Tag: Bees

  • Short Story Review: “Unreasonable” by Rivka Galchen

    (The short story “Unreasonable” by Rivka Galchen appeared in the September 29th, 2025 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photo illustration by Stephen Doyle

    A couple of years ago, my daughter got invited to a classmate’s birthday party, and as good parents, we attended with her. As the wife and I mingled with the other parents hiding on the periphery of the party, we struck up a conversation with a father who was a scientific researcher on fruit flies. It took a few minutes to convince him that we were actually interested in what he did, because as he put it, “No one thinks fruit flies are interesting.” But once he started talking about his research, he got excited and animated about the topic. It was a great conversation, and it reminded me that if someone is passionate about what they do, when they talk about it, it can be very interesting.

    It was this conversation that I kept thinking about as I read Rivka Galchen’s “Unreasonable.” The narrator/protagonist of this story is a bee researcher at a university, and in essence, she’s telling us about her life and about bees. These two tangents work exceedingly well at complementing each other as the narrator’s tone is measured, funny, scientific, and relatable. I was struck at how seamless the story went from one area to the other, exemplifying how much the research and her life were intertwined, and impossible to separate from each other. But what truly reminded me about the conversation at the birthday party was how excited and passionate the narrator was about bees. Maybe it wasn’t a volcano of exuberance, but it was an intense interest and knowledgebase, just like that fruit fly researcher. Their excitement, made you excited. I don’t know if Galchen is a bee enthusiast or not, but if she isn’t, then lots of respect to her for creating this character.

    The other aspect of “Unreasonable” that I enjoyed was how the narrator, perhaps a bit subconsciously, viewed her life through the lens of bee behavior, and the study of bees. It’s pointed out in the story that male bees only have one function in the hive, fertilization, and that they don’t do anything else. I couldn’t help noticing that this fact of male bees is used almost like a prism towards the other male characters, exemplifying how some of them shirk responsibility, are adolescent, or are oblivious to the world around them. Then there is the use of tracking bees in the narrator’s research, and also how tracking is used in her personal life; how she tracks one of her daughter’s movements on an iPad, and how the other daughter used a bee tracking device to follow an ex-boyfriend. There are other examples in the story, but I think you get the point. It almost felt like a fun parlor game connecting the two worlds together.

    I liked “Unreasonable” and enjoyed how this was the type of story that kept rolling and moving, and left me wondering where it was going, but was happy to have that feeling of unexpected surprise. This was a fun place to inhabit with the narrator, and experience her world, because it’s exciting to be around a person who is excited about what excites them, and let’s it swarm into their life.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Everything is Green, Son of a Clothes Horse, and Sick Kid on the Couch

    ODDS and ENDS: Everything is Green, Son of a Clothes Horse, and Sick Kid on the Couch

    (Who said that!? Not Me!)

    …And I hope you enjoy the weird AI image that was created for this post…

    Came out this morning to do the Alt Side Parking Dance, and discovered that our little car was covered in green. The wife had parked under a tree, and now there is a fuzzy haze of pollen all over the vehicle. Besides the fact that my allergies started weeping in despair as I felt my nose simultaneously running and clogging up, I also wondered how much pollen could this car collect? Could my car have so much pollen on it that if I drove around the City, even out in the country, it would act as a pollinator? I know the bees are dying off, but if push came to shove, couldn’t we just drive are cars around to, in a very basic rockbottom way, pollenate the world? Just an idea, cause there is a crap ton of tree pollen on my car.

    First of all, let me start by saying this very loaded statement; I love my wife very much. And as such, we tease each other often, as is our want. There are many things she makes fun of me over, but one of the most recurrent jokes of her’s is to call me a “clothes horse.” Going on twenty years, she’s called me this. Until I had met my wife, I had never heard this term before. A clothes horse is a folding frame used inside someone’s house to hang laundry on while it dries, or a fashionable person who thinks too much about their clothes. (I bet you can guess which definition my wife uses for me.) Most specifically, she will uses this term towards me on days when I have a sitting around the home outfit, a running errands in the neighborhood outfit, and then a third running around town outfit. Not that I do this all the time, but it does happen; I have been known to wear three different outfits in one day. So, I was home visiting my dad the other week, and I witnessed my father doing the same thing; over the course of the day, he had three different outfits he would put on. I had never noticed that, nor thought about it, as that’s just who my father is. Now, I clearly see the depths of the influence this man has had on my life, for I am the Son of a Clothes Horse.

    The kid was sick the other night. Like very sick, and throwing up. She was weak, and needed to be comforted, which I was more than happy to do. As she gets older, the opportunity for a snuggle starts to decrease, you know. But I noticed something as we were on the couch at 2am, hoping that she would be able to keep crackers down; That when she’s sick and on the couch in the daytime, I watch whatever she wants to watch – But at night, I make the kid watch what I want to watch. Nothing inappropriate, but it’s my choice. So, the other night, at 2am, I made my kid watch the MST3k episode “Cave Dwellers.” It’s one of my favorites, and to be honest, I wasn’t too concerned with what the kid thought, as she was nauseous and going in and out of sleep. The next morning, she was feeling better, still a little under the weather, but better. And to my surprise, she was making Cave Dweller jokes – like, “I fell on my eight sided dice,” “Gotta a Minute!” and “The tapes not queued up!” I couldn’t have be prouder to be her father!