Reader

Details. The all-important details. Some say the devil hides there, in minutiae easily dismissed as inconsequential and beneath notice. Aspects of the whole so small as to escape importance.

I didn't think much about insects. Unless they were biting me or extraordinarily beautiful I didn't give them much consideration. They were inconsequential details that didn't merit my intellectual or spiritual real estate.

I get caught up in angst about the suffering of the charismatic species driven to extinction, and grieve the ecosystems brutalized by anthropogenic climate change. I am perpetually grief-stricken about the disappearance of polar ice and all of the life forms that depend on it. Mass die-offs like the drowning of an entire generation of Emperor Penguin chicks winter before last. There was too much meltwater standing on top of the ice so that rather than learning to walk the chicks fell in and drowned. This leaves me inexpressibly sad. It's the big picture stuff that has kept me gutshot. The Greenland Ice Sheet, so rapidly sliding into the ocean, that will raise sea levels worldwide. Desertification, particularly for those of us who already live on the edge of a desert, is terrifying. It is predicted that my beloved Desert Southwest home will be uninhabitable in less than fifty years. And yes, I grieve for us too. For my people. The extreme social injustice accompanying global climate change is the collective shame of our species.

Insects were the least of it.

Until they didn't show up. Until the tragedy of climate change came home. Until we started experiencing climate-change-driven 'drier than average' springs here on the edge of the Colorado Plateau in the arid American Southwest.

* * *

“If all humankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed 10,000 years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”

E. O. Wilson, Harvard Entomologist

Meadow is probably an altogether too generous term for the one-acre clearing I live on the verge of, but that's what I call it. One of the magical things about life on the verge of a little meadow is coming to life with it in spring after the cold sluggishness of winter's doldrums.

When me and my meadow begin to resurrect after exceptionally warm, dry winters, there is a crucial element missing. Lack of adequate winter moisture here results in a painful lack of insects in spring. When we get good snow grasshoppers part in front of me as I stroll the meadow like the Red Sea before Moses, and crickets sing me to sleep as soon as the nights are above freezing.

It's an odd thing, the absence of a sound. As I sought sleep after those dry winters, my mind wandered the spring meadow looking for my cricket lullaby without finding it. My dreams and I had been abandoned. There were no dead houseflies to vacuum from the windowsills on cleaning day.

Nothing was as it should be in consequence of the absence of insects. The plenty of the meadow was no more. My beloved Flycatchers, who nest here every summer, searched desperately for food. The vigorous hatchlings customarily clamoring for parental attention from the nest in the eaves just outside my dining room window were so feeble I could hardly hear them. Nobody in the meadow was eating what—who—they usually did.

I have been enchanted with the local Corvid species here for the length and breadth of my life and know them to be intelligent, opportunistic omnivores. The Corvid clan is not above robbing the nests of others, but I could have gone my whole life without seeing it. Images of the titanic battle waged at the Flycatcher nest will haunt my nightmares evermore. For all their valiant efforts against a pair of birds twice their size, the Flycatcher parents only managed to save one of their three hatchlings from marauding Steller's Jays. The Jays ate the two Flycatcher babies they pulled from the nest down to the last feather, for which I am grateful. I would otherwise have had to pick up the remains of my precious baby birds and conduct a funeral for them. The very thought makes me choke.

Raptors are elegant predators. The strike usually breaks the back of their prey, paralyzing it, and then their sharp talons finish the job as their feet grasp their dinner and take off with it. The death of Raptor prey is most often swift and merciful.

The Corvids are inelegant predators. For want of their customary fare —insectivorous lizards and grasshoppers—in a dry spring the Corvidae here go for larger prey. I watched a Crow pull a gopher out of its burrow by the face. Who knew gophers could scream? There was nothing swift or merciful about the gopher's death. The Crow didn't wait until the gopher was dead to start eating. I turned away so I didn't have to watch, but it didn't save me. The screaming was intense for a very long time and then ceased abruptly.

You would think that someone who has studied as much Biology as I have would have kept a closer emotional eye on the base of the pillar, on the foundation of all the ecological interrelationships that rest upon it. But I am vulnerable to the drama about losses at the top. The panicky reports that browbeat me daily. The horror of cetaceans washing up on the beach, dead from ingesting plastic. Or the kids standing outside the grocery store selling candy bars to save the polar bears. The news that one of the last jaguars had been shot on the Arizona/Mexico border for his pelt was a knife in my heart. The starving polar bears and the tragically persecuted wolves. The list is endless these days.

These crunchy dry climate change springs here in the meadow are reeducating me about the interrelated nature of ecology. The tuition is gruesome. Collapse occurs from the bottom up.

Humanity lacks the vocabulary to adequately discuss the climate change happening around us in any kind of meaningful way, at least in my colonial language. Perhaps First Nations languages have words big enough, but mine doesn't. Meteorologists try to give us a grasp of the enormity of increasingly common catastrophic weather events by explaining them in temporal terms. Hurricanes Irma and Harvey in 2017 were spoken of as 50-year storms. This language is useless at best, counterproductive at worst. The time spans used to describe these massive weather events are the product of actuarial tables—more an expression of percent probability than any kind of meaningful significance. These tepid terms don't convey the life-changing fury of the storms they attempt to describe. It isn't as though Puerto Rico doesn't have to worry about another Irma-scale event for another fifty years.

Sometimes we try to describe our new climate in relative terms. What constitutes 'customary' now? What is the 'normal' weather pattern? What shall we count as a 'drier than average' season from the depths of this persistent drought? My homeland has been in a greater or lesser state of drought for the past 30 years. Will we consider a winter dry in comparison to the winter of 2017/2018? Or dry in comparison to what was considered dry before 2017-2018?

It is an odd thing, the absence of a sound. In summer, by day, my heart and spirit wander the meadow seeking birdsong. I am left wanting. I have lived beside my little one-acre meadow for a very long time and predictably experience Rachel Carson's dreaded Silent_Spring two years out of every five now. The pesticides she feared would kill the birds are doing so, but indirectly, by killing their food source in an increasingly harsh environment without adequate moisture for birds or insects either one to survive

* * *

Redemption lies in the details as well.

A Prayer for the Least Among Us

Gaia, Great Goddess, I Cast my fear, anger, and self-loathing into the blistering, punishing Summer Solstice sun to wane with the season. I do not offer prayers for the salvation of my own kind this Litha as I customarily do. You have blessed us with all the resources and abilities we need to save ourselves from ourselves. My prayers this Summer Solstice are for the least among us, for those who are the base of the pillar. Few have been so maliciously and persistently persecuted by humanity as insects. I understand now it is they who tie the world together. Save them, Mother, from me and my kind if you can. I pray for enough moisture that they might survive. All we know — the might and majesty of all of Creation — rests on their tiny shoulders.

I never thought I'd miss bugs, Gaia. I never thought about them at all, save for that occasional beautiful butterfly, or perhaps the heartbeat of compassion I felt for the housefly that bounced itself to death against my window. In keeping with Your tradition, even in a dry year, the passing of the Summer Solstice sees the humidity increase in my arid homeland, and it offers the tender stirring of hope for summer monsoon moisture. I pray for nourishing and spectacular summer rainstorms. I never thought I'd be so grateful to hear the whine of a mosquito in my ear, or be so willing to send her on her way with wishes for prosperity and a drop of my lifeblood.

A Prayer For The Least Among Us is an excerpt from Terryl’s forthcoming book Familiars.
This prayer recognizes that we—the human beings of planet earth—will be required to learn how to live in amiable peace with our fellow travelers on this blue dot hurtling through the black if we want to survive ecocide. Our fellow travelers include everyone, human and nonhuman alike. Mother Earth will continue to turn up the volume until we learn this. The tuition gets expensive from here.

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Gratitude list:
Graphic design by AJ Brown, https://mastodon.sdf.org/@mral
Photography by AJ Brown, https://mastodon.sdf.org/@mral
additional photography by:
Andreas Weith, CC BY-SA 4.0
Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0
James Gathany, USCDCP, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

To the Life in Pieces writing circle for reading an early draft of this oh, so long ago.

And to Gaia, Mother Earth, who has created life on this planet in such spectacular diversity. We offer our gratitude to the insect clans; to the moths and mosquitos who feed our beloved bats; to the pollinators who fertilize the world; to the ants who feed the lizards; and to the lizards and grasshoppers and worms who feed the birds; and to the prairie dogs and all the other nonhuman keystone species humans kill so thoughtlessly. There are no extra parts in the natural world and we offer our gratitude to all of the folk, human and otherwise, who are thought of as ‘lesser’ and who tie the world together in so many ways.

I was righteously pleased with my clever box labeling, and my label that got a lot of laughs from a lot of people for a lot of years. I was a young adult packing to move out of my college dorm room, and was beginning to accumulate things. My things. The things that would express my adult self and define my style. My box required no careful scrutiny. It was plain cardboard, about two feet square, labeled in large letters on five sides with a thick-tipped black marker. It boldly identified its contents as:

I went so far as to draw a (rather good, if I say so myself) cartoon treasure chest on top.

That box was my first adult possession. I was taking it with me out into the world. It was a statement of my autonomy. Everything I owned then fit in a brown Honda subcompact with plenty of room to spare. It took 15 minutes to pack my life: a backpack of clothes with my sleeping bag tied on, a small bag of books, skis in the rack on the roof, and my box of Miscellaneous Treasures and Other Junk.

I was launched on the grand adventure of making my own decisions about the hows and wheres of my life. Rebelliously inflamed, I blew off both graduate programs I had the opportunity to pursue and ran away to be a ski bum. I'd gotten a job at Wolf Creek ski area in Southwestern Colorado. My life as an independent adult, chasing my own pursuits and adventures, stretched out in front of me as long and wide open and full of unlimited possibilities as the road across the rez to get there.

The life is not for the sedentary, nor those burdened with possessions. Ski area folk don't make enough money to be very settled and it is, after all, seasonal work which can involve moving twice a year from summer to winter jobs. Sometimes my version of the life required many more moves than that. My worst year (or best, depending on how you look at it), I moved 8 times. But since it was a 15-minute job, it wasn't a daunting task either for me or my traveling companion, a tomcat named Merlin.

Merlin and I rented a walk-in closet for part of one winter. It was the two of us and six other lift ops and their pets crammed into a small one-bedroom place. Merlin and I figured we scored with the closet because at least we had a door that closed. The Miscellaneous Treasures and Other Junk box with a bandana draped over it made a perfect nightstand, and Merlin and I were happy there until we weren't, at which point we loaded up our stuff and went to the next flop.

A couple of years later, I coincidentally wrecked my knee about the same time my flaming rebellion began to flicker and wane. Trying to recover from injury in a sleeping bag on someone else's floor sucks. I rented a 400 square foot cabin of my own just outside of South Fork. It was only one room, but my scant Honda load didn't go far to furnish it. Mom kindly bought herself a new bedroom set and brought me her old one. I had hit the big time with my adulting project. I had real wooden furniture. A real nightstand, and a real bed with headboard, footboard, and two mattresses. I had a dresser, and I had a closet to house the clothes, backpack, and the Miscellaneous Treasures and Other Junk box.

It was the beginning of the end.

I would never again be able to move in the Honda. I thought this made my adulthood official, owning furniture and having a lease in my own name.

I had to have help to move after that. It took a truck and at least one other person to help carry furniture. Root hairs were working themselves into the soil of my life. My dad teased me about nesting.

It was a remarkably slippery slope. My fancy free days were over. Within a year I had living room furniture, too, with a couch and end tables and a coffee table. I had dishes and pots and pans and bookshelves and books to fill them and even—-gasp!—-a recipe box (also courtesy of Mom). A year after that, moving from winter to summer I had so much stuff I had to beg space in the corner of a friend's garage for a couple of pieces of furniture and the Miscellaneous Treasures and Other Junk box plus a dozen of its kin. For the first decade of my official adulthood, I was unable to have all of my possessions in the same place. There was a ten-year succession of attics, garages, and rented storage spaces.

The embers of my escapist rebellion finally burned out completely, and I decided to move back to my Northern Arizona home. I wanted to go back to school and repair my relationship with my parents. But the roots of my adulthood had grown thick and strong by then. It took a 25' U-Haul and driver each for it and the two vehicles I owned to move.

I hadn't opened the Miscellaneous Treasures and Other Junk box for close on 15 years. I'd moved it more times than I could count and paid a fortune to store it. I no longer had any memory of what it contained but kept it with me because it was full of treasure. It said so right on the box.

The first place my roommate and I rented when we landed in Northern Arizona was a huge three-story house south of Flagstaff. We were both excited about this opulent spaciousness. She was in the same boat as I and we were looking forward to unpacking all our stuff for the first time in a very long time.

The Miscellaneous Treasures and Other Junk box, now shabby and careworn with the years, had become an enigmatic mystery. It was well packed, so shaking it didn't divulge any clues about its contents, and neither did its heft. We saved it for last and threw a party for the ceremonial opening. We invited friends, family, and neighbors over to discover at last what treasures were in it. After the dinner dishes were cleared, everyone gathered around the dining room table, tight with anticipation. With much fanfare (my dad put on the 1812 Overture for dramatic effect), I opened the treasure box to find . . .

Wine bottles. Old empty wine bottles. Carefully wrapped in tissue paper for the ages. My shame burned hot. I couldn't begin to recall what special occasions these ancient wine bottles had attended, but we all got a good laugh out of it. Although I wouldn't get sober until years later, it was my first slap, the first inkling I had that maybe I needed to quit drinking so much.

Mom had the gift of knowing what to keep and what to throw away. It is a gift I did not inherit and nor could she train me. The box of Miscellaneous Treasures and other Junk exposed my inner packrat, and disabused me of the notion that possessions make the adult. It was a low blow.

The house I live in now is a taproot grown deep into the soil of my native land. I haven't moved for almost thirty years and I'm so stuck here now I wouldn't know how to live anywhere else. How to be anywhere else. How to breathe the air anywhere else.

This house is plenty big enough for one person and all the crap one person could possibly ever need. I'm proud I've kept myself comfortably contained in this space for so long in spite of my hoarding tendencies. When the miscellaneous treasures and other junk start to crowd me out I de-crap, and I'm getting better at keeping the treasure and passing the junk along to thrift stores or the recycler.

Miscellaneous Treasures and Other Junk is an offering from the Saturday Morning Cartoons series of creative nonfiction essays. This one is just for fun.

Blessed Litha, everyone! MoonLit sends you our warmest prayers for a happy Summer Solstice with this week’s cartoon. We pray that you are enjoying these long, lazy days of summer with those you love and that you are surrounded by kind, supportive community. We pray that you are not in danger from fire. Cast your burdensome cares into the Summer Solstice to wane with the daylight.

We here at MoonLit are going to take a little summer vacation at the next new moon, and will be looking forward to connecting with you again at the full moon in July.

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Photography by Terryl Warnock, https://mastodon.sdf.org/@wordsbyterryl

The Life in Pieces writing circle, for their excellent critiques of an early draft.

Terryl is grateful to her Mom who, even though she’s already gone on ahead, must be proud that her efforts to train her eldest daughter about clutter have finally registered in a meaningful way.

She’s also grateful to her beloved little sister, who shares the hoarding tendency and is the uncomplaining recipient of a lot of the Miscellaneous Treasures and Other Junk Terryl just can’t quite bring herself to let go of.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. If the Spring Equinox is the subtle stirring of an initial thaw, Beltane (May Day or May Eve) is a luscious, tumescent awakening. Beltane cherishes the power of the Sun as it warms the Earth into Her season of fertility. This is no fleeting, adolescent crush. This is that heart-pounding, ecstatic moment you first find true love; the moment you know this is The One (capital T, capital O); the moment the flirtation quickens and grows into the kind of life-affirming love you can trust enough to build your life around. Love that we all share with Goddess and God in this season of reincarnation and generation; a tidal pull far too delicious and compelling to resist. This is a time for lovers in the most Sacred sense. The lessons now are gentle ones. This is the arousal of love everlasting. The Goddess stirs and awakens fully to her lover’s touch. Pink and white abound, naturally, in the world. Trees burst into flower and deciduous trees are achingly vivid, bright, new green. The green that neon tries, but fails, to capture.

A potent and widely recognized symbol of Beltane is the Green Man, the primal consciousness of the plant kingdom. He is a seed who starts out as an undefined character and, with a kiss from Element of Water, jumps up from Element of Earth at Beltane to join and influence the world of the living, his face hidden in leafy camouflage. He is the resurrected god, reincarnated after death to bring salvation and hope of life after death. Guardian spirits (think Fairy Godmother) in the other world and in this one safeguard the newborn life that it may strengthen and grow.

Element of Air stirs us to rise to the season in small ways at first; with gentle butterflies and raucous hummingbirds. The scents are sweet and wet. We gasp as they waft past. Although appeased through the winter by the savory smells of soups, roasts and wet wool, our sense of smell by the time spring stirs is starved for tastes of the living, resurrected, outside world. We gulp the fragrant Beltane Air deeply with its savor of mud, compost, pollen and flowers. It is a time of opening up. A time for spirited and effervescent conversation; a time for opening ourselves to possibility; a time for allowing fresh air to clear away impeding doubts and gust change into our lives. It is a time to rekindle energy and realize connections. A time to see the missing parts of ourselves and connect with that special someone who completes us. It is a time to let our hidden selves out to play in the moonlight; to invite the child within us to adult wakefulness.

As celebrated by the ancients, Beltane was a fire festival when Element of Fire was propitiated with passion. The blessings of the Sacred fire’s light and warmth were fertility and safety for people, animals and fields alike (over which the ashes from the sacred fire were scattered). Beltane is the season to court, to write love letters and seal them with a kiss. To let our lusty hearts (as Sir Thomas Malory called them) blossom and bring forth fruit.

Although Beltane celebrates the intimate, its blessings are also wide. We throw ourselves single into the circle of time at Beltane and come out multiple. After being cooped up all winter it’s finally warm enough to get outside; get in the garden and get some dirt under your fingernails. It’s time to open the windows and reconnect with the wider community, human and nonhuman alike, who have likewise been cooped up all winter. It is a time to celebrate by leaving your neighbors anonymous baskets of flowers, and lean over the fence to catch up on all the news with them. It’s time to move; to put aside winter’s sedentary enjoyments and dance.

Beltane and Samhain separate the pagan year into summer and winter, into the seasons of the living and of the dead. Beltane is a time to focus on life and renewal as Samhain is a time to focus on the death that must needs precede Beltane’s glorious rebirth and resurrection.

Blush is an excerpt from The Miracle du jour by Terryl Warnock and is reprinted here with permission of MoonLit Press.
© Terryl Warnock 2024 All rights reserved; License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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Photography by AJ Brown, https://mastodon.sdf.org/@mral

Now there's something you don't see every day.

My brain struggled to process what my eyes were seeing. It was the scale I couldn't quite grasp. It was as though a child had flung his toy road grader down in the sandbox when he got called in for dinner. But this was a real road grader, impossibly huge. It wasn't just stuck in the mud, it was buried in it. It was in the ditch, and rotated ninety degrees on its long axis, so that the axles were perpendicular to the surface of the road. Only half of it was still sticking up out of the mud. There was no need to ask myself who had so carelessly thrown this thirty-foot-long, five-ton behemoth down in the mud like that. This had Wally written all over it. Some people just should not operate machinery. My Uncle Wally was one of them.

I was on my way to work of a Sunday morning, and had just turned onto the ski area road. There's about a mile of straight flat until you get to the gate where the road starts climbing and curving. I was looking forward to the variable conditions of a clear, warm spring day. My morning class would be challenged by the hard, fast, ice (but I would enjoy a few bullet runs before the circus started); my noon private would be heroes in the sugar; and my afternoon group lesson would learn more than all the rest put together as they got their feet under them in the slow, forgiving slush.

A hundred yards on, Wally plodded along on foot. Utterly dejected. Head down. Knuckles dragging.

I rolled down the passenger side window as I pulled alongside. “Bad morning, Wal? You want a ride? Or you want to walk it off?”

He spoke to his feet “I'll ride.”

We drove on for several minutes in silence. I finally said “You want to talk about it?”

“No, dammit, I do not. I only pulled over to roll a cigarette. I didn't know how soft it was.”

“What do you mean you didn't know how soft it was? You'd turned it around to start working the uphill side, so you been pulling ditches all morning on the way down. Maybe it's time to invest in ready-rolls.”

“Shut up. You're fired.”

I grinned at him. “You gonna take my classes? I'm the only instructor you got. Besides, Wal, who pulls a road grader over for anything? You got the biggest dog in the fight, dude. Park right in the middle of the damn road to roll your smoke. Make 'em go around. It's a helluva lot easier to pull a car out of the ditch with the road grader than vice versa.”

“Shut up. After today you're fired.”

Northern Arizona Mud: 1

Wally: 0

I'd worked for Wally for more than a decade by then and would go on to work at Wally World for nearly ten more winters. He never meant it when he fired me. He needed me a lot more than I needed the job. I made my living at the auto parts shop during the week and taught skiing at Wally World on weekends for fun and extra money. Most of the time I was the only one on what was loosely called the ski school. I was always the only one trained to my craft and with any experience. It was a bust-ass job. There were some weekends I taught upwards of 150 beginners by myself and was grateful to go back to running the rat race at the auto parts shop so I could catch my breath.

His name wasn't Wally and he wasn't my uncle. We called him Wally (after Wally World in that comedy movie) because it felt a lot like we were working in a cartoon strip. Wally owned a charming little anachronism called Williams Ski Area just outside of Williams, Arizona. It wasn't so much a ski area as it was a caricature of one. The technological advances of the latter half of the twentieth century had passed Wally World by entirely. Some time in the 60s Wally and his brother had driven a wheezing old forties-vintage farm tractor up what would become the beginner's run and put it up on blocks. Wrapped a rope around one of the tires and called it a lift. Must have worked some kind of magic to get the tramway inspector to sign off on it.

Wally couldn't afford to buy new equipment any more than he could pay experienced people. He took discards from real ski areas and brought them back to life with chewing gum and baling wire. He got the poma lift for free for carting it away from Hesperus ski area in southwestern Colorado, and the Thiokol (snowcat) was a Wolf Creek castoff. I don't know where he got the road grader but it was a derelict POS just like all the rest.

Wally was a wreck looking for a place to happen as soon as he left the shop in or with any machine, big or little. He had to do all the summer felling and clearing by himself because there wasn't a logger in three states who would get within twenty miles of him if he had a running chainsaw in his hand. The butt of a tree he'd been felling had kicked back and hit him in the face the day I met him, to interview for the job. Looked like he was lucky to still have his head attached to his shoulders his face was such a mess. And as for his winter operator errors, burying the road grader was just the most impressive among them. Trying to make a sharper turn than the machine was designed for, he would pull the stick back on one of the Thiokol tracks while pushing the other one forward about once a winter. The machine would rotate, corkscrewing itself down into the snow until it met frozen earth, where it would chew a track, blow hoses, and puke hydraulic fluid. He buried it one year right where you had to get off the poma. Another time he buried it, the snow was deep enough only the roof was sticking out of the crater he dug himself down into. And he did it right in the middle of the only good teaching terrain for beginners in the whole place, in the base area, while I was teaching there. I had to restrain myself from choking his neck as he climbed up out of the hole he'd dug with that silly “oops” grin on his face. Scared my poor wobbly-legged first day people near to death. I could see the terror in their faces. Tears were shed. Some took their skis off, walked down, and would never again put skis on their feet.

I learned to avoid him when he was operating machinery like everybody else, but make no mistake, I loved my Uncle Wally. He was a smart, educated man whose intelligence and education found no practical use whatsoever in the real world he inhabited. I'll be casting no stones his way on that account. He was a sweet person who kept his business afloat, barely, on a shoestring. This is something that every small businessperson in Williams can relate to, myself included. He shared his charming little anachronism with everyone, especially if they were willing to pitch in. He collected snowmelt from the roof for water to flush the toilets with so the potable water could be conserved for drinking and use in the kitchen. He was happy in his poverty, as am I.

Surprisingly, Wally died of old age and as he aged he turned into a mountain gnome. He curled in on himself like his ancient, worn pack boots had curled up at the toes. He'd always had elfin features—-a long pointy nose with bright, intense eyes burning behind thick glasses. He looked like an old apple, brown and craggy, always bundled in the same old tattered winter gear; ski pants worn shiny, his signature hand-knit conical blue hat with a ragged tassel at the tip, a scarf of indeterminate color, and a down vest I think might have been yellow once, but which had turned black from the grease in the shop. He developed a bad hip in his old age like so many of us do, and with it, a mincing gait not far removed from the beautiful, tight tele turns he made as a younger man.

If the fables and fairy tales have it right, gnomes make their way through the world at a little different pace than the rest of us. Wally had always heard his own drummer and did not much care what the rest of the world thought of him, he was doing the best he could under the circumstances with what he had. It's all any of us can do.

Medicare diagnostic code R41.3*; subsection f-POTUS (IJMTU)

In the dark times 2016-2020, tRump-itis spread across our country. In just four short years we, the people of the United States of America, came close to loosing our democracy and our government and our economy and our way of life. The things we assumed would always be there: that the rule of law applied to everyone, that education would be based on facts and that the News would be based on reality, were all under attack. Constitutional separation of powers, balance of power, and a fair and independent judicial system were all being eliminated. The government infrastructure we all depend on everyday: the US Post Office, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, consumer protection, worker protection, product safety, public infrastructure projects, and a working court system were all being ignored, made unworkable, or completely eliminated.

Now we are seeing a huge surge of a new disease, tRump Amnesia Syndrome (tRAS). The mega-corps, big corporate media and billionaires are trying to gaslight us, hoping we will forget the past.

We the people need to develop tools, techniques and methods to remind folks suffering from this disease just how bad it was when tRump-itis was unchecked and the damage it did to our country. To prevent a return of tRump-itis we also need to provide a clear view of how much better off we all will be when we work together to ensure the fundamental systems of our democracy continue to function for everyone.

Democracy is more than merely how we vote.

*R41.3 is a billable diagnosis code used to specify a medical diagnosis of other amnesia. The code is valid during the current fiscal year for the submission of HIPAA-covered transactions from October 01, 2023 through September 30, 2024. https://icdlist.com/icd-10/R41.3#code-information
:–)
f-POTUS former-POTUS
IJMTU I-Just-Made-This-Up

Nothing much for today either. I was again playing with multi-threading and noticed a had a bug. The issue was that several cores were computing the result, however, because I had data races I would get a poor-quality picture. I didn't check the output image, that's why I didn't notice it yesterday. The idea is that even tho each core would do one sample, running on 8 cores would mean I have 8 samples per pixel when averaged. However, because random was shared it wouldn't do 8 samples, but some sequences would be corrupted and I get less than 8 samples. Here the code I finally ended up with:

static std::hash<std::thread::id> hasher;
static std::uniform_real_distribution<double> distribution(0.0, 1.0);

inline double random_double() {
  static thread_local std::mt19937 generator(
    static_cast<unsigned>(hasher(std::this_thread::get_id()))
  );
  return distribution(generator);
}

I have static thread_local, which says that each thread has its own random number generator. Furthermore, its constructor receives the hash of the current thread_id resulting in different seeds for each seed, so sampling on different threads would actually make sense. Nevertheless, there is a case where hash id could repeat and my threads' work would be redundant. Fortunately for my use case since I use very few threads, six on Windows, 8 on Mac (4 efficiency cores, 4 performance cores), and all threads start “at the same” it is little likely that id would repeat. On that note, I think the code I wrote that distributes the tasks to threads still looks kinda of ugly, and I can do better. For that specific purpose, I resumed reading Bjarne's book, specifically the “Threads and Tasks” section, to seek for better alternative. In the meantime, let's enjoy more renders of balls. This time in full HD, with 80 samples per pixel. Why again balls? you may ask. Because I am too lazy to write code for loading meshes and handling a ray-to-triangle intersection, but I will do it eventually, most probably tomorrow. This time the image took 25 minutes to render, which is quite good considering the other render took me 4 hours. Note the previous render was 120x675.

I have finally added the multi-threading support. A screenshot showing 100% utilization of my CPU resources: CPU Utilization on MacBook Pro 13 m1, when rendering in multi-threading mode. There was 5x improvement in speed, which is amazing considering my computer has 6 cores ( tested on windows ). That's it for today, I will share with more insight tomorrow!

I am now on a path of darkness, and no tutorial shall help me. That is, I have finished the tutorial and I am experimenting on my own, therefore there is no one to hold my hand and tell me if I am doing something right, or wrong. Speaking of someone to hold my hand, this post has been sponsored by HedgeTheHog#andranik3949, who was kind enough to help me when I was completely lost debugging my code. Wish I could say the same for the compiler... The issue was that I was trying to use std::bind, to pass to the render function a reference to my world. HedgeTheHog found The arguments to bind are copied or moved, and are never passed by reference unless wrapped in std::ref or std::cref. Therefore, a solution would be to force pass the reference with the use of std::ref, where auto f = std::bind(func, std::ref(world));, then use f();. Another workaround is to use std::placeholders::_1, where auto f = std::bind(func, std::placeholders::_1); the pass the world in function call such as f(world);. There are some other errors I have yet to battle, but I will talk about them after I find a fix. The second challenge I have to face is to somehow use local instances of random generators. “Why?” you may ask. Because, if I have several threads using the same random number generator it's gonna be a bottleneck since random generators usually maintain some type of inner state. Therefore, all of the cpu cache across all of the cores will be invalidated. Someone smart reading this may think “Aha! Just use static thread_local, instead of static”. Unfortunately, that is useless, because I would have the same seed over all instances. I need to figure out a way to have that with different seeds on each thread and without making my code super ugly. That's it for today, see you!

Today, I have spent extra hours to finish up the project. The final result looks super cool. Since I haven't yet added support for multithreading this scene took me around four hours to render. It had 500 samples per pixel, with a max depth of 50 rays. For the last day, I have added defocus blur.

I am not sure yet, what I would want to add to this project, but I will decide soon. That's it for today, see you tomorrow!

Almost done with the series! Although next step would be to add simple improvements for quality of life. Here is the list of stuff done ( again in reverse chronological order ):

Added camera controls with lookfrom and lookat parameters.
Added glass material.
Added metal material fuzziness property.
Added materials.

Yet again, below is the evolution of the output image after each major change ( in chronological order ) Fuzzy metal.

Glass Attempt.

FOV experiment

Camera controls.

Zoomed in.

That's it for today. Code is as always available in my github page. I have implemented some more stuff, but there is currently a bug, so I will leave it for tomorrow. See you!

Day 1: Starting to get my shit together

Վերջին փոստս գրելուց հետո հասկացա, թե ինչքան շատ գործ կա անելու խաղերի դիզայնի և խաղերի ծրագրավորման ոլորտը հայաֆիկացնելու համար։ Ոնց եմ ուզում հայաստանում խաղերի արդյունաբերություննը լինի բարձր մակադակի։ Ինչի՞ չենք կարա ասենք Ամերիկայի, Ճապոնիայի, Շվեդիայի կամ Լեհաստանի մակարդակի խաղեր սարքենք։ Չեմ խոսում AAA խաղերի մասին, որի վրա հազարներով մարդիկ են աշխատում, բայց են փոքր ու ապշեցնող ինդիների մասին, որ մարկետը գրավում են ու պարզվում ա երեք հոգով են սարքել։ Մենք ունենք համապատասխան մասնագետներ, լիքը ծրագրավորող, լիքը արտիս, մաթեմատիկ ու ստեղծարարներ։ Հնչյունային օպերատորներ ջան ձեր մասին չեմ մոռացել, դուք հրաշք եք~~~ Հետ գալով հայաֆիկացման խնդրին, ուզում եմ նշել, որ երբ գրում էի անցած փոստը ինձ հազիվ էի զսպում անգլերեն եզրույթները չգործածել և ի վերջո պարտվեցի։ Իրականությունը են ա, որ էդ եզրույթների համար համապատասխան բառը չկա հայերենում ու էդ խնդիր ա։ Դրա համար կոչ եմ անում բոլոր հայ խաղերի դիզայներներին, կրիտիկներին և այլոց ավելի շատ հոդվածներ գրել խաղերի մասին հայերենով, որ լեզուն զարգանա ու մարդկանց խաղերի գրագիտությունը հետը։ Բերեմ մի բառի օրինակ որ հայերենում չկա ու շատ էի ուզում թարգմանել, բայց ցավոք համապատասխան փորձառությունը թարգմանելու չունեմ, իսկ ուղիղ թարգմանությունը շատ տարօրինակ ա հնչում։ Խոսքը գնում ա “joystick” բառի մասին։ Փոստը գրելուց հետո խնդրեցի Անիին որ Դավիթ Իսաջանյանից հարցնի ոնց ինքը էդ բառը կթարգմաներ, որովհետև պարոն Իսաջանյանը այժմ իրենց “Introduction to Translation” է դասավանդում ու ստացա լաւագույն պատասխանը որը կարելի էր ակնկալել։ Ուզում եմ կիսվեմ բոլորիդ հետ ու մի գուցե կարողանաք նույն մեթոդը կիրառել ձեր թարգմանությունների մեջ

Dear Ani, 

I would definitely choose to translate the word. A calque could be a good option, խինդաձող, ժպտաձող, ցնծաձող, but I am afraid these would create unnecessary (also, somewhat naughty) associations, and as a result, people would only ridicule the word. I would therefore choose a word that does not have the kind of connotations ձող has in ordinary language, and would opt for կայմ; i.e., the (stick-like) mast of a sailing boat: հեռակայմ, խաղակայմ, ժպտակայմ, կառակայմ (կառավարման կայն), etc. 

Let me know which one you like more! 

Yours, D. I.

Խաղակայմը շատ հաւես ա հնչում, միտքը հասցնում ա ու տարօրինակ չի։ Բայց սենց պետք ա անել ամեն ինչի համար։ Հիմա լիքը հետաքրքիր թեմաներ եմ սովորում համալսարանում, չեմ կարում կիսվեմ, որովհետև հայերեն եմ ուզում գրեմ ու դժվարանում եմ։ Հուսով եմ կապրեմ են ապագայում, որ կկարողանամ հայերենով հանգիստ մտքերս արտահայտեմ խաղերի մասին խոսալուց։

#մտքեր #խաղերիդիզայն #թարգմանություն

Անցած ուրբաթ մեր համալսարանում մեկնարկեց խաղերի ջեմ պլյուսը ( անգլ.՝ game jam+ )։ Ով տեղեակ չի ինչ է խաղերի ջեմը ասեմ՝ խաղերի ջեմը սովորաբար երկու օր տևողությամբ միջոցառում է, որի ժամանակ տարբեր հեռանկարի մարդիկ հավաքվում են խաղ ստեղծելու նպատակով։ Կարևոր է նշել, որ խաղը պարտադիր չի լինի թվային ( սակայն ցանկալի է ), այլ կարելի է ստեղծել սեղանի, մտովի և ցանկացած այլ տիպի խաղ, այդ թվում նաև կենդանի գործողություններով դերախաղեր ( անգլ.՝ live action role playing game ):

Օր զրո

Ջեմը սկսեց ժամը վեցին, երբ հայտատարեցին թեմաները։ Այս անգամ մրցում էինք երեք կատեգորայում՝ ոչ ծաղիկ ոչ մոլորակ ( անգլ.՝ No Plant no Planet ), վերմակ ու ջոյստիկ ( անգլ.՝ A blanket and joystick ), վերանայել կլասիկաները ( անգ.՝ Rethink the classics ), ուրախ ժամանակ անցկանցել ( անգլ.՝ Having fun Casually ), հիմնված իրական դեպքերի վրա ( անգլ.՝ Based on real events ): Ամբողջ օրը ծախսեցինք մտքի վրա աշխատելով։ Ընտրեցինք իմ միտքը, որը շներին կերակրելու մասին էր։ Ես միտքը կտեղավորեի «ուրախ ժամանակ անցկացնել» կատեգորիայի մեջ, սակայն որոշեցինք ասել որ վերանայում ենք կլասիկաները, կլասիկան լինելով Risk of Rain 2-ը։

> Լուսանկար Risk or Rain 2 խաղից

Մտքի նկարագրությունը

Խաղը տեղի էի ունենում փոքր թաղամասում, որտեղ խաղացողին վարձել են շներին ման տալու համար։ Ման տալու ընթացքում բոլոր շները փախնում են ու սկսում են վազել քարտեզի տաբեր կողմերով, և պետք է շներից մի քանիսին հավաքել մինչև ժամանակի ավարտը, թե չէ աշխատանքից կհեռացնեն։ Խաղը իրենով երրորդ դեմքից կրակոցի է ( անգլ.՝ third person shooter ), որտեղ խաղացողը կրակում է ուտելիք շների վրա և երբ շան սովածության մակարդակը նվազում է զրոյի, նա հեզանում է և միանում խաղացողին վզակապով։ Հակրավոր է նշել, որ խաղը ունի շատ արագ ընթացք Doom Eternal-ի նման, որտեղ ճարպիկորեն պետք է շարժվել քարտեզի տարբեր մասերով և ճշգրիտ շարժումներով «կերակրել» շանը։ Խաղը ունի երեք դժվարություններ։ Առաջին, քարտեզում կան սկյուռիկներ և կատուները, որոնք փորձելու են խանգարեն խաղացողին տարբեր կերպով ժամանակը սպառելու համար։ Երբ շները կապված ենք խաղացողին, նրանք տարբեր ինտեռվալներով փորձելու են քաշեն խաղացողին դեպի իրենց կողմ, խանգարելով խաղացողին նշան բռնել և տեղաշարժվել, հարկավոր է նշել որ ինչքան շատ շուն այդքան ավելի դժվար է լինելու տեղաշարժվել։ Եվ երրոդ շները ունեն սովոծանալու հատկություն, այսինքն եթե երկար ման գաք նույն շներով, իրեքն սովոծանալու են ու էլի փախչեն։ Սակայն շներին հավաքելը ունի երկու լավ կողմ, առաջին հավաքելով տարբեր տեսակի շներ, ստանում եք տարբեր տեսակի առավելությունները ( անգլ.` buff ), օրինակ հավելյալ արագություն, կամ ավելի արագ տեմպով կերակրելու ձևեր։Նաև որոշ քանակի շներ հավաքելուց հետո, հայտնվում է հիմնական թիրախը ( չգիտեմ ոնց թարքմանեմ boss-ը այս կոնտեքստում ), որ շաաաատ մեծ ու շաաատ սոված շուն է։ Իրան կերակրելուց հետո դուք հաղթում եք։

Օր առաջին

Թմում վեց հոգի էինք։ Երեք հոգի ծրագրավորող, մեկ հարթակի դիզայներ ( անգլ.՝ level designer ), մեկ արտիստ և մի հոգի ով սկսնակ էր և փորձում էր ամեն ինչում օգնել։ Ինձ որոշեցին նշանակել, որպես lead programmer, որ համար շատ զխճում եմ, քանի որ ավելի շատ զբաղված էի մյուս ծրագրավորողներին տարբեր բաներ բացատրելով և գործերը մարդկանց մեջ բաժանելով։ Ես պետք է գրեի «ոչ խաղացող կերպարների»(անգլ.՝ Non Player Character)՝ այս դեպքում շների ,կատուների և սկյուռիկների արհեստական բանականությունը և պահվածքը, որի վրա ես ցավոք չհասցրեցի շատ աշխատել։ Որպես շարժիչ (անգլ.՝ Game Engine) որոշեցինք օգտագործել Godot-ը, որը շատ հարմար է փոքր և միջին չափի խաղեր ստեղծելու համար։ Բանականության համար գրում էի օգուտի վրա հիմնված բանականություն (անգլ.` utilty-based AI )։ Գաղափարը պարզ է և շատ էֆեկտիվ է խաղերի մեջ։ Մի քանի բառով, կերպարներին տալիս եմ մի քանի հնարավոր գործողություն, անիմաստ վազել, փախնել խաղացողից, կծել կամ ուրիշ բաներ, և ամեն մեկին տալիս եմ փոփոխական արժեք։ Ապա, կախված որ գործողությունն է տվյալ պահին ավելի արժեքավոր, կերպարը անում է կոնկրետ բան։ Ասենք եթե հեռու է խաղացողից ապա անիմաստ կվազի քարտեզով, եթե խաղացողը մոտիկանա, կփորձի փախնել և այլն։ Օրվա վերջում արդեն ունեինք մի քանի աշխատող բան որոնք պատրաստել էինք տարբեր համակարգիչների վրա և պետք է հավաքեինք իրար գլխի։

Վերջին Օր

Երկրորդ օրը արդեն կիսաքնած էինք, բայց լիքը գործ արեցինք։ Առաջին հերթին սկսեցինք բոլորի արած գործերի մի պռոյեկտի մեջ ավելացնել, որը բերեց լիքը կոնֆլիկտների, խոսքը գնում է գիթ ( անգլ.՝ git ) կոնֆլիկտների մասին։ Կոնֆլիկտները ուղղելուց շատ ժամանակ չէր մնացել, ու գնացինք խաղը ցուցադրելու վրա։ Իհարկե ոչմի տեղ չշահեցինք քանի-որ խաղը շատ կիսատ վիճակում էր և հիմնական գեյփլեյից ոչ մի հատկանշական բան դեռ չկար, բայց մենք շատ հավես ժամանակ անցկացրեցինք, իսկ ես լիքը բան սովորեցի գոդոտից և մարդկանց առաջնորդելու մասին։ Խաղը դրած է itch.io-ի էջում Hounded: Նաև կցեմ եմ փոքր հոլովակ խաղից

Unai's First Post: THIS IS A DRILL

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See if this goes to fediverse.