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January 21, 2021

The There There Letter: Yolo, Yeast, and Yammering

Three things from DAH.

DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. I pen, promote, and make change (not the coin kind). 

First up this week, Yolo …  
“What’s up with that bus!” cried my niece as we drove back from the Sacramento airport. She was visiting from Washington State for the first time, with her husband and daughter. 
“Uh, that’s the regional transit bus,” I replied. 
“The You Only Live Once Bus?” she asked, incredulous. “Does anybody ride it?”
“Oh, right, that. We live in Yolo County. That’s the YOLOBus, named for the county.”
I often forget that what seems ordinary and everyday to me might seem quite outrageous to someone with different experience and knowledge. While I know that the County of Yolo (one of California’s original counties) name is likely derived from a Patwin Native American place-name, why would anyone not from around here know that? My guess is that LOTS more people would recognize Yolo as the name for a social media Q&A app for SnapChat. Undoubtedly there’s lots more you don’t know than what you do know. Me and you, left wide-open to surprise, since you only live once. 
20+ Things for People Who Think That Nothing Can Surprise Them

Second up this week, Yeast …  
Yeast! That useful member of the fungus kingdom. I’m thinking about Saccharomyces cerevisiae, not any of the other types. Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the yeast species, converts carbohydrates into carbon dioxide and alcohol. That’s fermentation, the key to delicious baked goods and intoxicating beverages. It’s amazing to me that of the over 1,500 species of yeast, we stumbled upon (a really long time ago) one that makes our gustatory lives so much better. Wild ferments (no human-added yeast) can yield interesting flavors (sourdough begins as a wild ferment) as a variety of species try to consume those carbohydrates in a race to see which yeast survives. It’s like magic! But it’s not, it’s science. It just seems like magic. It's also pretty cool and suprising.
Yeast facts for kids

Third up this week, Yammering …  
I write a lot about talking too much, which seems sad and ironic. I have issues.
“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” Rudyard Kipling said that during a speech in London to the Royal College of Surgeons in 1923. As intoxicating as are instances of surprise and products of yeast, words can eat into our minds so insidiously. We’ve just finished up more than a year of political campaigning in the USA. There were a lot of words. Probably too many words, since we’re mostly stuck without direct socialization during the pandemic. But we have the internet and streaming and social media. They offer non-stop yammering to anyone with open eyes or ears. It really is rather as if our culture has been surprised by a bevy of yeast bombs that generated vast quantities of intoxicating bubbles of blather. Every day I pledge to myself that I will speak less and make less noise. Yet I always feel over-voluble. I'm receiving too many words from others whom I don’t even know or really care about. Oh, dear. Here I am yammering on again. I’ll be quiet now. 
10 Reasons You’re Talking Too Much, and What to Do About It

And a bit more. My very-English parents gave me a little framed version of this well-worn Rudyard Kipling poem when I was quite young. It still gives me pause. Triumph and Disaster are impostors? That sounds about right. And that "sixty seconds' worth of distance run" -- I've always been in too much of a hurry, and I blame Kipling.

If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

And that’s all for this week.
From Mary Oliver’s poem “Sometimes” …  
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it. 

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