Field Notes #2: A poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, COVID-19 expert Dr. Eric Topol, & my favorite water filter
Hello! Today’s Field Notes include a portal into kindness through poetry, a newsletter by a humanistic COVID-19 expert, and a recommendation for delicious home-filtered water. If you have a Field Note to share — a book, podcast episode, exercise, tool, recipe, quote, or any bit of wisdom in any form that you’ve run across — please send to brianne@odysseyofthebody.com. Field Notes come out on Wednesdays, and longer Odyssey of the Body emails come out on Sunday. Thanks for joining me here.
1} “Kindness” poem by Naomi Shihab Nye
Poems can capture a slice of life that otherwise escapes the light. I love relatively short poems, translucent rather than opaque, a spoonful of wisdom that can be swallowed in a spare minute, and carried around as nourishment for the day. Here’s such a poem, “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye, who is a Palestinian-American, born in Missouri in 1952.
It begins:
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
To me, the poem “Kindness” speaks to the sorrows we all have, which as wildly different as they may be, bind us as humans. Our pains give us the wider view of the suffering of others, a portal to understanding, a tunnel to empathy.
Read the full poem here, on Poem a Day, a marvelous free newsletter. The last stanza stops my breath every time.
2} Grounded Truths newsletter from Dr. Eric Topol
Sifting through the endless stream of COVID-19 news can be disheartening, bewildering, and suspect. Where is this data coming from? Should we trust it? What’s the latest? What has changed? The quality and accuracy of all news depends upon its source, but science news is even trickier, because science is ever-evolving. Science is not fixed facts, but the best of what we know of the universe based on careful study so far.
In the COVID-19 chaos, the best expert I’ve found to lean on is Dr. Eric Topol, a physician-scientist. He has four major leadership roles at Scripps Research. He’s written bestselling books, including Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligent Can Make Healthcare Human Again and The Patient Will See You Now. He has a 600k+ followers on Twitter, where he shares and explains the latest data. He was also awarded the National Humanism in Medicine Medal by the nonprofit Gold Foundation, where I’ve been lucky to work for the past five years. (This newsletter is a personal project separate from my work there.) In short, he’s an icon in medicine — meticulous about the data and passionate about humanity.
Back in December, Dr. Topol began writing a newsletter called Grounded Truths. It’s packed with data, more than you get in an average news flash. I have found it incredibly useful to understand what’s going on with the pandemic.
In his latest piece, Where do we stand with Omicron?, Dr. Topol looks at the data on the flurry of “breakthrough” infections we’ve all been seeing, noting that vaccination — 3 total shots — is 50% effective with Omicron, but is still holding up amazingly well against death and hospitalizations.) Lots of charts, lots of studies, lots of interesting info.
And if you only read issue, I’d recommend We’re very lucky: It could be far, far worse. It’s a scientific reality check of how fortunate we have been so far.
It left me feeling intensely grateful.
3} Berkey Water Filters
I love a delicious glass of water. If you live, like me, in a place where the tap water smells and tastes of chemicals — and not in a good way — then some alternative is in order. For several years, we bought bottled water. It’s expensive, and there’s that worry now about having micro-plastic floating around. And honestly, it still doesn’t taste great.
Then a new neighbor asked about just this topic in the Facebook group for our community — what do you do about the water? — and a flood ensued of the same phrase: We love our Berkey! Over and and over and over again. I hadn’t seen that much love for something since Link.
What was this Berkey thing? Turns out it’s a water filter that sits on your counter in a big shiny silver cylinder. It has two sections. You lift the lid on the top and pour in tap water. The top section has filters in it. The tap water sifts through those and drips into the bottom section, where there is a spout. It turns stinky tap water into beautiful, glorious, delicious water. I am not joking.
The Berkey isn’t cheap, and the filters have to be replaced filters periodically, but it still seemed like a good value when we calculated the cost of all the bottled water and the time to go pick it up each week. We’ve had it for 2 years now and have yet to replace the filters. (Admittedly, we are a tiny household.)
The Berkey reportedly filters out 200+ contaminants, including lead, arsenic, bacteria, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, and viruses. It does not remove minerals (except zinc) or fluoride (unless you buy the special floride filters, too.)
The first time you assemble the Berkey, there’s a recommended test that blew our minds. Basically, you add a spoonful of red food dye into a pitcher of water, and then pour that gleaming red liquid through the Berkey. If the water comes out clear — which it did!! — the Berkey is set up properly and ready to go. It was like magic.
Here’s more info about the Berkey.
If anyone has questions or tips, please share in the comments or email me anytime. Hope you all have a wonderful rest of the week, and see you on Sunday!
To our journeys and healthy days ahead,
Brianne