ed coming out in tomorrow's Philadelphia Inquirer that covers some of this ground. It's up online here.

---

Last night I did something I hadn't done in almost two years. I made lasagna for dinner. I used the recipe I reverse engineered from my favorite restaurant in Albano Laziale.  That's nice, I hear you thinking, glad it is back in your rotation. What I want to say back is, "nice? nice? It's a miracle." 

The lasagna is that good? Well, it is, but it's the preparation that's the miracle, or rather that I can undertake it. 

I use a homemade tomato sauce, which requires dicing onions and mincing garlic and opening cans of San Marzano tomatoes. I brown Italian sausage. Grate Parmesan. Hand knead dough for fresh pasta. And make béchamel sauce, which means briskly stirring to emulsify the sauce. From start to sitting down at the table it takes about four and half hours.

But recently I couldn't: dice things, open those cans, break up the sausage in the pan, knead the dough or stir the sauce to emulsify it. Some tasks on that list were merely very difficult (dicing was glacially slow) and some were just impossible. Stirring that sauce.

It was a bit like the frog dropped in a pot of cold water, slowly being heated. Things almost imperceptibly got difficult. My handwriting got smaller. Writing on the blackboard for an hour got harder. Then it was a problem to get through an entire problem. It became tough to cut a sandwich in half. Folding my socks was a challenge. So was tying my shoes. And stirring. I couldn't make a quick pan sauce. (I know, I know, first world problems.) Then it was folding flour in to make a cake (more first world problems.) Then it was stirring my tea. That was a problem. I was in hot water.

Like that frog, for the longest while I kept adapting, or at least not noticing. Adapting my wardrobe, choosing blouses that did not need buttoning (or ironing, yep, I still iron stuff). Adapting my approach to research, dictating more, typing less. Not noticing that I wasn't making lasagna on a winter Sunday afternoon. Or choosing to have yogurt for lunch instead of a sandwich. 

This is not a bid for sympathy. It's a grounding in reality, in what can be at stake in scientific research that on the surface seems quirky (lizard saliva or getting a tranquilized rabbit's ears to perk up) or esoteric (using singular value decomposition to help assign atomic charges to atoms in a molecule.²) Or that is supported by the government, or was done by someone in the US from another country. 

Some of that research can be life changing. (Both the lizard saliva and the pop-up bunny ears research was.¹) And some of it will not be. We try as researchers to follow trails that will be productive, but not every line will lead to immediate results, some will not lead to results at all. We are exploring the universe, not following well-trod paths to known destinations.  There will be dead-ends. This is not fraud or waste. It's how research works.

The drug I take, that allows me to dice onions and emulsify a sauce, that makes it possible to care for myself and continue to work was developed in part by a scientist here on a visa at the NIH. The reality is that without it, I would be disabled and unemployed. Thanks to NIH funding (and medical insurance), I have access to a life-altering therapy. It's not a cure, but it is a miracle. Other people deserve their miracles, too. 

But Trump and Musk cry, "Fraud! Waste!" and say the NIH is a disaster. Their cuts to indirect costs will save each household less than the cost of 2 months of Netflix (about $30), and cost some people their lives. 

---

1. A study on lizard saliva led to Ozempic, the bunny ears to a Nobel prize. Rabbits that had had Parkinsonism induced chemically had their droopy ears almost instantly perk-up when L-DOPA was administered. L-DOPA is still the gold standard for relieving many of the motor symptoms of Parkinson's. And as miraculous as it is, it is not perfect, so I am still rather personally invested in ongoing research.

2. That bit about singular value decomposition and charges might seem esoteric, but is my work and is used today in in silico drug design, including therapies for Parkinson's. 

Photo is of an earlier lasagna, circa 2022.

O Cecilia!

 

I was working on a reflection for this coming November 22, the feast of St. Cecilia, for Give Us This Day. (I generally have my feet in two different parts of the liturgical year. Right now, it's Ordinary Time and Lent. Which sometimes gives me double vision.) 

As I do when I start these reflections, I noodled

around. I read the scriptures for the day (and for the days on either side). I read some commentary. And about Cecilia,"of whom almost nothing is known for certain" (according to the Oxford Dictionary of the Saints I pulled from the shelf).

There was poetry, there was polyphony (Arvo Pärt's lush Cecilia, vergine romana.) And there was Simon and Garfunkel.

Oh, Cecilia, I'm down on my knees
I'm begging you please...

This last was an earworm (and might or might not have anything to do with St. Cecilia). Try as I might I could not banish it. Begging St. Cecilia for her intercession didn't work either. And surely this wasn't going to be a helpful earworm? Argh. I'm down on my knees...

Earworm or not, I needed to write. And write I did, Oh, Cecilia...

Simon and Garfunkel's ode to Cecilia (whoever she may be), opens with a thumping percussion. As I discovered when I was trying to figure out if the composition had anything to do with St. Cecilia, they were messing around one night and beat out this rhythm on a piano bench, recorded it and used the sample to open Cecilia. So perhaps that's where this line in the reflection came from? "I felt the pew shiver under my hands ..." God knows.

---

The photo is of the mug of the day. St. Ignatius and his hot beverage hanging out on my bookshelf. Not shown, my Jerome commentary on the shelf below.

For the record, Cecilia is once again stuck in my head. Apologies if I have stuck it in yours.

Just google "ordo amoris"

 

"Just google 'ordo amoris'," suggested VP Vance on 30 January 2025, defending his remarks earlier about who we are obliged to help:

JD VANCE: There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world... 

Apparently Pope Francis did. Or rather he used his common sense and dug into the Gospels and the deposit of Catholic social teaching that draws upon them.

"Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words: the human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings! The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation. The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan” (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception." — Pope Francis in a letter to the Bishops of the United States, 11 February 2025

The whole letter is here.

Writing in isolation

I had two pieces of writing due in the last week. And...I lost a day to a medical procedure that turned me into a vampire, cowering in the sunlight. So I was feeling a bit pressured. Whoosh - one piece went off last Sunday (though I still have the earworm it gave me). The next piece needed more than a bit of wrangling. So much stuff I could say, but a firm word limit. So many tangled lines in the narrative, but in a short piece you can't have too many threads. And I was tired (vampiring is tiring, I discovered, is that why they are so pale?). 

Every time I got to work, I was interrupted. Math Man wanted some advice about floating point numbers and high precision calculations. A Girl Scout was at the door with cookies (I bought Crash some Thin Mints). Egads - that meeting! A colleague with good news. A colleague with challenges. Time to get online to give that talk. Each interruption took time to recover from, to recapture where I was. I felt like I was trying to untangle a skein of yarn, forced to stuff it back in the bag every few minutes, where it gathered more tangles. I was...frustrated. Also grumpy (sorry, Math Man!). 

This photograph turned up in one feed or another. It is an Isolator, invented by Hugo Gernsback (the founding editor of Amazing Stories and the Hugo for which the Hugo Awards are named). The article introducing this gadget in 1925 (it was the cover article for Science and Invention!) notes that it blocks out 90% of distractions (relative to what it doesn't say). The user found that after about 15 minutes under the hood things got stuffy, hence the oxygen tank, which the author said was found to "liven the subject considerably." 

The article also gave a design for an isolated office, which looked far more conducive to working than that helmet. All I might add would be a bar on the door.

I did get both pieces written and dispatched, without recourse to a isolating helmet. I just firmly closed the door to my office. (Though post-procedure the  helmet might have been welcome. No light!)

Aliens in my office

Terrible things are happening in the world, and as sometimes it is more than I can take in, I am seeking refuge this morning in wonder and awe.

Today's mug comes from Rome, and features astronauts and an asteroid. Two pieces of writing are on my desk this week, both due soon. One about extraterrestrial intrusions (of the rocky sort, not the animate sort) and the second a reflection for the feast of St. Cecilia next November. You can guess which one I am working on this morning.

The piece on meteorites opens with the note that I keep three aliens in a Petri dish on my desk. Lest you imagine tiny creatures with six eyes and green skin jumping up and down in their glass prison, let me assure you that my aliens are inanimate. Well, at least I'm pretty sure they are, unless they are related to the Horta.¹

The meteorites on my desk never fail to awe me. These were once in outer space. They are old, so very old, older than earth, as old as the solar system. Windows into times and places I have never been and will never be.

---

1. See "The Devil in the Dark" episode of the original Star Trek series.

Slot machine prayers

Representative Josh Breen walked out of last Tuesday’s prayer service, offended he said, by Bishop Budde’s hijacking of a religious service for political purposes. I came to pray, he said. For many things. For the newly inaugurated president, for his family, for success of the new administration. And for the nation — though apparently not for all the nation. Certainly not for the immigrants, or the LGBTQ+ community, or others frightened by the cruel and vindictive rhetoric that flows from the Trumpian right wing.

It struck me that Breen has a very limited idea of what constitutes prayer. That prayer is a solely a divine request line, directed at letting the Almighty know what we want. As if the omniscient God doesn’t know. Or perhaps, since not every prayer gets the answer we want — something Rep. Breen is surely aware of — a holy slot machine. Pull the handle and if you are lucky or deserving(?), three angels pop up and you get what you asked for.

Who does prayer change? Us or God? What do we hope to accomplish in prayer?

I was further stunned to hear Breen flat out accuse the Bishop of lying when she said Christianity asks that the stranger be welcomed. The Bible only means welcome the stranger who conforms to the norms of the society, says Breen. I went back and read (in Greek) Matthew 25:35: “ For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in” ξένος or xenos, is rendered as “stranger” here. None of this carries any hint of limitations. The call is not to feed or offer water to or welcome only the deserving. Breen may not agree with my exegesis (or the Bishop’s) but to call it a half-truth, or an untruth? Or is it that it is an uncomfortable question that Breen prefers not to entertain? 

Breen says we might be better off if more people got up and walked out of churches in righteous anger. I agree. I have prayed and listened to the Gospel and a righteous anger is upon me. I will stand up and walk out of church, and seek to feed the hungry and see that the thirsty have something to drink and that the stranger is made to feel welcome. Without limitation. As was done for me on Calvary.

May God have mercy on us all, that is what I am praying for.

The tale of the great tea kerfuffle

A year ago today, Steeped was published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. I was excited to see all my work come to fruition. But little did I know what the day would bring.

There had been an article in La Civilta Cattolica, and another in the Philadelphia Inquirer a few days before publication. I had gotten up at 4am a couple of mornings to check my mail for interview requests with UK publications. I did a couple, including one with The Telegraph and one with the Daily Mail. I might have mentioned that adding a tiny amount of salt to tea can ease the bitterness, particularly if you'd let your tea oversteep. 

On Wednesday, I woke to a lovely email from my editor at the RSC offering her best wishes and some suggestions for publicizing the book. It was the first day of teaching, so I figured I'd tackle some of those tasks after my classes wrapped up at 1 and before office hours at 3:30. (Confession, there are still a couple of those tasks I haven't managed yet.) And off I went to the college to catch the 9am departmental meeting. 

I went to pull the meeting agenda out of my inbox and noticed I had an email from the RSC's PR firm. The Telegraph was wondering if I had a response to the US Embassy's statement. What statement??? This statement! Turns out that Britain was up in arms over the suggestion that salt in tea could be desirable. We drafted something light and I went off to the departmental meeting. But I kept a wary eye on my inbox. An email from a reporter at the NY Times popped up. Would I have time to talk to him now? I excused myself and went back to my office. We had a lovely conversation, and I was pleased he asked me about my (non-tea related) science. I rang off.

That's when chaos ensued. My phone started ringing. There were DMs on what-was-once-known-as-Twitter, on LinkedIn. In my college email, my personal email. A text from my sister summed it up, "this isn't REAL is it?" It was crazy real. I grabbed a marker and started writing times and interview requests on my glass-topped desk - a space I usually used for working out quantum mechanics problems with my pchem students. Then I went to teach.

The next three days were wild. I did an interview with Lauren Frayer on NPR, and was too flustered to dig out the passage in the book about salt and bitterness when she asked me to read it to her. A TV crew came from the Philly station. I did interviews for media outlets in Ireland and Canada and South Africa and Turkey and Australia and Japan. And of course for the UK. For CNN and the BBC and PBS. At all hours. Like at 1:30 am my time - morning in Britain. By Zoom and phone and via fancy web set ups. And I taught my classes. 

I was the subject of a press briefing at the US State department.

Saturday morning I was sorting my laundry as one does on the weekend when the texts flew again. I was a limerick on NPR's Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me:

Before all you Britains find fault
Take a sip and your whinging will halt
While sugar is nice it’s not quite the right spice
Because your tea needs a wee pinch of…salt

It got a bit less wild the following week. I did more interviews, but got more sleep. One of my favorites was with WHYY's Cherri Gregg and Avi Wolfman-Arent for their show Studio 2. I brought tea to taste and it was fun to meet the people behind the voices that I had heard so often. I enjoyed giving a Joseph Priestly Society lecture at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia, which played a role in the book. In the end the PR people estimated that the news had been seen 19 billion times. I'm with my sister, this isn't real is it?

I'm still talking tea (four events coming up in the next month including a reading at an independent book store and a virtual talk with the ACS -- you can sign up for free here) and doing the occasional interview about the chemistry of tea (December's Consumer Reports) beyond salt. I got to meet and talk tea and baking with chemist and Great British Bake Off finalist Josh Smalley in London last summer, hosted by the RSC. Most of all I enjoy taking people for a dip into their cup to better appreciate the rich molecular mash-up that is the world's most popular beverage after water. And to find ways to make their tea taste better! Even to the adding of a pinch of salt.