Sunday, January 12, 2025

Jar of Goodness 1.12.25: Shelda’s Chocolate Party

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”

This week, I’m expressing thanks for friendship and community.

The chocolates were just the focal point to gather us together, the way a candle, a cross, a mandala, or a swinging watch on a chain serves to draw one’s attention.

The invitation arrived from our friend Shelda via text:

“Chocolate party: Some time back, my friend Jaye and I were discussing how dispirited we were feeling in this new political reality. How could we gather our friends together and have more fun and community? We remembered themed parties we used to have in the 90s and early aughts. And we came up with an idea for having serious (and not so serious) fun. Maybe monthly or thereabouts, but with no obligations to attend each time.

“About that time Jaye remarked that it was time to taste test Whitman Sampler chocolates and compare them to Russell Stovers. Fun on! So being the over-the-top person that I tend to be, we’ve expanded the chocolate field. We have the aforementioned as well as See’s Factory.

“So let the tasting begin! This coming Sunday, January 12 [at specific time and place]. There will be coffee, hot tea, hot cocoa and horchata for your drinking pleasure . . .”

Subsequent texts expanded the competitive field to include See’s (representing Southern California), Fannie May (from Chicago), Lindt (which was imported from France), and Columbia, Missouri’s own Candy Factory.

Shelda had the chocolates all displayed to their best advantage, and she got out her beautiful pink rose-of-Sharon Depression glass plates for us to use.

The chocolates were really lovely, and they all tasted great, each with their own layers of goodness. Of course, some of them were definitely higher quality, with smoother texture, depth of flavor, nuances of fillings, balance of sweetness to bitterness, etc. But others—like the Whitman and the Russell Stover—had different levels on which to base my appreciation.

Like, I’m not a regular consumer of chocolates, but when I was a child, it seems that Grandma Renner, or my mom, would ALWAYS receive a Whitman’s sampler each year at Christmas, and the box would be passed around the room, with everyone getting a piece or two. When I was a kid, that was a huge treat, those grown-up candies. And we all remember the first time we grabbed that colorful Jordan almond, thinking it would be a delectable super-sweet candy, and it turned out to be a nut. Children quickly learn not to make that mistake twice! And I remember being rather skeptical about all the “weird” cream candies. At the party, I made sure to have a few of those, and I lucked out with a strawberry and an orange. Orange! They still taste kind of weird to me, but I appreciate them a lot more.

And it brought back so many pleasant memories. Later, at dinner, Sue and I reminisced about how our families approached boxes of chocolates when we were children. Sue talked about the Valentine-shaped Valentine’s boxes we all enjoyed as children. And later, as teens and adults.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to write this much about candy, because I’m not even that much of a fan of candy. The real reason I’m celebrating was for the community. This group of friends are people I appreciate and admire so much . . . these are women who were just a little older than me when I was in college. They feel like the older sisters I never had. As feminists, they were trailblazers who showed me the way, the ones up ahead in the tunnel, holding the flashlights, taking risks that I didn’t have to take, because they were a few steps in front of me. And they’re still doing it today: Come on, let’s get together and solidify our community and have some fun.

The time passed much too quickly! I hope that by writing about it I can help cement the positive energy into my being. We’re not alone, my friends. We’re not alone.

Shelda had made up score sheets for us and handed out pens, asking us to rank the chocolates, and indicate whether creams, nuts, or caramels are our favorites. But when it came time for an evaluation, we all pretty much said, Who cares? Most of us had lost track of which chocolates were from which company, and we aren’t serious connoisseurs, anyway. We all knew why we were there, and it wasn’t precisely for the chocolates.

It was for each other.

Thanks, Shelda, and bless you for hosting this gathering!

P.S. It was not a category for judging, but for presentation, Columbia’s Candy Factory gets first place in my book: the chocolates were beautifully decorated and had a nice sheen. Second place is Lindt (in part for the packaging and arrangement within the package). Since all the chocolates basically tasted fine (I’m not that snooty about chocolates), the presentation and the “wow” factor is kind of the difference maker for me, since I only buy chocolates as gifts.

Sunday, January 5, 2025

Jar of Goodness 1.5.25 B: New Mailbox, Just in Time

At the risk of possibly using up my next-week's thing to feel grateful for, I'm going to double-up and post two gratitudes in a single day. Hopefully there will be something else to be grateful for by next Sunday. Right?

Here's JOG 1.5.25 "B": I'm glad we got Dad and Mom's new mailbox installed (and without any hitches!!!) on Friday afternoon. Sue and I prepared hard for it: make sure we have all the tools we'll need, all the hardware, a board to raise the bracket above the railing where we'd be installing it (so the flap would open), and what-all. Because, you know, these kinds of "simple" things often turn into some kind of production, another trip to the hardware store, whatever. But our preparation was perfect! How about that!

I'd been trying to get my dad set up with the Post Office for door delivery for over a year, but apparently the stars have to align, and you need to be Sherlock Holmes in order to discover the correct procedure for applying for this service. Like, don't bother looking online; just start by asking the letter carrier who comes near your home each day. The stuff online is contradictory, and half of it is hidden in the USPS's puzzle-like website.

Anyway, we got the doctor's letter, I found the official form, I filled it out a few different ways, Dad signed it and a letter I'd composed officially requesting the service, I printed out a satellite view of their house, driveway, street, and current mailbox location (marked with distance my Dad has to walk), and in early November I hand-delivered it all to the cryptic, non-public USPS distribution station (because, of course, you can't mail them the form), and just a month or two later, I discover they've been approved. (The only hitch was that a month ago, they'd called my parents and left them a message saying it was approved, so naturally I didn't get that information.) But I called them to follow up, learned it was approved, so it was time to install the new mailbox by my parents' door.

And just in the nick of time! This snow and ice storm is gnarly, especially since it'll be followed by at least a week of super-cold temperatures. Thank goodness my dad won't be staggering through ice and snow on his concrete sidewalk and steps, long gravel driveway, and the icy road. (Columbia is horrible about clearing any of its roads, much less ones in neighborhoods.) Because yes, elderly people still really do rely on postal mail to get their printed newspapers from their former hometowns, their printed magazines, their tons of printed direct-mail catalogs, their bills, their correspondence, their junk mail, their coupons, and all manner of non-television entertainments.

So anyway, whew, there we go. And their letter carrier saw it as we were installing it and approves of its location, and everything. He'd been notified of their door-delivery status and had already started delivering to their door. Hooray!

Jar of goodness . . . mailbox of happiness.

Jar of Goodness 1.5.25: Snow Plows and Such

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.” Yup, I’m doing that again. Mainly so I don’t go bananas and go on a rampage or something. Or, more likely, drive my car in a straight line away from wherever I am, and not turn back. (Wouldn’t that be nice? So many directions to travel.)

This week, I’m expressing thanks for snow plows and such.

Though the picture above is from Sunday afternoon, this was actually written on Saturday night, January 4, 2025, as our snow begins. A huge swath of the United States is getting a bunch of winter weather: several inches of snow, more than a foot of snow in some places; sleet, freezing rain in other places; in many places (like, apparently, us), it’ll be a mix of snow and sleet and snow and freezing rain, and more snow. Like a layer cake of mayhem. Farther south, they’ll get thunderstorms and maybe tornadoes.

Here's the temperatures as I write this, Saturday night, January 4, 8:15:

Then, on top of the crusty, hard-to-shovel, slip-and-fall-and-break-your-ankle stuff (or wreck-your-car-stuff), we’re supposed to get, like a week or more of super-freezing cold weather. The kind that can kill. Ugh. It’s one of those bad scenarios where the freezing rain, topped with snow weighs down branches, then it gets windy, and the trees break like crazy and strum down power lines. Then ya don’t have electricity, and you wish you’d sprung for the gas water heater last time you replaced it.

As of Saturday evening, 8:15:

I’ve blogged about this kind of nonsense before, because I’ve been there, I’ve done that. I truly don’t like having bad snow and ice, because I truly don’t like the power to go out when it’s freezing cold. You never know when it’ll come back on. It just sucks. And this year I’ve got my parents to worry about.

There will be a fine line between who gets freezing rain, sleet, snow, and total mayhem—and those who simply get a ton of snow. The weather people seem to think the “line” is basically right where we live. Or where my parents live. The weather people give their predictions in terms of highways being dividing lines. Most people basically live in highways, that is, cities. Anyway, it will turn out however it turns out.

Hopefully, my parents will get mostly snow, and their kind neighbor with a snow blower will clear their drive and sidewalk, but also hopefully my parents won’t have to go anywhere until everything is cleared out. Hopefully, they won’t experience power outages. (What a nightmare that would be: could I even make it to Columbia if I had to help them move somewhere?)

Then there’s our own status. It’s entirely possible our power could go out for twelve hours or more.

But here’s the Jar of Goodness: fortunately, we live near the center of town, just a few blocks from the state capitol building, and we’re quite likely to be high on the list for restoring power, as well as for street clearing.

Here's how the roads are looking, as this begins on Saturday night: Kansas City's getting socked! Central Missouri and the eastern Ozarks are next:

Which is to say, that for all the annoyances of living near the center of Jefferson City, or any town, one of the perks is that your utilities generally get fixed quickly. Sure, you have plenty of idiot, noisy neighbors, and you have all kinds of cars tearing up and down the street in front of your house, and every emergency vehicle screaming by with its sirens on, but you also get snowplows rumbling through as soon as the first snowflake falls.

So for however uncertain this bad weather feels, at least I know we’re not isolated. If we lived out in nowhere (where I so often wish we were—it would be so nice and quiet! . . . and beautiful, and relaxing, and private), we could be snowed in for days, maybe a week. We’d have to find someone to plow us out, because we’d have a long private drive from the paved road to our house. If our power went out, too-bad-so-sad. We’d have to have our own emergency generator. Self-reliance is for the strong, the handy, and/or the rich, and face it, we’re none of these.

So, hooray for the public works snowplows! The emergency crews at the power utility. The EMT people. The cops. All the emergency workers who’ll be out there working their butts off in the freezing cold, damn dangerous road conditions.

Glad I don’t have to go out there.

As of Sunday morning, 8:45:
As of Sunday afternoon, 2:00:

Monday, December 23, 2024

Big Nature, 2024

The year 2024 has been a notable nature year in several ways. Sure, there were some significant tornado, flooding, and other severe-weather events (some part of Missouri gets those every year); but if you lived in any of the places affected, it was definitely a year of “big nature” for you.

And we had an exceptionally mild spring, which is something, and by fall, most of the state was in some level of flat-out drought. (Which affected fall color in our state.)

In October, the drought stress caused our lilacs to bloom even as our green ash tree turned yellow. It was a really odd sight.

But I want to talk about much bigger nature. Like, once-in-a-lifetime nature. Like, there was that amazingly beautiful total solar eclipse in April (I still need to blog about it). Of course, I didn't even try to take pictures of it, but I sure soaked in the time and place—the way the event felt, and how unique it looked—sunny but shady, at once.

And there was that solar storm that ignited aurorae visible exceptionally far-south in May and October. If you got to see that, or get photographs of what you wished you could see with your bare eyes, then bully for you!

But let’s not forget the coolest nature thing that happened in eastern North America: the coincidental emergence of two big periodical cicada broods the same year! It was Broods XIII (17-year) and XIX (13-year). Realize, every “normal” periodical cicada emergence is an amazement in itself. That these insects can live 13 or 17 years below ground, sucking juices from tree roots, then somehow all emerge within the space of a few weeks, the same year, like clockwork, is a staggeringly cool example of big nature.

The last time the two broods emerged the same year was in 1803, the year the Louisiana Purchase was signed!

As of 2024, there appeared to be nowhere that the two broods overlapped, so it was a geeky thing to geek out over. It’s not like there were twice as many cicadas in most places (indeed, cicadas generally decline thanks to habitat disruption, and climate change is affecting them, too).

So it’s a mathematical convergence. When one thing happens every 13 years, and another thing happens every 17 years, it’s rare when they synch up.

So, when will the two broods emerge during the same summer again? How do you figure that out? Well, here you go: 13 x 17 = 221, and 2024 + 221 = 2245. The year 2245!!

What will the year 2245 be like? None of us alive today will see it . . . but Star Trek at least has offered some suggestions. According to Star Trek, 2245 is the year, on April 11, of the launch of the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701 (yes, THAT Enterprise!). Its first captain will be Robert April (who appears in later Star Trek series, including Strange New Worlds). James T. Kirk will take the captain’s chair in 2265.

It’s also the launch year of the Enterprise’s sister starships, the USS Cayuga (NCC-1557), later destroyed by the Gorn, and the USS Constellation (NCC-1017), under Captain Matthew Decker; both are destroyed by the Bugles-shaped planet killer in a memorable Original Series episode, “The Doomsday Machine.”

Star Trek canon also has it that 2245 is the year that Pavel Chekov will be born, and it’s the year that Leonard McCoy will decide to pursue a career in medicine.

I love it that these musings for 2024 have started with astronomical phenomena—the solar eclipse, the aurorae—then took a dive underground to consider the years our cicadas lived in soil, then fast-forwarded to the Star Trek universe. Science can predict, even project natural events: solar cycles, solar and lunar eclipses, and cicada emergences. And what do you think 2245 will be like?

Saturday, November 30, 2024

Changes

The first snow of the winter of 2024–2025 came today.

I awakened at five and sensed something was wrong. As I grew more conscious, I realized I was smelling smoke. That’s never a good thing, unless you’re sitting near a campfire, or burning incense. And it was ugly-smelling smoke—not the pretty scent of someone’s fireplace or woodstove, wafting in the chilly air. No. It smelled like plastic, vinyl—acrid—nothing anyone should be burning, although we’ve had our share of neighbors who burn their trash in their backyards, in the early hours of the morning, trusting that no one will care about the smoldering dioxins and other toxins they inhale while asleep. Most of our neighbors smoke, anyway, so how would they even notice it?

But I was concerned. I tiptoed around our chilly house in my bare feet, making sure that all rooms on all floors were free of an obvious problem. I mean, we do have smoke detectors, but . . . Then I stepped onto the sunporch, which was colder still, and the attached “screen” porch (now with storm windows, of course, but still fairly open to the outdoor air, since we haven’t yet chinked the windows with insulation). And the smoke odor out there was much stronger. I moved back indoors and down the stairs to the front door, and stuck my face outside: again, smoky. Ugh. Whew.

This information led to another round of the second and third floors, this time with my glasses on, squinting more carefully out the windows. Is one of our neighbors’ houses on fire, or billowing smoke? Or is someone actually burning trash covertly? If the latter, I knew the fire might already be done with, even though the heavy, still air can let the stench linger for hours after the deed. But all I saw was a diffuse haziness in the direction of the motel on the expressway. (Hmm. And we need to clean our windows. Kind of late in the season for that, now.) Somehow, I managed not to awaken Sue with all this traipsing around at 5 a.m. (I also managed not to stub my toes on anything. Huzzah!)

Well, it turned out that around 2:45 a house had blown up on the east side of town. They haven’t yet announced a cause, but my money’s on a natural gas appliance or exhaust malfunction, possibly combined with electric space heaters or some such. It’s the first time this season that people’s heaters are running full-bore, and heating systems in poor repair are getting their dangerous shakedown this weekend. Yeah, while everyone’s observing Thanksgiving and Black Friday, and all that. Happy holidays.

And yes, if you know me, you know I’m too appalled about the results of the presidential election to feel very “thankful” this year. I live in a red state that was a purple state not long ago, before a Republican supermajority and gerrymandering, and toxic fundamentalist misinformation bubbles. I’m literally surrounded and ruled over by crazy, het, right-wing Trump-Jesus-gun worshippers. . . . And Thanksgiving? Are you kidding me?

Also, my parents are a grim situation all by themselves: it’s the inevitable collision between my mom’s unbending and increasingly unrealistic notion that she and Dad can continue forever to live in their home, with its staircases, and Dad’s flat-out exhaustion and increasing disability. He is her caregiver: he staggers and stumbles around their house; he fixes all her meals and carries them to her on a platter, brings her beverages and begs her to drink them, launders her clothes and bed sheets, supplies her with Depends and Poise pads, dispenses and tracks her (and his) medications, deals with all the house upkeep, pays the bills, everything. He exercises, does PT, walks, to stay in shape (“to keep myself physically fit . . .”). As she has for years, she sits in her puffy recliner and does nothing, not even the tiny amount of walking the doctors have been telling her for years that she must do if she wants to stay at home . . . and he’s simply exhausted. And so am I.

In retrospect, my brother and I should have talked them into moving a decade ago, and if they’d done nothing, at that time, we should have done it for them then. Too late for that now.

Mom, psychologically increasingly like a toddler, expects me to quit my job and move in with them until they both are gone, which, given my mom’s genetics and lack of serious chronic illness, could be another decade, in her case. Well, actually, I don’t think she knows I have a job, because I’ve been so generous with my time with them. As a freelancer, I’ve been able to skip some hours of work in the past five years to drive them to their haircuts and doctors’ appointments, to pick up groceries, computer supplies, and what-not, but those demands have exploded in the past few years, with Mom being taken to the hospital, often with rehab, six times in the past two years, and Dad twice.

Dad had a stroke, and he needed outpatient PT after it, and he needed me to drive him there a few times a week. And there’s always the questions about the computer. Or, Why isn’t the phone working? Or, I think we might need a new water heater. Your Mom needs more Depends: this size, overnight, super absorbency. . . .

Wash, rinse, repeat. I know Dad remembers I have a job, but I’m pretty sure Mom doesn’t realize it—or if she does, she doesn’t respect it.

Talk about pushing my buttons. I try to just see it, acknowledge it, know that it’s old, old material, breathe, and move on without, like, yelling. Of course I’m not respected. And I don’t need her validation anymore.

When I tell her she can’t expect me to come take care of them at their house 24/7 for the next decade or so, she tells me that she and Dad will simply have an elevator added to their house, or they will just hire 24-hour in-home assistance. I recently sketched out the math for her: $30 an hour, times 24 hours in a day, is $720 a day; multiply that by 365 days in a year, and you’re paying $262,800 annually just for someone (some person or persons—who?) to be there to help you, in a home that’s not going to accommodate a wheelchair, which she will soon need to be in—it does not count food or food preparation, transportation, incontinence supplies, heating and cooling bills, water, house maintenance and property taxes, medical copays and drug costs, and the ever-loving cable TV and landline/internet bills. It’s just fantasyland.

In our family, the dynamic has always been to go along with Mom’s ideas, because she’s always been “the practical one.” The one good with finances. The one who takes care of the house, the bills, the do list. Balances the checkbooks. (Kind of like the myth about Republicans being good about the economy.) She was always the one to deal with the plumbers, electricians, and handymen. She used to be sharp as a tack, “on top of” everything. But those days are long gone, as she becomes more confused and lives increasingly in the past. Actually, they both are.

So it’s past time for independent living; it may already be too late for assisted living, for Mom. She’s hurtling toward skilled nursing; she doesn’t want to drink, so she gets dehydrated and gets UTIs, she doesn’t move around, she’s weak, her blood pressure tanks when she merely stands up. The idea of getting her up the staircases is a horror for me. She’s been hospitalized three times in the past six months. But she still expects us to treat her as if she knows best, and we all still tend to twirl around trying to make her happy. Of course, that is impossible. People like her will never be happy; this is how ninety years of untreated depression and anxiety disorder, with a little side order of NPD, ends up. And so we are moving ahead with plans for senior living for them both. Dad is ready. We simply leave her out of our conversations, which is easy to do since she only ever sits in her living room chair and has grown pretty hard of hearing.

So we’re in a race to get them moved into a good place where they can be safe, clean, fed, comfortable and hopefully find things to be happy about, to be entertained with; to have people to talk with; to maybe even find ways to still contribute to the world (Dad would like that, I think).

You know, I started this blog in a state of deep stress and depression. Hopelessness. Things that used to cheer me only made me feel like I’d been slapped. I was repeatedly contemplating suicide. I thought that starting a blog about the things—the few little things—that I can unequivocally claim as good would help me regain a sense that there is something still to enjoy, even when my life seems in shambles, when my career—hell, my whole life—seems a big fat joke, when I see myself as the center of all my problems. Even when I’m almost convinced that I don’t belong here, that I have no place or purpose.

I truly don’t have any goddamn time to be fucking around with a blog, or anything, anything, that is not related to my job, or with the needs of my parents. I’m not going to fuck around with Christmas cookies this year. (Well . . . maybe I’ll make a few kinds. To give to the elders who remain.) Christmas tree? Bah, humbug. I’m down on Christianity, too—all the white Christian nationalists have turned me off of religion entirely—in America and globally, the trouble, the evil, that religion causes far outweigh its so-called blessings. Overall, religion is still, always, eternally a way that greedy, mean, power-hungry people convince other people into doing horrible, selfish, mean-spirited things. I’m sick of it. Grow the fuck up and learn how to be a good person without having the imaginary threat of eternal damnation hanging over your head, okay?

But yeah, I think I’m gonna attempt another year of “Jar of Goodness.” Because I kind of need it. At least, let’s give it try before I call my doctor and ask to “up my dosage.” I’ve been doing a lot of journaling the past few years, and I have a lot I’d like to say about that. And there are several other half-baked posts I can complete and upload. Let’s keep a-goin’.

Tuesday, May 28, 2024

My Tuna Pasta Salad

My humble contribution to the universe of pasta salads. I devised it in college, and it’s had real longevity among my go-to dishes. It’s tasty, filling, relatively healthy, and it makes a can of tuna go a long, long way.

As with other dishes of this nature, relative quantities are up to you. I’ve never codified it with exact quantities. I adjust the mayonnaise dressing as I go.

Serving: Serve it on a lettuce leaf, or on a bed of shredded lettuce, mixed spring greens, or alfalfa sprouts. Triscuits are a nice accompaniment. You’ll probably eat the last portion right out of the plastic storage tub you had it in, standing over the sink.

Julie’s Tuna Pasta Salad

  • 1 lb. box of rotini pasta, cooked in salted water until done (I often use tricolor rotini)
  • 12-oz. can tuna, packed in water (not oily) (break the large chunks into smaller pieces)
  • 1 crown broccoli, trimmed to small pieces (include peeled, chopped stalks, too) (extra points: consider blanching the broccoli a few seconds in boiling water, then shocking it in ice water to stop the cooking, then drain completely)
  • one half to 1 crown cauliflower, trimmed to small pieces (total volume about equal to the broccoli)
  • 1 medium to large carrot, peeled, cut in matchsticks or coarsely shredded (about ½ cup)
  • ½ cup sliced black olives, chopped, California/ripe (about half of a regular 6-oz. can)
  • ½ lb. cheddar cheese (orange, boing-boing, government-style; medium or sharp) (but pepper jack or Monterey jack is good, too), cut into little bricks or cubes
  • mayonnaise, your favorite kind, about 1 cup
  • apple cider vinegar, about 1/2 cup
  • salt, black pepper (to taste)

Mix it all together gently in a large bowl or stock pot. I usually whisk together the dressing ingredients (mayo, vinegar, salt, and pepper) separately before folding it in to the rest.

You may need to add more dressing or mayo. Adjust all the ingredients to your liking.

Preparation tip: after cutting the cheese into bricks or cubes, toss them with a pinch of flour, and the pieces of cheese won’t stick together before you stir them in with the rest of the salad.

This yields about 14 cups (or about 3 quarts) of tuna pasta salad.

Yes, it makes a lot, but part of the charm is that it’s tasty enough that we’re happy to eat it for lunch several days in a row. Just spoon it into a bowl and eat it with a few crackers; it takes virtually no time in the kitchen during our lunch breaks.

Friday, May 10, 2024

Cicadas: What’s Up With Their Eyes?

It’s just uncanny how insects seem to be looking right at you. No matter how you turn them, and from no matter what angle you look at them, they always seem to be looking right at you.

Right

at

you!

So, what’s up with their eyes? I mean, we “know” they’re compound eyes and that they are quite different from our own. Our eyes are basically a clear-jelly-filled ball, with sensors (retina) at the back, a lens-covered, expandable aperture (pupil) in the front, and muscles that rotate it (so we don’t always have to turn our head in order to look around).

But their eyes are quite different. They are fixed; they don’t rotate. So why does that dark spot on their big, buggy eyes seem to follow around, so it’s always looking at the viewer?

Wet or dry . . . they always are looking at you.

Even while they’re molting!

How does this work? It’s caused by the structure of their compound eyes. It’s essentially a result of tubes, shadows, and mirrors. To understand this, imagine a model: Think of their globe-shaped compound eyes as a cluster of narrow tubes, all pointing outward from a center point, and imagine these tubes are coated, on the inside surfaces, with silver. Closest to you, the tubes are pointed directly at you, and you can see into the whole long (dark) tunnel (you’re not seeing much of the silver), while the tubes increasingly angled away from you appear light-colored, reflecting the light.

That’s basically it: you are looking at a spherical cluster of tubes.

And it’s not just with cicadas; many insects have compound eyes that have this property.

Like this common meadow katydid.

Like this little baby, gray short-horned grasshopper. So cute, sitting on a leaf in his prairie.

And like this pretty green planthopper.

The next question is, why does this seem so freaky to us?

We humans—with our social nature, our interdependence, our allies and enemies, our capacities for trust and for deceit—have evolved to be masters at evaluating each other. We look carefully at one another’s eyes. You can tell so much about someone by their eyes! Yes, “the eyes have it.”

This is why those professional poker players so often wear mirrored sunglasses—they want to conceal their thoughts and feelings. (Why shouldn’t that be considered cheating?)

It’s why people who have eye-alignment problems have a real social disadvantage, because crossed eyes or other misalignments are stereotyped as a sign of severe developmental disability, or head injury, of being dazed or semiconscious.

It’s why silent movie actors wore such heavy eye makeup.

And so we, in our anthropomorphization of insects, can’t help but look into their eyes, too, and try to read their expressions. And what we get back is an unblinking stare, perpetually fixed upon us. Does it freak us out?

Maybe it should. Insects depend on us to not ruin the world for them. They need elbow room. They depend on the existence of their many native food plants; they depend on the habitats—prairies, woodlands, glades, wetlands—that support their various food plants. They need plenty of plants and habitat, because the usual existence strategy for insects is to create a bazillion eggs and offspring, most of which won’t make it to adulthood. On some scale, they need room, like cicadas, to have a bloom, a heyday, and then have a majority eaten by countless predators, and then return to the soil.

So yes, they depend on us.

If you feel stared at, it’s not surprising.

Do things to preserve and increase native habitats.

And vote for the environment.

The above text explaining the dark dot in insect compound eyes is loosely edited from a page I wrote for MDC’s online field guide, Mantids (Mantises). Mantises, of course, are one of the many insects with compound eyes that exhibit this phenomenon.