Field Notes #13

Bittersweet playlist, tick repellent options, Delia Ephron on processing traumatic experiences

Hello, friends, and Happy Wednesday! Spring is slowly arriving here, along with it new books and teeny ticks. The trees are still barren. I’m longing for the day when spring bursts forth in a decadent confetti of verdant yellow-green leaves. Here are a few things I’ve run across recently, “field notes” collected from here and there. If you feel inspired, you can share your thoughts by replying to this email or posting a comment. I really love hearing what you are thinking about.

1} Bittersweet playlist

Music can be so stirring, unlodging emotions and connecting us to something larger than ourselves.

Susan Cain began thinking about the power of sorrow, the importance of melancholy, when she noticed how deeply sad songs affected her. As she told the New York Times in an interview:

“I would listen to a technically sad song, but what it made me feel instead was a sense of communion with other people who had also known the sorrow that the music was expressing. And with this incredible sense of awe and gratitude toward the musician for being able to translate what had clearly originated in pain and to transform it into beauty. It’s kind of like my church when I listen to that music.”

Susan’s wonderings led her to an exploration of melancholy and an understanding that the bitter and the sweet parts of life are intrinsically linked — an exploration that became her new book Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole.

You might know also Susan from her blockbuster book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.

Susan has put together a playlist of bittersweet songs, which are beautiful, poignant, aching.

One is “After All,” by Dar Williams, an exquisite, wrenching song in the folk singer’s silky voice. I hadn’t listened to Dar in a long, long time. Amazing how music can stir your cells, letting feelings and a sense of another era of your life rise to your consciousness again.

A few more of my favorites on the Bittersweet list are “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen, “Over and Over” by Morcheeba, and Adagio for Strings.

And one song that’s not on the list, but which always fills me with so much emotion: Pachelbel’s Canon in D. The joy, the sweetness, the aching, the inexpressible translated into notes.

What songs stir you?

2} Be-gone tick sprays

I confess: I have not taken ticks seriously. I grew up in Maryland with ticks in our woods and grassy backyard, with our dogs bringing in ticks from outdoors all the time. My mom would pluck them off, and that was that. We knew about Lyme Disease, and we were concerned, but not all that much.

I did buy a bottle of tick repellent last summer, and it mostly sat unused.

But this year, after reading The Deep Places, a harrowing account of Ross Douthat’s years-long battle with Lyme, and hearing first hand from friends like Jana Steck, author of The Battle Within and creator of United by Lyme, I have a new outlook on the dangers of tick-borne illnesses.

Lyme Disease and other tick-borne illnesses are seriously vexing, painful, and disorienting diseases. They can topple your life.

So what should we use to repel these devilish bugs?

One study, Formulations of Deet, Picaridin, and IR3535 Applied to Skin Repel Nymphs of the Lone Star Tick (Acari: Ixodidae) for 12 Hours in The Journal of Medical Entomology, compared different tick repellents. Options with 20% picaridin, 20% IR353, and 33% DEET all did well. The option with 10% IR3535 did not fare as well, so the concentration can make a difference.

What is picaridin? According to the Picaridin Fact Sheet from the National Pesticide Information Center at Oregon State University, picaridin “is a synthetic compound first made in the 1980s. It was made to resemble the natural compound piperine, which is found in the group of plants that are used to produce black pepper.” It repels ticks, but does not kill them.

(See also: DEET Fact Sheet, Ethyl Butylacetylaminopropionate (IR3535) Fact Sheet.) DEET has more potential side effects than picaridin or IR3535.

Wirecutter, which talks to loads of experts and does their own testing, picks Sawyer Products Premium Insect Repellent as its favorite of its Best Bug Repellents. In spray or lotion, it has 20% picaridin.

Sawyer Permethrin Premium Insect Repellent also comes recommended by Wirecutter. This chemical is applied to shoes or clothes (not skin) and can last 6 weeks or 6 washings. Permethrin is what the Army applies to its soldiers’ uniforms.

We’ll be using both this spring, and I’ll let you know how it goes. If you have any first-hand experience or tips on repelling ticks, please share. Thus concludes the first installment of 2022 Tick Season Research.

3} “If you can paint it, knit it, dance it, it will be better.”

Delia Ephron, author, screenwriter (“You’ve Got Mail” and others), and playwright, faced a left turn in life when she was diagnosed with A.M.L., acute myeloid leukemia, at age 72.

A.M.L. was an all-too familiar acronym.

Delia’s older sister — also a famous writer, Nora Ephron — had been diagnosed with the same type of leukemia.

And Nora had died from A.M.L..

But Delia is not her sister. Her version of leukemia was different, and new drugs had been created in the years between.

Delia’s story turned out differently. She is 2 years cancer-free now at 77. And she’s written a book about her cancer experience in Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life.

Where does the title of the book come from? Delia explains: “If you are in Manhattan, traveling downtown on Fifth Avenue or Seventh Avenue, you can turn only left on Tenth Street. It’s a one-way street, west to east. Left on Tenth is my way home. I was left on Tenth when my husband died, and after that, life took many left turns. Some perilous, some wondrous. This book is about all of them.”

In a delightful New York Times article (open gift link), Delia says:

“I think for everybody who has had as traumatic an experience as I had, or even half as traumatic, if you can paint it, knit it, dance it, it will be better. For me, I could take this thing and I could write it.”

Such good advice for all of us.

To our journeys,

Brianne