What is a Witch / Rosalie Lightning

Issue No. 108

WHAT IS A WITCH – A POETIC AND VISUAL CONJURING OF THE WITCH ARCHETYPE

What is a Witch
by Pamela Grossman (author) and Tin Can Forest (artists)
Tin Can Forest
2016, 36 pages, 9.0 x 11.75 x 0.25 inches

Buy a copy

There are few ideas and words in the popular zeitgeist more mercurial than “witch.” Whether coming from the world’s mythologies, religions, folk tales, the realms of fiction, or from those who embrace it as a real-world religious identity, witch can mean myriad things. There are probably few archetypes more simultaneously romanticized and demonized.

This dizzying dream of character and identity is uniquely and creatively expressed in What is a Witch, a sort of comic book grimoire on the subject by witch and author Pamela Grossman and Canadian’s comic-art occultists, Tin Can Forest. In just under 40 pages of lush, saturated black art and text, What is a Witch serves as something of a witch’s manifesto. The dreamy, free-form text, interwoven amongst equally dreamy art, attempts to cast a spell over the reader, to bring this complex character more vividly to life. In doing so, it doesn’t really answer the question (note that it’s not posed as one) of what a witch is, but instead, plays with her mercurial identity, dipping in and out of fictional and real-world conceptions and how witches are experienced and self-identified. The art and production are really lovely and work to deepen the spell that the book is attempting to cast. The effect of Grossman’s free, often trance-like prose reminded me somewhat of Jack Parson’s famous “We are the Witchcraft” manifesto, another attempt at a poetic conjuring on the identity of the witch.

What is a Witch feels like a captured dream to me, one in which the author and artists dutifully recorded what they experienced and shared the results with us. And those results definitely feel touched by magic. – Gareth Branwyn

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ROSALIE LIGHTNING – WHAT COMES AFTER THE SUDDEN, UNEXPLAINED DEATH OF A TWO-YEAR-OLD TODDLER

Rosalie Lightning
by Tom Hart
St. Martin’s Press
2016, 272 pages, 7.8 x 9.6 x 0.8 inches

Buy on Amazon

“What do you do when your child dies?” Rosalie Lightning shows us what Tom Hart and his partner Leela Corman did as they mourned the sudden, unexplained death of their toddler Rosalie. This graphic memoir, written and drawn by Hart, is a poignant recounting of grief. In the first pages of the book, Rosalie Lightning, not yet two, dies in the night, without any known cause or sign.

Or were there signs? Hart looks for signs and portents – things that might have given him a clue about was to come — though knowing the portents are meaningless. “What meaning do we make of things?” he asks. Seeking symbols becomes the activity of grief. All the while, he and Corman are visiting friends, selling a home, and considering getting pregnant again.

“Wasn’t I a father? Didn’t I have a daughter?” Hart’s grief is acute and vivid. He mixes grayed drawings of himself with simple, adorable drawings of Rosalie (“Rodzy” as she pronounced it). He brings her to life for us through her toddler language “bumbites” (bug bites), “Rodzy hep” (Rosalie help) and “bye big spidoo wam!” (no translation needed).

The memoir is personal but not invasive. It provides no pat resolution but instead rests on the symbolism of life that comes from one of Rosalie’s favorite objects to collect – an acorn. The closing images of the memoir show an acorn growing into a mature tree, accompanied by the repetition of the word “yes.” The affirmation feels equally willing and forced. After the death of loved ones, after all, we want to move on; we must force ourselves to move on. – Meagan Rodgers

03/10/26

Dental Care

Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 180

Mirrored flashlight for oral & mechanical work

GUM Oral Care Kit

Two incredibly handy tools seldom used for their intended uses are dental mirrors (a.k.a. “inspection” mirrors) and dental picks. The one problem with most inspection mirrors is that when you have to look into awkward electronic or mechanical crevices where you need a mirror, you also need a flashlight for illumination and a spare hand to hold the light. This kit (#832) has a dental mirror with a bright flashlight integrated into the handle and a switch in the grip, freeing up your other hand. The other neat thing is that for less than $10 you get two dental picks — great for nudging or extracting small inaccessible components from assemblies. Recently, I was upgrading a friend’s computer. The motherboard was mounted in a “baby ATX” case which was a very tight fit. To locate the CMOS reset jumper or check to see if the memory socket catch was engaged, I needed the use of the lighted mirror to negotiate the dark spots where those components were hidden. In the same manner the picks were handy to snag small cables within the case. — Stephen A. Kupiec

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Superior dental tool

Reach Access Flosser

The civilized way to floss. A tiny, easily replaceable harp on the end of a stick. More hygienic (no fingers in your mouth), more effective at flossing the hard parts, more comfortable, easier to use. Our kids love ’em. I floss much more often myself since I started using one. A really cool tool more folks should use. — KK

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Essential mouth tool

Dental Mirror

I got mine — made of surgical stainless steel — from a set of used dental tools at a garage sale for 25 cents. It’s incredibly handy for inspecting missing fillings, infections, gum complaints, particularly in kids. And you can look for sharp edges on dental braces. There really is no other way to look deep inside the mouth. The key is to get a proper front-surface mirror, which some drugstore plastic versions don’t have. Otherwise at close range there is a slight double image which confuses the image. — KK

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Emergency teeth fillings

Dentemp

Dentemp is a traditional dental combination of zinc oxide and eugenol (clove oil) mixed when needed to make a temporary tooth patch for lost cavity filling, or to re-cement a cap or inlaid on a tooth. It’s strong enough that you’ll need to have a dentist remove it later. Since an emergency Dentemp kit weighs less than an ounce, it should be part of your traveling or backpacking kit. You can get it at almost any drug store. — KK

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Floss alternative

Brush Picks

I hate flossing. I hate how the floss cuts into my fingers and lips, and how it gets wet and slimy and impossible to manipulate. I’ve tried those little flossers with handles but they’re not much better than regular floss. I’ve used interdental brushes (they’re like itty-bitty bottle brushes with handles) but they’re not flexible and don’t fit between normally-spaced teeth. After years of ignoring my dentist’s suggestion to just floss the teeth I want to keep, I think BrushPicks are my solution.

Each disposable plastic pick has a pick end and a brush end. The pick end has tiny ridges that help to scrape harder material from between your teeth. But it’s the brush end that’s a real innovation. It looks kind of like a feathery antenna, with a flat row of tiny bristles extending on either side of a thin, flexible pick. This brush end is stiff enough and thin enough to poke easily between your teeth, but flexible enough that it readily bends so that you’re not jabbing painfully into your gums. This flexibility also allows for cleaning behind rear molars. Rotating the brush end as you clean helps to loosen and remove gunk from otherwise impossible-to-reach areas.

BrushPicks are so effective that they’re actually kind of fun to use–in a “look what I just dug out of my own head” sort of way. I’ve taken to using one every 2 or 3 days and I’m anxious to see if my dental hygienist notices the difference during my next cleaning. — Rhodora Collins

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Emergency dentistry

Where there is no dentist

There is very little chance you’ll ever be beyond the reach of a dentist most of your life. However, like its companion Where There is No Doctor, the true audience for this free PDF (and for-sale printed book) is care-givers in the developing world. But this tome also works as a short course in emergency care. Real dental first aid that is useful for anyone to know. — KK

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Once a week we’ll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.

03/9/26

Maverick tours / Protocol cards / Kitchen sponge

Recomendo - issue #504

Maverick tours

I’ve taken several tours with Young Pioneer Tours. Their motto is “leading group tours for people who hate group tours to destinations your mother would rather you stay away from and at budget prices.” They deliver all that, famously taking small tours to restricted places like North Korea, Turkmenistan, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, and to “Unrecognized Countries” in Africa. They just started offering a new tour to Least Visited Countries, which happen to mostly be Pacific island “countries” which are normally very hard or expensive to reach. While these tours may sound dangerous, they don’t go where it is actually dangerous. Rather they are contrarian, and an affordable travel adventure. — KK

Protocol cards for nervous system regulation

Protocolcards.com is a digital deck of evidence‑backed nervous system “protocols” you can pull up when you don’t know what to do with yourself. They’re not magic quick fixes, but if you follow the short guided practices and prompts, your system will start to feel more regulated over time. Cards are organized into five categories: Emergency (for when you need instant regulation), Focus (to upshift into more alertness), Recover (to downshift from activation or transition into more chill), Sleep (for evening wind‑down), and Feel (for when you want to be with and process your emotions), and you unlock the full library by signing up with your email. — CD

Best kitchen sponge

Scrub Daddy sponges have replaced every other sponge in our kitchen. They have a rough, grippy texture that removes stuck-on food, but they won’t scratch nonstick cookware. My favorite feature: you can squeeze nearly all the water out of them, so they dry fast and don’t develop that funky sponge smell. — MF

Shrinkable child car seat

Car seats keep kids safe, but are surely a pain to travel with. For kids 2-3 years old or older, there is a legitimate alternative, which is a DOT-approved vest that the child wears as a harness. The child + harness is then strapped into a regular seat belt. The pioneering safety vest is Ridesafer. It comes in different sizes, for larger kids too. When not worn, the vest shrinks to a small, easy to pack lump about the size of a folded jacket, fitting into your bag. This makes it perfect for taxis, ubers and rental cars. It also makes it perfect for grandparents, who may not want to keep their back seats perpetually occupied with car seats. We’ve found the Ridesafer easy enough to put on and off, and with some patience to buckle in – but still faster than loading a kid into a car seat. (I would lean toward getting a size larger, it will still work as well.) — KK

12 Home Library Ideas

There are two types of list articles I will always click on: best book cover roundups and bookshelf “shelfies.” This Zillow list of 12 home library ideas scratches my book‑voyeur itch, and now I have names for all the little libraries scattered around my house, most of which fall into the “strategic library” category, but the dream is still a library in every room. — CD

How well do you remember colors?

The free online game Color revealed how terrible I am at colors. It shows you a color for a few seconds, then asks you to recreate it from memory using sliding color and shade pickers. It sounds easy — it’s not. I swore I nailed that shade of green, only to see my guess was way off. Play solo or challenge friends in multiplayer mode. — MF

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03/8/26

Book Freak #199: Thinking in Systems

A Powerful Framework for Understanding Complexity

Get Thinking in Systems

From the lead author of the landmark Limits to Growth report, Thinking in Systems offers a powerful framework for understanding complexity — revealing that war, hunger, poverty, and environmental destruction aren’t isolated problems but system failures that can’t be solved by fixing one piece in isolation.

Core Principles

Systems Generate Their Own Behavior

A system is a set of interconnected elements that produces its own pattern of behavior over time. The behavior emerges from the structure — the feedback loops, delays, and connections — not from external events. Stop looking for who’s to blame; instead, ask “What’s the system?” The system itself causes its own behavior.

Stocks and Flows Drive Dynamics

Every system has stocks (accumulations like water in a bathtub, money in an account, or carbon in the atmosphere) and flows (the rates at which stocks change). Understanding which stocks are critical and what controls their flows reveals why systems behave as they do — and why they often resist our attempts to change them.

Feedback Loops Create Stability or Growth

Balancing feedback loops push toward equilibrium (a thermostat maintaining temperature). Reinforcing feedback loops amplify change (compound interest, viral spread, erosion of trust). Most real-world systems contain both types interacting in complex ways. Finding and understanding these loops is key to understanding any system.

Find the Leverage Points

Not all interventions are equal. The highest leverage often lies not in pushing harder but in changing the system’s goals, rules, or underlying paradigms. A small shift in the right place — like changing what gets measured, or who has information — can produce large changes in behavior.

Try It Now

1. Pick a problem you’re struggling with. Instead of asking “Who caused this?”, ask “What’s the system that’s producing this outcome?”
2. Identify the stocks involved (what’s accumulating or depleting?) and the flows (what’s increasing or decreasing those stocks?).
3. Look for feedback loops: Is there a balancing loop keeping things stuck? A reinforcing loop making things worse?
4. Ask: Where is information missing? Often system malfunctions stem from key players not having access to the right information.
5. Consider: What would happen if you changed the goal or what gets measured, rather than just pushing harder on the current approach?

Quote

“Let’s face it, the universe is messy. It is nonlinear, turbulent, and chaotic. It is dynamic. It spends its time in transient behavior on its way to somewhere else, not in mathematically neat equilibria. It self-organizes and evolves. It creates diversity, not uniformity. That’s what makes the world interesting, that’s what makes it beautiful, and that’s what makes it work.”

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Book Freak is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run Recomendo, the Cool Tools website, a YouTube channel and podcast, and other newsletters, including Recomendo Deals, Gar’s Tips & Tools, Nomadico, What’s in my NOW?, Tools for Possibilities, Books That Belong On Paper, and Book Freak.

03/6/26

Ski Coat Sales/Delayed Luggage Tactics/Another United Devaluation

Nomadico issue #196

Buy That Ski Coat on Sale

I’m currently leading a group ski trip around Jasna, Slovakia, and one of the participants said, “Here’s a game for when you’re waiting in the lift line. Try to spot two jackets that are the same. It almost never happens.” I looked all day and he was right. That tells me that a) the market is very fragmented and b) the brand doesn’t matter as much as they would like you to believe as long as it’s well-made. I’ve personally used ones from Hi-Tec, Adidas, and Kuhl the past few trips and all have performed great. So buy when the best sales are going on and just make sure it has a left breast pocket or sleeve pocket for today’s digital lift tickets.

Preparing for Delayed Luggage

Delta sent my Prague-bound suitcase full of ski clothing to Pittsburg instead on this trip and it took partner KLM 2.5 days to get it back in my hands, despite the bar code still being attached. That’s a new record for me, with things normally resolved in a day at most. Thankfully I had enough essentials in my laptop bag that it was an annoyance, not a catastrophe, but it’s a reminder that you have to anticipate this scenario and say, “What if?” In most cases the airline will compensate for reasonable purchases, but any good travel insurance policy will kick in if that doesn’t work.

United Will Penalize Fliers Who Don’t Carry Their Credit Card

United just devalued their loyalty program again, which is nothing new, but this time they took it an extra step. They basically said, “Pay up for one of our credit cards or you’re not going to get the same benefits.” In case you were wondering what your airline loyalty is really worth, apparently the answer is “a $150 or more annual subscription fee.” If you don’t have their card, your loyalty status won’t matter: you will get penalized on both the earnings and redemptions. See more info here.

Fake Travel Confirmations

I have seen a slew of articles lately about travelers getting scammed by fake confirmations or change notifications that look just like the official ones from your airline, hotel company, or OTA. In most cases, the aim is to get as much of your personal information as possible. They can be very convincing, but never click on the link and start entering info: go to the official website or app. If your password manager doesn’t fill in your log-in info automatically, that’s the first sign you’re not in the right place. A legit e-mail will tell you to do the same and if you have the app, you’ll get an alert about real flight changes or problems.

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A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World’s Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.

03/5/26

What’s in my NOW? — Amanda McClendon

issue #244

I’m a librarian, but I don’t do whatever you think of when you think of what librarians do. I also host trivia on Monday nights at a local Tex-Mex restaurant, work on a master’s degree in theology, and listen to too many podcasts during whatever free time I have left. — Amanda McClendon

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PHYSICAL

• Oven pull – These are wood or silicone sticks with two notches. You grab your oven rack with it to get it in and out of the oven while putting some distance between yourself and a very hot metal box, so you’re less likely to burn yourself.
• Keats & Co. Evensong Chai – Caffeine free (it’s rooibos), plus all the profits go to tuberculosis treatment. Good.store, which runs the brand, is a great company run by internet celebrities John and Hank Green and they have all kinds of other good products as well.
• Public libraries! – Listen, I work at an academic library, and I still hit up my local public library all the time, because they have items for checkout that my workplace doesn’t have, and they’re one of the last places in American society where you can hang out and they won’t ask you for money (save for maybe late fees). Plus they may have programs and items you weren’t expecting, like board games, odd kitchen equipment, tax prep help, passport services, free museum passes, or makerspaces.

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DIGITAL

• Kung Fu Grandpa in the Food Lion parking lot! – The narration combined with the absurdity of the guy messing with nunchucks in the grocery store parking lot is pure gold.
• Worlds Beyond Number – If you had asked me a year ago if I would be interested in a podcast of four people playing DND together, I would have said no. Past me would have been wrong. Some of the best audio storytelling, and a lot of that is due to the friendship between the four players, all with improv backgrounds. (But also: The editing and sound design are pretty killer as well.)

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INVISIBLE

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it” — Pirkei Avot, 2:16

Especially helpful in these times!

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03/4/26

What’s in my NOW? — Amanda McClendon