I Hope There Are Thermophilic Spiders on Venus!
If you're afraid of spiders, you can skip this one! (No pictures!)
Hi Bestie!!
I have drafts in the pipeline but write to you having enjoyed Premium Couch Time (™) during the MLB All-Star Game. I ate Thai food and kept my eye focused on Anthony Santander (Orioles) and Elly De La Cruz (Reds). (An aside: his red carpet look is A+ and so is Boston's Jarren Duran. See below!)
I came home from a trip to Los Angeles and almost immediately turned on the local news. Unless you're elderly at heart, you don't know that the depth and gravity of what's reported varies by hour, and since it was 5 p.m., I received a lot of less serious news. (Except for the bit about NJ Senator Bob Menendez.) This is how I learned that NASA sent Missy Elliott's "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)" to Venus. Of the choice, she said, "I chose Venus because it symbolizes strength, beauty, and empowerment and I am so humbled to have the opportunity to share my art and my message with the universe!"
This is very cool. (Couldn't they have sent Ann Peebles too?) It's the second song NASA has transmitted into space! The first song was The Beatles' "Across the Universe." This makes Missy Elliott the first hip-hop artist and the first woman!
The atmosphere on Venus is hot, gassy, and 95% more intense than Earth's. If you stood on Venus, you'd blow up! (I'm not researching this one, I know what I heard on NBC4.) I thought about what could live in a hot, dense environment, however, and I remembered Yellowstone's thermophilic spiders.
The thing about me is …I want to believe there's already life on other planets. (There are definitely bacteria on Mars! I'm sure of it.)
Yellowstone's hot springs are known for their outstanding colors. Among the contributors to the colors of the hot springs are thermophiles, heat-loving microorganisms that thrive in acidic environments. In addition to beautiful bacteria and amazing algae, ephydrid flies lay eggs, eat, and live in the thermophilic mats — as do spiders! They hang around the bacteria mats, eating bacteria and living their hot, acidic lives.
Now that I know I can't live in the mountains I don't think I can adapt to a hot, acidic environment. Congratulations to the spiders, though!
Two missions, launching in 2029 and 2031 are headed to Venus, 158 million miles away. Maybe they'll find spiders.
IYKYK.
In a side trip for another issue of this newsletter I ended up on the Wikipedia for Vashon, Washington, an island in Puget Sound: "In 1890, Japanese Americans started growing strawberries for sale. Denichiro Mukai came to the island in 1910 and became renowned for barreling fresh strawberries using a special method that concentrated flavor and moisture in the fruit and permitted long-distance shipping. In time, Mukai designed and built his own home and elaborate garden and then constructed a sturdy timber framed barreling plant. During the peak years, ice cream, jam and preserve makers across the West were customers of Mukai, relishing the oak barrels for their lingering flavor and mythologizing about the island of strawberry fields. This became an important part of the island economy during the next 50 years, until the Japanese American population was forcibly relocated into internment camps as a response to Japanese/American tension caused by WWII."
I want to eat those strawberries and we can't! (Think of the beer that could be aged in those barrels!) FDR really fucked things up, didn't he?
The barreling plant was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. You can visit the farm, so maybe I yelled too soon. (It was sold in 1963 and Mukai used the money to restore his ancestral home in Osaka.) No, I didn't — fuck FDR!
My best friend drove me to Thunderbolt Sunday night for cocktails. Having already cried publicly at Idle Hour (great patio to cry on, tbh!) we both ended up yelling about Boomers, and I cried out (to the horror of the table nearby, apparently), "I cite my sources in MLA format!"
At another bar, I yelled that Ben Gibbard is hot now and I will not be elaborating or defending the truth.
Always your friend (and always yelling at the bar),
Katherine
Sources (MLA 9)
"1910 to 1926: Getting Started — Mukai Farm & Garden." Mukai Farm Garden, mukaifarmandgarden.org/blending-two-cultures/1910-to-1926-getting-started. Accessed 19 July 2024.
"Ann Peebles - I Can't Stand the Rain (Official Audio)." YouTube, 27 Apr. 2021, youtu.be/SmGig_b2QLI.
"Big SWOLE on Instagram: 'Allstar ✅ Best Dressed ✅ Allstar Home-Run ✅ Allstar MVP ✅.'"Instagram, www.instagram.com/p/C9k2Dx3S9IB. Accessed 19 July 2024.
"Cincinnati Reds on Instagram: 'Four Letter Word That Starts with "a" and Ends with "Ura."'"Instagram, www.instagram.com/p/C9f3UpahhNo. Accessed 19 July 2024.
"Cocktail Bar: Thunderbolt: Los Angeles." Thunderbolt, www.thunderboltla.com. Accessed 19 July 2024.
"Life in Extreme Heat." National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/life-in-extreme-heat.htm. Accessed 19 July 2024.
"Mukai Cold Process Fruit Barrelling Plant." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 25 Jan. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukai_Cold_Process_Fruit_Barrelling_Plant<span.
"NASA Transmits Hip-Hop Song to Deep Space for First Time." NASA, NASA, 16 July 2024, www.nasa.gov/general/nasa-transmits-hip-hop-song-to-deep-space-for-first-time.
"The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 15 July 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rain_(Supa_Dupa_Fly).
"Thermophilic Eukarya." National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/thermophilic-eukarya.htm. Accessed 19 July 2024.
"Vashon, Washington." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 24 May 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vashon,_Washington.