Oh, hey, it's your neighbor clipping his nails on the porch again.

Allie Ward, let's venture across the sea.

Let's talk about weaving, shall we?

One thing I love is when you think an episode may have nothing to do with your life,

and then before you know it, you're either obsessed with it,

or you have to pull over and contemplate the way you go about your whole existence.

So get ready.

This is one of them. So this ologist was brought to my

attention by another ologist, the charming Corbuthanologist, Dr. Kaylee Swift, who joined us for an

episode years ago on Crow Funerals. And she is based on Tinian, which is a tiny island in the

commonwealth of the northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific. She's doing bird work and truly living her best life.

And she emailed me saying, you got to talk to this guy. He is one of the best basket weavers

in all of the ocean. And immediately, I found that at least one time in the literature, someone has

used the word chenistramology from the Latin for wicker basket. So I'm in. Now, I thought

wicker, by the way, was just a type of plant, but no, it just means something woven from plant

reeds or fibers or sticks. But we're expanding on this ology to include the gorgeously intricate

work of, in this case, the Pacific Islands, which feature

typically angular, geometric, and almost impossibly tidy methods of weaving. And they can be all

one color of grassy green, or they can be faded, golden, or they may have patterns in darker

colors or checkerboards.

And this ologist makes traditional baskets for food, for chicken laying, for rice pouches,

for coconut leaf fans and hats and fishermen's baskets and fine art figurines.

...