FERN’s Friday Feed: Deadly passage
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
The aftermath of the worst immigration-related disaster in U.S. history
FERN and Texas Monthly
In June 2022, 53 people from Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras died in the back of a tractor trailer in San Antonio in what has often been described as the worst immigration-related disaster in U.S. history. “Last summer,” writes Elliott Woods, “I spent three weeks searching for relatives of the Quintana Road victims. I met with sixteen families spread out across the migration routes that link Central America to the U.S. border, from the mountain villages of western Guatemala to diverse regions of Mexico—the tropical lowlands of Oaxaca, the dry plains of Guanajuato, and the industrial sprawl of Ciudad Juárez … Some families politely refused to talk, saying they were fearful of drawing attention from smugglers and criminal gangs or that they were exhausted and saw no point in reopening old wounds. But others welcomed me into their homes and refused to let me leave without offering a snack or a home-cooked meal … I spent dozens of hours talking with spouses, parents, siblings, children, and neighbors, all of whom shared migration stories spanning generations.”
The long shadow of an eating disorder
Longreads
“If I thought my eating disorder would stay quiet forever, I was wrong. A few years ago, the combination of a naturally slowing metabolism and pandemic-induced lifestyle change altered my body. My pants stopped buttoning smoothly, my outline softened. I couldn’t tell you exactly what was different, but I knew something had changed,” writes Maggie Slepian. “I started obsessing over my body in a way I hadn’t since college. I avoided mirrors, kept the lights off in the bathroom, and wrapped a towel around my body before stepping out of the shower. I went from wearing dresses, skirts, crop tops, and matching workout sets to baggy shirts and high-rise leggings with wide elastic waistbands …. Body dysmorphia flared as fast and hot as my eating disorder had 15 years before. The all-consuming thoughts stretched back to my 19-year-old self, sobbing on the floor, vowing never to eat again after being cheated on.”
The American lobster’s baby bust
BioGraphic
“Right now, lobsters seem to be thriving in the Gulf of Maine. The adult population is near its record high, and commercial landings have been largely growing for decades,” writes Moira Donovan. “But since 2012, scientists studying the crustaceans have struggled to answer a worrying question: Where are all the young lobsters? In 2012, divers off the New Hampshire coast armed with underwater vacuums suctioned parts of the seafloor for an annual survey of juvenile lobsters. They scarcely found any—and almost every survey since has turned up similarly dismal results. ‘It kind of had everybody scratching their heads as to what was going on,’ Carloni says.”
Fine-dining menus are more than just word salad
The New York Times
“Fine dining in America may be a privilege for the few, but its lore is universal,” writes Sam Corbin. “Audiences for these menus are self-selecting — you can find online groups dedicated to praising a tweezered approach to food, or to denouncing it — but the language of those menus makes for easy satire. Consider a scene from the comedy series ‘Broad City’ in which the show’s main characters, Abby and Ilana, attend a fancy party and are offered a ‘dose of reality’: After they bite into macaroni-and-cheese balls, a server tells them that a child in another country has just died of starvation. Is it hyperbole? Maybe. Then again, Alchemist, a restaurant in Copenhagen, implores its guests to consider the food chain by serving them chicken feet chained to a cage, which can only be tasted after a server shouts, ‘Free the chicken!’”
How climate change affects bird flu, and thus the price of eggs
Grist
“When it comes to eggs, climate change is affecting supply more indirectly — by changing the migratory patterns and nesting habits of birds that carry avian influenza. As global average temperatures rise and extreme weather events scramble animal migration patterns and force some species north toward increasingly temperate climes,” write Frida Garza and Zoya Teirstein, “animals are crossing paths in entirely new configurations, making it easier for them to swap diseases.”