Excerpts

In 1936, during the depths of the Great Depression, forty young women arrived at the Cooper Pants Factory near Gainesville, Florida, sat down at their sewing machines, and set about stitching hems and seams, another dreary day in the land of opportunity. Shortly after they began their busywork, and as if this debasement of their imagination were not tragic enough, a tornado came along and bumped into the factory. Thirty-nine of the forty women ran panicked and screaming to the stairwell; a Mrs. Boyd Shaw remained at her station. She had inadvertently sewn her own dress into the seam she was stitching, and was unable to beat the hasty retreat. As she struggled to free herself, the tornado ripped the roof from the building, ultimately causing it to collapse, but not before it tore Mrs. Boyd Shaw clean out of her clothes and tossed her a block away, stark naked and bruised, but otherwise fine. All thirty-nine of her coworkers died in the ensuing inferno that consumed the factory.

There are hundreds of substantiated oddities such as this surrounding tornadoes. A tornado once opened a barn door, pulled a wagon out, turned it around, wheeled it back inside, and closed the door. A phonograph recording of the song Stormy Weather was once found wedged into a utility pole after a tornado had swept through the area. A butter churn once dropped out of the sky and landed on a cow’s head, half an hour after a tornado had hit twenty miles away. Chickens are routinely stripped of their feathers, and the feathers are sometimes found speared into planks of wood. In 1974, a farmer reclaimed a mirror, a carton of eggs, and a box of Christmas ornaments – all undamaged – from the otherwise total wreckage of his house. A tornado in 1996 even had the audacity to hit a drive-in movie theatre in Canada while it was screening the movie Twister.

Why aren’t apples called reds? What a dumb question, I used to think, before a five-year-old named Dandelion taught me otherwise.

Why aren’t apples called reds? One could just as easily ask why aren’t bananas called yellows, or why are oranges called oranges? These are essentially the same question, no matter the outfit in which we dress her.

Why aren’t apples called reds? One could just as easily ask why aren’t bananas called yellows, or why are oranges called oranges? These are essentially the same question, no matter the outfit in which we dress her.

Why aren’t apples called reds? All questions are female. All answers are male. If you’re wondering why this might be the case, you are thinking with your feminine sensibilities. If you’re considering why this is the case, you are thinking with your masculine senses. Questions are creative, intimidating, and periodically irritating. We may think them docile, we may try to ignore or suppress them, but their destabilizing power persists, pushing us toward our proper destiny. Answers are protective, giving us some ground, however shaky, on which to stand. Answers are cool, logical, but they can also become stubborn know-it-alls, resisting the emergence of new questions and answers and deteriorating into conservative old farts. Truth is a precarious balance between poignancy and peace. Truth lies within the perpetual prance of Yin and Yang.

Why aren’t apples called reds? Look at her. She blushes exactly like an apple in the harvest sunshine every time she’s pronounced. She is an honest question, unassuming and not at all arrogant. She is demure, to be sure, but her diffidence is her only defense to the endless parade of listless shrugs and wise-assed banalities that have been answering her every utterance since shortly after the dawn of time.