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Meaning of everything under the sun in English

Everything under the sun.

• across-the-board
• not a dicky bird idiom
• not a sausage idiom
• not/nothing much idiom
• sweet fanny adams idiom
• the whole bit idiom
• what with one thing and another idiom

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on top of the world

extremely happy

Keeping up appearances (Talking about how things seem)

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Review: The most sinister power in this riotously fun dystopian novel? Still Hollywood

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On the Shelf

Something New Under the Sun

By Alexandra Kleeman Hogarth: 328 pages, $28 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org , whose fees support independent bookstores.

Alison takes a crowbar to her lawn; then she heads over to whack the neighbors’ grass. Her husband, Patrick, a novelist, talks sense to her, suggests pills or therapy. But given the state of the climate, is it really so unreasonable to take a crowbar to our neighbors’ lawns? After the “incident,” the couple’s preteen daughter, Nora, begins to obsess over mushroom clouds, species extinction and other end-times phenomena. Patrick flies to L.A., ostensibly to consult on the film adaptation of his latest novel.

The brushstrokes of plot that kick off “ Something New Under the Sun ,” the second novel by Alexandra Kleeman, suggest the makings of a mildly satirical novel starring yet another neurotic upper-middle-class family. But that’s just misdirection, and Kleeman excels at it; what follows is muscular, brilliant, bonkers, an incredibly upsetting portrait of not only who we are but what we may yet become.

Whether due to vanity, bad luck or good luck masquerading as bad, Patrick’s role in L.A. is not what he thought he’d signed up for . The first inkling of something amiss is the banter of the production assistants who pick him up from the airport. Nicknamed Horseshoe and Arm, they trade off sharp one-liners and operatic paragraphs, as if Samuel Beckett spent a year commuting on the 405.

“‘Do you know why we have traffic?’ the Arm asks suddenly.”

“‘There are too many cars,’ Horseshoe says, in a sad tone.”

A bit later Arm says, “When change happens, we want it to happen all at once ... . In transit, there’s catastrophe.”

Horseshoe responds, “Catastrophe is incomplete change ... . Change is violent for those who arrive to it late.”

It turns out Patrick isn’t meaningfully attached to the film at all; he is just another production assistant. In his hotel, he discovers that the pipes under the counter are gone. All the water in Southern California is actually WAT-R, a commercially produced substitute.

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A hundred pages in, we are starting to catch on to Kleeman’s true ambitions. Patrick’s wife and daughter flee Boston for a sort of eco-cult in upstate New York. Earthbridge was founded by a man who had tried to kill himself after he saw a viral video of a polar bear being shot while scavenging in a grocery store. Alison decides she’s happy at Earthbridge, fixating on planetary doom. “I never feel as bad as I do when I remember living in that house with you and Nora,” she imagines telling Patrick, “watching these same things unfold, and getting ordered by you to take my handful of pills and look away.”

Meanwhile, in Hollywood, Patrick is charged with looking after Cassidy, a former child star who exerts a gravitational force on the book. “Her presence makes actors of them all,” Kleeman writes, describing Cassidy’s home as an “expensive, lonesome space,” which “inspires as much sympathy as envy.” At her most assured, Kleeman digs deep into Cassidy’s origin story: the town west of Fresno where a famous guy asked her for directions and predicted her fame; her family’s grim but plucky first L.A. apartment in a complex full of stage families; the demented game Cassidy played with her sister — Switch On/Switch Off — in which they toggled between emotions, over and over.

The present action is more disconcerting. The film isn’t actually in production; Patrick and Cassidy begin to deduce its real purpose, which is connected to WAT-R, mass derangement, green vans and memory clinics. The themes rhyme with “ Chinatown ” and “ Soylent Green ,” but the metafictional approach recalls literary innovators such as Ben Marcus or Jesse Ball , or even Vladimir Nabokov in his mind-bending masterpiece “Pale Fire.”

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At times, the book can groan a bit from Kleeman’s apparent dedication to research. The reader is dragooned into learning facts about quails’ gestational cycles; the myth of Theseus’ ship ; details of Patrick’s novel that feel piped in from Google searches. A 220-page version of this novel might’ve been better.

And yet, when Kleeman is having fun, so are we. She revels in the mechanics of a film set: the craft table, the director’s ego, the diva lead, the disgruntled writer, the shadowy financing. The specific, maddening, unfair and apocalyptic mechanics of WAT-R must’ve also been fun to construe — like the “pods” installed in every middle-class home, which inevitably leak, necessitating more WAT-R.

Horseshoe muses on this unsettling liquid simulacrum: “It’s the same as water, just a little bit more so.” In the words of an Orwellian scientist: “Water has been through the butts of dinosaurs and the blood of the diseased. The water you drink may have been in the mouth of your worst enemy, and you would never know. Water is secondhand, but our WAT-R has never been used.”

How is this different from other dystopian novels of late capitalism? Kleeman mixes in alluring tinctures of other genres — a sharp send-up of the Hollywood we love to hate, the inspiring transformation of Cassidy from fake hero to real. But the novel’s true genius lies in Patrick’s realizations about family, ambition and storytelling, epiphanies that arrive tragically late.

Will the ending of “Something New Under the Sun” crush you under the weight of its own transgressive horrors? That might depend on how you really feel about polar bears. It will certainly cause you to peek under your countertop one more time to check on your water pipes. In a keen and wonderful novel about celebrity worship, paranoia and the many ways lonely people can get it wrong, it’s the innocent Nora who might be most right. “People aren’t the future,” she says, and after finishing this book and having a look around at the real world, it’s hard to disagree.

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May 13, 2020

Deuel is a continuing lecturer in the writing programs at UCLA.

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Everything under the sun.

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‘Something New Under the Sun’ Is a Climate-Change Mystery Set in Hollywood

Alexandra Kleeman’s new novel imagines a disaster-plagued California where everybody’s drinking man-made water

Heading out the door? Read this article on the Outside app available now on iOS devices for members! >","name":"in-content-cta","type":"link"}}'>Download the app .

We’re relaunching the Outside Book Club this week, and to celebrate we’re publishing a series on how the booming genre of climate fiction is helping us see our changing planet in a new light. You can learn more about the book club here ,  or join us on  Facebook  to discuss our October pick,  Bewilderment ,  a new work of climate fiction by Richard Powers.

At one point in Alexandra Kleeman’s new novel, Something New Under the Sun , the protagonist joins a crowd at a film production studio as they watch catering staffers struggle to keep a large tent from toppling over. “He’s surprised at how many of the onlookers seem actually happy, actually carefree,” Kleeman writes. “It’s fun to watch something collapse, as long as you’re not beneath it.” Likewise, it’s queasily fun to read Kleeman’s book, a propulsive mystery about a disaster-ridden world only a little different from our own.

Set in either an alternate universe or the not-so-distant future, Something New Under the Sun follows novelist Patrick Hamlin on a trip to California to assist in a movie adaptation of his latest book. He spends his days working with prickly actress Cassidy Carter and a slate of typical Hollywood characters, including sweet stoner production assistants and a pair of glossily suspicious producers. Everyone’s drinking WAT-R, lab-made water that has replaced much of the real thing in the drought- and wildfire-ravaged state. At first, the synthetic water seems like a tame bit of window dressing compared to other zany details in the novel: Cassidy does advertisements for an acne cream that causes seizures, and internet ads read, “How to make $500 a day using the body debris you’d usually throw in the trash can!” But Patrick soon starts to notice something amiss about WAT-R, his film colleagues, and the whole seedy system that links the two industries.

Something New Under the Sun winningly combines mystery with speculative fiction but reads almost like a contemporary realist novel. Much of the believability is due to Kleeman’s sharp eye for the weirdness of consumerism, and especially her ability to satirize a certain type of fancy person with laser precision and humor. At the home of a producer named Brenda, where every furnishing is a pristine shade of white, a production assistant marvels over the ecru catering uniforms and eggshell sofas: “I don’t even know if my untrained eye is capable of distinguishing them all…but to Brenda it must be like a rainbow. I’m like a worm gazing up at the stars.” In another scene, Patrick overhears a radio program about urban wildlife encounters in which a woman recounts being attacked by a pack of raccoons while trying to return Nikes to a Foot Locker. “I think it was because of the leather scent they spray in these things, just too completely real,” she says. “But if it can fool a wild animal, it must be a high-quality product.” Meanwhile, the ominous WAT-R comes in varieties like Fruit Snack Quenchers and Feminine Mystique. It all sounds ridiculous until you realize that in our world, aesthetically pleasing disaster preparedness kits exist.

The novel’s interest in the mundane experience of catastrophe stands out in an increasingly crowded field of books that could be described as climate fiction . In Something New Under the Sun , the specifics of the imagined crisis are not the point, though it’s not far-fetched to imagine some desperate solution will be necessary to address water shortages in the West (or, rather, even more desperate than we’re already seeing ). Instead, the book seems to grapple with the question of how humanity deals with horrifying, large-scale change—and particularly, how complacency can outlast even the most obvious portents of disaster. Patrick occasionally worries about his own apathy toward the increasingly obvious warning signs around him, but he has more immediate concerns: a stressful job, appointments to make, and a seemingly constant case of dehydration that keeps him chugging plastic bottles of WAT-R. If there’s one thing he has time for, it’s rationalizing why he doesn’t have time for existential panic just yet. Driving past a wildfire on the highway, he thinks, “It’s not really an emergency…if you can drive around it. An emergency would be everywhere you looked, inescapable; some long-submerged animal intelligence would recognize it with fierce instinct.”

But this is a book about climate change, so of course the real problem is corporate wrongdoing. Cassidy insists on drinking real water because the synthetic version has a disturbing taste, and there’s increasing evidence that WAT-R may have adverse health effects. WAT-R employees steadfastly defend their product: “Water has been through the butts of dinosaurs and the blood of the diseased. The water you drink may have been in the mouth of your worst enemy, and you would never know,” one says earnestly. “Water is secondhand, but our WAT-R has never been used.” But the idea of manmade water is a red herring for the real horror in the book—the questionable regulation and marketing of such a product in a capitalist society, and the idea of commercialized solutions standing in for systemic change as climate change remaps access to resources around the world.

It all adds up to a perfect portrait of capitalist complacency in the face of climate change.

Something New Under the Sun is a memorable addition to the canon of fiction about climate change, thanks to the same Hollywood tricks that fuel its plot. Though most of the novel is told from Patrick’s perspective, Kleeman will sometimes take a more cinematic approach, zooming out from the scene at hand and taking the reader somewhere else entirely. At one point, we land in Cassidy’s empty seven-bedroom home, where a multitude of self-regulating cooling appliances render it “a half-living thing, multi-lunged and plushly organed, steeped in electricity and suspended in a continual sigh.” In some scenes, Kleeman even scans through geologic time, to a primordial past and a future reclaimed by wilderness, where her characters are completely forgotten. This narrative device offers an uncomfortable perspective: that our lives are all a blip in the grand scheme of things, but also that the choices we make in our present moment may have consequences much greater than we can understand.

Meanwhile, Kleeman’s depictions of WAT-R and the slick world of showbiz evoke familiar worries about authenticity and fakery and the ways we’re warping nature beyond recognition. At one point, a WAT-R employee toasts, “To Mother Nature, who sends us her rough draft so that we may perfect her grammar!” A producer brags to Cassidy about new movie backgrounds, better than even the best sets made by hand, that can be engineered beyond perfection in postproduction. “Reality was easier to override than ever, and the substitute was much more potent, much harder to forget,” Kleeman writes. It all adds up to a perfect portrait of capitalist complacency in the face of climate change: we continue insisting that the world we’ve built around ourselves is better than the one we were given, that we’re still in control, even as it becomes increasingly clear that our future holds no guarantees.

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Everything Under the Sun

a curious question for every day of the year

Molly Oldfield

A wonderful new paperback edition of 366 curious questions asked by children from around the world, based on the award-winning podcast by Molly Oldfield.

How much bamboo can a giant panda eat? Do aliens exist? What we would do if we didn't have a prime minister? Why do hammerhead sharks have such strange-shaped heads?

Find out the answers to these curious questions and much, much more! Ponder where ideas come from with award-winning illustrator, Rob Biddulph. Find out why you taste things differently when you have a cold with Michelin star chef, Heston Blumenthal. Learn about everything from how astronauts see in the dark to what the biggest dinosaur was with experts from the Natural History Museum.

Fascinating facts are accompanied by gorgeous illustrations making the perfect gift for Christmas. Whether you read a question a day, or dip into it whenever you are feeling curious, this is a book to treasure and share all year round.

Illustrated by Momoko Abe, Kelsey Buzzell, Beatrice Cerocchi, Alice Courtley, Sandra de la Prada, Grace Easton, Manuela Montoya Escobar, Richard Jones, Lisa Koesterke, Gwen Millward, Sally Mullaney, and Laurie Stansfield.

About the author

Molly Oldfield is the host of 'Everything Under the Sun', a weekly podcast answering questions from children all around the world. The podcast went straight to Number 1 on the 'kids and family' Apple podcasts chart, when it launched in November 2018 and it won Bronze for 'Best Family Podcast' at the British Podcast Awards 2019. Molly is full of unusual facts and knowledge. She is known as The Original QI Elf and spent twelve years researching and writing questions for the BBC quiz show. She is also the author of several other children's books - The Secret Museum, Wonders of the World's Museums and Natural Wonders of the World. You can find out information about how to send in questions to the podcast at: www.everythingunderthesun.co.uk

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Bursting full of children’s curiosity Everything Under the Sun is a glorious celebration of life on earth.

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Alexandra Kleeman Finds Reality All Too Surreal

Her latest novel, “Something New Under the Sun,” imagines a highly imaginable California so ravaged by drought and wildfires that only the rich can afford to survive.

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By Lauren Christensen

It was 109 degrees Fahrenheit in the Mojave Desert on a Friday evening in July, down from 120. Alexandra Kleeman had seen people splash water on concrete to watch it evaporate, and a sparrow hunt a live cicada, killing and eating it right out of its shell.

“It feels like a different world,” she said over FaceTime from her hotel room in Palm Springs, Calif. She was back in the United States after a six-month residency at the American Academy in Rome, where the landscape was comparatively lush, the streets and buildings crumbling naturally with age.

“Heat behaves differently here,” Kleeman said. “You walk outside and it’s like walking into a wall.”

It is almost exactly the setting of her new novel, “Something New Under the Sun,” which Hogarth publishes on Tuesday. The story follows a middle-aged East Coast novelist, Patrick, as he travels to and around Los Angeles for the movie adaptation of one of his books. Back in New York, his catastrophizing wife and daughter have taken shelter at a cultish eco-commune upstate, and he’s torn between proving his value at work and saving his family from what he sees as their own doomsday scenarios.

Kleeman’s 2015 debut, “ You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine ,” written during her M.F.A. program at Columbia, was a satire of plastic modern-day identities, depicting a 20-something woman known only as A and her roommate, B, who is so obsessed with looking and being like A that the two become virtually interchangeable — particularly to A’s emotionless boyfriend.

“Something New Under the Sun” takes that sense of disorientation and zooms out, using multiple, bicoastal plot lines to reveal a world that looks a lot like ours, with some scarily plausible differences. The book is set in the near future, and its version of California is so arid, hot and flammable that water is too scarce to go around. So people have to buy WAT-R, a synthetic product that mimics some, but not all, of water’s properties.

Kleeman’s first published story, in The Paris Review in 2010, was the nightmarish “ Fairy Tale ,” about a woman confronted by suitor after suitor, none of whom she recognizes, all claiming to be her fiancé. The one she’s forced to choose tries to kill her. It is part of her surrealist 2016 collection, “ Intimations ,” whose stories were inspired, she said, by Samuel Beckett.

In contrast with her earlier work, “Something New Under the Sun” is closer to real life, water shortages included. “I have a funny relationship to the idea of realism,” Kleeman, 35, said earlier this summer, when she was still in Rome.

When she began writing, she started with poetry, since it didn’t require her to create fully formed characters. “Writing realist fiction seemed like such a high bar for me,” she said. “It involved understanding people so well that I could never hope to get there.”

So she takes comfort in genre: sci-fi, the post-apocalyptic, detective stories. Kleeman met her husband, the novelist Alex Gilvarry, at a Don DeLillo reading in 2013, and the two still swap Raymond Chandler and Patricia Highsmith books at their home in Staten Island.

The child of two professors — her mother, a Taipei native, taught Japanese literature; her Miami-born father, East Asian Studies — she grew up in Berkeley, Calif.; Tokyo; Paris; Philadelphia; Williamsburg, Va.; and Boulder, Colo., among other places. In 1995, when Kleeman was in fifth grade, she and her mother lived in Riverside, Calif., and she can remember the “sharp boundary” between their gated condominium’s manicured lawn and the trails just beyond, where she’d go for long walks alone.

“It seemed so strange to me that there was this huge difference in feel between the part that people had made and the part that was just there already,” she said, “and that we tried to spend our time ignoring the part that was around the periphery, just keeping it out.”

That’s hard to do in California. “Part of the bet you make with yourself living in that place,” Kleeman’s agent, Claudia Ballard, said, “is that you’re sort of on the brink of disaster all the time.”

When Kleeman started writing “Something New Under the Sun” in 2018, the first thing she knew was that she wanted to set it around the making of a movie, drawn to “the idea of fabricated realities that are more appealing to exist in than the real apparatus that conjures them.”

Whereas in “You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine,” bodies themselves were plastic, shape-shifting until they lost all trace of their original form, in “Something New Under the Sun,” the plasticity is something foreign, and menacing. Nobody, including its suppliers, knows enough about WAT-R to foresee its true consequences — as Kleeman describes it in the book, it is born out of a capitalist desire to profit from human-inflicted scarcity.

“Things that we’ve always needed, like land, a place to live, resources, become privatized and turned into possessions, when they weren’t to start with,” Kleeman said.

In the novel, only the wealthy in the Malibu hills have access to temperature-controlled interiors and real water, which they drink while watching WAT-R wreak biological and topographical havoc on the less fortunate down below. Back in New York, Patrick’s wife, Alison, suffers a panic disorder, her sense of impending doom irreconcilable with the willful obliviousness of everyone around her.

“She is, to me, the most identifiable character,” Kleeman said. “A lot of me is in there.”

Patrick’s 9-year-old daughter, Nora, represents a younger generation’s precocious, guarded optimism. “It’s difficult to live a life without contradictions, but it’s not impossible to know what those contradictions are,” Kleeman said. “And to keep trying to think of a way out, or to a slightly better state.”

Too often, she thinks, pessimistic dystopian fiction ends up reinforcing the status quo, rather than remedying it. She quoted Fredric Jameson’s dictum that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” Kleeman writes as if to say: Watch me.

An assistant professor at The New School, Kleeman teaches graduate classes on the dystopian genre. Her colleague, the novelist Marie-Helene Bertino, often gets students Kleeman has previously taught. “They’ll just rave about how intelligent she is and how she can unpack literature in a way that surprises them,” Bertino said.

One of the stories Kleeman teaches is “The Savage Mouth,” by the Japanese writer Sakyo Komatsu , in which a man systematically amputates and consumes his own body parts so as not to be responsible for taking the lives of other beings. She pulled it from her mother’s bookshelves and read it with horror and fascination when she was 11. “If you want to cause no harm in the world, do you truly have to turn inward?” she asked.

Though Kleeman’s roots are Taiwanese and American, she grew up steeped in Japanese language and literature because of her mother’s field as well as her family’s experiences during World War II. “My grandparents both spoke Japanese because of the occupation,” she said. Her first memory is of waking up in her Tokyo bedroom as a toddler, feeling everything shaking, when her grandmother ran in shouting the Japanese word for earthquake.

But she would say her identity as a writer belongs to no one lineage, genre or style. “I’m terrified of writing the same book twice,” she said, and when she moved away from the dreamlike mode of “Intimations,” there were people who told her to go back to it.

“I literally don’t know how,” Kleeman said. “The idea of trying to be like myself and failing scares me so much.”

She’s not a surrealist, a satirist or even an anticapitalist. She’s a contortionist, she said, “more located in my desire to be something else.”

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• Statement of Faith

Under the Sun: Reading Ecclesiastes

What profit have we from all the toil

which we toil at under the sun?

One generation departs and another generation comes,

but the world forever stays.

The sun rises and the sun sets;

then it presses on to the place where it rises.

Shifting south, then north,

back and forth shifts the wind, constantly shifting its course.

All rivers flow to the sea,

yet never does the sea become full.

To the place where they flow,

the rivers continue to flow.

All things are wearisome,

too wearisome for words.

The eye is not satisfied by seeing

nor has the ear enough of hearing.

( The New American Bible , Ecclesiastes 1:2-8)

The poetic language of these opening verses of the biblical book, Ecclesiastes, combines images of both nature (sun, wind, rivers, sea) and the human body (eye, ear). Despite the beauty of the poetic images, the reader cannot ignore the fact that these opening verses present sentiments of pessimism, futility, and mundanity. The reader’s choice to continue may very well be based on a desire to further enjoy the author’s poetic language and/or a desire to know if/how the author eventually nuances the overwhelmingly negative sentiments that he initially presents.

There is an appointed time for everything,

and a time for every affair under the heavens.

A time to give birth, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant.

A time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to tear down, and a time to build.

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them;

a time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces.

A time to seek, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to cast away.

A time to rend, and a time to sew;

a time to be silent, and a time to speak.

A time to love, and a time to hate;

a time of war, and a time of peace.

(Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

Reading on, this passage from the third chapter of Ecclesiastes surely satisfies the reader seeking further poetic elements. The repetition of “time” combined with the repetition of juxtapositions like “birth”/”die,” “kill”/”heal,” “weep”/”laugh,” etc., provides the passage with a sort of meditative structure. The passage also appeals to the reader seeking the author’s redemption from his previously negative tone, though this appeal, for several reasons, is more subtle than the appeal of poetic elements. For the reader who recognizes the passage as one that is commonly read at funerals, the sentiment of the passage remains overwhelmingly negative, as the reader associates it with death, loss, loneliness. However, upon a closer reading of the passage, one notices that the author varies the order of the positive and negative elements of the juxtapositions. Specifically, the first two juxtapositions feature the positive element before the negative element, the next five juxtapositions feature the negative element before the positive element, the following three juxtapositions feature the positive element before the negative element, the next two juxtapositions feature the negative element before the positive element, the following juxtaposition features the positive element before the negative element, and the final juxtaposition features the negative element before the positive element. It is this last part of the observation that the reader should remember, so to restate it: one can observe that the passage ends with a positive element, that of “peace.” The passage ends with a positive sentiment that is so subtle that it may not satisfactorily oppose the initially negative sentiment, though it does begin to nuance the negative sentiment. The curious continue reading Ecclesiastes.

And I saw that there is nothing better for mortals than to rejoice in their work; for this is their lot. Who will let them see what is to come after them?

(Ecclesiastes 3:22)

In this verse, the author seems to further nuance the initially negative sentiment. Whereas at the beginning of Ecclesiastes, the author questions, “What profit have we from all the toil  which we toil at under the sun?” (1:2), now he refers to “toil” as “work,” a synonym with a slightly more positive connotation. Furthermore, the author tells the reader to “rejoice” in his work. Though work is mundane, and sometimes futile, two sentiments which the author expresses at the beginning of Ecclesiastes, here, the author chooses to adjust his initial sentiment of pessimism to one of rejoicing. Yet, some degree of pessimism remains in that the author still poses the (rhetorical) question, “Who will let them see what is to come after them?” The eager and persistent reader continues on.

Here is what I see as good: It is appropriate to eat and drink and prosper from all the toil one toils at under the sun during the limited days of life God gives us; for this is our lot.

Those to whom God gives riches and property, and grants power to partake of them, so that they receive their lot and find joy in the fruits of their toil: This is a gift from God.

For they will hardly dwell on the shortness of life, because God lets them busy themselves with the joy of their heart.

(Ecclesiastes 5:17-19)

This passage presents the clearest opposition yet to the author’s initially negative sentiments. The choice to preface the passage with the declaration that what follows is “good” marks a clear transition. Here, the author recognizes that work, toil, is not always futile; rather, we can “prosper,” too, from our work, acquiring “riches,” “property,” “power,” and, in further contrast to the author’s initial negativity, “joy of heart.” In this passage, it seems that the reader may no longer deem the author pessimistic, but only realistic, such as when he recognizes that we have only “limited days of life,” a “shortness of life.” At this point in Ecclesiastes, the reader who seeks knowledge of whether or not the author eventually nuances the overwhelmingly negative sentiments that he initially presents ought to be satisfied. Yet, out of curiosity and persistence, the reader continues. Will the author move beyond his now realistic sentiment to achieve an optimistic sentiment?

Therefore I praised joy, because there is nothing better for mortals under the sun than to eat and to drink and to be joyful; this will accompany them in their toil through the limited days of life God gives them under the sun.

I applied my heart to know wisdom and to see the business that is done on earth, though neither by day nor by night do one’s eyes see sleep,

and I saw all the work of God: No mortal can find out the work that is done under the sun. However much mortals may toil in searching, no one finds it out; and even if the wise claim to know, they are unable to find it out.

(Ecclesiastes 8:15-17)

In this passage, it is clear that the author’s nuancing of his initially negative sentiment does not continue to progress. The author’s sentiment stagnates at one of realism. He maintains his declaration that we ought to find our toils “joyful,” and he continues to recognize our lives as consisting of “limited days.” There is futility in one’s efforts to unveil God’s will for His Kingdom, yet, here, the author does not seem to emphasize that futility requires a pessimistic sentiment; the author does not imply that a lack of knowledge of God’s will for His Kingdom is an undesirable outcome.

For whoever is chosen among all the living has hope: a live dog is better off than a dead lion.

For the living know that they are to die, but the dead no longer know anything. There is no further recompense for them, because all memory of them is lost.

For them, love and hatred and rivalry have long since perished. Never again will they have part in anything that is done under the sun.

Go, eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart, because it is now that God favors your works.

At all times let your garments be white, and spare not the perfume for your head.

Enjoy life with the wife you love, all the days of the vain life granted you under the sun. This is your lot in life, for the toil of your labors under the sun.

Anything you can turn your hand to, do with what power you have; for there will be no work, no planning, no knowledge, no wisdom in the nether world where you are going.

(Ecclesiastes 9:4-10)

Though firmly maintaining his sentiment of realism in this passage, the author provides the reader with tangible examples of how he might find joy in his life despite the reality that the reader will occasionally find his work to be futile and mundane. By poetically juxtaposing the living and the dead, the “live dog” and the “dead lion,” and by ultimately declaring that “the dead” will “never again…have part in anything that is done under the sun,” the author suggests that we, the living, through our daily works, do take part in what is done under the sun, here on earth, here in God’s Kingdom.

Earlier this semester, I read in a post by Blessed is She , a daily blog for young Catholic women, “I am finding purpose in the process.” Ever since I read this, the sentence has become my personal mantra. Though the current process for each of us, our works as students, may seem futile and mundane at times, perhaps leading us to feel pessimistic, we ought to be at least realistic. We ought to at least find purpose in our works. This purpose lies in recognition that our lives, our toils under the sun, are designed to fulfill God’s will for his Kingdom, though we will never, in a tangible sense, know exactly what God’s will entails. We know not the vision that He has for His Kingdom, yet we must recognize that we are part of His present Kingdom and that we are part of building His future Kingdom.

While the author transitions from a pessimistic to a realistic sentiment over the course of Ecclesiastes, what he maintains throughout the book is his vivid poetic language. The significance of the poetic image and repetition of “under the sun” is worth noting. The sun provides light and warmth and allows for growth. What is growing, under the sun, is God’s Kingdom. Just as the sun is an element required for the growth of God’s Kingdom so, too, is each of our toils, our everyday works. I find this to be profound. The realization that I, and every person, am responsible, in part, for growing God’s future Kingdom, through my present works, the present process, provides me with purpose, making me very glad to have read Ecclesiastes and very grateful that the book is included in the Bible.

Marina Spinelli ’18 is a Junior in Eliot House studying Human Evolutionary Biology.

Sun’s magnetic field originates surprisingly close to the surface

• Data Science

An international team of researchers, including Northwestern University engineers, is getting closer to solving a 400-year-old solar mystery that stumped even famed astronomer Galileo Galilei.

Since first observing the sun’s magnetic activity, astronomers have struggled to pinpoint where the process originates. Now, after running a series of complex calculations on a NASA supercomputer, the researchers discovered the magnetic field is generated about 20,000 miles below the sun’s surface.

The finding contradicts previous theories, which suggest the phenomenon has deep origins — beginning more than 130,000 miles below the sun’s surface.

The research was published May 22 in the journal Nature.

Not only does the new discovery help us better understand our sun’s dynamic processes, it also could help scientists more accurately forecast powerful solar storms. Although this month’s strong solar storms released beautiful, extended views of the Northern Lights, similar storms can cause intense destruction — damaging Earth-orbiting satellites, electricity grids and radio communications.

“Understanding the origin of the sun’s magnetic field has been an open question since Galileo and is important for predicting future solar activity, like flares that could hit the Earth,” said study co-author Daniel Lecoanet . “This work proposes a new hypothesis for how the sun’s magnetic field is generated that better matches solar observations, and, we hope, could be used to make better predictions of solar activity.”

An expert in astrophysical fluid dynamics, Lecoanet is an assistant professor of engineering sciences and applied mathematics at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and a member of the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics . Geoffrey Vasil , a mathematics professor at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, led the study.

Puzzling history

For centuries, astronomers have studied the tell-tale signs of the sun’s magnetic activity. Among them was Galileo, who made the first detailed observations of sunspots in 1612. Using early telescopes and even his naked-eye, Galileo documented the shifting dark patches caused by the sun’s ever-changing magnetic field.

Over the years, astronomers have made significant progress in understanding the origins of the solar dynamo — the physical process that generates the magnetic field — but limitations have remained. Theories suggesting the dynamo has a deep origin, for example, predict solar features that astronomers have never observed, such as strong magnetic fields at high latitudes.

Missing pieces

To solve this puzzle, the research team developed new, state-of-the-art numerical simulations to model the sun’s magnetic field. Unlike previous models, the new model accounts for torsional oscillations, a cyclical pattern of how gas and plasma flow within and around the sun. Because the sun is not solid like the Earth and moon, it doesn’t rotate as one body. Instead, its rotation varies with latitude. Like the 11-year solar magnetic cycle, torsional oscillations also experience an 11-year cycle.

“Because the wave has the same period as the magnetic cycle, it has been thought that these phenomena were linked,” Lecoanet said. “However, the traditional ‘deep theory’ of the solar magnetic field does not explain where these torsional oscillations come from. An intriguing clue is that the torsional oscillations are only near the surface of the sun. Our hypothesis is that the magnetic cycle and the torsional oscillations are different manifestations of the same physical process.”

When Kyle Augustson, a postdoctoral fellow in Lecoanet’s lab at Northwestern, ran the numerical simulations, the researchers found their new model provided a quantitative explanation for properties observed in the torsional oscillations. The model also explains how sunspots follow patterns of the sun’s magnetic activity — another detail missing from the deep origin theory.

Improving predictions

With a better understanding of the sun’s dynamo, researchers hope to improve forecasts for solar storms. When solar flares and coronal mass ejections launch toward Earth, they can severely damage electrical and telecommunications infrastructure, including GPS navigation tools. This month’s recent solar storms, for example, knocked out navigational systems for farming equipment — right at peak planting season.

But the researchers look to an even more powerful solar storm that hit Canada in September 1859 as a cautionary tale. Dubbed the Carrington Event, the intense storm damaged the country’s fledgling telegraph system. With enough warning, engineers could take steps to prevent catastrophic damage in the future.

“While the recent solar storms were powerful, we’re worried about even more powerful storms like the Carrington Event,” Lecoanet said. “If a storm of similar intensity hit the United States today, it would cause an estimated $1 trillion to $2 trillion in damage. Although many aspects of solar dynamics remain shrouded in mystery, our work makes huge strides in cracking one of the oldest unsolved problems in theoretical physics and opens the way to better predictions of dangerous solar activity.”

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My family home of 17 years is being sold behind my back – I learned about my ‘zombie mortgage’ from a knock at the door

• Cheyenne R. Ubiera , Night News Reporter
• Published : 0:48 ET, Jun 1 2024
• Updated : 0:58 ET, Jun 1 2024

A WOMAN'S home of nearly two decades is being sold out from under her and it all happened after receiving a strange knock at the door.

Karen McDonough was enjoying a cup of tea at her home in Quincy, Massachusetts - about nine miles south of Boston - when she saw something unusual outside her window.

"There were like 20 cars , and they all came at the same time and they parked in front of my house, across the street, up the street," she told MPR News .

"I just had this feeling like something really bad had happened ... like maybe somebody in the neighborhood died."

She had no idea that she would be involved in the ordeal.

McDonough walked outside and approached a group of men to ask what was going on.

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"He had a piece of paper, and I said, 'What's happening?' And he goes, 'We're selling your house.'"

The commotion was actually a foreclosure auction on the home she owned for 17 years.

McDonough, who raised her two children in the home and made sure to pay her mortgage each month, was shocked.

During the 2008 housing crash, McDonough asked for a modification on her mortgage - just like millions of other homeowners.

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She said her mortgage company told her that the second mortgage on the home had been forgiven as part of the modification, which McDonough believed to be true as she stopped receiving statements for more than 10 years.

Recently, however, she had gotten phone calls demanding money and believed it to be a scam.

However, these men on her lawn were telling her, "This is a foreclosure. You are going to lose this house," McDonough said.

It turns out McDonough had become a victim of a zombie second mortgage.

Many homeowners believe these loans are long gone, however, they come back to life because they get brought up by debt collectors.

These companies will also add on retroactive interest and fees before foreclosing on people's homes .

McDonough bought the home in 2005 after her divorce and found that the $365,000 price tag was affordable with her income as a nurse.

"I thought the size was kind of charming. ... It had a little yard," she said. "I thought it would be perfect."

Despite having a decent amount in savings, however, McDonough didn't save up for a big down payment for a house.

As the housing bubble was about to burst, mortgage companies found ways to loan money , which included getting rid of down payments, and instead, lenders giving two mortgages .

The first loan covered 80% of the home's value while the second covered the remaining 20% - these were called 80/20 loans.

"It was the easiest thing I've ever applied for," McDonough said.

"I just filled out paperwork and submitted it and I was approved."

Her first mortgage was $292,000 and the second was for $73,000 on the two-bedroom home, where she lived with her two sons.

What it means for a home to be put in foreclosure

Foreclosures can happen when lenders take control of a property after borrowers have failed to make their repayments.

Homeowners or borrowers will receive a Notice of Default by their lender triggering the foreclosure process.

Those in HOA communities can also see their homes  foreclosed by their HOA  for falling behind on fees, meaning that even if you keep up on mortgage payments, you can still lose your home.

Before foreclosure, a HOA will put a lien on your property which then allows them to auction it to reclaim unpaid funds.

The sale price of the property can often be much less than it's worth as it only needs to be enough to cover the debts to the HOA or lender and is sold via auction to the highest bidder.

But when the world was sent into the worst financial crisis in decades McDonough wasn't sure what to do until her mortgage company told her the second mortgage was forgiven.

McDonough believed the loan was dead, however, in 2020 she received a letter in the mail from First American National telling her she owed money .

"It had an amount and they wanted a payment ... like $77,000," she said. "I was kind of in disbelief."

McDonough ignored the notice, believing it to be fraud however, First American National kept calling and threatening to foreclose on her home.

Fed up, she called the company managing her first mortgage to get advice, however, a representative also believed the strange calls were fraudulent.

"I was crying on the phone with them, like having a nervous breakdown," McDonough said.

"And they kept saying like we're gonna help you. You can't lose your home through this."

However, McDonough's mortgage company told the outlet that it has not found any record of this conversation.

What is a zombie mortgage?

A zombie mortage is a mortgage debt that was believed to have been forgiven or satisfied a long time ago, but still exists.

These old debts can be written off by the lender and sold, oftentimes for pennies on the dollar, to debt collectors.

Sometimes, mortgage companies will stop sending payments and homeowners believe the debt is dead.

However, debt collectors come years later to collect on the debt.

As property value rises, debt collectors threaten foreclosure and other collection actions while asking for the outstanding balance - plus fees and interest.

Source: Consumer Finance

In 2021, First American National made the steps to foreclose on McDonough's home, auctioning it, and purchasing it for $178,500.

A few months later, McDonough said she received an eviction notice on her front door.

"I didn't sleep , and I just started packing everything," she said. "I was crying for three days straight. I just packed."

McDonough filed a lawsuit claiming that her second mortgage was forgiving and that she was told the debt collection was likely a fraud.

"We think that they have systemically and deliberately broken the law ," said McDonough's lawyer, Todd Kaplan.

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At the time of writing, she still lives in her home and continues to pay her mortgage.

"It's still my house," she said. "Like on principle ... it's still my home."

• Massachusetts

All Books by Under the Bridge Author Rebecca Godfrey

Dive into the work of the late, great writer depicted on the Hulu series.

Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. We may earn a commission from these links.

Godfrey died in 2022 from lung cancer, but her work lives on. Her best-known book, Under the Bridge , was recently turned into a miniseries on Hulu, starring Riley Keough as Godfrey herself, who teams up with a detective (played by Lily Gladstone ) to investigate a murder. If you’ve been keeping up with Esquire’s coverage of the series, you know how much we enjoyed the heartbreaking yet enlightening tale . Aside from Under the Bridge , Godfrey penned two more compelling, essential stories. You can brush up on her collection below.

Gallery Books Under the Bridge

Released eight years after Reena Virk’s tragic death, Under the Bridge explores the events leading up to her demise. Godfrey spent six years researching the case, conducting numerous interviews with the accused to create a thought-provoking story. Under the Bridge taps into the psyche of eight teenagers (seven girls and one boy) to unpack the dangers of mob mentality and highlight how bullying can have fatal consequences. Rather than remaining objective, Godfrey tried to empathize with everyone involved, resulting in a refreshingly humane true-crime story.

In an interview with Leslie Jamison for The Paris Review , Godfrey opened up about her writing process for Under the Bridge . “I wanted to very carefully portray the lives of the teenagers, and the victim Reena, before the crime so the reader could see them not as studies but as people, with lives that were once so innocent and normal,” she said. “I hoped if I could be as observant and detailed as possible about the tensions and characters involved, the reader would be able to understand without relying on the authorial voice for a simple explanation.”

The Torn Skirt: A Novel

The Torn Skirt is similar to Under the Bridge in that it examines the secret lives of teenagers—only this time the narrative is pure fiction. Godfrey’s debut follows Sara Shaw, a sheltered girl desperate for an adventure. Her pursuit leads her to Justine, a mysterious teenager who wears a torn skirt. Sara’s connection to Justine puts her in the path of thieves, runaways, skater boys, and dangerous adults. It’s all fun and games—until tragedy strikes.

Peggy: A Novel

Godfrey died while working on Peggy , but Leslie Jamison—her friend and fellow writer—completed the novel. The story is inspired by the real life of Peggy Guggenheim, a Jewish woman whose world is upended when her father becomes a victim of the Titanic sinking. His sudden death inspires her to make the most of her life. Her family is wealthy, prim, and proper, so she subverts expectations by pursuing an art career. Peggy is entranced by the glamorous art communities in New York and Europe but gets discouraged by the rampant sexism and antisemitism that she encounters. While trying to find her footing, she’s tasked with a balancing act: Can she appease her family while honoring herself? Peggy will be available for purchase on August 13.

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Nicole Brown Simpson's sisters recall her life — with and without O.J. — in Lifetime documentary series

“she’s someone who just was very warm, very warm-hearted and quirky,” says tanya brown, of her late sister nicole brown simpson..

Nicole Brown Simpson is shown in this Oct. 4, 1993, file photo at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo. A new, four-part docuseries on Lifetime explores her life.

DAVID EULITT/AP, File

In the familiar images that circulated after her June 1994 death, Nicole Brown Simpson appears frozen in place.

She’s a statuesque blonde with a tense smile, silently escorting famous husband O.J. Simpson . She’s the breezy California beauty behind the wheel of her white Ferrari. And she’s the somber woman, with telling bruises and a black eye, in the stark Polaroids locked away in a bank vault.

Thirty years later, Nicole’s three sisters want her remembered for more than those static images or the violent way she died. They fear the vibrant person they knew has been lost in the chaos of Simpson’s murder trial, the questions it raised about race in America and the headlines spawned by his recent death.

“It’s seeing her move. It’s hearing her talk, seeing her,” youngest sister Tanya Brown told The Associated Press of the joy she felt watching video clips of Nicole in a new Lifetime documentary. “(She’s) someone who just was very warm, very warm-hearted and quirky.”

“Daddy’s taking movies again,” coos Nicole, who met Simpson when she was 18, as she cuddles her infant child on the beach. The home movie included in “The Life & Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson,” which airs this weekend, echoes one of her as a child with her own mother.

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“She wanted to be like her mother,” said Melissa G. Moore, the executive producer. “Nicole wanted to be home, being a mother and creating a beautiful home.”

The innocence of the mother-and-child beach scene contrasts with friends’ memories of a cloud descending over the couple’s Laguna Beach home whenever Simpson arrived and another of him knocking her down in the water.

“Nicole was a very, very good hider of her domestic violence. She pushed everything under the rug and then would change the subject. And I think that was just all to protect herself and to protect everyone that she loved and her family,” Dominique Brown told the AP in a recent interview with her sisters.

Along with the Browns, the filmmakers spoke to friends both famous and infamous, including Simpson houseguest Brian “Kato” Kaelin, whose laid-back demeanor on the witness stand at the 1995 trial made him a household name; Faye Resnick, who wrote a tell-all book; and Kris Jenner, whose ex-husband Robert Kardashian, to her dismay, joined Simpson’s defense team.

Nicole’s two children, who have stayed out of the public eye and seemingly remained close to Simpson until his death last month, did not take part. They were both busy starting families of their own, Moore said.

Denise Brown (from left), Dominique Brown and Tanya Brown are featured in the docuseries “The Life & Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson.”

Christopher Smith/Christopher Smith/Invision/AP

But the sisters felt it was finally time to revisit Nicole’s life and legacy. They have grieved in different ways, and sometimes grew apart. Their parents have died.

Oldest sister Denise Brown, who gave wrenching trial testimony, never hesitated to pin the stabbing deaths of their sister and Ronald Goldman on Simpson, and became a vocal advocate for domestic violence victims. Although she had known the marriage was volatile, she did not think of Nicole at the time as a battered woman, even after Simpson was charged with assault on New Year’s Eve 1989. Nicole, after a week away, chose to return home afterward.

“She said, ‘I don’t want to ruin my children’s father’s life,’” Denise Brown recalled to the AP.

Dominique Brown focused on the couple’s young children, Sydney and Justin, after Nicole’s death. For more than a year, as Simpson sat in jail, she helped her aging parents raise them, along with her own son. Simpson won back custody after he was acquitted, later moving his children to Florida. Dominique said she remains close with the children today — and still doesn’t know quite what to think.

“There are kids involved. And they don’t have their mother. I knew that somebody was to blame and I knew that somehow there was involvement. I didn’t know to what extent,” Dominique Brown says in the film, explaining why she refrained from commenting on Simpson’s alleged role during the trial. “I still don’t know.”

Tanya Brown, a decade younger than Nicole, has felt waves of guilt over Nicole’s death. At the 10-year mark, she tried to take her own life. In treatment, she thought: “She had a perfect opportunity to share something with me, to share her tumultuous relationship, you know? And she never did.”

All three believe that Nicole, like many victims, downplayed the abuse. She had always wanted the kind of happy family life her parents had provided them.

They had met in Germany, then built an affluent life for their girls in southern California. Nicole, a homecoming princess, was interested in photography. She enrolled in community college, but met Simpson in 1977 at a club where she worked. He was a 30-year-old NFL superstar and married father.

A childhood friend, David LeBon, remembers Nicole coming home from their first date in a Rolls Royce, with the zipper of her pants ripped. He wanted to confront Simpson.

“She said, ‘No, don’t. I really like him,’” LeBon recalls in the documentary.

They made a glamorous couple, and Simpson found more fame as an actor and TV pitchman. Nicole loved hosting people at his Los Angeles mansion, where they married in 1985. But those good times were interrupted by bouts of violence, according to the photos and diaries Nicole hid in a safe deposit box, and the repeated 911 calls she made seeking help, especially after they separated in the early 1990s.

And while they both had big personalities, the documentary makes clear how Simpson came to control her. Early on, he became angry when she kissed a male friend on the cheek at one of his Buffalo Bills games. He wanted all her attention when he returned home from a trip. He derided her for getting “fat” during her pregnancies and wanted her to avoid vaginal deliveries and nursing to keep her body intact.

“He had turned her into the perfect wife, and that’s what he expected of her,” Resnick says in the film.

At the time, domestic violence was largely deemed a private matter. Nicole’s death helped bring it out of the shadows.

“The family saw some of this stuff, but they didn’t have a name for it,” said Patti Giggans, a nonprofit director in Los Angeles who has worked on domestic violence since the 1970s, and spoke frequently on it during Simpson’s trial. “They were pretty helpless.”

Not long after Nicole died, then-Sen. Joe Biden invited Denise Brown to Washington to lobby support for the Violence Against Women Act. It passed that fall, helping to fund shelters, hotlines and other services ever since.

Nicole herself called a helpline five days before she was killed, as Simpson’s stalking intensified. They had been on and off since their 1992 divorce, but finally, at 35, she was looking to make a clean break.

“She was on the cusp of a new life,” said Moore, who found it difficult to realize how much Nicole had suffered in silence.

“This was a woman who couldn’t share the hell that she was going through with the people she loved. Not because she didn’t trust them, but because she wanted to protect them,” Moore said. “It must have been a very lonely experience for Nicole.”

NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide and domestic violence. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org . For the National Domestic Violence Hotline, please call 1-800-799-7233 in the U.S.

Baltimore Orioles | Jud Wilson and other Baltimore Negro Leagues…

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Baltimore orioles | jud wilson and other baltimore negro leagues stars now part of mlb record books.

Major League Baseball announced on Tuesday the completion of a three-year study of over 2,300 Negro Leagues players, unveiling new leaderboards that incorporate the statistics of Black major leaguers who played in one of seven Negro Leagues from 1920 to 1948.

Josh Gibson, not Ty Cobb, is now the all-time batting champion. Satchel Paige, not Bob Gibson, has the lowest single-season ERA since World War I.

“We are proud that the official historical record now includes the players of the Negro Leagues,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “This initiative is focused on ensuring that future generations of fans have access to the statistics and milestones of all those who made the Negro Leagues possible. Their accomplishments on the field will be a gateway to broader learning about this triumph in American history and the path that led to Jackie Robinson’s 1947 Dodger debut.”

Wilson played for the Baltimore Black Sox, one of the two recognized Baltimore-based Negro League teams, from 1923 to 1929 as part of a 21-year career split among the Eastern Colored League, American Negro League, East-West League and Negro National League II. The intense, hard-hitting infielder was one of the greatest players of his era and he stuffed the box score on a regular basis. MLB now acknowledges his .350 career batting average as fifth best in major league history, trailing only Josh Gibson’s  .372, Cobb’s .367, Oscar Charleston’s .363 and Rogers Hornsby’s .358.

Wilson also ranks 10th in on-base percentage (.434) and 21st in OPS (.960). The lack of a full schedule for some Negro Leagues teams, combined with missing records for many games, prevented him from ever playing more than 76 games in a season — and kept him and others from appearing near the top of any counting stat leaderboards — but he won two batting titles with Baltimore, including a .422 average in 1927 that sits 13th all time.

MLB set unique standards for Negro Leagues players to qualify for its major league leaderboards. Players who spent their entire careers in the Negro Leagues require at least 1,800 at-bats or 600 innings innings pitched, compared with 5,000 at-bats and 2,000 innings for MLB leaders. The study is not yet finished, either. The researchers assigned to the project estimate it’s approximately 75% complete, which means more players could pop up on leaderboards and statistics might be adjusted moving forward.

Other Baltimore-based Negro League standouts include Roy Campanella, who spent eight seasons with the Baltimore Elite Giants before joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948. The boost Campanella receives for his Negro Leagues stats push his RBI total up to 1,019, making him one of 303 players in major league history to drive in 1,000 or more runs. Willie Wells, a Hall of Fame infielder who played 53 games with the Baltimore Elite Giants in 1946, ranks 36th in MLB history in batting average (.328) and 30th in OPS (.943).

Hall of Famer and two-way star Leon Day, who grew up in Baltimore and played for the Black Sox as a rookie in 1934, joins Bob Feller as the only two pitchers to throw a no-hitter on opening day. The Elite Giants’ Bill Byrd, another two-way player, becomes another statistical unicorn in the neighborhood of Babe Ruth and Shohei Ohtani. In 1941, Byrd won an ERA title on the mound with a mark of 2.23 and hit .298 at the plate. Ruth achieved both of those statistics in the same season three times, but Ohtani never has.

Black Sox right-hander Joe Strong, who also hit .268 in his career, now holds the record for the longest no-hitter with his 11-inning performance in the first game of a doubleheader July 31, 1927. His teammate Laymon Yokely paced the team’s assigned league in strikeouts in back-to-back seasons from 1928 to 1929; he’s the only pitcher in Baltimore’s major league history to lead his respective league in strikeouts in consecutive seasons.

Outfielder Henry Kimbro also gets credit for winning a batting title for the Elite Giants with a .385 average in 1947. That mark ranks just outside the top 100 in major league history for a single season.

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