World Mangrove Day

Posted on July 26, 2025 by arwenbicknell

As you all know, I’m the least nature-y person around. But since I was a Florida teen, it occasionally surprises me when I bump into someone who doesn’t know what a mangrove is. (Not that this topic comes up very often in conversation anyway, but you get my drift.)

For those less fortunate, a mangrove is a tropical tree that grows in brackish water and is equipped to deal not only with salt but also massive erosion (because tides) and occasional submersion (because flooding). They are cool to look at; part of their ability to cope with such a cruddy environment involves a big root network above the water line that helps with taking in air and excreting salt.

Like most plants, there are a slew of species, but Florida mostly has red, black and white mangroves. Chopping them up usually requires a permit and a professional. They’re good as storm buffers, and they’re great for ecosystems—although not as broadly interesting as California’s tide pools, because you can’t see diddly from the surface.

I learned everything I’ve forgotten about mangroves from Mr. Deere in my high school marine biology class. He was an uptight little man who was probably in the wrong profession for his nature. He was very serious, he wanted everyone to put forth maximum effort all the time, and he seemed to not realize that he was teaching a class that people took to avoid having to take one of the harder and more math-oriented science courses. This, of course, meant he got a mix of some serious kids who didn’t want a C on their record (hello, that would be me) and an at least equal number of kids who seriously didn’t care about anything, least of all estuary ecosystems.

Nevertheless, every year he took his entire role book of students on a field trip to do some hands-on examination of what he’d been talking about all year. Everyone trooped on to a bus and got hauled an hour away to the evocatively named Cockroach Bay. I mean, really, it’s a losing battle from the jump when you take kids to a place with a name like that. It should be noted, however, that Cockroach Bay does not have cockroaches. It doesn’t even have an inordinate number of palmetto bugs—the larger, blinder, and flight-capable relative of the cockroach. The place got its name because it used to be crawling with horseshoe crabs, which Spanish explorers assumed were aquatic relatives of roaches. Of course, poor Mr. Deere had to explain not only that detail to squeamish girls but also that they were unlikely to be attacked by leeches or alligators, at least on this particular trip.

I cannot for the life of me remember much of what we did—it was a lot of taking notes about plants and water bugs. I think it was sort of scavenger hunt-y in nature: try to find this item, describe it in detail, and check it off your list. But it was a fun trip, despite Mr. Deere being annoyed that high-energy kids like playing in water as much as studying it. He got out of his head for a bit and when he got excited about some flora or fauna, it did rub off and he got his wish for complete focus from everyone for at least a few minutes.

My friend Dionna took this trip twice—once as a student, and then again a few years later as a chaperone. She told me the coolest thing she saw was when they pulled a blowfish out of the water and it started squealing—sort of like a balloon being deflated. I don’t remember anything that exciting happening when I went.

When I got older and moved back to Sarasota, I would occasionally make a good-faith effort to do the nature thing and visit a nature area like Myakka State Park. I never really enjoyed it as much as Mr. Deere. I preferred the beach, where I could see what was coming. Swamps and rivers are too murky; I don’t know what’s in them. And all those tangled root lines of mangroves, plus the spiky nature of palmettos just made me even more ill at ease; no telling what kind of bitey bugs were lurking in there. Top it off with mosquitoes, and I think we have identified just why I am NOT a nature-y person!

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Talk in an Elevator Day

Posted on July 25, 2025 by arwenbicknell

This recognition day encourages people to strike up conversations with strangers during elevator rides, aiming to break down social barriers and foster connections.

I can’t say I’m a fan of that, for the most part. I don’t spend much time on elevators these days, but when I did, my observation was that most people were pretty content to be left alone with their thoughts for that minute or so—and the elevator venue didn’t matter. Office buildings, shopping malls—it was all the same. Etiquette generally seemed to dictate that a simple “Hi there,” or even a nod was sufficient. If it was a cluster of women, an occasional “I like your earrings” seemed in bounds, but even that was a case-by-case thing. A lot of people wear ear buds. Some are very intent on avoiding eye contact.

There are two possible exceptions. One is at sporting events, where banter is acceptable but loud trash-talking is less welcome. (A little aggression in a jam-packed enclosed space goes a LONG way.) The other is at pet-friendly hotels, where it is generally OK to admire someone’s dog. But if it’s YOUR dog, you don’t get to say anything, especially if the other person on the elevator seems to be shrinking into a corner in mortal terror of your teacup Yorkie. Just make it clear you’ve got the matter in hand and leave them to their irrational phobia.

Even when it’s not a “breaking down social barriers” moment and you’re on the elevator with someone you know, conversation isn’t really necessary. It’s like talking on your phone on a bus. Nobody needs to hear your business, do they? “Hey, Bill, how’s your gall bladder?” is probably not what Bill wants to talk about, and it’s almost certainly not anything the other 12 people on the elevator want to hear about.

In fact, it is my contention that the only conversation that is really needed in an elevator is when some dork gets on first and blocks the button panel so that nobody else can select their floor. And that conversation can start out as a polite “excuse me,” but it doesn’t need to end that way if the person is a repeat offender or won’t move. Hey, a common enemy can break down barriers and foster connections among the others on the scene, right?

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Pioneer Day

Posted on July 24, 2025 by arwenbicknell

Pioneer Day is an official holiday in Utah. I know a little bit about it. Lucky for me, the hubs has written a ton on this topic, so I’m handing this space over to him today as the in-house expert:

Today is Pioneer Day in Utah, commemorating the 1847 arrival of Brigham Young leading the first group of Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley. The arrival is memorialized at the supposed site where Young declared “this is the place” at the end of their journey, now dedicated as This Is the Place Heritage Park.

Young most likely did not do that. He was prostrate with fever in the back of a wagon when they arrived. Fellow Mormon leader Wilford Woodruff came up with the story three decades after the fact.

But it’s a good story, and it captures the essence of the Mormon hegira. They wanted to get away from American civilization, which had consistently persecuted them for almost 20 years, and create their own in a place nobody — or at least no other white Americans — wanted.

The Mormon adventure played a key role in my first two books. In America 1844: Religious Fervor, Westward Expansion, and the Presidential Election That Transformed the Nation, I wrote about the presidential candidacy and assassination of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith. That murder led to the Latter Day Saints’ exodus to Utah three years later.

I wrote about the Mormons again in Lincoln’s Pathfinder: John C. Fremont and the Violent Election of 1856. Fremont played a small role in recommending the Salt Lake Valley to Young, but the main Mormon story of 1856 was the tragic handcart disaster in which several hundred immigrants died after getting a late start and getting caught in the snow in Wyoming.

About a decade ago, we visited Martin’s Cove, one of the campsites of that winter, and we traveled (by car, on a highway) along some of the route those immigrants took. We’ve visited a number of other Mormon sites, too: Nauvoo, Illinois; Winter Quarters in Florence, Nebraska; the Carthage Jail where Smith was lynched. Arwen is always amused by the earnest attempts at proselytizing by the people who work in these places; my instinct is to engage them in discussions of Mormon history to see how much they know. Usually, it’s quite a bit.

As the largest home-grown religion, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints plays an outsized role in American religious history, and a crucial role in the history of the West, so it has always been of interest to me as I’ve studied both. It’s not quite a coincidence that I wrote about two years in which Mormons played a significant part in the story.

There’s no Mormon angle to my new book, The Pathfinder and the President: John C. Fremont, Abraham Lincoln, and the Battle for Emancipation. There might be in my next one, though, or possibly the one after that. Stay tuned.

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Peanut Butter and Chocolate Day

Posted on July 23, 2025 by arwenbicknell

This is a winning combination in my house from way back, and in all forms. Cake, cookies, bars, ice cream—and candy, of course.

This being the case, I’m not sure why it took us so long to go to Hershey when we lived in Virginia. I heard stories about the place as a kid. We had friends who went, and they talked about how the whole town smelled like cocoa, and how they had intended to eat nothing but chocolate all day but gave up and needed something more substantial for dinner. And still, I never went.

When the kid was in grade school, we finally went and made a weekend of it. At the time, I was the only one in the family who liked roller coasters, but the park had other things to offer, so we spent one day doing that and then the next day doing everything else—sitting in the class, making our own candy bars, and getting overwhelmed by the gift shop. We also took a trolley tour of the town, and this is where we learned all about Milton Hershey and Harry Burnett Reese, how Reese worked for Hershey til he struck out on his own in 1923, their friendly collaboration, and their eventual merger in 1963.

It was no surprise to any of us that Reese’s peanut butter cups became Hershey’s top seller in 1969 and the product has stayed in that spot ever since (as far as we were told). We celebrated this education by going back to the gift shop and loading ourselves down with T-shirts, towels, and one sickening indulgence of a package of two half-pound Reese’s cups.

Hershey opened a new thing in 2022 called “Stuff Your Cup,” where you buy a 1-lb chocolate shell and fill it with peanut butter and whatever add-ons you like—pretzels, marshmallows, stuff like that. I wonder if this is where the company gets its ideas for those new roll-outs, like the PB&J cups (which my son says are pretty gross and disappointing, I’m sorry to report). I’m not sure we actually need to go back for that. If we did, I suspect our 1-lb shell would be filled only with peanut butter. Why mess with perfection?

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Spoonerism Day

Posted on July 22, 2025 by arwenbicknell

Hands down, the most impressive display of spoonerisms I’ve witnessed were masterworks by the Capitol Steps, who talked about ducky lays and lirty dies, and were way—I mean, wayyyyyy—ahead of the curve in 1990 talking about Tronald Dump. You can Google those; you won’t be disappointed.

I do this when I’m overly animated. More than once I have howled at my son to Shake a Tower, which just leads to him shaking his head and wandering off to maybe or maybe not do as requested. I have caked occasional bakes. My dad always joked that he was about to deliver a blushing crow when he’d beat me at gin rummy or checkers.

However, most spoonerisms I find in the wild don’t have second meanings; they’re just nonsensical. I don’t know what you call those. Gaffes? Whatever they are, my husband rolls these things around in his mouth on occasion. Sometimes it’s obvious and accidental (ask him to say “shoulder surgery” and see what happens), but sometimes I feel like he’s doing them as verbal calisthenics, and honestly sometimes I wonder if he is aware he’s doing it out loud. One of my favorite memories is of when we were at his parents’ house and his older brother was playing guitar. He was letting of the kids (probably mine) strum with a pick, and he asked the kid “is that a Fender pick?” My husband then cocked his head and without really thinking or engaging, said, in this musing tone, “thender fick. Pender thick. Fender pick.” Then he saw me giving him a WTF stare and shrugged. “Sounds weird,” was his only explanation.

What’s your best spoonerism? Do you book the cooks? Do you eat belly jeans? Does Sarah at the shoeshine shop shine and sit, or does she do two other things? Mit he!

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Get Out of the Dog House Day

Posted on July 21, 2025 by arwenbicknell

Today is supposed to be a day to mend fences and get back in the good graces of someone you have upset. Once upon a time, this would have been like a religious holiday for me. I’ve made those attempts. I’ve reached out to people I wronged. Most of the time, I got blown off. I had one very satisfying reconciliation with a college friend when I was in my 30s, which was nice—and after which we never spoke again. Still, we can both die knowing that hatchet was buried.

Up until recently, I would have assumed that nobody likes being in the dog house, but life has shown me that there are people out there who are quite content to be out of favor with anyone and everyone. I have to assume this is because those people are aware of their surroundings and marching into that doghouse with their heads high and their eyes open.

I’m not generally part of that crowd. I mean, yeah, sometimes I do crummy things out of spite or malice. I tend to own those and apologize—later, if not sooner. But most times I end up in the dog house, I have blundered in there unwittingly and as a result have no idea how to get out until someone gives me detailed directions. I have always been this way. Honestly, I think it was more the confusion that distressed me than the actual negative treatment.

Having my parents for parents also gave me a weird relationship with the doghouse. When my mom got mad, she would blow a gasket and forget about it ten minutes later. When my dad was mad, he would seethe for hours or days before confronting the issue. I lived in mortal terror of upsetting either of them—not because they were mean, just because I hated them being mad at me. But I also watched how they interacted with each other, and I saw how my dad managed my mom, and I learned to apply his blend of anticipation, action, and occasional apology. I watched how my mom would notice my dad was sulking, ask once what his problem was, and then just go about her business and leave him alone until he was ready to discuss it.

I am told by those who know me well that all this made me into a pleaser personality. I wasn’t a total pushover, but I was the kid who found it incredibly distressing when people would be nice one day and pretend I didn’t exist the next. I was the teen who tried to remember everyone’s birthday and leave a nice note in their locker. I was the girlfriend who planned, I was the co-worker who baked.

What I find interesting is that I never really considered how other people felt about my putting them in the doghouse. When people didn’t thank me for the notes or boyfriends didn’t show up for dinner, or colleagues didn’t acknowledge that my cookies were a nice snack, I would get minorly (sometimes majorly) offended and stop delivering. On the rare occasions someone told me my brownies were “gross” or “fine, I guess,” I would first panic that I’d used salt instead of sugar and (despite knowing I hadn’t messed anything up) would taste them again to be sure. And when they tasted fine, I would apologize. I wish now that I hadn’t, since nothing was actually wrong, but I hated to disappoint anyone. But once I had apologized, I would also roll my eyes and make a note to exclude that person from future samplings. I wanted to be liked, I tried to be likable. But only up to a point.

For the most part, I’m not big on apology scenes. Say it if you need to (but mean it, none of this “I’m sorry you were offended” or I’m sorry but you are an idiot” noise), and do better going forward. My parents generally apologized to each other with deeds more than words; my dad would bring my mom a book she wanted or my mom would buy my dad the expensive scotch. I also watched my parents stand friendly but firm when they felt they had done nothing wrong. When a lady at the PTA made a face about my mom showing up for a meeting in jeans and a T-shirt, my mom didn’t bat an eye. She just said, “Well, I’m here for this completely inconvenient meeting; you can put me to work or send me home.” When I was on a date with my not-yet-husband and he said, “Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke,” it was like coming home and reinforced my belief that we were meant to be.

And I’m finding that the doghouse can be an OK place to be as I get older. I try to follow Davy Crockett’s motto: Be sure you’re right, then go ahead. If I’m sure of myself, I’m OK with someone else not being OK with me. This was put to the test recently when someone I had considered a friend for years didn’t like something I wrote. Rather than asking me to explain or considering they might have misinterpreted or overreacted, they assumed the worst, declared my depiction ugly and hurtful, and apparently concluded that my soul was black as pitch. Now, here’s the thing. I know I can be an ass, so I checked myself, then I asked some relevant outside parties for their input on what I’d written, looked it over again, and concluded that not only is my soul just fine but also that what I had written was not the new Mein Kampf that this person seemed to think it. I said so. The other person Didn’t Know What to Think. Well, I did, and I ended the friendship. And my only irritation with the whole thing is that although the other party apparently had conviction, they lacked follow-through and made Mean Old Me pull the trigger. If I’m as loathsome as they apparently considered me to be, why on earth would they need time to think anything over rather than just go no-contact immediately? But I guess this way they get to say that their assumption was correct and I am ugly and hurtful because I chose to call it a day while they were willing to “think”—about what, I will never know.

So, sure. Despite having a big, thick strain of Pleaser Personality running through me, I have hit my limit and lost a few friends over the years. That’s fine. When it’s over, it’s over. I was more bothered when a person I thought was a good friend ghosted me; it still bothers me a little—again, that confusion versus negativity thing. But after attempts to reach out to her failed, and when various mutual friends seemed unable to tell me what I might have done to cause such offense, I eventually concluded that if she couldn’t be bothered to tell me what I did, I didn’t need to bother fretting about it. When I found myself pattering down that rabbit hole, I turned myself around and distracted myself by bothering someone who was willing to talk to me.

But hey, if you have a guilty conscience, today is the day to ease it. Maybe you’ll have a happy reconciliation. I hope you do!

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Ice Cream Day

Posted on July 20, 2025 by arwenbicknell

I’ve written a ton about ice cream here in relation to various other topics. So today, I’ll talk about making ice cream instead.

When I was a kid, my grandparents had an ice cream maker and every summer that I visited them, we took another stab at making some. We had a lot of texture problems. One year it was chocolate chip ice cream, and my grandmother laughed for years afterward about the “vanilla and BB pellet” result. Next year, we shaved the chocolate and it was much better. Another year we made French vanilla ice cream that had a great taste, but the egg yolks (or something) wound up creating chewy bits that were fairly off-putting. We would eat the ice cream outside and spit out what my grandpa insisted on calling the pith. We stuck with plain vanilla after that.

My mom says we had an ice cream maker at home, too, but it didn’t last long. The story I got about it was that some friend of hers brought their kid over, and the kid threw their banana peel in the machine. When my mom finally noticed several weeks later, the ice cream maker was one big rust bucket and was dumped at the curb the next trash day. My memory of making ice cream at home was generally an adult-free effort; I’d have a friend over, we’d throw some cream, sugar, and vanilla into a bowl, beat it half to death with a pair of old-timey eggbeaters (the kind that inevitably jammed and you had to turn the wheel backward to unjam them), then dump that into a small coffee can. Then we’d put the small coffee can into a bigger coffee can full of ice and salt and spend 20 minutes rolling it across the kitchen floor to (sometimes at) each other. Then we’d open it up and pretty much drink the sightly thicker result.

One of my failings as a parent was not having an ice cream churn on hand at any point to show the kid how much effort goes into it. I’m pretty sure we did have an ice cream maker at one point, but my recollection is that it had a motor and made enough ice cream for maybe 1.5 servings—in other words, why bother?

Traditional ice cream in Illinois has been surprisingly hard to come by. There’s plenty of soft-serve—we have more DQs than you can shake a stick at, plus a couple local chains that also make a mean twisty cone. But the nearest Baskin Robbins is about 40 minutes away; the closest Cold Stone is 20 minutes. A local café on Main Street just got its freezer up and running a couple months ago, and we have stopped in a couple times—it’s good, but the selections are few and it’s not quite the same.

Maybe it’s time to scrounge up a few coffee cans.

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Karoake Day

Posted on July 19, 2025 by arwenbicknell

I have never sung karaoke. I consider this a public service.

The closest I get to karaoke is singing when I’m alone in the car, and these days I spend half that time coughing after cracking on a high note.

In public, I’m more of a head-bobber. If singing is involved, vastly prefer sing-alongs. I might murmur along if my husband is crooning away with Frank Sinatra; I might be almost audible if he and my son are both in the car and harmonizing. If I feel drowned out by my peers, I’m quite happy to join in on the ba-ba-ba’s of  Sweet Caroline or the chorus of Livin’ on a Prayer with a large crowd at a ballgame or dueling pianos bar. Stick me out somewhere by myself? It’s 50-50 I’ll sing or barf, and that is only partly dependent on how much I’ve had to drink before landing myself in such a ridiculous predicament.

I am in awe of people who can get up and belt out a number. Doubly so for those people who can’t carry a tune in a bucket and go for the gusto anyway. It requires some quality that I lack—confidence, brazenness, lack of self-awareness, I don’t know what. I used to blame this on being a band geek; I always played an instrument, I never soloed with a choir. Or maybe it’s my Midwestern reserve surging to the fore.

Whatever my problem is my son did not inherit it. He truly enjoys karaoke. It doesn’t hurt that he actually CAN carry a tune—in fact, he has a great voice, which for some reason surprises me all over again every time he uses it. He’s always has a musical bent, and it’s one of my Annoying Mom Traits that I continue to wish he’d pursue something along that avenue despite his insistence that he hates practicing, he doesn’t like any instrument enough to spend the time required to get proficient on it, he doesn’t want to hate music and he would if he had to practice and get proficient, and he is MUCH more in tune with himself than I give him credit for.

All that said, he apparently does take some amount of care in his karaoke outings. He says his standby is Life During Wartime by the Talking Heads, but that he prefers to do a different number each time and work out the lyrics and some measure of choreography before going in. He sends us videos occasionally, and I am delighted to report that his performances are warmly received and my parental bias is validated.

I am quite content to go watch other people enjoy themselves on stage this way. I’ll stick to writing!

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World Listening Day

Posted on July 18, 2025 by arwenbicknell

This day is not intended as a “let others speak” day. Apparently it is intended to call attention to “acoustic ecology”—the natural and manmade sounds around us.

This is intended to be more of an outdoor thing more than a “sit in bed and listen to your air conditioner” thing. It’s not a bad exercise, but it’s also an interesting test of other things—how long you can keep your attention focused on external sounds, whether you can stand being alone with your thoughts, how long it takes for you to be more grossed out by the sweat rolling down your back than charmed by the birdsong in your ears.

The kid and I used to do this when he was little. I would drag him outside, make him splat in the yard and close his eyes, and then tell me what he heard. As if it wasn’t abundantly clear that he had ADHD simply by looking at him for 30 seconds, these little exercises would have removed all doubt to any professional diagnosers. He would sit calmly for maybe 30 seconds, listing, “Wind. Birds. Dog barking.” Then he’d pop his eyes open and ask why we were doing this. I’d tell him I could hear cars, squirrels, the neighbor’s sprinkler. He would take an impatient breath, close his eyes again, and say, “Something humming (the heat pump). More wind. The same dumb dog.” And then you could practically see him vibrating, so I’d give up and tell him to take a lap around the house while I closed my own eyes and listened some more. He’d pelt away, run two laps for good measure, and then go back in the house and spend the next several hours happily and deeply absorbed in Star Wars minutiae too obscure for scholars eight times his age.

Conversely, the hubs and I would occasionally go for hikes in the woods, which in Virginia means a lot of hills and humidity. While he was quite content to walk in silence and speak only occasionally and reverentially, I found myself wishing I had headphones, a chatterbox companion, anything to distract me from the sameness of the trees, the buzzing of the insects that made me itch by association, the sweat pouring off me in all kinds of yucky places, and my own extremely unattractive wheezing and panting that drowned out pretty much everything else.

I’m still not a fan of bugs or sweating, but I will say it is nice to sit outside of an evening and close my eyes. These days I hear more cars and fewer bugs—and, at a certain time of year, the perpetual hum of grain elevator heaters. But in between, there’s still wind, and birds, and occasionally a dog barking.

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Wrong Way Corrigan Day

Posted on July 17, 2025 by arwenbicknell

For a long time, my only awareness of Wrong Way Corrigan was that it was something my grandmother would holler whenever someone took off heading in some direction other than the one they were supposed to. If she said “time to leave” and you headed toward the bathroom instead of the backdoor, you were hauled up short with that phrase and required to explain yourself.

Somehow, I got it in my head that Mr. Corrigan was a baseball player who was famous for running the wrong direction to field fly balls. This is about as wrong way as Corrigan himself, and I am still trying to figure out where that notion came from.

The truth is that this day commemorates the transatlantic flight of a guy named Douglas Corrigan, who, in 1938, famously claimed to have accidentally flown from New York to Ireland, blaming a faulty compass and poor weather conditions, taking it so far as to say he thought he was in San Francisco when he landed.

What was his motive for lying? It’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask for permission a second time. See, Lindbergh had made the transatlantic flight 11 years earlier, and Corrigan had been one of his mechanics. Apparently deciding it was more fun to fly planes than fix them, Corrigan cobbled together a junker of a plane and flew nonstop from California to New York—and got a lot of press simply because the plane—and he—survived the trip.

Once in New York, he filed plans for a transatlantic flight, but the authorities were as freaked out by his Frankenstein jalopy as the press, and the plans were rejected. But they did say Corrigan could fly back to the West Coast—his plane was deemed safe enough to crash on land, just not in the sea. So Corrigan fired up his single-engine on July 17 at Floyd Bennett field and took off. One version of the story goes that he was told to use any runway except the one heading west, so he took off to the east and kept going. In another version, he got airborne and headed west—for a minute or two. Then he made a 180-degree turn and vanished into a cloudbank.

Twenty-eight hours later, he popped out of his plane in Dublin, asking where he was. Nobody in charge bought into his story of a busted compass, though Corrigan stuck to it. They suspended his license, so he and his boxed-up plane had to take a boat back to New York. By the time he arrived, his suspension had been lifted and he was a national celebrity.

Nobody else really bought into his story, either—I mean, c’mon. His initial plan was to fly to Ireland and he just happened to wind up there. If nothing else, surely he got a glimpse of all that ocean at some point that would have been a tipoff. And the guy was no dummy—he got his autobiography written and into stores in time for Christmas 1938, and he worked every Wrong Way marketing angle that came his way. He played himself in the movie of his life and made a bundle. He tested planes during World War II.

In 1988, he joined in the golden anniversary celebration of his famous flight. Wikipedia says Corrigan was so jazzed that event organizers keep a close eye on him to make sure he didn’t take it for a spin. For all that, he went to his grave still insisting it wasn’t a lie, it was a legitimate mistake.

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