...and there it is...'the title of your book'...incorporated into your wild true story of decaying fish. I didn't know fish pooped water.
It would be glorious to experience your gross stories around a campfire...and of course all the other good ones with a decidedly philosophical bent...they aren't all 🐟 stories...
Dave, what a story! Only you could handle it with a combination of horror, melodrama and respect. You are at the top of your game of storytelling but I can tell it’s not a game for you and your “whiskered innocents.”
Even now at arms length a stench can have a long reach, and strength weakens with age. But you touch on the morality of flies, which is good.
This household had a recent discussion about aquaria. A grandchild heading for ocean studies had her start managing difficulties in a microcosm, and the adequacy or lack of it even with instrumentation: thus, enter stage left, ecology and the free services of the wild.
Paul Kingsnorth has a good start remembering his sea-water aquarium when writing the follow-on arguments in 'Against the Machine', figuring the akin lunacy of instrumenting the world, any world, sufficiently to resolve its management, and any assumption of other such god-like powers.
Perhaps Einstein also comes to mind who told of taking off into the abstract, like some some solo flyer his engine into the blue, when life got unresolvably personal.
(PS. Don't want to imagine an ageing Henry VIII, in whatever kindly voice!)
Good morning, Phillip. OK, that last line made me laugh out loud in a quiet, early morning house with company upstairs in the guest room. I thank you, sir.
And I am most grateful for the paragraphs that preceded it, your ability to draw parallels and add fascinating bits from the larger world.
I'll be thinking about the morality of flies all day.
David, always you are eloquent and evocative whatever the subject, and your good writing deserves reading! The grit of integrity goes with the grain: lives observed. My conjectured linked dots are more like spin-off.
That reminds me of a long ago summer when my brother or I caught a catfish at the Rod and Gun Club. We brought it home and made a little pond for it in the swamp (which we called "The Jungle") next to our property. We visited our new pet every day and fed it pieces of bread until a drought left our catfish high and dry.
Good grief Davey, I am struggling to imagine the hideousness of so many thousands of bloated catfish rotting under a boiling sun... I kinda thought I was a pro at handling the stench of death living as I do, the sight of a bloated cadaver in the heat of summer is not an uncommon one, neither the stench, but that many bodies, exploding too...? Jeepers that sounds like hell on earth!
Last summer, during the hottest, most sweltering breathtaking days of mid July through to August, an old grass snake, deciding the number of his days were exhausted, curled up under the floorboards in our bathroom, shed his skin for the last time and there he stayed, rotting and stinking to high heaven to the extent that even the water from the taps felt impregnated by his decay! I guess he wasn't to know the consequences of his decision would be felt for nye on a month. Didn't imagine the incessant flies and ants searching for the origin of such an enticing — to them — odour would invade our washroom, a place where usually we left feeling cleansed but didn't even as late as September. Even now I can still catch the faint, nauseating waft of dead snake permeating the floor, although I am sure he is nothing but ghost now.
And there was me thinking that dead snake under the floorboards in our bathroom was the worst smell in the world!
Evidently I am I just a beginner in matters of death stenches... Fish rot is as unpleasant as snake rot but I only had one to deal with!
So, I am picturing you sitting in a big leather wing chair, wearing a tweed jacket and holding a pipe, in Alastair Cooke style. Except the setting is not in an old English home, or a prelude to Masterpiece Theatre , though Raisin’ Up Catfish might just fit right in between ,The Six Wives of Henry VIII, and Pride and Prejudice ( had to look those up). I think Toni coined it perfectly; “gross story-hour”. On top of that, I listened to your cheerful, southern drawl, while I was walking in a snow storm this morning. Cold wet flakes, trees dressed in frosty white, laughing out loud. The crisp fresh air, in stark juxtaposition to a story filled with every disgusting , literary way to breathe in, visualize, be covered in, olfactory overload of , the nastiest stench of “hundreds, even thousands of whiskered innocents.”Well, it just doesn’t get any better than that. I was smirking when I walked into the house covered in snow up to my eyelashes, I said to myself, in a southern drawl,“Calgon take me away”. Needless to say, but I will anyways, I loved it!
I am sitting here in a big leather wing chair, wearing a flannel and holding a cuppa joe, lightened with eggnog instead of cream, it bein' the season fer such, and all... And I'm tryin' to imagine fitting in between The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth and Pride and Prejudice in the mind of a generous, snow walker, storyteller who occasionally finds herself laughing out loud at the gooberish rememberings of a teenage boy trying to make sense of things that unfolded around and atop him way down in that state named for Mr. Sippi's lovely wife. And it is a damn fine thing. Bless you, dear Lor. How very wonderful you are!
So, I am picturing you sitting in a big leather wing chair, wearing a tweed jacket and holding a pipe, in Alastair Cooke style. Except the setting is not in an old English home, or a prelude to Masterpiece Theatre , though Raisin’ Up Catfish might just fit right in between ,The Six Wives of Henry VIII, and Pride and Prejudice ( had to look those up). I think Toni coined it perfectly; “gross story-hour”. On top of that, I listened to your cheerful, southern drawl, while I was walking in a snow storm this morning. Cold wet flakes, trees dressed in frosty white, laughing out loud. The crisp fresh air, in stark juxtaposition to a story filled with every disgusting , literary way to breathe in, visualize, be covered in, olfactory overload of , the nastiest stench of “hundreds, even thousands of whiskered innocents.”Well, it just doesn’t get any better than that. I was smirking when I walked into the house covered in snow up to my eyelashes, I said to myself, in a southern drawl,of course, “Calgon take me away”. I need a hot bath, to wash the story off. 🛁
Oh boy David, I think this is a blunt cautionary story about the tragedy that often befalls human attempts to manage nature, especially where greed and personal gain is a driving motive! The results are misery and chaos...
What a great storyteller/writer you are! Loved your southern voice and the way you emphasized certain words. It reminded me of Keith Morrison on Dateline.
Your story made me wonder if the town of Fishkill in NY had a fish problem. The village is in the eastern part of the town of Fishkill on U.S. Route 9, and it borders on Fishkill Creek. The name "Fishkill" evolved from two Dutch words, vis (fish) and kil (stream or creek). No sense of dead or dying fish appeared in my research.
But here is an interesting story: In 1996, the animal rights group PETA (led by the organization's president at the time, Jack Earnhardt) suggested the town (and, presumably, the village, as well) change its name to something less suggestive of violence toward fish. The town declined this change because the name is not meant to suggest violence. Various other communities also contain the word "Kill" with various prefixes, and a creek in the Catskills called Beaver Kill is a tributary of the Delaware River. Both "Catskill" and "Beaver Kill" could be considered to promote animal violence when their names are improperly understood. This led then-mayor George Carter to joke that if Fishkill is renamed, the Catskills should also be renamed, presumably to the Catsave Mountains. (Wikipedia)
But the fine people of Fishkill might have forgotten why this town was so named, as it was settled in 1714.
Thank you, Mare for the diligence of your research and for sharing it with the rest of us. Does make you wonder, doesn't it. The Dutch angle makes perfect sense, but we've all heard of places like Hanging Rock and Great Falls that actually imply what you'd think. Glad you liked the story (as much as one can like such a tale.) Obviously, they're not all pretty, or warm and fuzzy. But the larger journey only really makes sense if you don't try to clean up the messy parts; leastwise that's the theory.
You honor me with your time and generous participation.
Trust have taken forever to get rid of these'll in and on you...Death is never a pleasant odor to deal with. The only really disgusting smell I remember was a dead rat in the attic of our house in the middle of the hottest part of summer. Very vivid description , and you could jyust see the dead fish on the banks being attacked by the vultures
Growing up on the west coast of Florida I have experienced the fish smell from red tide so I understand dead catfish and adding any other “fragrant” aromas like warm dirty water with fish poo only makes it more nauseous. Glad you survived. Some fool will say it made you a stronger man…right?
Listening to your southern voice speaking this chapter somehow made the foul, fishy die-off entertaining---i mean, you brought a bit of melodrama, which was, for me, totes essential to the whole.
Just reading the print could never have gifted me with both the gross, rotty details, and that fully-understood sense of you, and what you had to endure. It was kinda like the best, gross story-hour: fascinating and detailed in ways similar to hearing a scary ghost story when I was a child. Perfecto! I loved participating as listener, getting soaked in magotty catfish details, led through the intolerable atmospheric stench by your voice. Thanks for the experience---it was terrific!
Thank you, Toni for offering such encouraging and helpful insights. I'm so pleased that a little of that 'Southern' lilt and cadence could take some of the rotty edge off. Truth be told, I first narrated it in a much more low-key, matter-of-fact voice and had that version trimmed and ready to upload, but just had this nattering little voice whispering in my ear, saying that a steady voice of seasoned calm might not be the best way to tell this one. It's kinda dark all the way through. So on a lark, I recorded the first two paragraphs in a more gee-whiz, animated, colloquial cadence just to see how that would sound, instead and immediately grasped how much better it worked to take some of the edges off of the ugly. Then I went back and recorded the whole chapter, but in a slightly less theatrical voice than in my test.
Your notes tell me that that was the right decision.
Good on that “nattering little voice”! Listening to it is intuitive, and essential, isn't it? Sometimes in my own art, I fear that voice because the other, judgy voice, seems more normal, maybe louder, even. But, yeah, so glad you listened… “on a lark” that first step---yes!
I'm about out of tolerance for my version of that 'judgy voice.' I've given it say far more often than I needed to and at this stage of life, don't have the heart to constantly question myself about whether I'll fall off the creative cliff or become a sellout if I don't do exactly as I'm told. We've earned that by now, haven't we?
The stench of death is unforgettable - especially when the quantity or size of the dead things is overwhelming. My first visit to Africa in 1995 took me to Bumi Hills Reserve in Zimbabwe. This was before the country imploded under the corruption and violence of Mugabe’s regime, and before hungry people broke into the wildlife reserves and slaughtered anything they could for food.
One day, a group of us visitors were taken out in a Land Rover by the guide. He warned us that we were about to encounter one of the brutal realities of the lives of elephant groups. And he told us that, for our own sakes, we should breathe through our mouths. So we had an idea of the scenario.
If you have been right up close to an elephant - even an adolescent like this one, you know how vast they are. Several days of bloating with internal rot and gases had blown the young male up like some obscene Macy’s Parade balloon, the legs sticking out at crazy angles. As we neared the giant corpse, literally hundreds of vultures large and small, rose in a ponderous cacaphony of protests and flapping wings that fanned the revolting, stomach-churning vapors our way. We could taste death, and that noxious fume coated tongue, mouth, skin and hair for days.
The skull of the juvenile had been battered and cracked by a mighty blow from the group’s matriarchal leader. He had been warned, pushed to the boundaries, encouraged to leave home and find a mate in another family pod. Instead, like too many young humans, he hung around home and began to flirt with his own siblings - a genetic no-no. One day, the matriarch just had enough. The formidable power of her tusks and trunk was brought down in fury on the offender’s great, thick skull. And it was all over for him.
I can still almost smell and taste that revolting stench of death more than 20 years later. It is something one never forgets.
Lordy mercy, Jude, that is some story. Tribal survival, an implicit understanding of genetics by wild animal populations and a completely overwhelming baptism into the olfactory punishments of death made large. Who knew? Who could even have imagined? I'm ever so grateful for this addition to the rather inedible picnic we've got going here. I learned so much, and I know without doubt that you know how that particulate air can cling to you for days...
Wow ! I did not know that was part of the elephant herd but it makes sense and it show that they are smarter than humans regarding this...That was probably a good thing the guide warned you even if in your wildest dream you could not possibly be fully prepared.
...and there it is...'the title of your book'...incorporated into your wild true story of decaying fish. I didn't know fish pooped water.
It would be glorious to experience your gross stories around a campfire...and of course all the other good ones with a decidedly philosophical bent...they aren't all 🐟 stories...
Nicely done... 💜
You are such a gift, Kathleen. Again and again.
Thank you, once again for your careful reading, your wry with and your generous heart. Wishing you every kindness in this new set of days.
My pleasure, David. May the new year bring you more joy and bring back the brighter times for all of us.
Dave, what a story! Only you could handle it with a combination of horror, melodrama and respect. You are at the top of your game of storytelling but I can tell it’s not a game for you and your “whiskered innocents.”
Ahh, Patrice... I thank you for this ray of sunshine. Truly.
It finds me on a morning when such warmth is a pure gift.
Thank you for reaching out.
Even now at arms length a stench can have a long reach, and strength weakens with age. But you touch on the morality of flies, which is good.
This household had a recent discussion about aquaria. A grandchild heading for ocean studies had her start managing difficulties in a microcosm, and the adequacy or lack of it even with instrumentation: thus, enter stage left, ecology and the free services of the wild.
Paul Kingsnorth has a good start remembering his sea-water aquarium when writing the follow-on arguments in 'Against the Machine', figuring the akin lunacy of instrumenting the world, any world, sufficiently to resolve its management, and any assumption of other such god-like powers.
Perhaps Einstein also comes to mind who told of taking off into the abstract, like some some solo flyer his engine into the blue, when life got unresolvably personal.
(PS. Don't want to imagine an ageing Henry VIII, in whatever kindly voice!)
Good morning, Phillip. OK, that last line made me laugh out loud in a quiet, early morning house with company upstairs in the guest room. I thank you, sir.
And I am most grateful for the paragraphs that preceded it, your ability to draw parallels and add fascinating bits from the larger world.
I'll be thinking about the morality of flies all day.
David, always you are eloquent and evocative whatever the subject, and your good writing deserves reading! The grit of integrity goes with the grain: lives observed. My conjectured linked dots are more like spin-off.
I thank you, 🙏 sir for your generosity.
That reminds me of a long ago summer when my brother or I caught a catfish at the Rod and Gun Club. We brought it home and made a little pond for it in the swamp (which we called "The Jungle") next to our property. We visited our new pet every day and fed it pieces of bread until a drought left our catfish high and dry.
Good grief Davey, I am struggling to imagine the hideousness of so many thousands of bloated catfish rotting under a boiling sun... I kinda thought I was a pro at handling the stench of death living as I do, the sight of a bloated cadaver in the heat of summer is not an uncommon one, neither the stench, but that many bodies, exploding too...? Jeepers that sounds like hell on earth!
Last summer, during the hottest, most sweltering breathtaking days of mid July through to August, an old grass snake, deciding the number of his days were exhausted, curled up under the floorboards in our bathroom, shed his skin for the last time and there he stayed, rotting and stinking to high heaven to the extent that even the water from the taps felt impregnated by his decay! I guess he wasn't to know the consequences of his decision would be felt for nye on a month. Didn't imagine the incessant flies and ants searching for the origin of such an enticing — to them — odour would invade our washroom, a place where usually we left feeling cleansed but didn't even as late as September. Even now I can still catch the faint, nauseating waft of dead snake permeating the floor, although I am sure he is nothing but ghost now.
And there was me thinking that dead snake under the floorboards in our bathroom was the worst smell in the world!
Evidently I am I just a beginner in matters of death stenches... Fish rot is as unpleasant as snake rot but I only had one to deal with!
Kudos my friend... due respect sending now.
So, I am picturing you sitting in a big leather wing chair, wearing a tweed jacket and holding a pipe, in Alastair Cooke style. Except the setting is not in an old English home, or a prelude to Masterpiece Theatre , though Raisin’ Up Catfish might just fit right in between ,The Six Wives of Henry VIII, and Pride and Prejudice ( had to look those up). I think Toni coined it perfectly; “gross story-hour”. On top of that, I listened to your cheerful, southern drawl, while I was walking in a snow storm this morning. Cold wet flakes, trees dressed in frosty white, laughing out loud. The crisp fresh air, in stark juxtaposition to a story filled with every disgusting , literary way to breathe in, visualize, be covered in, olfactory overload of , the nastiest stench of “hundreds, even thousands of whiskered innocents.”Well, it just doesn’t get any better than that. I was smirking when I walked into the house covered in snow up to my eyelashes, I said to myself, in a southern drawl,“Calgon take me away”. Needless to say, but I will anyways, I loved it!
I am sitting here in a big leather wing chair, wearing a flannel and holding a cuppa joe, lightened with eggnog instead of cream, it bein' the season fer such, and all... And I'm tryin' to imagine fitting in between The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth and Pride and Prejudice in the mind of a generous, snow walker, storyteller who occasionally finds herself laughing out loud at the gooberish rememberings of a teenage boy trying to make sense of things that unfolded around and atop him way down in that state named for Mr. Sippi's lovely wife. And it is a damn fine thing. Bless you, dear Lor. How very wonderful you are!
Now I wonder how many kisses I’ve had, my partner’s mind far away, trying desperately to drown out the stench of rotting fish!
...and just like that, just when I start to wonder if you're still funny...
I thank you, once again for the smile across my face.
So, I am picturing you sitting in a big leather wing chair, wearing a tweed jacket and holding a pipe, in Alastair Cooke style. Except the setting is not in an old English home, or a prelude to Masterpiece Theatre , though Raisin’ Up Catfish might just fit right in between ,The Six Wives of Henry VIII, and Pride and Prejudice ( had to look those up). I think Toni coined it perfectly; “gross story-hour”. On top of that, I listened to your cheerful, southern drawl, while I was walking in a snow storm this morning. Cold wet flakes, trees dressed in frosty white, laughing out loud. The crisp fresh air, in stark juxtaposition to a story filled with every disgusting , literary way to breathe in, visualize, be covered in, olfactory overload of , the nastiest stench of “hundreds, even thousands of whiskered innocents.”Well, it just doesn’t get any better than that. I was smirking when I walked into the house covered in snow up to my eyelashes, I said to myself, in a southern drawl,of course, “Calgon take me away”. I need a hot bath, to wash the story off. 🛁
Oh boy David, I think this is a blunt cautionary story about the tragedy that often befalls human attempts to manage nature, especially where greed and personal gain is a driving motive! The results are misery and chaos...
What a great storyteller/writer you are! Loved your southern voice and the way you emphasized certain words. It reminded me of Keith Morrison on Dateline.
You are a man of many talents! 🫶🏼
I may have just giggled with a southern accent, Vickie.
You are much too kind.
😁
Your story made me wonder if the town of Fishkill in NY had a fish problem. The village is in the eastern part of the town of Fishkill on U.S. Route 9, and it borders on Fishkill Creek. The name "Fishkill" evolved from two Dutch words, vis (fish) and kil (stream or creek). No sense of dead or dying fish appeared in my research.
But here is an interesting story: In 1996, the animal rights group PETA (led by the organization's president at the time, Jack Earnhardt) suggested the town (and, presumably, the village, as well) change its name to something less suggestive of violence toward fish. The town declined this change because the name is not meant to suggest violence. Various other communities also contain the word "Kill" with various prefixes, and a creek in the Catskills called Beaver Kill is a tributary of the Delaware River. Both "Catskill" and "Beaver Kill" could be considered to promote animal violence when their names are improperly understood. This led then-mayor George Carter to joke that if Fishkill is renamed, the Catskills should also be renamed, presumably to the Catsave Mountains. (Wikipedia)
But the fine people of Fishkill might have forgotten why this town was so named, as it was settled in 1714.
(I liked your story - ugh!)
Thank you, Mare for the diligence of your research and for sharing it with the rest of us. Does make you wonder, doesn't it. The Dutch angle makes perfect sense, but we've all heard of places like Hanging Rock and Great Falls that actually imply what you'd think. Glad you liked the story (as much as one can like such a tale.) Obviously, they're not all pretty, or warm and fuzzy. But the larger journey only really makes sense if you don't try to clean up the messy parts; leastwise that's the theory.
You honor me with your time and generous participation.
Thank you.
I appreciate that you do not kick me off for the tangents I sometimes follow. You stir the depths of memory and free association takes over. :-)
Trust have taken forever to get rid of these'll in and on you...Death is never a pleasant odor to deal with. The only really disgusting smell I remember was a dead rat in the attic of our house in the middle of the hottest part of summer. Very vivid description , and you could jyust see the dead fish on the banks being attacked by the vultures
I would never, ever want to downplay the piquant odors of a dead rat in the attic. Mercy, no!
I'm also glad you never had to experience approximately a thousand times more...
So glad you're here, Teri.
Growing up on the west coast of Florida I have experienced the fish smell from red tide so I understand dead catfish and adding any other “fragrant” aromas like warm dirty water with fish poo only makes it more nauseous. Glad you survived. Some fool will say it made you a stronger man…right?
Listening to your southern voice speaking this chapter somehow made the foul, fishy die-off entertaining---i mean, you brought a bit of melodrama, which was, for me, totes essential to the whole.
Just reading the print could never have gifted me with both the gross, rotty details, and that fully-understood sense of you, and what you had to endure. It was kinda like the best, gross story-hour: fascinating and detailed in ways similar to hearing a scary ghost story when I was a child. Perfecto! I loved participating as listener, getting soaked in magotty catfish details, led through the intolerable atmospheric stench by your voice. Thanks for the experience---it was terrific!
Thank you, Toni for offering such encouraging and helpful insights. I'm so pleased that a little of that 'Southern' lilt and cadence could take some of the rotty edge off. Truth be told, I first narrated it in a much more low-key, matter-of-fact voice and had that version trimmed and ready to upload, but just had this nattering little voice whispering in my ear, saying that a steady voice of seasoned calm might not be the best way to tell this one. It's kinda dark all the way through. So on a lark, I recorded the first two paragraphs in a more gee-whiz, animated, colloquial cadence just to see how that would sound, instead and immediately grasped how much better it worked to take some of the edges off of the ugly. Then I went back and recorded the whole chapter, but in a slightly less theatrical voice than in my test.
Your notes tell me that that was the right decision.
I'm ever grateful for your careful reads.
Good on that “nattering little voice”! Listening to it is intuitive, and essential, isn't it? Sometimes in my own art, I fear that voice because the other, judgy voice, seems more normal, maybe louder, even. But, yeah, so glad you listened… “on a lark” that first step---yes!
I'm about out of tolerance for my version of that 'judgy voice.' I've given it say far more often than I needed to and at this stage of life, don't have the heart to constantly question myself about whether I'll fall off the creative cliff or become a sellout if I don't do exactly as I'm told. We've earned that by now, haven't we?
I'm so slow to shut it up...but you make a difference...ty for nudging me...ty for persisting...
The stench of death is unforgettable - especially when the quantity or size of the dead things is overwhelming. My first visit to Africa in 1995 took me to Bumi Hills Reserve in Zimbabwe. This was before the country imploded under the corruption and violence of Mugabe’s regime, and before hungry people broke into the wildlife reserves and slaughtered anything they could for food.
One day, a group of us visitors were taken out in a Land Rover by the guide. He warned us that we were about to encounter one of the brutal realities of the lives of elephant groups. And he told us that, for our own sakes, we should breathe through our mouths. So we had an idea of the scenario.
If you have been right up close to an elephant - even an adolescent like this one, you know how vast they are. Several days of bloating with internal rot and gases had blown the young male up like some obscene Macy’s Parade balloon, the legs sticking out at crazy angles. As we neared the giant corpse, literally hundreds of vultures large and small, rose in a ponderous cacaphony of protests and flapping wings that fanned the revolting, stomach-churning vapors our way. We could taste death, and that noxious fume coated tongue, mouth, skin and hair for days.
The skull of the juvenile had been battered and cracked by a mighty blow from the group’s matriarchal leader. He had been warned, pushed to the boundaries, encouraged to leave home and find a mate in another family pod. Instead, like too many young humans, he hung around home and began to flirt with his own siblings - a genetic no-no. One day, the matriarch just had enough. The formidable power of her tusks and trunk was brought down in fury on the offender’s great, thick skull. And it was all over for him.
I can still almost smell and taste that revolting stench of death more than 20 years later. It is something one never forgets.
Lordy mercy, Jude, that is some story. Tribal survival, an implicit understanding of genetics by wild animal populations and a completely overwhelming baptism into the olfactory punishments of death made large. Who knew? Who could even have imagined? I'm ever so grateful for this addition to the rather inedible picnic we've got going here. I learned so much, and I know without doubt that you know how that particulate air can cling to you for days...
Wow ! I did not know that was part of the elephant herd but it makes sense and it show that they are smarter than humans regarding this...That was probably a good thing the guide warned you even if in your wildest dream you could not possibly be fully prepared.