Dear Reader (including those of you still plowing your way through my endless essay on Bellamy’s Children), 

It’s been a rough couple days—more on that below—so as the idiot said when told he was standing in front of quicksand: Let’s jump right in. 

Actually, hold on. Speaking of quicksand, if you’re around my age or maybe slightly older, quicksand was a major concern. When I was, say, 5 or 6 years old, I think I would have listed quicksand as one of the chief causes of death for explorers, Tarzan’s entourage, and even railroad crews in the Old West. It came up in movies and TV shows all the time. Gilligan’s Island, Abbott and Costello, Jonny Quest and so many others had to contend with it. 

My friends and I would regularly discuss how to survive quicksand and run drills pretending that the living room floor was quicksand (when it wasn’t lava, duh).