Lost Words, Lost Spells

Odd Company -- November 3, 2025

Dear Friends, Family, Neighbors, and Those of You I Don’t Yet Know —

Welcome to the beginning of November, the Gaelic festival of Samhain, which marks the end of harvest season and the beginning of the darker half of the year. We are halfway between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice now (sometimes called the “cross-quarter”). I wonder if it’s just a coincidence that yesterday we Americans marked the start of the dark half of the year by turning our clocks back an hour, making the arrival of night seem earlier and more sudden. It’s chilly outside tonight. No crickets. Just the rattling of seed pods in a fitful breeze. Time to gather the very last bit of harvest — the seeds, to be saved for next year, always an act of faith.

I find myself still reading and digesting the material I had planned to write about tonight. So this issue of Odd Company is likely to be a cup of soup with many flavors, and probably a little bit scattered. But be brave, and set off with me, to see where this leads us!

I’ve been reading Changeable by Stuart Ablon, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School. The book has one of those subtitles that is so long it makes the poet in me feel ornery. I really just think he should have thought about it a little more carefully. If the title’s not good, he has lost his first chance to interest his readers, and also his first chance to impress them with his writing prowess. Alas, poor Ablon. He did not put his best foot forward. Fortunately, he has some interesting ideas and has articulated them pretty well. The book is about ways of getting people to work together to solve problems. I was intrigued by an interview with him, in which he outlined three basic methods of dealing with people who are not doing what we want them to do.

One method is to try to impose our will on the other person. We see this all around us all the time. Someone in some position of authority (parent, teacher, doctor, manager, political leader, etc.) seeking a quick solution simply says, “Do this!” If the commanded person asks why, the response is, “Because I say so!” or some variation on that theme. I’m sure we can all remember this from our childhoods, late for school or daydreaming when we should have been doing chores. Just do it! As every parent knows, it seldom works very well. The result might well be a toddler seated in the aisle of a grocery store, screaming bloody murder.

Another method is to simply decide not to pursue the matter at this time. Maybe you’ll come back to it someday; maybe not. This strategy is also sometimes called “choosing your fights.” Some things are not worth arguing about in the moment. So, for the sake of calm, or to save time, you resolve the matter the way the other person wants it. The trouble with this method is that if you do it over and over again, your wishes are never met. And sometimes the problem just gets bigger because of that.

The third method, collaborative problem-solving, is the one Ablon hopes more people will master. Me, too. It involves empathy — trying to see the situation from the other person’s point of view. We do this mainly by asking questions and listening with an open mind, until a moment arrives when we think, oh yeah, I see why he might feel that way! Then it’s your turn to try to get across your own point of view and explain what your concerns are about the situation. After which, you invite the other person to work together to solve the problem. But this can only happen after everyone’s concerns are out on the table and everyone feels assured that nobody is going to force them to do anything they don’t want to do. Tricky. But in fact, it is the basis of all successful political systems. This is why ours is not working so hot right now. Our politicians seem to have forgotten how to do politics.

But, as I say, I haven’t finished reading Changeable yet. This might be because I’m reading two other books as well. Actually, I’ve just finished one of those, The Dog Stars, a novel by Peter Heller. A friend recommended it. I had never heard of this author before. But I now expect to read more of his work as soon as I can get it. It’s tempting to assign it to the “post-apocalyptic” genre and stop there. But that really doesn’t do it justice. The language is so beautiful from start to finish, it reads almost like poetry. The story is a complex mixture of dark and light, and it’s a metaphor for a story most of us already know by heart. It’s about the after-effects of a pandemic, published a year before Covid hit. Eerily prescient. It’s one of those books that felt like an intense dream. I have not quite awakened yet. Speaking of which…

I have to get up early tomorrow. No luxurious sleeping in for me, not this time! So I want to talk about tonight’s music a bit, and a bit more than usual, because it’s not just music tonight. It’s music that comes out of yet another book, one I’ve had on my shelf for some years and keep going back to. A few Christmases ago, a dear friend gave me a copy of Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris’ small book, The Lost Spells. It is a book of poetry about the magic of animals and birds and wild places, mingled seamlessly with beautiful illustrations, mostly in watercolor. The book itself is a work of art — the paper, the typefaces, the binding, the endpapers, the blend of illustration and text, all chosen with a sort of care that is rare in the modern world. Like The Dog Stars, it weaves a web of enchantment around the reader.

In one of those happenstances that feels like more than happenstance, I picked it up earlier this week because the other book brought it to mind. And then…truly…yesterday I heard a song I couldn’t get out of my mind. When I ran SoundHound on it, I discovered its title is “The Lost Words Blessing.” Now…The Lost Spells is one of a set. Its companion is a book called The Lost Words, also by MacFarlane and Morris. Both are about the magic of the natural world, as is The Dog Stars in its own way. Tonight’s music, “The Lost Words Blessing,” grew directly out of MacFarlane and Morris’ two beautiful books, beginning with an idea for a musical-literary collaboration suggested by the Irish songwriter and singer Karine Polwart. She is joined here by friends and musicians Julie Fowlis, Seckou Keita, Kris Drever, Rachel Newton, Beth Porter and Jim Molyneux. The video is the story of the creation of the books, and of course, the creation of the music. The world is filled with more wonders than we can guess.

Here’s my blessing to you. May you know the magic of autumn, and enjoy the restfulness of the coming winter indoors. As we know, many of our countrymen are at this moment hungry and afraid because our leaders have forgotten how to work collaboratively with one another, if they ever knew. I hope you’ll give whatever you can to your local food pantry. And phone your senators and your representative and explain that you’ll be thinking of all this when next you vote. See you in two weeks!