This episode’s word is speed.
Matthew reminisces about questionable childhood gifts, walking with Thoreau, the time man spends with his automobile, and traveling at “human speed”.
Let’s also contemplate the flexibility and utility of language, and how a word like “clang” can only exist in a world where that sound is made. Zoom is a word we all use with regularity but would you be surprised to find out that it’s less than 100 years old, and for the record whooshes are slower than zooms.
Is there a difference between a road and a trail, and which one do you want to travel on?
What is the consequence of speed in our modern lives?
“Underneath all the things that allow us to go fast, there might be something reminding us to go slow.”
Notes on show content:
Sonnet 19: When I consider how my light is spent
By John Milton
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Henry David Thoreau – Walden
“the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot”
“I start now on foot, and get there before the night. You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive there some time tomorrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad reached around the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you”
Ivan Illich – Energy and Equity“the typical American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for petrol, tolls, insurance, taxes and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it. And this time does not take into account the timeconsumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts and garages, time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next buy. The model American puts in 1,600 hours to get 7,500 miles: less than five miles per hour”
Effective Speeds: Car Costs Are Slowing Us Down https://roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/ivanillich/
Nature Word of the Day: Solfatara
Associated with the Solfatara Volcanic Crater west-southwest of Naples, Italy, a solfatara, which is Italian for sulfur mine, is a fumarole, or vent, emitting predominantly sulfurous gases. Most often found in areas of diminishing volcanic activity, solfataras are nonexplosive, and their gentle vapors, when cooled, may result in a rimming deposit of minerals. A solfatara is also known as a soffione, suffione, or soffoni. The solfataric stage of volcanic activity is often used in a wider sense to include all fumaroles. A solfatara field, a group of solfataras, is also called a fumarole field.
And if you prefer to READ instead of listen, here is a rough transcript.
[00:00:42] Hello there everyone. Welcome back to the Oxbow podcast. You Oxbowers. Sort of strong to call you a collective noun like that. Oxbowers. Still pretty early to know if anyone actually wants to associate themselves with this in that way. That’s all right. Still wondering how to start off a podcast. Without the breezy chit-chat, which you’d normally have another person and I don’t know what to do yet, but it’s being improvised.
[00:01:17] It’ll be okay in the end somehow we’ll get through it. So let’s just get to it. Um, and see what today’s word is. I picked the envelope out of the stock that I have. And today is, is a, um, sort of a semolina colored on envelope, maybe three by five. And it’s from a lady who I know, uh, named Dina cross sta and I don’t know Dina well, we’ve had a few opportunities to speak.
[00:01:46] Um, and we’ve met once in person briefly, and she’s been very kind in her generosity of thinking that I haven’t had something to say in the world. And I don’t, um, know what to say about that except to just sort of, uh, drop my chin and bet and be grateful. Uh, she seems to think I’m a good idea. I think she’s a good idea too.
[00:02:10] She teaches yoga in New Jersey and, um, yeah, I’ve really, I was very touched by the times that we’ve spoken. So let’s see what she has, uh, sent in the mail and this nice little envelope, the color that I like. Here we go. All right.
[00:02:33] So. It’s a paper here with two feathers on the corner and it says human scale. Speed. Hmm. Thanks Dina. No problem. Human scale. Speed. Speed.
[00:02:57] No sort of comes to mind first. God, I haven’t thought of this in a long time. Is a, is a poem. It’s when I was 11, my father gave me maybe it was 12. Maybe it was 10. I mean, something in that narrow neck of the woods, my father gave me a cassette tape that was called, or was two of them called your favorite poems.
[00:03:22] And I felt this was the stupidest gift ever, but I had a, a boombox and I had a. Wooden cassette holder that needed to be filled. And so I, those two got like the lower right hand corner, like where you never listened to them. Um, everything else went in the other corner or the other, the rest of the body.
[00:03:46] And I don’t know some someplace like three or four years later, I finally decided to start listening to them and are listening to them as they went to sleep. And, you know, it was like a time-release. Gift because that those poems like ended up like seeping into my brain. But first the very first poem that was on that first album or cassette was John Milton’s on his blindness where he talks about speed.
[00:04:22] And I’ve been recited this poem in a while, but let me see if I got.
[00:04:28] When I consider how my light is spent air half my days in this dark world and wide, and that one talent, which is death to hide. Ooh, let me just stop and say talent here is not mean like your personal talent. He’s talking about talents, the, the amount of money and he’s, this is a biblical reference to the parable, the talents.
[00:04:50] Uh, maybe we’ll talk about that in a second. I don’t know. Let me start again. When I consider how my light has been. There half my days in this dark world and wide, and that one talent, which is death to hide lodged with the useless of my soul war bench, to serve there with my maker and present my true account.
[00:05:09] Lest he returning chide doth God, exact day, labor, light denied. I finally ask, but, but patients to prevent that murmur soon, replies God does not need either. Man’s. Or his own gifts who best bear his mild yolk. They serve him best. His state is kingly thousands at his bidding speed and posts or Landon ocean without rest.
[00:05:42] They also serve who only stand and wait
[00:05:47] still in their sort of rough little bit. Um, I I know. I’m sure I, Trent, I turned, that’s what they’re called. Like I said, into digital recording. Let me see if I can
[00:06:07] find that there it is.
[00:06:12] Okay. Let’s. Yeah, this is the most sure I got two versions. So that’s cool. Uh, here let’s hear the one that I heard when I was a kid, when I consider how my light is spent, half my days in this dark world and wide, and that one talent, which is death to hide lodged with me. Useless. Though my soul more bent to serve there with my maker and present my true account.
[00:06:45] Lest he returning chide Duff God, exact day, labor, light denied. I found layers, but patients to prevent that murmur soon replies God does not need either man’s work or his own gifts who best bear his mild. They serve him best his state, his kingly, thousands at his bidding speed and post all land and ocean without rest.
[00:07:19] They also serve who only stand and.
[00:07:29] That is amazing version. I have not heard that in a long time, um, that I’m almost sure that the Richard Burton it’s pretty dramatic. Um, there’s I wanna hear this other version is I don’t remember listening to this other one, um, just to give you a context for what this poem is about. Um, and it does, we can connect it to, to speed.
[00:07:52] Um, But also in, so John Milton was an incredibly successful poet and was well-received famous. I would say. And then in the 1650s, forties, I don’t remember, but he was in his mid forties. He started to go blind. And this was, he sort of took this as an affront. And so like the, and it’s sort of like it tested his faith and, you know, eat the poem even starts off that way.
[00:08:27] You know what I consider how my light is spent air half my days in this dark world and why the world’s starting to become dark to him now. Um, you know, and he’s talking about, you know, how he’s halfway through his life air half my day is in this dark world and wide. So he’s still got half of his life to go and he’s going to be blind in the dark for it.
[00:08:47] What is he going to do? And how is he going to serve his, his talents to the world? Um, And so that’s him reflecting on it and this sort of classic I’m Italian I’ve, I’m pretty sure this is an Italian sonnet. Um, it’s an Italian sonnet. Um, let’s I want to hear the other one because you know, why not? Um, because that one for Richard Burton was pretty hilarious.
[00:09:11] That’s the one I used to like go to sleep too. Um, not every night, but enough, um, on his blindness, this one. A minute 19. So it’s obviously read more slowly
[00:09:26] Milton on his blindness. When I consider how my light is spent a half my days in this dark world and wide that’s one talent, which is desk to hide launched with me useless though, my soul more bent to says there with my maker and present my true.
[00:09:51] Lest he returning chide, dusk God, exact day, labor, light denied. I fondly ask, but patients to prevent that murmur soon, replies God does not need either man’s work or his own gifts who best bear his mild yolk. They seven best. His state has kingly thousands at his bidding speed and post or land and ocean without rest.
[00:10:28] They also serve who only stand and wait.
[00:10:34] Ooh, that’s a much better version. I like that one so much, um, to make much of time. Oh, wow. That’s the next headache I took. Got another good one. Um, to the Virgin to make much of time, um, that one goes, gather ye rosebuds while you may old time is still a flying in the same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying.
[00:11:00] And the glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, the higher he’s getting the sooner will his race be run and near he’s to setting. That age is best, which is the first when youth and blood are warmer, but having spent the first and the first time still exceed the former. So be not coy, but used your time. And while you may go Mary for having one split lost your prime, you may forever carry.
[00:11:25] Um, that’s a good one. Um, but yeah, back to his own blend as well. I love that version. I have no idea who says that that’s from an album. Popular poetry, popular verse volume one. Um, there are other volumes, um, band recorded poetry. I do not get tired of it if it’s good. Um, well, let’s go back to this poem. Um, so it’s an Italian sonnet and.
[00:11:54] I think it’s a classic thing in a sauna is the, on the ninth line. It sort of makes a turn, um, and sort of presents this other way of looking at the thing that it’s trying to talk about. Um, but Milton amazingly is. Does his turn was a little bit fast. So in terms of human speed, he actually rushes it. Uh, but he talks, it’s a very tender way cause he’s he rushes his turn in the eighth line.
[00:12:23] So he’s actually ahead. So he says, but patients to prevent. Man. I think that’s a really cool thing that he’s rushing his patience, but the, I think the there’s many messages in this poem, but I think one of the messages is that, um, to the, to those who are hungry to claim their purpose and make their dent in the world, uh, which Milton was wondering about, and he gets to this point, which is that your capacity for patients.
[00:12:58] Your capacity, you just stand and wait is just as valuable as your speed and rushing to serve. The thousands that has bidding speed is, you know, God or gods, whoever, whatever those, those commanding spirits are. Uh, they have the capacity to draw you in to go fast. If you need to. And the postal for land and ocean without.
[00:13:26] But that service is not any better. That worthiness isn’t any better than just the capacity to actually stand in, wait and see how you actually might be needed and to proceed as if you were so, yeah. So I’m wondering if, maybe a little bit about what human human scale speed. There’s something about the capacity to stand and wait.
[00:13:56] I wonder, um, yeah, let’s leave that there. So human scaled speed. I mean, the other thing that makes me think about human scale speed is from throw. Um, I think, you know, the road talked about how he liked to walk everywhere. It was sort of like his thing. Um, I don’t know if he coined, he definitely used the term effective speed and he wrote about it in Walden, uh, his famous book.
[00:14:32] And he talked about being, you know, that the swiftest traveler is the one that walks or that goes something like, yeah, something like that. The switchers traveler goes by foot. Um, look that up. See what letter.
[00:14:55] Okay.
[00:15:03] Yeah. That’s from Walden 33. Hey, that was not, not far off. Um, yeah, here it is. I start now one foot and get there before the night. You will be in the meanwhile having earned your fare and arrived there sometime tomorrow or possibly this evening, if you’re lucky enough to get a job in season, instead of going to Fitchburg, you’ll be working here in the greater part of the day.
[00:15:29] And so if the railroad reached around the world, I think I should keep ahead of you. So yeah, there’s thing about, uh, walking, but of course, that connects to. Man. I love this thing. I didn’t know that at all. When I first read this, I mean, it’s one of those like really new thoughts. Um, and this is from, uh, Ivan Illitch, um, who wrote, uh, energy and equity.
[00:15:59] And, um, he talked about how the average speed of a car is basically walking speed. I loved this. Um, I mean, the gist of the argument was something like you have to account for how much goes into the speed that the car can make you travel and not accounts for the amount of time that you had to spend sitting still working, uh, to earn the money, to buy the car, um, and the money it takes to sit and wait for it to be fixed and all the other stuff.
[00:16:37] Um, oh God, I gotta find this. Oh, thank God. This was so cool. Um,
[00:16:47] um, what should be the search term here? Hm, energy and equity for sure. Car. Sure. Energy equity. I could find the whole PDF
[00:17:05] speed. Boom. Boom, boom. There we go. Oh man. Got the internet is amazing sometimes. Um, this is from a website called, uh, roads were not built for cars.com. The real speed of cars. Sure. Let’s take a look. I mean, I’ll put this in the show notes. There’s lots of stuff in there. Um, yeah, here we go. Um, okay. So. This is a quote on this website from that book.
[00:17:38] God, I remember this book in years, I should read it again. Uh, the typical American male devotes more than 1600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes. And while it stands idling, he parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down. And to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for petrol tolls, insurance taxes and tickets.
[00:18:01] He spends four of his 16 waking hours on the road or gathering cause the resources for it. And this time does not take into account the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport times, smitten, hospitals, traffic courts, and garages time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next by.
[00:18:24] The model American puts in 1600 hours to get 7,500 miles less than five miles per hour. So I think that, um, God, that’s so good. So this notion of effective speed is a really very, very cool one. And that. While we think we travel 80 miles an hour. That may be maybe Emerson was right. Then maybe we should have been just walking everywhere and not having to take on jobs to pay for the things to make us go fast.
[00:18:53] Like that’s an interesting, um, balance, um, that we sort of veil from ourselves about what the fair trade of speed is. Um, because you only really think about like the time you spend in the car. As the speed that you were going, um, when you estimate your efforts to speed, but like all that other time, that was so I don’t know.
[00:19:20] So demanding on us. I mean, that’s really like what our lives are for is to basically pay for speed at another time. What would our lives look like if we traveled at this human speed of. We’ll just slower. Um, what are the consequences of that? And of course the, have the consequences of having fast speeds in the world is no small thing.
[00:19:46] Um, yeah. Yeah, the, maybe the past the capacity to even go fast at all requires a human speed in the first place. Um, fascinating problem. That’s a big thought, so that to have a car speed work, plane speed. You need to have a human speed at somehow. Like based off of that, like some other, the human speed isn’t enough.
[00:20:18] And what do, because those are the things that we need to get in spend. Um, and so there’s, there’s this profound dissatisfaction with the human speed.
[00:20:33] So effective speed. We’ll let Jim and thorough, I guess there’s also, I mean, it makes me also think about something that we’ve used so much in the last year or more than a year now. Well, new words come into language all the time. You know, you think about a word like staycation or using Google as a verb.
[00:20:56] Those are particular kinds of neologisms. Um, And so know when you use words in new ways and a new combinations, it’s part of the flexibility and the utility of language. You know, if you think about a word like Wi-Fi that was invented in, I don’t know, the nineties or something as a pun to refer to the stereo term Hi-Fi um, but you know, it’s not made up term.
[00:21:23] Integral to our use every day. I mean, who hasn’t walked into basically, you know, say like what’s the wifi code? I mean, I know I do. I don’t have a cell phone, which is true. And my little device, which connects to the internet only connects through wifi. So for me, like wifi codes are critical. Um, but I’m cautious.
[00:21:43] Like I don’t actually don’t want a cell phone because it makes everything. So much faster, it makes you always on, it makes you want to monetize every moment, which I’m already feeling pressed to do anyway. So my own desire to only be on wifi as part of my own desire, to point in the direction of human scale speed.
[00:22:03] But I mean, it’s not just a fig leaf. I mean, that’s fair. Um, but you know, there are words that are invented that are called a COVID. Uh, or imitative words, which imitate specific sounds like Meow or cuckoo or bang or click, but, you know, it would make sense. These words would only be formed if there was something in your midst enough that made a distinctive sound that you would need a new word.
[00:22:29] So you can imagine a world hundreds of years ago when there was, or thousands of years ago, there was no metal. They probably didn’t have a word like clang. I mean, I remember reading about how the word bounce. Came into Europe. Like they had Europeans never knew the word bounce until rubber came, um, from the new world from plantations and cold colonialism.
[00:22:53] Um, it was like something you’d never seen was bouncing. So clang as a word only comes in when you have metal. So for me, I’m thinking about all this when I’m thinking about speed, because I think of the word zoom. So like I’m sure. There’s no way that anyone is listening to this. Hasn’t been zooming things so much in the last year and a half or two, um, more than you certainly had before.
[00:23:21] And you use it for everything. I mean, of course, for everything like, you know, classes, courses, meetings, funerals. I want to talk to the very beautiful zoom funeral, but whatever you want to do with, I mean, zooming is sort of a thing, but zoom is also an echoic word. Um, I am pretty sure of this, that zoom is just like, it’s a word that’s about a hundred years old, but I know for sure, um, that it emerged as a piloting term, which would echoing the sound of a fast plane.
[00:23:54] So, um, maybe it’s 90 years old, like, I don’t know, but it’s something that’s in that range, but you know, but it’s this echoic word that connotes speed, but you know, But whoosh is slower than zoom. Um, and the first usage of whoosh, uh, was in the 1850s. I think that sounds sort of familiar. I remember looking this up at some point, um, and things certainly of course whooshed before 1850, whatever, but I don’t know.
[00:24:24] Let me look quick. Look it up. Whoosh. Barnhart, Dictionary of etymology, whoosh.
[00:24:37] Why not look it up. It’s right here. I got these books for a reason.
[00:24:45] Whisper, wicked too far,
[00:24:51] whole Oop Whopper, almost there.
[00:25:00] Um, Hmm. It’s not in here. It’s weird. Look over the internet, the internet wash
[00:25:20] uh, there it is mid 19th century, so I wasn’t totally wrong. Oh, I was spelling it. Okay. Um, 1850 is there, it goes, um, as a noun from 1880 and introduction to 1899. Hey, I wasn’t that far off, but it was imitative, so that’s cool. Well, anyway, so where was I? Yeah. Wishes are slower than zooms. Um, yeah, so. That was the word that was picked when you settled on the sound of wind going through the rushes or birds flying right by your ear or the quits quick gust of a storm or something.
[00:26:03] But I think it’s fair to say that nothing really zoomed until an airplane. I mean, I can’t think of anything, maybe something did, but there’s something about that particular incarnation of speed that would need a new word. You know, but like not high, fast, like whistling wine and like the Doppler, like the rising and sound.
[00:26:24] Then the quickly vanishing sound, I guess you need a word for it. You, but of course, you know, the zooming airplane became foundational to our way of life. Uh, certainly the last century and it’s that speed that has allowed us to get anywhere. We want to go a little in position beyond. The coin in your pocket or your digital pocket or your credit card, you know, so our economy zoomed along with the jet engines, but I guess the zoom, the, you know, the tool that we all use is sort of trading on that notion of speed that’s inherent in the world.
[00:27:06] Uh, To infer that our connection with each other will be as fast and as reliable as planes. I think that’s sort of what maybe the name is means, but you know, it’s funny now that one of the consequences of a century of zooming is not a stay in place and zoom less, but zoom more, maybe, I don’t know. It’s strange that we’re resuming while sitting at home mostly that’s I guess that’s sort of another contradiction at the time, but when you’re zooming along in a car, You know, driving in a rural place, pushing 80 or 90, I’ve pushed 90 before.
[00:27:43] Um, you can easily find yourself in like what they call the middle of nowhere. Um, in the U S we have fly over country and these two terms are consequences of speed. You know, terrestrial speed or airspeed, I guess, is, is paired with a kind of cultural forgetting or a geographic. Place goes away. Like only the destination matters.
[00:28:06] You get, you fly over, fly over a country to get to where you’re actually trying to get to. Um, and maybe like one of the consequences of speed is that the people who live in those places think that they get angry, that they’re considered nobody. Is there no places? Um, maybe that’s a consequence of speed too.
[00:28:26] I sorta think that actually does have some political resonance, uh, Sort of claiming like you don’t see us, like we’re the real America and not the consequences of speed. Hmm. Well, if these destinations of the things that seem to only really matter to a speed driven culture to make such speeds, possible roads have to be made holes, have to be dug somewhere in the world to get asphalt and black tar and the crack rock and the limestone graveled make smooth highways and level runway.
[00:29:01] And then you regular use by commuters and travelers and truckers and salespeople and plumbers and delivery people. It means that the same roads have to be maintained because the very way and the very capacity to go crumbles them from use and exposure. So that means more holes have to be dug somewhere else in the world to constantly repair these roads.
[00:29:26] So we can go fast. And then the cycle continues as a response to our cultural devotion to speed and to immediacy is that we have to constantly make new holes in the world to make up for the speed, which goes back to that sense of effective speed. How much faster are we actually going you different than a road is a trail.
[00:29:47] A trail is a path that’s made and made deeper and more durable by its use, which is different than a road or a runway. Almost always the trails that people walk that humans have made are by following animal trails, but simply the act of walking the trail maintains it, no other materials required than traversing that, that sort of, you know, sub five mile an hour pace that Ivan Illich talked about or that, um, Emerson talked about, although he didn’t say three miles an hour, But you, at that pace, you can start to know the landmarks and hear the birds and see the alive moments of the place.
[00:30:30] And it starts to not become a nowhere. It becomes a real place. So when you go 500 miles an hour in a plane or 80 miles an hour in a car again, and again and again for our whole lives, you lose the sense of terrain and texture. The trees whiz by. Uh, oh man, that’s gotta be another echoic word. I’ve no idea when whiz was invented.
[00:30:54] Should we look up whiz? Sure let’s look back to the dictionary: whiz. Yeah. Okay. Make or move with a humming hissing sound. 1540s of imitative. Um, that’s amazing. And also it’s meaning to urinate is from 1929, uh, to whiz. Um, but 1540s that makes me think it’s like related to arrows and stuff. That’s cool. Um, yeah.
[00:31:27] So those trees they whiz on by man, I sort of think about all those times being in the backseat. Um, When I was young and my parents driving the car and sort of stick your hand out the window. Cause there was no air conditioning back then and watching the trees whiz by and sort of making waves in the, in the air with your hand and what a pleasure that was really was a cool pleasure.
[00:31:55] That was only possible because of speed. Um Hmm. Yeah. But everything, when you when you go with. Fast pace, everything that’s in relationship with the trees is made infinitesimally small, you know, you sort of, when you’re going that fast sort of think, oh, did we see a raccoon? Was that a deer where if you were walking you’d know for sure, but you saw over mountains in minutes rather than weeks, but it continues to like subtly spur the logic that there are no limits.
[00:32:28] You can go anywhere you want and be anything. Um, yeah. I know we’ve talked about Marshall McLuhan before, but Marshall McLuhan says the medium is the message. And so somehow like the medium of travel by car or by plane has this message of anywhere as possible. And so that’s might be even that might be tied up with our cultural ways of seeing.
[00:33:01] Nope. You know, of course I say all this having of course driven fashion and 80 miles an hour, plenty of times I’ve gotten my fair share of speeding tickets. I’ve taken planes all over the country and to Europe, many times I’ve ordered food and items from far away. I came to my door with speed. So this is not the curse, these things, but just starting to wonder about some of the consequences and the conditioning that seemed to emerge from this fifth gear ness of our lives.
[00:33:32] And we can’t just get rid of it. So it’s, but it’s also a plea for slowness as well to include that, but somehow going slow or standing still like John Milton said might be worthy. But the notion of a trail, the thing that’s maintained by its use of by its own use. That sounds a lot like sustainability to me.
[00:33:53] And it also sounds like culture. The main thoroughfares that we drive almost always sit on top of or echoes sort of in shape of older trails beneath or beside them. I live in New York city. If you didn’t know, this is a city built on. The airports, the global reach, the media center. The city has been a vector of speedy transmissions within its borders and for the world for a long time
[00:34:22] now. You know, in my city, one of the centers of, you know, like a real hub of like where so many trains connect I sort of think of is, um, is in Brooklyn. You have Atlantic and Fulton and Flatbush, all sort of intersecting. Um, but those of you, but Fulton and Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, those were absolutely once upon a time, the walking and hunting and trading trails of people and Nyack people and Canarsie people, and the Winnipeg, lots of others. They wouldn’t have built those roads there.
[00:35:01] If they weren’t already sort of established as. Places that were a good to walk. So underneath all the things that allow us to go fast, there might be something that was reminding us to go slow. Yeah. There might be a slowness all the way beneath it. And of course that human speed, um, on those paths was probably tracing an animal.
[00:35:26] So I wonder if maybe after all this, that if human speed really is related to the living world speed. Maybe animal speed or plant speed. Um, the sense that we’re plants allow you to grow, where trees merge or open up or, yeah. I think that’s plenty. Well, some good, wondering about speed, human scaled speed.
[00:35:54] What that might ask of us, got to have some of those poems. Well, let’s, uh, let’s call it there.
[00:36:03] As I have been committed to doing, I want to end each episode with a nature word of the day from the book home ground language for an American landscape edited by Barry Lopez who recently died. I love this book.
[00:36:18] Um, so let’s open it up. Let’s see, we got to close off the day. Solfatara
[00:36:25] Associated with the Solfatara Volcanic Crater west-southwest of Naples, Italy, which is Italian for a sulfur mine, is a fumarole, or vent emitting predominantly sulfurous gasses. Most often found in areas of diminishing volcanic areas, solfataras are nonexplosive and their gentle vapors, when cooled may result in rimming deposits of minerals. A solfatara is also known as a soffione, suffione, or soffoni. The solfataric stage of volcanic activity is often used in a wider sense to include all fumaroles. A solfatara field, a group of solfataras, is also called a fumarole field.
[00:37:11] Man. I’d never heard of that word. Solfatara. Look it up online, use it in a sentence. Thanks so much for listening until soon.
