The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(117)

For sneaking into the mansion late at night, for breaking out the Ouija board, for dashing to the liquor store (and once to the ER), for surviving the nor’easter that snapped trees and cut power for days, for the hike by moonlight, for the karaoke night, for the candlelight vigil at Katrina’s grave, and for the all-you-can-eat feast of creative spirit, I will never forget: Beena Kamlani (Head Nut), Maeve D’Arcy, CJ Hauser, Erick Hernandez, Joshua Riedel, Karan Kandhari, Kylie Heidenheimer, Ru Freeman, Tatyana Tennenbaum, Krish Raghav (who also heard the laughter), Luba Drozd, Karen Tepaz, Mike Albo, Toni Ross, Sheila O’Connor, Steve Bellin-Oka, Spencer Reece, McCallum Smith, Steve Snowden, Mmgkosi Anita Tau, Carrie Fertig, Sigrid Rausing, and “the twins” Ryan Pfeiffer and Rebecca Walz.

Then there’s the research.

For their work, their articles, their books, their experiments, and their examples, I am beholden to the following individuals and organizations regarding:





Epigenetics


Brian Dias and Kerry Ressler for their groundbreaking work at Emory University that showed how mice inherit fear from their parents, to which Marcus Pembry, emeritus professor of pediatric genetics at University College London, said, “It is high time public health researchers took human transgenerational responses seriously.” Laura Hercher, the director of research, Human Genetics at Sarah Lawrence College, put it more succinctly, calling it, “Crazy Lamarckian shit.” (Lamarckism is a theory explored in the 1800s that suggests that organisms pass on to their offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired during its lifetime.)

Dora L. Costa, Noelle Yetter, and Heather DeSomer, whose work on intergenerational transmission added more evidence suggesting that our parents’ and grandparents’ experiences affect our DNA. Their studies explored how trauma among US Civil War prisoners was passed down to their children and how a father’s stress, nutrition, and mental health can affect his son’s lifespan. (Thanks, Dad.)

Rachel Yehuda, who led a research team at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital regarding genetic changes stemming from the traumas suffered by Holocaust survivors and how one person’s life experiences can affect subsequent generations. Yehuda also did research that showed how pregnant 9/11 survivors transmitted trauma to their children.

Adding fuel to this fire is the pioneering work of neuroscientists Steve Ramirez (The Ramirez Group) and the late Xu Liu. While at MIT they used optogenetics to implant a false memory into a lab animal. (You may want to read that sentence again.) Their work suggests that instead of using cognitive-behavioral therapy or drugs to treat depression, dementia, and PTSDs, in the not-so-distant future, scientists may be manipulating memories or performing memory surgery. Their work is literally mind-altering.

For further exploration (until neuroscientists can implant memories of these books into your brain) I suggest reading The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, It Didn’t Start with You by Mark Wolynn, and watching NOVA’s Memory Hackers episode about engrams, editing memories, and deleting fears. As a fun adjunct, you can also explore How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan, with or without psychedelics.

If that wasn’t enough to break your brain or at least give you a headache, listen to the presentations of Lee Bitsoi, Navajo, PhD Research Associate in Genetics at Harvard, who discusses how epigenetics is uncovering proof of intergenerational trauma. When speaking about how trauma is woven into the DNA of Indigenous peoples, Bitsoi said, “Native healers, medicine people and elders have always known this and it is common knowledge in Native oral traditions.”

That’s just the tip of the epigenetic iceberg.

When it comes to the study of heritable phenotypes, there’s so much more to explore and learn. But if transgenerational epigenetic inheritance works as described in Scientific American, perhaps the DNA methylation of one of my grandchildren will be affected by my choices and life experiences and they’ll grow up with preprogrammed inclinations to write fiction, or study genetics. Or just sing really bad karaoke songs.





ARkStorms


A century ago, Seattleites could go ice-skating on Green Lake. Now as I write this, they’re recovering from their hottest summer on record. You can argue the root causes of climate change all you want, but as the philosopher Robert Zimmerman once said, “You better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a-changing.”

With that song ringing in my ears, I’m grateful for the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and their Multi Hazards Demonstration Project, which was as inspiring as it was distressing. Their study explored the atmospheric phenomenon of ARkStorms—typhoons that are carried across the Pacific Ocean to the Western Coast of the US.

It’s believed that California’s Great Flood of 1862 was caused by an ARkStorm. Whatever you want to call it, that tempest generated as much as 120 inches of rain over a ten-day period. Then there’s the Columbus Day Windstorm of 1962, when Typhoon Freda crossed the Pacific and became an extratropical cyclone that lashed the coasts of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia with sustained winds of 110 miles per hour. More recently, in 2016, Typhoon Songda took a ride on the jet stream and moved perilously close to the Pacific Northwest, prompting the cancelation of ferries, the closure of airports, and the opening of 325 emergency shelters.

Do you know the difference between hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones? If you live in the Pacific Northwest, don’t worry, I suspect you’ll eventually find out.