🌀🐇 #234 ordinary people, my great grandfather, magic in the machine

Plus Everything You Should Know About Sound

March 19, 2025

⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

🤖 The Magic in the Machine: Finding wonder in the technology of storytelling. Read it here.

🫂The Quiet Power of Ordinary People: How everyday individuals shape history through small yet impactful actions. Read it here.

🪦 Regrets of the Dying: Insights from a palliative care nurse on the most common end-of-life regrets. Read it here.

💌 Want More? Down The Rabbit Hole readers also enjoy these awesome (and completely free!) newsletters. Explore

🎇 Image of The Week

The Yosemite Firefall is a natural phenomenon that occurs in Yosemite National Park, California, typically around mid-to-late February. It happens when the setting sun illuminates Horsetail Fall, a seasonal waterfall on the eastern edge of El Capitan, in such a way that it glows with a vibrant orange and red hue, resembling a cascade of fire. This stunning visual effect lasts for only a few minutes each day under the right conditions. Watch a video of it flowing here.

🔗 Honoring a Great Grandfather

At the end of last year, upon discovering my wife was pregnant, I was inspired to take a deep dive into my ancestry. I knew I had vaguely European roots but had no names or details. My family line was largely a mystery to me, and I wanted my son to have some sense of where he came from.

One of the more interesting things I unearthed was this story, which brought one of my 6th great-grandfathers to America:

“One bright Saturday morning in the year 1739 John Broomhall, then an active and intelligent lad nearly thirteen years old, got leave of his mother to walk into Bristol to see the ocean and the shipping.

When he reached the wharves the captain of one of the ships lying there enticed him on board the vessel and entertained him highly until late in the afternoon; and before the boy was aware of it, the ship had sailed and was out at sea, and he was, of course, unable to return to his home. This kidnaping game was constantly played in those days by unscrupulous and conscienceless "sea captains," who found in it a source of great profit; and it is to this practice that the United States now owes many of its best people and families.

Upon the arrival of the ship in America young Broomhall's services for seven years were sold in Pennsylvania or Delaware to a Quaker named Paynter (a pious, God-fearing man) to "pay for his passage." When we consider that his "passage" was thrust upon him by fraud, sorely against his inclination and will, the ironical humor of selling seven years of his life to pay for it seems to fall but little short of the diabolical. However, the boy was of approved character and good pluck, and rose superior to the oppressions that were heaped upon him.”

Sometimes, when I’m holding my son, I think about this man. He could have let this grievous assault on his agency grind him under, becoming subsumed by the sadness wrought by this unfair treatment. But he persevered and made a life for himself. He didn’t let the winds of harsh circumstances blow him over. I’ve been unknowingly living in the shade of his courage my whole life.

But now I know his name and what he went through.

This reveals two things to me:

  1. Misfortune that sculpts character can ripen into good fortune.

  2. You have no idea how the trials you face today might lead to the unspeakable joy of your descendants.

I’m grateful I was able to recover this story so I can weave it into my familial lore moving forward. Both your family and mine, I’m sure, have countless stories like it, lost to history. The long arc of the human journey is the repeated song of triumph over tragedy. You are a living victory.

We are fragile creatures in a world of abundant danger—delicate bubbles of sea foam emerging from the thrashing waves of time.

To exist is a gift.

I’m grateful for John and my ancestors. I’m grateful for my son and my descendants to come.

I’m grateful for you, dear reader, as a mostly invisible passenger giving me reason to weave these words.

Thank you.

🧠 Brain Food, Delivered Daily

Every day Refind analyzes thousands of articles and send you only the best, tailored to your interests. Loved by 528,799 curious minds.

👁️ Common Mystic

Ponder this wisdom from G.K. Chesterton

Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus, he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also.

G.K. Chesterton

🤓 Learn This Word

Klexos: the art of dwelling on the past

⏳ From The Archives

A hand-picked link from a previous edition of 🌀🐇

Everything You Should Know About Sound

I’ve always been a little confused about sound. So for “Tuesday’s” “mini” post, I decided to do something about that.

We think of sound as something we hear—something that makes noise. But in pure physics terms, sound is just a vibration going through matter.

The way a vibration “goes through” matter is in the form of a sound wave. When you think of sound waves, you probably think of something like this:1

But that’s not how sound waves work. A wave like that is called a transverse wave, where each individual particle moves up and down to create a snake situation.

A sound wave is more like an earthworm situation:

🎬 Endnote

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With Wonder,

Mike Slavin

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