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Our shul has a program that runs every year between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. On Rosh HaShanah, you’re given a few paper shopping bags as you exit services. On Yom Kippur, you bring them back––filled––and the non-perishable food is taken over to a food bank we work with. Simple. Easy. It has always been part of that space between the two holidays.

The shul provides a shopping list stapled to the bag, and we fill it. Josh and I walk the line every year: fill the bag without ripping the bag. We’ve gotten it down to a science of balancing the weight of cans vs. boxes.

But this year, as we took the bags, the people passing them out told us the food bank was most in need of three things: diapers, formula, and baby food. She pointed to a box of example teething biscuits on the table. “Like this,” she said.

“So we’ll get diapers this year,” I told Josh. It will make things easier. Packs of diapers are lighter than canned vegetables. You can fill the bag to the top without ripping it, even if you fill the bag with multiple packs of diapers in various sizes. Baby food in those squeezable bags is pretty light.

And yet. It’s hard to step in that aisle. I usually avoid it at the food store unless I’m buying something for someone else. I will walk the extra aisle and walk past aluminum foil or dog food rather than walk past a wall of diapers or boxes with pictures of smiling babies.

I want to be helpful, and I hate the idea of waste––giving the food bank something they don’t actually need or want vs. something they clearly do. So I’ll go into the aisle this weekend when we’re doing our normal food shopping for the week; tuck the diapers and formula towards the bottom of the basket. Place them inside the bags when we get home and fold the top over so we don’t have to see it again while we’re waiting to take them over on Yom Kippur. I’ll pretend that it doesn’t bother me, that it’s just like shopping for green beans. Except it’s not.

You get it.

Nathan Bransford asked a great question about who has tucked a great mystery into a novel:

Note that I’m not necessarily asking for your favorite mystery novel! Some great mysteries have been crafted outside of that genre, whether it was wondering if Snape could be trusted in the Harry Potter series or whether Ahab would get his nemesis of a white whale in Moby-Dick.

It made me think about how I’m always seeking out puzzle fiction.

Because there are mysteries, as in the genre of mysteries (and I read a lot of those), but then there are mysteries or puzzles tucked inside non-genre fiction, such as Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore or Tell the Machine Goodnight or Gnomon. I just bought Gnomon and can’t wait to read it. (And try to figure out what the numbers mean on the first page.)

I just started Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, and there are tiny mysteries scattered over the pages. I love it when you encounter one and tuck it into the back of your brain, knowing that Atwood will solve it for you later.

I wanted more stories added to Bransford’s post. What mysteries-inside-non-genre-fiction would you add?

The first bird I ID’ed as an official birder–I’m now considering myself an official birder–was a Carolina wren. I used Merlin to narrow it down to eight possible candidates for losing my bird identifying virginity, and cemented the name once it began warbling WHILE LOOKING DIRECTLY INTO MY SOUL. Through a window, yes, but also THROUGH MY SOUL.

I loved that little Carolina wren.

The book I bought to get me started on birding said that it was an activity that shared many similarities to sleuthing like Sherlock Holmes. I love Sherlock Holmes. Which means I now love birding. It is strangely addictive to punch all the facts into the app and have it spit out possibilities. Is it this? Or this? It has pictures. It has sound files. I can now go all around the world, IDing birds. I always have something to do, wherever I go.

I think I love it because it’s collection without clutter. I’m collecting birds, logging their names in my notebook (yes, I bought a notebook for this), and even if I get to thousands of names, it will only take up a tiny bit of space. Just a slim notebook that slips into my pocket and comes with me wherever I go in case I meet a bird friend along the way.

And I’m going to love all of them. Especially the birds who eat crickets and remove them from the world for me. Thank you, birds. You rock.

I read Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer (one of the creators of Atlas Obscura) about training for a memory championship. He practiced daily for months, and he weaves the memory techniques he used into the story (as well as some background neurology information). After the memory championship, he ultimately gave up the daily practice though retained this new way of seeing the world as well as appreciating the pause memorization built into an experience.

He writes in the epilogue on page 268,

There is something to be said for the value of not merely passing through the world, but also making some effort to capture it—if only because in trying to capture it, one gets in the habit of noticing, and appreciating.

I highlighted the passage and immediately started wondering why memorization (in this way) is lauded while photography, which also is about not just passing through the world but attempting to catch it, is vilified.

Every so often, there is a spate of posts about how photography makes you miss out on moments. That by trying to document an experience visually, you stop paying attention to the moment itself. People complain about the people documenting everything with their camera or point out about how they had a superior experience because they didn’t photograph something.

I don’t know… gave me food for thought as I looked at the world through my camera. I love looking back at photos and returning, mentally, to a moment.

I found out that I’ve been driving by an old friend’s house for years now. I bumped into her mother, her mother told me she was living a few towns away, and I realized that I literally drove down her street and past her house at least once a week.

We didn’t have a falling out; we just drifted away many many years ago. It makes me think of Dougie MacLean’s “Calendonia.”

Oh and I have moved
and I’ve kept on moving
proved the points
that I needed proving
lost the friends
that I needed losing
found others on the way

I’ve always taken the line in the positive sense. Shedding people who don’t fit in your life anymore. Not because it’s a bad relationship, but because it’s healthy to enjoy people in a certain time of life and not bring them into the next stage. He calls them “friends,” and I think of friends in the positive sense. So, his line — at least to me — has always been that some people simply fit best in one era. And I appreciate that idea, even though I’m usually very sentimental and want to hold onto everything and everyone.

The New Yorker had a piece about how kids are losing that ability to reinvent themselves due to social media. They never shed old acquaintances because they live on via social media. Which is a good thing — on one hand — but also a terrible thing because, as Dougie MacLean sings, sometimes you need to shed friends. And recognizing that and saying goodbye is part of life.

It comes with an important warning:

On the other hand, Eichhorn writes, such media can prevent those who wish to break with their past from doing so cleanly. We’re not the only ones posting; our friends and family chronicle our lives, usually without our consent. Growing up online, Eichhorn worries, might impede our ability to edit memories, cull what needs to be culled, and move on.

Cull what needs to be culled.

I’ve decided not to disturb the past and reach out. I’ll continue to drive by her house, and if she’s outside one day, I’ll slow down and say hello. But I’m not going to find her on social media and attempt to reconnect because… she was wonderful at one point in my life. But I don’t know how we’d fit into each other’s lives now.