Creepy Pufferfish

Like this. And it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful to hear a soliloquy I loved so much already, and have it come to life in a way it never, ever, did before. I feel like I grasp his motivations, his twists and turns, no longer on an academic level but on a visceral, instinctive one. Because he’s presenting his mental and emotional journey in a way that speaks honestly, like a real person.

"Okay I want sustainable woodworking and logging to be kind of a core feature of this ethnic group's trade and relative self-sufficiency, so I'm gonna do some research on logging. What's that word for when you float logs down a river? I should probably put them near a river. Hell yeah geographical feature. That is a thing I can add to a map. I'm so good at worldbuilding. Oh you have to cure lumber before it can be usable--that makes sense, that's why it doesn't rot. Okay gonna watch this video on curing wood. Huh this video's kinda boring and a little too modern in terms of my worldbuilding. Oh! I had that really neat old-timey book on woodworking I stole from my dad! I'm gonna get it!

Huh New Jersey had cedar swamps?

New Jersey cleared out its cedar swamps so bad that by the 1800's they were literally mining hunks of dead cedar out of the swamp like how Irish people in peat bogs would haul perfectly-preserved centuries-old logs out of the peat and use them for firewood?

They cleared out the trees that bad?

Google New Jersey Cedar Swamps

Google New Jersey Cedar Swamps Restoration

Google Atlantic White Cedar

Google Who is Saving the Cedar Swamps

Oh shit my notes doc that's right I was going to write.

Google Cranberry Bog Rewilding

Google Cedar Swamps Restoration (again)

• Headdress.

Date: early 19th century

Culture: Russian