{"id":34728,"date":"2022-06-01T21:24:16","date_gmt":"2022-06-02T01:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/?p=34728"},"modified":"2022-06-01T21:24:17","modified_gmt":"2022-06-02T01:24:17","slug":"never-home-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/2022\/06\/the-bookworm-sez\/never-home-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"Never Home Alone"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>

Ahhhhh, a quiet night at home.  You\u2019ve been promising yourselves that for a long time.  A nice dinner, maybe a movie, or soft music and conversation.  It\u2019s gonna be perfect \u2013 just you, your beloved and, as in the new book \u201cNever Home Alone\u201d by Rob Dunn, a few billion bacteria, a hundred insects, a parasite or two, and maybe a fungi.  Back when you were a child, chances are that you spent a lot of time outdoors getting dirty, sweaty, and germy.  Today\u2019s kids, says Dunn, spend an average of 93% of their week inside, in what\u2019s often a place that\u2019s as germ-free as possible.  Dunn and his colleagues learned, however, that our homes are actually teeming with life we rarely notice, critters we can\u2019t see, and creatures we share without even trying.  We live amidst abundant biodiversity, and it\u2019s \u201cbeneficial to us, necessary even.\u201d  Bacteria, for example, get an overall bad rap.  Of all the millions of bacteria known, \u201cJust fifty\u201d or so are dangerous to humans, and we absolutely need the rest to exist.  Without the bacteria in your gut, you\u2019d be in a world of hurt.  Without it in your food, some dishes wouldn\u2019t taste as good.  Says Dunn, we need bacteria so much that the kindest thing you could ever do to your kids is to let them get filthy dirty, or to take a page from the Amish and buy them a cow.  Bacteria are everywhere, including space stations, shower heads, and that glass of water you just drank.  Your house is loaded with fungi that are slowly eating it \u2013 so many kinds of fungi that some aren\u2019t even named yet.  The average home holds \u201cat least a hundred species of arthropods,\u201d and cockroaches don\u2019t make you nearly as sick as will the people you come in contact with.  So, it\u2019s unsettling to think of those germs in your home, your food, and your bed, isn\u2019t it?  Argh, what can you do to eliminate the creepy-crawlies that are in, on and around you?  \u201cThe answer,\u201d says Dunn, \u201cis that you shouldn\u2019t.\u201d  If you could somehow infuse the curiosity of a six-year-old with PhD-level intelligence, imagine what wondrous things you could learn.  Or why not make it easier on yourself and just read \u201cNever Home Alone.\u201d  Yes, that delightful, open-minded gee-whiz is exactly what makes this book so enjoyable.  Surprisingly, it\u2019s doubly so for a germophobe, an arachnophobe, or anyone who can\u2019t stand the idea of \u201cintruders\u201d in their home.  Author Rob Dunn has a way of brushing fears aside so he can tell you about something that\u2019s too cool to miss, or a fact that makes you say, \u201cWow!\u201d  You\u2019ll kind of forget that fear for a moment, you\u2019ll be almost impressed, and more likely to relax more and clean less.  Science-minded readers will love this book, too, as it\u2019s filled with things you\u2019ll want to know just for the health aspect of it.  Really, for anyone who\u2019s alive, \u201cNever Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live\u201d is a book to share with a few million of your newest best friends.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ahhhhh, a quiet night at home.  You\u2019ve been promising yourselves that for a long time.  A nice dinner, maybe a movie, or soft music and conversation.  It\u2019s gonna be perfect \u2013 just you, your beloved and, as in the new book \u201cNever Home Alone\u201d by Rob Dunn, a few billion bacteria, a hundred insects, a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":34730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-34728","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bookworm-sez"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34731,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34728\/revisions\/34731"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}