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1250270235
| 9781250270238
| 1250270235
| 4.25
| 1,453
| Feb 15, 2022
| Feb 15, 2022
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it was amazing
| Big changes are taking place across the vast plain stippled by spruce and striated with water that unfolds below the aircraft at 10,000 feet. The Big changes are taking place across the vast plain stippled by spruce and striated with water that unfolds below the aircraft at 10,000 feet. The skin of the earth is melting, microbial life waking after thousands, possibly millions, of frozen years. The soil is transpiring—perspiring one could say since more moisture is being released than absorbed—and animals and plants are taking note. It is a new world, and intelligent life—the smart genes—is sniffing it out, sending out suckers, seeds and scouts, ranging north, getting ready.The Treeline is a mind-blowing piece of work that will teach you many, many things you never suspected, while feeding your sense of awe and your sense of dread. We look to the margins for evidence of large changes in the world, tell-tale signs like rising levels along water frontages, expanding desert edges, changes in growing seasons, changes in wildlife. The treeline was the edge Ben Rawlence chose. [image] Ben Rawlence - Image from 5 x 15 He had spent years writing human rights reports and trying to get the UN and governments to address refugee issues, but when he started writing through the eyes of the refugees themselves, in several books, many more people began to listen. Understanding that the conflict and the displacement that was going on was driven by climate change I began to look for other examples, other parts of the world where we could see this process in action, where we could see climate breakdown as history already, and we could catch a glimpse of the future that awaits the rest of us. So I began digging around and doing research and came across this very arresting image of the trees and the forest moving north towards the pole. I discovered that the forest was on the move and the trees were turning the white arctic green. They shouldn’t be on the move. That’s not supposed to happen. And this sinister fact has huge consequences for all life on earth. - from the 5x15 pieceSo, what exactly is the treeline? Generically, it is the latitude above which there are no trees, roughly the Arctic Circle. Another measure is the rippled line around the globe south of which the average July temperature is ten degrees centigrade or higher. (The Arctic Squiggle?) Discovering that the Arctic treeline consisted of mostly six types of trees, he set about to look at each of these. Scots pine in Scotland, birch in Scandinavia, larch in Siberia, spruce in Alaska and, to a lesser extent, poplar in Canada and rowan in Greenland. I decided to visit each tree in its native territory, to see how the different species were faring in response to warming, and what their stories might mean for the other inhabitants of the forest, including us.The Arctic treeline is actually fairly squishy, not so much a line as an area of transition, an ecotone, where tree presence diminishes rather than ceases. Rawlence begins with a look at where he lives, in Wales, at the yew, struggling to persist in a world that is no longer conducive to its needs. But that may be changing. Then, it is off to the Cairngorm Mountains in Scotland, the Scandinavian interior, Siberia (larch), Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, looking at the role the boreal plays in our environment, and at the impact of global warming on these borderlands. More than the Amazon rainforest, the boreal is truly the lung of the world. Covering one fifth of the globe, and containing one third of all the trees on earth, the boreal is the second largest biome, or living system, after the ocean. Planetary systems—cycles of water and oxygen, atmospheric circulation, the albedo effect, ocean currents and polar winds—are shaped and directed by the position of the treeline and the functioning of the forest.One of the things that most impressed me, among the many fascinating nuggets to be found here were descriptions of the structures underlying forests. Wherever there are mushrooms, ferns, bracken and particular kinds of woodland plants like violets there was once forest. Rings of mushrooms are usually the outline, the long-ago earthwork of a tree stump. There are between fifteen and nineteen ecto-mycorrhizal fungi (fungi growing around the roots) in a mature pine forest, and they play a role in everything from carbon and nutrient transport to lichen cover, taking sugar from the tree and providing it with minerals in exchange. Planting trees without regard for the essential symbiotic “other half” of the forest below ground may be far less effective than allowing the ground to evolve into woodland at its own pace. Oliver Rackham describes a planted oak wood in Essex that even after 750 years still does not possess the orchids, plants and mushrooms that you would expect of a natural wood.I was reminded of what it might look like to see a city like New York or London from above and believe it to be constructed entirely of the visible structures, not appreciating that there are vast underground networks, water lines, sewer lines, gas lines, electrical lines, communication cables, transit tubes, and the like that provide the lifeblood which allows the above-ground, visible city to survive. Globally, these threads of mycorrhizal fungi make up between a third and a half of the living mass of soils. Soil is in fact a huge, fragile tangle of tiny connected threads. Having done some digging in our back yard, I can very much appreciate that. Another impressive feat is Rawlence’s strength in communicating how local populations interact with the trees among which they live. There are many surprises to be found here, in the range of specific benefits trees provide for one, which includes the fact that they transmit aerosols carrying chemicals that help maintain health in humans, that their leaves, berries, bark and other parts providing medicine for a wide range of illnesses, that they provide materials that oceans need to sustain life, that they drive planetary weather. Did you know that there are birch trees with things called trichomal hairs on the underside of their leaves, that capture particulates from the air, natural air filters that then allow the materials to be dropped to the ground, and washed away with the next rain? They also act like a fur coat for the leaves. The list goes on. You will be surprised by many of the uses that Arctic peoples have devised to make use of their local trees. Will it be possible to continue such a positive relationship as the land becomes less supportive of human endeavors? The Sami people, for example, are finding it increasingly difficult to manage their reindeer herds. Snowmobiles are less than ideal when there is no snow. Substituting four-wheel All Terrain Vehicles may allow them to herd their critters, but using them damages the landscape even more. At what point will it be impossible to continue at all? There are plenty of dark tidings. In this ring of melting ice global warming is taking place at a rate far in excess of what we experience in the more temperate zones. And then this unnerving bit; with more Co2 in the air, trees do not need to work so hard to get what they need, thus will produce less oxygen. Uh oh. As the forests of the northern hemisphere migrate north (race actually, at a rate of hundreds of feet a year in some places instead of inches per century) they are pursued on their southern end by increasingly fire-prone conditions. How much of our forest land will be consumed by a Langolier-like army of drought and flames before finding more welcoming climes? And then there is methane, pretty pearl-like bubbles when seen through clear Arctic ice, but how about this cheery nugget as permafrost becoming permaslush? Some studies have suggested that an unstable seabed could release a methane “burp” of 500–5000 gigatonnes, equivalent to decades of greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to an abrupt jump in temperature that humans will be powerless to arrest.In pop science books, the author acts as a guide to the subject matter, introducing us to the places he visits, and the experts he consults. Rawlence is an engaging and informative teacher with a gift for extracting local cultural lore and area-specific histories, as well as reporting the science in accessible terms. He seems like someone you would want to hang out with. You would certainly like to sign up for any class he teaches. You will learn a lot. He is also a lyrical writer, able to offer not only straight-ahead exposition, but poetical, sometimes emotion-filled reactions to the places he visits and the experiences he has on this journey. The brilliant sun on the pinkish cliffs and the starched blue of the sky, which has been mostly hidden all week, make the morning sing. The scent of a meadow is so heady it should be bottled. The hay has been freshly cut: huge plastic-covered bales guide the eye to a combine harvester abandoned mid-job, its windows covered in sparkling dew. Beyond, the path crosses the meadow to a wide bend that the flooding river has worked into a series of interlinked channels. The little bridges have been overwhelmed and carefully placed stepping-stones lie visible in the clear stream, half a meter underwater. Feet have cut a higher path along the edge of the valley, around drowned shrubs, riparian willow now floating midstream. The roar of the main river is all around. Gray water cradling slabs of dirty ice meanders around a cliff and then widens into a foaming skirt over even-sized white granite boulders that snag the ice and make it dance and nod until it falls apart and joins the sea-ward torrent.Rawlence a not a fan of western capitalism, and it would be difficult to argue that the short-term profit motive is not at variance with the long-term health of the planet, but places that were at least nominally socialist did a pretty good job of devastating their environments too. Maybe the problem is a human one first, and a economic-political one second. Maybe if we lived as long as some trees (not all are long-lived) we might have a more long-term view of what matters, and not keep rushing to use everything as fast as we possibly can before someone else does. Rawlence keeps his eyes on the scientific and anthropological issues at hand. How is warming impacting these trees, the landscapes in which they exist, the societies that have lived with them for centuries, and the wider world? What can we learn from the changes that have already taken place? What can we look forward to? What can we do about it? Despite the growth of electric car usage and renewable power generation, we have arrived at this party too late, and relatively empty-handed. Attempts to mitigate global warming cannot change the fact that there is warming to come that is already baked in. We can do nothing to change that. It will continue, even were we to cease all carbon usage tomorrow. Not that we should abandon attempts to reduce emissions. But we should know that we will not see the benefits of those actions. The mitigation work we do today may impact future generations, but the planet will continue heating up for quite some time regardless. The most we can hope for in the short term is to slow the rate somewhat. The Treeline is a must read for anyone interested in environmental issues, global warming in particular. Who doesn’t love trees? After reading this you will love them ever more. As Rawlence points out, we are at our core tree people, having evolved thumbs to get around in an arboreal world, and having lived among or near trees for all of human history. We have evolved together, and will continue to do so. But we will have to adapt to the new Anthropocene world rather than attempting to force it back into its prior form. In the future, when the ice is gone, there may be no such thing as a treeline at all. Review posted – February 18, 2022 Publication dates ----------hardcover - February 15, 2022 ----------trade paperback - December 12, 2023 I received an ARE of The Treeline from St. Martin’s Press in return for a fair review, and a promise to plant a few saplings. Thanks, folks. And thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. This review has been cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews [image] [image] [image] [image] =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s Twitter page Lizzie Harper, a Welsh illustrator, provided many images for the book. Sadly, there were none in the e-galley I read. But you can see some on her site. Here are links to Harper’s personal, FB, LinkedIn, PInterest, and Twitter pages Interview ---InterMultiversal - An Interview with Ben Rawlence by Simon Morden Items of Interest from the author -----Video trailer for the book – 1:09 -----5 x 15 - Ben Rawlence on The Treeline - video -----The Big Issue - ‘As the planet warms, the forest is on the move’ ny Rawlence Items of Interest -----Patagonia Films - Treeline (Full Film) | The Secret Life of Trees - video 40:16 -----Cairngorms Connect - 200-year vision to enhance habitats, species and ecological processes across a vast area within the 600 square kilometer Cairngorms National Park. -----NY Times - February 4, 2022 - Seen From Space: Huge Methane Leaks, by Henry Fountain -----The Nature Conservancy - February 28, 2022 - Second Nature - A 2020 study suggests letting forests regrow naturally can help boost efforts to fight climate change - by Kirsten Weir You Might Also Want To Check Out -----Land by Simon Winchester -----Being a Human by Charles Foster -----The Earth’s Wild Music by Kathleen Dean Moore -----Road of Bones - not in form, obviously. But this one offers a fictional horror-story take on the great north rebelling against the outrages of humanity Music -----George Winston - Forest -----Sondheim - Into the Woods ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jan 29, 2022
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Feb 09, 2022
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Feb 09, 2022
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1250271045
| 9781250271044
| 1250271045
| 3.95
| 2,884
| Apr 26, 2022
| Apr 26, 2022
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it was amazing
| The disaster goes by different names. Sometimes it’s called the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. For years, it was called the Cretaceous-Tertiary, o The disaster goes by different names. Sometimes it’s called the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. For years, it was called the Cretaceous-Tertiary, or K-T, mass extinction that marked the end of the Age of Reptiles and the beginning of the third, Tertiary age of life on Earth. That title was later revised according to the rules of geological arcana to the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction, shorted to K-Pg. But no matter what we call it, the scars in the stone tell the same story. Suddenly, inescapably, life was thrown into a horrible conflagration that reshaped the course of evolution. A chunk of space debris that likely measured more than seven miles across slammed into the planet and kicked off the worst-case scenario for the dinosaurs and all other life on Earth. This was the closest the world has ever come to having its Restart button pressed, a threat so intense that—if not for some fortunate happenstances—it might have returned Earth to a home for single-celled blobs and not much else.-------------------------------------- The loss of the dinosaurs was just the tip of the ecological iceberg. Virtually no environment was left untouched by the extinction, an event so severe that the oceans themselves almost reverted to a soup of single-celled organisms.This is a story about two things, Earth’s Big Bang and evolution. K-Pg (pronounced Kay Pee Gee - maybe think of it as KFC with much bigger bones, where everything is overcooked?) marks the boundary between before and after Earth’s own Big Bang, manifested today by a specific layer of stone in the geologic record. [image] Riley with Jet - image from The Museum of the Earth Ok, yes, I know that the catastrophic crash landing of the bolide, a seven-miles-across piece of galactic detritus, most likely an asteroid, that struck 66.043 million years ago, give or take, was not the biggest bad-parking-job in Earth’s history. An even bigger one hit billions of years ago. It was nearly the size of Mars, and that collision may have been what created our moon. Black makes note of this in the book. But in terms of impact, no single crash-and-boom has had a larger effect on life on planet Earth. Sure, about 3 billion years ago an object between 23 and 36 miles across dropped in on what is now South Africa. There have been others, rocks larger than K-Pg, generating even vaster craters. But what sets the Chicxulub (the Yucatan town near where the vast crater was made, pronounced Chick-sue-lube) event on the apex is its speed and approach, 45 thousand mph, entering at a 45-degree angle. (You wanna see the fastest asteroid ever to hit Earth? Ok. You wanna see it again?) It also helps that the material into which it immersed itself was particularly likely to respond by vaporizing over the entire planet. An excellent choice for maximum destruction of our mother. And of course, its impact on life, animal life having come into being about 800 million years ago, was unparalleled. In the short term, it succeeded in wiping out the large non-avian dinosaurs, your T-Rex sorts, Triceratops grazers, brontosaurian browsers, and a pretty large swath of the planetary flora as well, burning up much of the globe and inviting in a nuclear winter that added a whole other layer of devastation. Aqueous life was not spared. You seen any mososaurs lately? Even tiny organisms were expunged en masse. (Cleanup in aisle everywhere!) [image] Image from Facts Just for Kids Here’s what the Earth looked like just before, just after, and then at increments, a week, a month, a year, and on to a million years post event. It is a common approach in pop science books to personalize the information being presented. Often this takes the form of following a particular scientist for a chapter as she or he talks about or presents the matter under consideration. In The Last Days… Black lets one particular species, usually one individual of that species per chapter, lead the way through the story, telling how it came to be present, how it was impacted by the…um…impact, and what its descendants, if there would be any, might look like. She wants to show why the things that were obliterated came to their sad ends, but also how the things that survived managed to do so. [image] Quetzcoatlus - image from Earth Archives But as fun and enlightening as it is to track the geological and ecological carnage, like an insurance investigator, (T-Rex, sure, covered. But those ammonites? Sorry, Ms. Gaea, that one’s not specified in the contract. I am so sorry.) is only one part of what Riley Black is on about here. She wants to dispel some false ideas about how species take on what we see as environmental slots. [image] Mesodma - image from Inverse Some folks believe that there are set roles in nature, and that the extinction of one actor (probably died as a result of saying that verboten word while performing in The Scottish Play) leads inevitably to the role being filled by another creature (understudy?) As if the demise of T-Rex, for example, meant that some other seven-ton, toothy hunter would just step in. But there is no set cast of roles in nature, each just waiting for Mr, Ms, or Thing Right to step into the job. (Rehearsals are Monday through Saturday 10a to 6p. Don’t be late), pointing out that what survived was largely a matter of luck, of what each species had evolved into by the time of the big event. If the earth is on fire, for example, a small creature has a chance to find underground shelter, whereas a brontosaurus might be able to stick it’s head into the ground, but not much else, and buh-bye bronto when the mega-killer infrared pulse generated by you-know-what sped across the planet turning the Earth into the equivalent of a gigantic deep fryer and making all the exposed creatures and flora decidedly extra-crispy. [image] Thescelosaurus - image from Wiki Black keeps us focused on one particular location, Hell Creek, in Montana, with bits at the ends of every chapter commenting on things going on in other, far-away parts of the world, showing that this change was global. When the impact devastates the entire planet, it makes much less sense to think of the specific landing spot as ground zero. It makes more sense to see it as a planet-wide event, which would make the entire Earth, Planet Zero. It was not the first major planetary extinction, or even the second. But it was the most immediate, with vast numbers of species being exterminated within twenty-four hours. [image] Thoracosaurus - image from artstation.com I do not have any gripes other than wishing that I had had an illustrated copy to review. I do not know what images are in the book. I had to burrow deep underground to find the pix used here. I expect it is beyond the purview of this book, but I could see a companion volume co-written by, maybe, Ed Yong, on how the microbiomes of a select group of creatures evolved over the eons. For, even as the visible bodies of critters across the planet changed over time, so did their micro-biome. What was The Inside Story (please feel free to use that title) on how the vast array of bugs that make us all up changed over the millions of years, as species adapted to a changing macrobiome. [image] Purgatorius - image from science News I love that Riley adds bits from her own life into the discussion, telling about her childhood obsession with dinosaurs, and even telling about the extinctions of a sort in her own life. What glitters throughout the book, like bits of iridium newly uncovered at a dig, is Black’s enthusiasm. She still carries with her the glee and excitement of discovery she had as a kid when she learned about Dinosaurs for the first time. That effervescence makes this book a joy to read, as you learn more and more and more. Black is an ideal pop-science writer, both uber-qualified and experienced in her field, and possessed of a true gift for story-telling. Also, the appendix is well worth reading for all the extra intel you will gain. Black explains, chapter by chapter, where the hard science ends and where the speculation picks up. Black incorporates into her work a wonderful sense of humor. This is always a huge plus! [image] Eoconodon - image from The New York Times Pull up a rock in the Hell Creek amphitheater. Binoculars might come in handy. An escape vehicle (maybe a TVA time door?) of some sort would be quite useful. Get comfortable and take in the greatest show on Earth (sorry Ringling Brothers) There literally has never been anything quite like it, before or since. The Last Days of the Dinosaurs a joy to read, is one of the best books of the year. From the time life first originated on our planet over 3.6 billion years ago, it has never been extinguished. Think about that for a moment. Think through all those eons. The changing climates, from hothouse to snowball and back again. Continents swirled and bumped and ground into each other. The great die-offs from too much oxygen, too little oxygen, volcanoes billowing out unimaginable quantities of gas and ash, seas spilling over continents and then drying up, forests growing and dying according to ecological cycles that take millennia, meteorite and asteroid strikes, mountains rising only to be ground down and pushed up anew, oceans replacing floodplains replacing deserts replacing oceans, on and on, every day, for billions of years. And still life endures.Review posted – May 13, 2022 Publication dates ----------Hardcover - April 26, 2022 ----------Trade paperback - October 24, 2023 I received an ARE of The Last Days of the Dinosaurs from St. Martin’s Press in return for working my ancient, nearly extinct fingers to the bone to write a review that can survive. Thanks, folks. [image] [image] [image] [image] This review has been cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, FB, Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter pages Profile from Museum of the Earth Vertebrate Paleontologist & Science WriterInterviews -----IFL Science - IFLScience Interview With Riley Black: The Last Days of the Dinosaurs - video - 15:40 – with Dr. Alfredo Carpineti - There is a particularly lovely bit at the back end of the interview in which Black talks about the inclusion in the book of a very personal element -----Fossil Friday Chats - "Sifting the Fossil Record" w/ Riley Black” - nothing to do with this book, but totally fascinating Items of Interest from the author -----WIRED - articles by the author as Brian Switek -----Scientific American - articles by the author as Brian Switek -----Riley’s site – a list of Selected Articles -----Science Friday - articles by the author -----Excerpt Items of Interest -----Earth Archives - Quetzlcoatlus by Vasika Udurawane and Julio Lacerda -----NASA - Sentry Program -----Science Friday - Mortunaria - a filter-feeding plesiosaur -----Biointeractive - The Day the Mesozoic Died: The Asteroid That Killed the Dinosaurs - on the science that produced our understanding of how the dinosaurs died out – video – 33:50 -----Wiki on the Hell Creek Formation -----Destiny - The First Minutes The Dinosaurs Went Extinct - about 13 minutes - video on the short term impact of the impact - pretty intense ...more |
Notes are private!
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Apr 25, 2022
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May 10, 2022
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Nov 22, 2021
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Hardcover
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1324001933
| 9781324001935
| 1324001933
| 3.84
| 25,218
| Sep 14, 2021
| Sep 14, 2021
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really liked it
| …I…follow along behind a small group of conservation officers heading to the lawn outside. Their leather hiking boots squeak as they walk. “So she …I…follow along behind a small group of conservation officers heading to the lawn outside. Their leather hiking boots squeak as they walk. “So she looks in her rearview mirror,” one is saying, and there’s a bear in the back seat earing popcolrn.” When wildlife officers gather at a conference, the shop talk is outstanding. Last night I stepped onto the elevator as a man was saying, “Ever tase an elk?”Mary Roach is up to her old tricks. A science writer now publishing her seventh book, Roach has written for many publications, including National Geographic, Wired, NY Times Magazine, and many more. She begins with a notion, then goes exploring. Roach tells Goodreads, in a book-recommendation piece, that she came across a potential story about cattle breeders staging deaths to commit insurance fraud. She even had a grand theft avocado story lined up, but the local Smokeys would not let her come along, which was a requisite. She shifted to wildlife. I paid a visit to a woman at the National Wildlife Service forensics lab who had authored a paper on how to detect counterfeit “medicinal” tiger penises. - from the GR pieceWait! What? (there is link to the study in EXTRA STUFF, of course) But again it was nogo accompanying the officers into the field. Really? Her presence would blow a National Wildlife Service raid on a market selling junk johnsons? It is pretty easy to come up with a descriptive for such unwarranted reticence. (Rhymes with sickish.) In any case, in her investigative travels, Mary came across a weird 1906 book about the prosecution and execution of animals and realized she had her hook. What if animals were the perpetrators of crimes instead of people? She breaks the book down into “criminal” categories, homicide, B&E, man-slaughter, larceny, even jaywalking, and off we go. [image] Mary Roach - image from Lapham’s Quarterly First, and foremost, I need to let you know straight away that you will be laughing out loud at least every few pages. This is not an experience I have with any other writer, and yet have had it consistently with Mary Roach, across the several books of hers that I have read. Ditto here. Well, fine, your sense of humor may not be like mine, but Mary has the key to my funny-bone. Her intro offers a stunning representation of just how stupid people have been when attempting to enforce laws on animals over the course of history. Python-worthy material, totally side-splitting, and jaw-dropping. Really, they actually did that? Yes, gentle reader, they totally did. On June 26, 1659, a representative from five towns in a province in northern Italy initiated legal proceedings against caterpillars. The local specimens, went the complaint, were trespassing and pilfering from people’s gardens and orchards. A summons was issued and five copies made and nailed to trees in forests adjacent to each town. The caterpillars were ordered to appear in court…Of course no caterpillars appeared at the appointed time, but the case went forward anyway.It goes on. Would have been tough making a charge stick anyway. They would have just blamed each other. It was that caterpillar, not me. I was nowhere near that orchard. And even if they were jailed they would have just flown out anyway. The law may be a ass, far too often, but sometimes it truly boggles the mind. As usual, Mary interviews experts in all the areas she investigates. She begins her contemporary explorations with a gathering of Canadian Conservation officers (in the USA) getting Wildlife Human Attack Response Training or WHART. They don’t, but you go right on ahead and call it what it is, CSI-Wildlife – DUUUUUM-DA-DUM! Mary brings plenty of funny to her reporting, but a lot of it is simply laying out the facts and letting them make you laugh themselves. For example, the test manikins are named for brands of beer. Good one, eh? And there is that quote at the top of the review. You will also learn some real-world intel like the significance of a round versus a more oval drop of blood at a crime scene. As usual with Mary, you will find yourself learning a whole bunch of information you never knew you wanted to know, like how to tell the difference between a bear and a cougar kill. (No, not that sort of cougar, the one with fur and claws, a mountain lion, Geez! and no, no, no, not that sort of bear, creatures of the Ursus genus, not those other large hairy beasts. Stop that right now!) She considers issues with elephants, leopards, cougars, bears, macaques, gulls, vultures and other birds, rats and mice, trees, and beans. Come again? The lines here get a bit vague. It is not just animals that are the focus but some non-critter-based elements of nature as well. Sticking with critters for the moment, there are considerable challenges in managing the interface between people and animals. For instance, the vig that farm mice seem to extract from farmers regardless of what is done to get rid of them can turn peaceable crop-growers homicidal. Mary looks at the control methods that have been tried, and explores a promising, more laid-back approach. Rats in the Vatican (which is an outstanding name for a band, just sayin’) present the challenge of managing the property while taking seriously the lead of Saint Francis of Assisi, an animal rights figure of long-standing, and a major inspiration for Pope, ya know, Francis. Mary talks to the guy in charge of this problem (I could not help but imagine Father Guido Sarducci, sorry), the Vatican Director of Gardens and Garbage, Rafael Torning. The considerable Vatican rat population has a taste for wires, and damages a lot of machinery. VG&G does what they can, trying to avoid using nasty chemicals. But even so, aren’t there ethical concerns? So, she talks with the house bioethicist, Father Carlo. Let’s just say that if you could count the number of angels on the head of a pin, Father Carlo could very nicely twist all of them into pretzels with his words. [image] A possible solution to half of the Vatican’s Gull-and-rats problem? - image from the Irish Sun The Vatican has a considerable problem with herring gulls as well, thousands of ‘em. None of this Mary Poppins Feed the Birds nonsense. The feathered rabble that descend on Saint Peter’s seem more like the gathered horde in that Hitchcock movie. You will not come away from this book fond of gulls. I found her lapsed-Catholic’s tour of the Vatican to be worth many, many indulgences, rich as it was with fun details and ambience. Chapters on elephants and leopards are particularly alarming. …when a leopard stalks and kills more than three or four people, villagers consider it a demon. - [it, clearly, considers them takeout]There was one historical case in which a single leopard killed over a hundred people. Mary travels with government and non-government people as they try to educate local populations in best practices for avoiding potential conflict. Not all leopard attacks are the same. You will learn the sorts. And not all attacking leopards are handled the same way. She looks at changes that have been at least partially implemented to try to reduce the carnage. (Indoor toilets, for example), and the challenges going forward in handling the problem, getting leopards to leave people alone. [image] Leopard - image from Wild Cats India When it comes to elephants, Mary Roach knows her shit, literally. She reports on a Smithsonian project that measured daily defecation by an Indian elephant. A poop scooper will not do. Maybe a poop plow? 400 pounds, give or take, per diem. Elephants loom large as a danger, laying waste to crops, trampling fields and bulldozing buildings. People are sometimes accidentally trampled. Sometimes it is no accident, as when one elephant did a headstand on someone. A bull elephant in an elevated period of breeding excitement, called musth, is particularly aggressive and a mortal peril. She can also tell you about the effectiveness of small arms against big pachyderms. Keep your powder dry. Most bullets do little or no damage. Even a bit of armor-piercing ordnance intended for tanks needs a follow up to get the job done. [image] Indian elephant in musth - image from Wikipedia Monkeys in India come in for a look. Macaques in particular, have made pests of themselves in urban areas, becoming aggressive thieves, to the point of violence, and even of extortion, as some will steal your phone, handing it back only when you pay the fee in food. Government officials struggle to come up with solutions, tough in a place where the monkey is a sacred animal. It is impossible to deliver directed doses of birth control without endangering other native wildlife, for example. Roach delivers a bleak portrait of official finger-pointing and inaction. [image] Street Monkeys in India – image from Outlook While reporting on the damage done to area farms and people, and the impact of wildlife in places populated with humans, Roach does point out that a lot (all) of these conflicts result from people expanding into the native territory of dangerous or potentially pestiferous, animals. I was surprised that there were parts of the book dedicated to non-creature natural perils. The material is interesting, but thematically it felt a bit off the central topic. There is much surprise information (well, for me anyway) about “danger trees,” those fully grown trees that have come to the end of their lives, at least in terms of growing. They still serve as useful woodland citizens by providing places in which creatures can nest, wood in which bugs can live, biomaterials that will be absorbed back into the woods. This is all good, but there is still one problem. The rotting tops of these gentle souls can come crashing down on passers-by, unaware of the peril. The approach that is taken, by woodland managers makes one wonder whether it is better to yell “Timber” or “Fire in the Hole!” [image] Decay throughout this tree makes it too hazardous to fell with a saw. It was felled with one bundle of fireline explosives taped to the side of the tree - image and text from the US Forest Service There is an element in this book that you should be aware of. The disposal of animals considered pests. This is of particular relevance in places where invasive species have arrived and laid waste to significant segments of the local fauna, and/or flora. Not all of these are the usual suspects, stowaway rats wiping out bird populations with their fondness for eggs, brown snakes, ditto and far too many others, often foolishly introduced by people attempting to counteract an earlier invasives problem. Some of the invaders are adorable and not on your likely list of things that MUST BE EXTERMINATED NOW. Mary looks at the techniques attempted (usually failed) and on the thought that goes into trying to make a creature’s passing as quick as possible. You might want to skip that chapter (14). Many of my daily companions are on that list and, although I did read it all, it was disquieting at times. Just lettin’ ya know. I hope this does not turn you off the book if you are otherwise interested. She does focus on ways in which people can live in coexistence with nature. This includes a greater understanding of the deer-in-the-headlights syndrome, and a workable approach for reducing roadway carnage. [image] Deer in the headlights - image from Bryans Blog I have issues with the titling of the book. The raised-patch addition to the hardcover jacket goes very nicely with the patches my wife and I picked up at many US National Parks. Mary might have called it Nature Gone Wild, but that was already taken. Naming it Fuzz, though, (maintaining the tradition of single-syllable Mary Roach book titles) does make it seem like it is about the police-type officials who are charged with coping when forces of nature interfere with people. Although there were indeed some badged officials in her stable of interviewees and guides through these fascinating worlds, she spoke as often with people who were researchers or administrators, and the stories were about the problems, not so much the law enforcers. Many may be related to parks here and there. Some were employed by wildlife services, but it just did not sit well with me. Her reporting is as much about a wider view of the issues as it is about the direct, Book-em, Danno “crimes” supposedly perpetrated on people by the furry or feathered set. So, I will not shy away from this. When it comes to actually describing what the book is about the title is decidedly fuzzy. There. I did it, and I am not sorry. Well, ok, maybe a little. Not that I can come up with anything better, just whining. That done, it is clear that wherever Mary Roach shines her light there will be surprises, there will be new knowledge, and there will be smiles, lots and lots of smiles, covered with copious quantities of laughter. Follow along behind Mary as she opens some closed doors, peeks into some hidden corners, and pesters defenseless officials to find fascinating, wondrous real-world material. Even despite that one grim chapter, I found myself reacting as I always do to a Mary Roach book, laughing out loud, often, very, very often. There is a definite joy in trailing after Mary as she shines her very bright light into unseen corners and calls back “Hey guys, come see what I found!” If you have enjoyed her books before, this one should do quite nicely. There is nothing fuzzy about that at all. Feeding animals, as we know, is the quickest path to conflict. The promise of food motivates normally human-shy animals to take a risk. The risk-taking is rewarded, and the behavior escalates. Shyness becomes fearlessness, and fearlessness becomes aggression. If you don’t hand over the food you are carrying, the monkey will grab it. If you try to hold onto it, or push the animal away…it may slap you. Or bite you. The Times of India put the number of monkey bites reported by Delhi hospitals in 2018 at 950. [When your teenager makes off with your car, just remember that it all began when they were small, and you made the mistake of offering them food] Review first posted – October 29, 2021 Publication dates ----------Hardcover - September 21, 2021 ----------Trade Paperback - August 30, 2022 I received this book from Barnes & Noble in return for cold, hard cash [image] [image] [image] ==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I moved it to the Comments section directly below. But in Summer 2021, GR disallowed the use of external links in the Comments section, so I have posted the entire review, including EXTRA STUFF, on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 02, 2021
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Oct 23, 2021
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Oct 27, 2021
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Hardcover
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0593136381
| 9780593136386
| 0593136381
| 4.34
| 2,338
| Aug 17, 2021
| Aug 17, 2021
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it was amazing
| The wind slammed against the Harding-era transmission tower, ripping a heavy electrical line from its brittle iron hook. It was 6:15 A.M. The 143-p The wind slammed against the Harding-era transmission tower, ripping a heavy electrical line from its brittle iron hook. It was 6:15 A.M. The 143-pound, 115-kilovolt braided aluminum wire—known as a jumper cable—fell through the air. A piece of the rusted hook fell with it. The energized line produced a huge bolt of electricity, reaching temperatures up to 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit and zapping the steel tower like lightning as it charred the pillar black. Droplets of molten metal sprayed into the dry grass. That’s all it took.------------------------------------ …this was how the fire spread so quickly: It wasn’t a single unbroken front but a hail of embers.Welcome to the new normal. [image] sign - may you find paradise to be all its name implies - Image from KQED In November 2018, one hundred fifty miles north of San Francisco, the town of Paradise became the epicenter of what would be called The Camp Fire. It was the most destructive wildfire in California history. (The Dixie Fire that was raging at the time this review was prepared had not yet been controlled, so we do not yet know if it was even worse.) The Camp Fire does not even make the top ten list for the most acres destroyed by fire. That dubious honor goes to the August Complex fire of 2020, which burned over a million acres. The Camp Fire destroyed only 153,336 acres. But in other metrics it leads the way. Almost 19,000 structures were destroyed. The property loss was over $10 billion, (I have seen a report indicating that the cost exceeded $16 billion) about 10 percent larger than the 2017 Tubbs Fire, the former title holder. Most importantly, the official death toll from the Camp Fire was 85, an undercount of at least fifty according to the author’s tally of wrongful death suits lodged against PG&E, and her knowledge of deaths that did not fit into the very restrictive official definition. In looking at lists of the worst wildfires ever, concentrated as it is in the last few years, and with no likelihood that conditions will improve any time soon, it is a certainty that we, as a planet, the USA as a nation, and California in particular are living in a powderkeg and giving off sparks. [image] Lizzy Johnson - Image from her site Johnson had been the fire reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle prior to the Camp Fire. (She has since moved on to the Washington Post) …this book is the product of more than five hundred interviews and nearly five years of full-time wildfire coverage. I even enrolled in a professional firefighting academy to better understand fire…It’s the product of coming to love a community that I embedded in: spending hours strolling across Paradise on my evening walks, buying ice cream sandwiches from the Holiday Market, eating more containers of green curry from Sophia’s Thai than I can count. The people whose lives I’ve chronicled in this book offered me unfettered access to their day-to-day lives without any expectations. They were not compensated for their time. - from Acknowledgments [image] Burned vehicles during Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif. on Thursday, November 8, 2018 - image and text from SF Gate She even stayed with some of them. Johnson provides a wealth of detail. Not just two dimensional, or even three, but adding time into the mix to make for four. We get personal histories of people who were impacted by the fire, specifically in how they came to be there, and the history of the place from before the 1850 goldrush. This includes some history on the Native American Konkow tribe, with lore that addresses the challenges of coping with wildfire. She also looks at PG&E’s history of poor line maintenance, and the legal system’s history of failing to make them pay for their malfeasance or force them to adequately change their ways. [image] Timeline – from the National Institute for Standards and Technology As for the structure of the book, I was reminded of The Longest Day, an epic 1962 war film that told, from a variety of perspectives, the story of the D-Day invasion of Europe in World War II. By knitting the diverse experiences together we get a sense of the overall event that would have been impossible in a more linear Boy-Meets-War type narrative. Paradise is a lot like that. We jump from the desperate bus-driver to the town manager to the maintenance man at the hospital to the pilot trying to dump flame retardant on the blaze, to the people on their off-road vehicles trying to find a location in which to shelter that had no combustible foliage, to the police chief, to the town manager, to the fire chiefs, to a woman who gave birth by Caesarian section that very day, and winds up being driven around by a stranger, trying to find her husband and a way out. and on. But somehow, the book never felt disjointed. Each person is given sufficient detail. We get to know them some, not too much, but enough to care. And we track their progress over that terrible day. I found it helpful while reading to have a browser tab open to a Google map of Paradise so I could follow each person on their fraught peregrinations. Johnson tracks the progress of the fire, from its ignition by the downed power line at 6:15 am on November 8, 2018, step by step. She tracks her residents through that day to where they are now, in August 2020. [image] Fire tornado explainer - from the San Francisco Chronicle Johnson’s focus is on the personal. There is a reason for that. Early in her fire reporting, Johnson noticed that many fire stories—hers included—sounded similar; they often relied on the same beats, the same kinds of quotes, the same tropes. (A woman who left her wedding ring at home, for example, only for it to burn.) Johnson began to wonder if disaster fatigue happened when stories felt predictable. So she changed her approach to make the fire secondary, a “supporting character” in a more surprising and nuanced human story—and readers paid attention. Too often, she said, coverage tries to hit people over the head with a “climate change caused this” moral. “I’m now thinking more like, What does climate change feel like? If we changed the model, maybe people will listen more, and we can do more work with our storytelling. - from the Columbia Journalism Review interviewOne can only hope. [image] The Camp Fire burns in the hills on November 10, 2018 near Big Bend, California. Fueled by high winds and low humidity the Camp Fire ripped through the town of Paradise - image from SF Gate Simple human error accounts for some of the carnage. A public emergency warning system failed to reach half the residents because it had never been tested locally, and a systems flaw had not been detected. And our old bugaboo of inadequate communication and coordination among the responsible emergency authorities was not helpful. In the larger context, it is the myopic focus on immediate financial or political motives that has created much of this problem. For example, a Code Red system for alerting people of an emergency is privately owned, requiring people to subscribe. Only 11% did. [image] from the Camp Fire - image from Cal Fire Maybe, after a four-lane road had been paved on the western edge of town several years before, cutting two lanes from the Skyway, providing extra parking for downtown businesses and removing the “expressway” feel of the road, ignoring pleas that this would be a deadly choice the next time a major fire hit, might, just might have been an incredibly bad, short-term decision with deadly long-term consequences. Someone in Paradise should be nominated for the Larry Vaughn Award for exceptional short-sightedness in the face of mortal peril. [image] NASA shot of the fire The experience of reading this book was unlike that of anything else I have read in recent memory. The closest I can think of is Five Days at Memorial, several years back. How quickly, how easily our civilization can be overwhelmed, our safety completely compromised. [image] Evacuating the hospital - image from The Daily Mail There were moments when I had to step away from reading, and just breathe, because the specifics of the fire were so upsetting. The stories Johnson tells are heart-wrenching, and often horrifying. It was like reading a real-life end-times, zombie-apocalypse novel. Someone hiding from the flames under a vehicle, pokes a hole in a tire just to get breathable air. After a victim of the fire is lifted from a flat surface, a layer of molten flesh remained. Just writing these words brings a sob. [image] A Cal Fire pilot maneuver's an S2-T tanker to make a drop on the Walbridge fire at sunset near Healdsburg, Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2020. - Image from the Press Democrat – photo credit Kent Porter – What it would have looked like had planes not been called back due to 70 mph winds and horrific down and updrafts Another part of the experience was learning new things, many of them dire, like the fact that trees were becoming so hot that the water and sap inside them heated to a point where they basically exploded. Things like the temperature becoming so high that metallic elements in the ground solidified into shards, and propane tanks became missiles and major sources of shrapnel. AT&T’s landlines melted. Internet service cut out as communications hardware on towers was destroyed. Things like the underground pipes carrying the town’s water becoming so hot that they melted, leaching carcinogenic materials into the water supply. (Repair/replace cost $50 million.) Things like the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere from this one fire matched the output of the entire state’s factories and traffic in a week. Things like the incineration of so many structures created clouds of toxic sub-2.5 micron particles that lodge in the lungs of any breathing thing. There are plenty more things to be learned here, not all of them quite so extreme. But all of them worth knowing. She looks at the topography, and how that impacts wind currents, the changes in the local flora, the psychology of disaster response. The scientific explanations in the book were clear and informative [image] Firefighter Jose Corona monitors a burning home as the Camp Fire burns - image and text from SF Gate It is easy to engage with the folks Johnson profiles, and root for them to survive. It helps that we can presume that all of the primary actors here make it out, else Johnson would not have been able to interview them, and we would not be reading their stories. But she succeeds in showing us what global warming means on the ground, to actual human beings, over 125 of whom are no longer with us, and many of whom have been scarred, physically and or emotionally, for life. [image] shot from the fire – image from The Daily Mail There is very little mention of political party here. Local representation is heavily Republican. Everyone burns at the same temperature, but maybe voting for the party of climate change denial while living in a tinderbox might be seen as somehow ironic, if not feckless and arrogant. Trump popped by for a photo op and a chance to blame Californians for the fire, claiming that they should have been raking out the leaves in the woods. (The largest wildland property owner in California is the federal government, by the way. The state is in charge of about 3% of it.) The town voted for him in 2016, but by 2020 had seen quite enough orange light and switched, at least at the presidential level. [image] Sheriffs yell to drivers to evacuate the area off of Pentz Road during the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, on Thursday, Nov. 8, 2018 - image and text from SF Gate As this book and countless other reports make clear, we have a wildfire problem. Serious research into the causes, both global and local, has been done. More is ongoing, and there will, for sure, be more ahead. Even more than has already been done, public policies will have to be crafted to encourage, and where possible, mandate best practices, and enforce restrictions on private and public use of land in the wildland-urban interface. There are many facets to this, from power line protection, roadway construction, widening, or even closing, development requirements, such as mandating fire-safe materials for new construction, and supporting retrofitting older buildings. Communications among first responders has been improved, but much remains to be done. Total deregulation, allowing property owners to do whatever they want with their property can very concretely endanger the property and lives of all those around them. We have an obligation to each other to not be totally indifferent about the safety of our communities and neighbors. Common sense regulation should be implemented. In the wider view, gaining new knowledge of areas that are likely to burn should inform policy on where new development is allowed at all, where further development should be halted, and where rebuilding burned areas is ill-advised. ( Between 1970 and 1999, 94 percent of the roughly three thousand houses destroyed by wildfires in California had been rebuilt in the same spot—and often burned down a second or third time.) Your freedom to do whatever the frack you want ends where my charred skin begins. Insurance companies, with the most to lose financially, have already made getting fire insurance tougher, if it is available at all, in fire-prone communities. [image] Cars escape the Camp Fire as they drive south on Pentz Road in Paradise, California, on Thursday, Nov. 8, 2018 - image and text from SF Gate I love this book. It is among my favorites for the year. I have much praise to offer and very few gripes. While I understand that the author’s intent was to make global warming on-the-street real, and appreciate that she has succeeded in doing just that, I would have liked a bit more on the long-term medical impact of wildfires, and the politics of the local public officials, particularly their views on global warming. [image] A bulldozer dislodged abandoned vehicles from a blocked roadway after the fire. The scene suggests that a burnover, a dangerous event where fire cuts evacuees off from escape routes, took place. There were at least 19 over the course of the fire. – image and text from National Institute for Standards and Technology Trade paperback - August 16, 2022 ==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved it to the comments section directly below. As of August 2021, GR will no longer allow external links in comments, so, if you want to see the entire review in one place please head on over to my site, Coot's Reviews. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 02, 2021
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Aug 09, 2021
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Aug 02, 2021
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Hardcover
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1250783712
| 9781250783714
| 1250783712
| 3.57
| 385
| Aug 26, 2021
| Aug 31, 2021
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it was amazing
| We think of wilderness as an absence of sound, movement and event. We rent our rural cottages ‘for a bit of peace and quiet.’ That shows how switch We think of wilderness as an absence of sound, movement and event. We rent our rural cottages ‘for a bit of peace and quiet.’ That shows how switched off we are. A country walk should be a deafening, threatening, frantic, exhausting cacophony.-------------------------------------- All humans are Sheherazades: we die each morning if we don’t have a good story to tell, and the good ones are all old.Up for a bit of time travel? No, no, no, not in the sci-fi sense of physically transporting to another era. But in the mostly imaginary sense of picturing oneself in a prior age. Well, maybe more than just picturing, maybe picturing with the addition of some visceral experience. Charles Foster has written about what life is like for otters, badgers, foxes, deer and swifts, by living like them for a time. He wrote about those experiences in his book, Being a Beast. He wonders, here, how experiencing life as a Paleolithic and a Neolithic person can inform our current understanding of ourselves. I thought that, if I knew where I came from, that might shed some light on what I am…It’s a prolonged thought experiment and non-thought experiment, set in woods, waves, moorlands, schools, abattoirs, wattle-and-daub huts, hospitals, rivers, cemeteries, caves, farms, kitchens, the bodies of crows, museums, breaches, laboratories, medieval dining halls, Basque eating houses, fox-hunts, temples, deserted Middle Eastern cities and shaman’s caravans. [image] Charles Foster - image from Oxford University His journey begins with (and he spends the largest portion of the book on) the Upper Paleolithic (U-P) era, aka the Late Stone Age, from 50,000 to 12,000 years ago, when we became, behaviorally, modern humans. Foster is quite a fan of the period, seeing it as some sort of romantic heyday for humanity, one in which we were more fully attuned with the environments in which we lived, able to use our senses to their capacity, instead of getting by with the vastly circumscribed functionality we have today. Interested in the birth of human consciousness, he puts himself, and his 12 yo son, Tom, not only into the mindset of late Paleolithic humans, but into their lives. He and Tom live wild in Derbyshire, doing their best to ignore the sounds of passing traffic, while living on roadkill (well, I guess they do not entirely ignore traffic) and the bounty of the woods. They deal with hunger, the need for shelter, and work on becoming attuned to their new old world. We’re not making the wood into our image: projecting ourselves onto it. It’s making us. If we let it.In one stretch Foster fasts for eight days, which helps bring on a hallucinatory state (intentionally). Shamanism is a major cultural element in the U-P portrait he paints. It is clearly not his first trip. He recalls an out-of-body experience he had while in hospital, the sort where one is looking down from the ceiling at one’s physical body, seeing this as of a cloth with a broader capacity for human experience. He relates this also to the cave paintings of the era, seeing them, possibly, as the end-product of shamanic tripping. This section of the book transported me back to the 1960s and the probably apocryphal books of Carlos Castaneda. Social grooming was important to ancestors of our species. But, with our enlarged brains able to handle, maybe, a community of 150 people, grooming became too cost-intensive. To maintain a group that size strictly by grooming, we’d have to groom for about 43% percent of our time, which would be deadly. Something else had to make up for the shortfall, and other things have. We have developed a number of other endorphin-releasing, bond-forming strategies that don’t involve touching [social distancing?]. They are…laughter, wordless singing/dancing, language and ritual/religion/story.It sure gives the expression rubbed me the wrong way some added heft. He has theories about religion, communication, and social organization that permeate this exploration. He posits, for example, that late Paleo man was able to communicate with a language unlike our own, a more full-body form of expression, maybe some long-lost form of charades. There is an ancient language, thought to have been used by Neanderthals, called HMMM, or holistic, manipulative, multi-modal, musical, and memetic communication. It is likely that some of this carried forward. And makes one wonder just how far back the roots go to contemporary languages that incorporate more rather than less musicality, more rather than less tonality, and more rather than less bodily support for spoken words. He writes about a time when everything, not just people, were seen as having a soul, some inner self that exists separately, although living within a body, a tree, a hare, a blade of grass. This sort of worldview makes it a lot tougher to hunt for reasons that did not involve survival. And makes understandable rituals in many cultures in which forgiveness is begged when an animal is killed. This becomes much more of a thing when one feels in tune with one’s surroundings, an experience Foster reports as being quite real in his Derbyshire adventure. This tells him that Paleo man was better able to sense, to be aware of his surroundings than almost any modern human can. Foster has a go at the Neolithic as well, trying to see what the shift from hunting-gathering to agriculture was like, and offers consideration of the longer-term impacts on humanity that emanated from that change. This is much less involved and involving, but does include some very interesting observations on how agriculture revolutionized the relationship people had with their environment. …the first evidence of sedentary communities comes from around 11,000 years ago. We see the first evidence of domesticated plants and animals at about the same time. Yet, it is not for another 7,000 years that there are settled villages, relying on domesticated plants or fixed fields. For 7,000 years, that is, our own model of human life, which we like to assume would have been irresistibly attractive to the poor benighted caveman, was resisted or ignored, just as it is by more modern hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherers only become like us at the end of a whip. Our life is a last resort for the creatures that we really are.He notes that even when farming took root, many of those newly minted farmers continued living as hunter-gatherers for part of the year. He finishes up with a glance at the contemporary. More of a screed really. He notes that phonetic writing severed the connection our languages have with the reality they seek to portray. Pre-phonetic languages tend to be more onomatopoeic, the sounds more closely reflecting the underlying reality. He sees our modern brains as functioning mostly as valves, channeling all available sensation through a narrow pipeline, while leaving behind an entire world of possible human experience that we are no longer equipped to handle. To that extent we all have super-powers, of potential awareness, anyway, that lie waiting for someone to open the right valve, presuming they have not been corroded into inutility by disuse. He tells of meeting a French woman in Thailand whose near-death experience left her passively able to disrupt electronic mechanisms. She could not, for example, use ATMs. They would always malfunction around her. He takes a run at what is usually seen to indicate “modern” humanity. I’ve come to wonder whether symbolism is all it’s cracked up to be, and in particular whether its use really is the great watershed separating us from everything else that had gone before.He argues that trackers, for example, can abstract from natural clues the stories behind them, and those existed long before so-called “modern man.” He calls in outside authorities from time to time to fill in gaps. These extra bits always add fascinating pieces of information. For example, Later I wrote in panic to biologist David Haskell, an expert on birdsong, begging him to reassure me that music is ‘chronologically and neurologically prior to language.’ It surely is, he replied. ‘It seems that preceding both is bodily motion: the sound-controlling centers of the brain are derived from the same parts of the embryo as the limb motor system, so all vocal expression grows from the roots that might be called dance or, less loftily, shuffling about.Foster is that most common of writers, a veterinarian and a lawyer. Wait, what? Sadly, there is no telling in here (it is present in his Wiki page, though) of how he managed to train for these seemingly unrelated careers. (I can certainly envision a scenario, though, in which we hear lawyer Foster proclaiming to the court, “My client could not possibly be guilty of this crime, your honor. The forensic evidence at the scene clearly shows that the act was committed by an American badger, while my client, as anyone can see, is a Eurasian badger.”) It certainly seems clear, though, from his diatribes against modernity, where his heart is. In the visceral, physical work of dealing with animals, which lends itself to the intellectual stimulation of a truer, and deeper connection with nature. The first time (and one of the only times) I felt useful was shoveling cow shit in a Peak District farm when I was ten. It had a dignity that piano lessons, cub scouts, arithmetic and even amateur taxidermy did not. What I was detecting was that humans acquire their significance from relationship, that relationships with non-humans were vital and that clearing up someone’s dung is a good way of establishing relationships.In that case, I am far more useful in the world than I ever dreamed. GRIPES Foster can be off-putting, particularly to those us with no love of hunting, opening as he does with I first ate a live mammal on a Scottish hill. (Well, as least it wasn’t haggis.) I can well imagine many readers slamming the book shut at that point and moving on to something else. Will this be a paean to a manly killing impulse? Thankfully, not really, although there are some uncomfortable moments re the hunting of living creatures. Sometimes he puts things out that are at the very least questionable, and at the worst, silly. Our intuition is older, wiser and more reliable than our underused, atrophied senses. Really? Based on what data? So, making decisions by feelz alone is the way to go? Maybe I should swap my accountant for an inveterate gambler? He sometimes betrays an unconscious unkindness in the cloak of humor: The last thing I ate was a hedgehog. That was nine days ago. From the taste of them, hedgehogs must start decomposing even when they’re alive and in their prime. This one’s still down there somewhere, and my burps smell like a maggot farm. I regret it’s death under the wheels of a cattle truck far more than its parents or children possibly do.I doubt it. One stylistic element that permeates is seeing an imaginary Paleo man, X, and his son. Supposedly these might be Foster and Tom in an earlier era. It has some artistic appeal, but I did not think it added much overall. All that said, the overall take here is that this is high-octane fuel for the brain, however valved-up ours may be. Foster raises many incredibly fascinating subjects from the origins of religion, language, our native capabilities to how global revolutions have molded us into the homo sap of the 21st century. This is a stunning wakeup call for any minds that might have drifted off into the intellectual somnolence of contemporary life. There are simply so many ideas bouncing off the walls in this book that one might fear that they could reach a critical mass and do some damage. It is worth the risk. If you care at all about understanding humanity, our place in the world, and how we got here, skipping Being a Human would be…well…inhuman. It is an absolute must-read. We try to learn the liturgy: the way to do things properly; the way to avoid offending the fastidious, prescriptive and vengeful guardians of the place. Everything matters. We watch the rain fall on one leaf, trace the course of the water under a stone, and then we go back to the leaf and watch the next drop. We try to know the stamens with the visual resolution of a bumblebee and the snail slime with the nose of a bankvole and the leaf pennants on the tree masts with the cold eyes of kites. Review posted – 9/17/21 Publication dates ----------Hardcover - 8/31/21 ----------Trade paperback - 8/9/22 This review has been cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! I received an ARE of Being a Human from Metropolitan Books in return for a modern era review. Thanks, Maia. =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, and Twitter pages By my count this is Foster’s 39th book Foster’s bio on Wiki Charles Foster (born 1962) is an English writer, traveller, veterinarian, taxidermist, barrister and philosopher. He is known for his books and articles on Natural History, travel (particularly in Africa and the Middle East), theology, law and medical ethics. He is a Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford. He says of his own books: 'Ultimately they are all presumptuous and unsuccessful attempts to answer the questions 'who or what are we?', and 'what on earth are we doing here?'Interviews -----The Guardian - Going underground: meet the man who lived as an animal - re Being a Beast by Simon Hattenston -----New Books Network - Defined by Relationship by Howard Burton – audio - 1h 30m Items of Interest from the author -----Emergence Magazine - Against Nature Writing - on language as a barrier to understanding -----Shortform - Charles Foster's Top Book Recommendations Items of Interest -----Wiki on Bear Grylls - a British adventurer – mentioned in Part 1 as an example of someone more interested in the technology of survival than the point of it (p 62 in my ARE) -----Wiki on Yggdrasil - mentioned in Part 1 – humorously (p 85) -----Wiki on the Upper Paleolithic -----Dartmouth Department of Music – a review of a book positing that Neanderthals used musicality in their communications Review Feature - The Singing Neanderthals: the Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body by Steven Mithen - Foster addresses this in this discussion of the origins of human language -----Wiki on Carlos Castaneda -----Discover Magazine - Paleomythic: How People Really Lived During the Stone Age By Marlene Zuk Like it says – an interesting read ...more |
Notes are private!
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Aug 16, 2021
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Sep 13, 2021
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Jun 30, 2021
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Hardcover
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1640093672
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| 4.33
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| Feb 16, 2021
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it was amazing
| Except during the lockdown to slow the COVID-19 virus, cities drown us in sound. Buses grind gears, trucks beep, and street-corner preachers call d Except during the lockdown to slow the COVID-19 virus, cities drown us in sound. Buses grind gears, trucks beep, and street-corner preachers call down damnation on it all—what does this do to the human being, whose ears evolved as a warning system? In daylight, our eyes can warn us of danger in front of us. But our ears alert us to opportunity and danger twenty-four hours a day, from every direction, even through dense vegetation and total darkness.It’s quiet, too quiet. And it’s getting quieter. There is a soundscape, a world of vibrations, wherever we are. I started reading this collection in a laundromat, pen and notebook at the ready. The wall-mounted TV blares The Goldbergs, an upgrade from the unspeakable Judge Judy, but still, noise that attempts to pierce my concentration, vying for attention. I sit on a bench at a table just inside a set of long, tall windows. A soft drink vending machine hums a steady note. Washing machines and dryers rumble. The irregular shmoosh-shmoosh of traffic passing on a wet street is muted by the window, higher tones intercepted by the glass. The only natural sound is a man with an operatic voice eager to engage on the subject of marriage as he folds newly-dry clothing on a table. While the urban orchestra may be largely comprised of mechanical instruments, it is not entirely so. The occasional dramatic crack and bang of nearby lightning are giant cymbals and following kettle drum, fading to a flutter-tongue trombone. [image] Kathleen Dean Moore - image from her site The sounds of nature we experience most are weather-related. The howl of a gale, the whistle of a sustained wind as it slips past constructed edges, the susurrus of wind-shuddered trees, the plik-plik-plik of hail, the long shushing notes of rain. The screech and hiss of cats fighting offers the sudden blare of a coronet and soft mallets on a high-hat. Aside from that, we do not hear mammals beyond, for the most part, neighborhood canines who make their presence felt when mail or packages are delivered or when someone approaches too close to their no-walk zone. I seriously doubt you have heard much from our fellow urbanites of the rodent family. Ground hogs save their conversation for underground, raccoons chitter on occasion when deciding among themselves which garbage can is most accessible. Roaches, ants, bedbugs and termites being notoriously quiet, the buzz of crickets and cicadas is the likeliest insectile sound we will experience, depending on whether you live in close proximity to a hive of bees, yellow-jackets, or hornets. And, of course, the occasional pestiferousness of a horsefly, or mosquitoes. Depends what part of the world you inhabit, of course. [image] Gulls on Anacapa Avian life probably offers the most sound from creatures in our natural aural canvas, the pik-o-wee of a red-winged blackbird, towee-oh-towee-ooh-towee-oh of a robin the hee-ah, hee-ah of the blue jay, the caws of covids, and gurgle of pigeons as they strut on an adjacent rooftop out of reach but within lunging distance of murderous pet felines safely contained behind windows, the rustle of feathers as a startled mourning dove launches. It is the sounds of avian life that receives the most coverage here. [image] Great Blue in the Everglades All this competes with the incessant onslaught of the television, 24/7, or so it seems, spewing news and noise into the world. City traffic also offers ongoing background noise. In my neighborhood there is the added joy of numberless hordes eager to blast car stereos at teeth-shattering volumes, as they pick up pizza next door. And there’s the hair place across the street that has proven resistant to civil pleas to lower the volume on the music they blast onto the sidewalk in hopes of attracting, I am guessing, the hearing-impaired. Silence is a rare event, and is unnerving because of that infrequency. [image] Frigate Bird in the Dry Tortugas I was living in Brooklyn when 911 happened. The sirens were ever-present, well, more ever-present than usual, masking the sudden absence of all air and most street traffic. Any city resident could tell from auditory clues alone that something very bad had happened. The soundscape changed, more than the hush created by a large snow. There was a different quality to it all, and it was unnerving, as if the quiet was in anticipation of another disaster. That was a sudden shift, and thus noticeable. The shift Kathleen Dean Moore writes of is a very different sort, more like the apocryphal frog in a pot of boiling water, which does not notice the gradual increase in heat until it is too late. [image] Great Egret in Everglades It is necessary to leave the larger cities (unless, of course, yours features sufficient acreage to allow one true aural relief from the urban) to have a chance at a more natural chamber orchestra. The sound of waves at oceanside, of burbling streams in the woods, or rushing rivers before they become major thoroughfares. In the absence of prowling predators, there is usually no such thing as woodland silence. Particularly at night the airwaves are alive with diverse calls and responses, come-ons and threats, warnings and conversations. But the rich chorus of the unpeopled world is being silenced, as member after member of that grand orchestra has been removed from their seat. Vivaldi incorporated the sounds of wildlife into his masterpiece, The Four Seasons. Let’s hope that critter-mimicking played-instruments or recordings are not all we have left of the sonic scape of the world of wildlife. [image] Green Heron in the Everglades It is, of course, not just creatures that Moore writes of. There are plenty of other sounds she celebrates, the song of dripping water in a luminous cave, the calming sounds of a singing mother soothing a squalling infant, the roar of the surf, the music of wind playing over cacti spines like a bow over strings, and plenty more. While a wide range of auditory experience is noted in this book, the largest representative of sounds that may be lost is the songs of birds. [image] Anhinga in a tree - Everglades I am no one’s idea of an outdoorsman, thus my very urban point-of-reference noted above. But neither have I been locked in a box. National Parks hold a magnetic attraction and I have been fortunate enough to have visited a bunch. Moore’s effervescent tale of a pika sitting on her son’s shoe while somewhere above the treeline, and squeaking out a warning when Moore happened to move about in the family camp downhill from her progeny reminded me of having seen a pika sitting atop a rock in Glacier National Park, and issuing the same squeak. There is an excellent chance that a few of the critters she mentions here might be found in whatever part of the states you live in, or similar creatures in places outside the states. That occasional direct connection adds to the enjoyment of reading about experiences she has shared with us. [image] Tri-colored Heron – Everglades In Earth’s Wild Music, Kathleen Dean Moore, has produced a cri du couer about the anthropo-screwing of our planet. She notes, in particular, the auditory element of our world, our experience of it, and the diminution of the actual evironment of sound on our planet as species go extinct. [image] Juvenile White Ibis – Everglades It is a book rich not only with a blaring call for recognition of what is taking place, for concern and action, but with notes of information, many of which will make you say to yourself, “Huh, I never knew that,” whether silently or aloud. The calls of shorebirds, which evolved at the edge of the sea, have high frequencies, audible over the low rumble of surf. In the forest, birds have low-frequency voices because the long wavelength of the low tones are not as quickly scattered or absorbed by the tangle of leaves and moss.or The true gifts of the saguaro are the stiff spines set in clusters on the pleats of their trunks. When the wind blows across the spines, they sing like violin strings. Better yet, when you pluck a spine, it will sing its particular tone. If a person is patient in her plucking she can play music on a saguaro cactus.It was a jaw-dropping read for me, not just for the content, but for the gift of poetic description that Moore brings to her mission. I experienced the same piercing joy in reading this book that is usually reserved for books by Ron Rash or Louise Erdrich. The gifts of nature tell us there is a persistence to life that no measure of insolence or greed can destroy…the natural world holds us tight in its arms—calm as we tremble, patient as we mark the days “until this is over,” strong as we weaken. When the time comes, the natural world will embrace us as we die. It will never leave us. If we are lonely, Nature strokes our hair with light winds. If, frightened in the night, we wander outside to sit on a bench in the moonlight, it will come and sit beside us. If we are immobilized, having lost faith in the reliability of everything, still the Earth will carry us around the sun. If we feel abandoned, the Earth sings without ceasing—beautiful love songs in the voices of swallows and storms. This sheltering love calms me and makes me glad.Moore has been at this for some time. This is her eleventh book, continuing her lifelong dedication to writing about the moral imperative for protecting the only planet we have. I am two things, a philosophy professor and a natural history writer. They speak to the same thing, I think, which is developing a responsible relationship with a place, so that you can openly learn about it and it can openly inform you and you feel this moral urgency in protecting it. - from the NHI interviewIt is not so much that this book should be read slowly, it MUST be read slowly, sips, not gulps, savoring the stunning beauty of her words, the appreciation of, the wonder at our world, the sorrow at what has already faded. It reads like a novel that does not link scenes through action, but through theme. Yet those scenes can be compelling. There are 32 essays. In a chapter set in Washington state, flooding had loosened the grip on the earth of a stand of huge cedars, sufficient so that biblical winds could push them over, into each other, causing a cascade of tree onto trailers, stoving them to ruin, across roads, requiring the liberal use of chainsaws to clear passage, with the residents holed up in a local tavern hoping for surcease like a science fiction town hoping for the best against an invading zombie army. In another, she comes face to face with a cougar in a cow field. There is the song of water dripping in a luminous, unsuspected cavern, more like glass than stone. [image] Pelicans – Everglades ==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved it to the comments section directly below. [image] I also cross-posted the entire, un-broken-up, review to my site, Coot's Reviews. Stop on by and make some noise [image] [image] [image] [image] Re-posted February 18, 2022 for release of the trade paperback - February 22, 2022 ...more |
Notes are private!
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Feb 11, 2021
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Mar 07, 2021
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Mar 09, 2021
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Hardcover
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1501198505
| 9781501198502
| 1501198505
| 4.14
| 1,343
| Aug 27, 2020
| Jan 05, 2021
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it was amazing
| Like a bird flying repeatedly into a pane of glass, I kept seeking Heathcote. Each time I reached out for him, the crack yawned open just a little Like a bird flying repeatedly into a pane of glass, I kept seeking Heathcote. Each time I reached out for him, the crack yawned open just a little wider, until eventually. I hurtled straight through.-------------------------------------- How do you let go of someone you never had?Charlie Gilmour was living in southeast London when his partner’s sister came across an abandoned chick. Magpies leave home far too soon—long before they can really fly or properly fend for themselves. For weeks after they fledge their nests, they’re dependent on their parents for sustenance, protection, and an education too. But this bird’s parents are nowhere to be seen. They’re nor feeding it, or watching it, or guarding it; no alarm calls sound as a large apex predator approaches with footfalls made heavy by steel-toed boots. It could be no accident that the bird is on the ground. If food was running short, a savage calculation may have been performed, showing that the only way to keep the family airborne was to jettison the runt.[image] From infancy to adulthood – From Charlie’s eulogy for Heathcote –photos by Polly Sampson and Charlie This small bird with a huge personality caught his attention. Charlie’s struggles to care for, to raise, this raucous magpie parallels his growth as a person, and his lifelong struggle to get to know the man who had abandoned him as a an old boyhood dream Of having a jackdaw on your shoulder, like a pirate. Whispering secrets in your ear Charlie seizes on this connection when he discovered the poem his father had written about the experience. “Initially it was just meant to be a light-hearted story about this magpie that came to live with me, roosted in my hair, shat all over my clothes and stole my house keys. When my biological father died, though, it became a much, much more complicated story. Honestly, I really didn’t know what the book was about until I was quite far into the writing process.” - From the Vanity Fair interviewWilliams was quite a character, a merry prankster, a Peter Pan sort, grandly creative but not the best at responsibility, able to charm all those around him, doing magic tricks, persuading people that he really was there for them, while never really being able to handle the demands or needs of the people who needed him most, leaving domestic carnage in his wake. Charlie had never really understood why, one day, he suddenly just got up and flew the coop on him and his mother, Polly Samson. This memoir tracks Charlie’s quest to make sense of the father he never really knew. [image] Charlie Gilmour and his beloved magpie Benzene – image from Vanity Fair - photo by Sarah Lee Charlie lucked out in the parent department in another way. When Mom remarried, it was to David Gilmour of Pink Floyd fame. None of David’s music career is addressed here. But he is shown as a stand-up guy, a supportive, understanding, and loving father who takes Charlie under his wing by adopting him. Absent fathers are hardly uncommon. In 97 percent of single parent families, it’s the mother who ends up taking responsibility for the kids. The child’s impulse to seek them out is just as widespread: psychiatrists call it “father hunger”. I was lucky: I was adopted, and the man who became my dad is both a brilliant man and a brilliant parent. But the longing to know your maker is something that lives on. - from the Public reading Room pieceWe follow the growth of Charlie along with Benzene. It is made clear early on that a magpie presents both challenges and delights that are uncommon in human-critter relations. Tales of bird behavior that might have one pulling out hair in clumps (which might actually be useful, as the bird stores food in Charlie’s hair) are told with warmth, and, frequently, hilarity. My favorite of these occurs when Benzene is under the sway of a nesting instinct, having settled on the top of the fridge as a place on which to construct her DIY nest. At a birthday party for her: My dad strums her a song; my younger sister reads a poem; and a family friend, a venerable literary academic named John, unwillingly provides the sex appeal. This rather reserved man of letters is too polite to do anything but quote Shakespeare as Benzene places her birthday bluebottles and beetles lovingly up his sleeve and tugs the hem of his trousers insistently nestward. [image]= Heathcote Williams planning one of the Windsor free festivals in his Westbourne Park squat, London, in 1974 - Image from his obit in the Guardian - Photo by Richard Adams Charlie’s nesting life is also under development. After he marries his partner and they talk about growing their family, he must confront his fears of being a parent himself. Nature vs nurture. Will he be the absentee his biological father was, or the rock-solid mensch of a parent he lucked into in David Gilmour? Clearly a concern that requires some resolution before going ahead and fertilizing an egg. The issue extends to a question of mental illness. Heathcote had been ill-behaved enough to get institutionalized. It was certainly the case that his behavior often crossed the line from eccentric to certifiable. Did Charlie inherit his father’s proclivities? Is genetics destiny? Charlie had committed some behavioral excesses of his own, consuming vast quantities of illegal substances, which fueled some extremely bad behavior. This landed him on the front pages of the local tabloids, swinging from a beloved and respected war memorial during a protest, and then in prison. [image] Charlie with David Gilmour – image from The Guardian - photo by Sarah Lee Charlie takes us through the attempts he made for many years to connect with Heathcote, but his father offered only teases of interest, always managing to disappear before Charlie could latch on, a hurtful bit of legerdemain. In addition to the title, the names, which largely focus on feather development, given to the five parts of the book, set the tone. All the expected imagery is used throughout, including fledging to nest-building, to mating behavior, to molting, egg-laying and so on. It could easily have been overdone, but I found it charming. In rooting about in Heathcote’s history Charlie offers us, in addition to his personal tale, some of Heathcote’s outrageous adventures from back in the day. Charlie’s personal growth as a person adds heft. I was reminded of a few other memoirs. In Hollywood Park, musician and writer Mikel Jollett tries, a lot more successfully than Charlie, to connect with his missing father, confronting issues of nature vs nurture. Helen MacDonald’s H is for Hawk looks at her training a goshawk as a coping mechanism to help in grieving for and remaining connected to her late father, similar in feathery subject matter, although it is quite a different book. Alan Cumming, in Not My Father’s Son, looks at the damage his father had done to him, trying to figure out how this mercurial man had become so cruel, as Charlie tries to figure out how his mercurial, if not overtly cruel, father had become so nurturing-phobic. John Grogan’s Marley and Me looks at the difficulties of caring for a difficult pet, and the corresponding rewards. It is not necessary to love the memoirist to enjoy their book, but that is not an issue here. Charlie behaved rather poorly, both as a child and an early twenty-something, but learned his lesson, grew up, straightened out, and became a likable, decent sort, a very good writer who is very well able to communicate the struggles through which he has grown. It is easy to root for him to get to the bottom of what made Heathcote tick, and to find a way to make peace with what their minimal relationship had been. His writing is accessible, warm, moving, and at times LOL funny. You will need a few tissues at the ready by the end. Just for padding your roost, of course. In the Archive, the sour smell of mold is somehow even more overpowering than it was at Port Eliot, as if the material is rebelling against the light. At the end of each day I come away filthy, sneezing, and feeling lousy—but I keep going back for more. I need this. My approach is far from methodical. I attack the body of words and images like a carrion bird, looking for the wound that will yield to my prying beak, the original injury that unravels the man. I peel back layers of skin, pick over the bones, snip my way to the heart of the matter. A patchwork biography begins to emerge; a rough story told in scavenged scraps. It feels almost like stealing, like robbing the grave, except it’s not the treasure that interests me. Heathcote’s glories get hardly a glance. It’s the traumas I’m searching for. Answers to those same old questions. Why does a person disappear? What makes a man run from his child? Why was Heathcote so afraid of family? What forces guided that nocturnal flight in Spring so many years ago? Review first posted – February 19, 2021 Publication dates ----------January 5, 2021 - hardcover ----------January 11, 2022 - trade paperback [image] [image] [image] [image] I received an ARE of this book from Scribner in return for an honest review. No feathering of nests was involved. Thanks, folks. And thanks to MC for bringing this to my attention. You know who you are. =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, FB, Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter pages Interviews -----The One Show - The One Show: Elton John meets Charlie Gilmour -----David Gilmour: ‘I’ve been bonded to Charlie since he was three. We were incensed by the injustice’ - Charlie and David Gilmour on their relationship and history -----Bookpage - Charlie Gilmour: From feathers to fatherhood by Alice Cary -----Vanity Fair - Birds of a Feather. Interview with Charlie Gilmour by Chiara Nardelli Nonino Songs/Music -----Donovan - The Magpie -----The Beatles - Blackbird Items of Interest from the author -----Vogue - What Raising a Magpie Taught Me About My Famous, Troubled Father -----Waterstones - a promo vid for the book - 1:52 -----5x15 Stories - Featherhood - a story about birds and fathers -----The Guardian - ‘One spring morning my dad vanished’: the son of poet Heathcote Williams looks back -----Public Reading Rooms - Heathcote Williams: Eulogy to the Dad I never knew ----- Charlie’s articles for Vice Items of Interest -----BBC - My Unusual Life | The Man Who Lives With a Magpie - a short doc on Charlie -----Wiki on Pin feathers -----The Guardian - David Gilmour: ‘I’ve been bonded to Charlie since he was three. We were incensed by the injustice’ -----Straight Up Herman – an arts journal blog - Being Kept by a Jackdaw - Heathcote Williams’ poem Other memoirs of interest -----Hollywood Park by Mikel Jollett -----H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald -----Not My Father’s Son by Alan Cumming -----Marley and Me by John Grogan ...more |
Notes are private!
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Feb 02, 2021
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Feb 10, 2021
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Jan 13, 2021
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Hardcover
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125020402X
| 9781250204028
| 125020402X
| 4.14
| 76,930
| Aug 04, 2020
| Aug 04, 2020
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it was amazing
| There is nothing so disturbing as a creature born to flight being bound to dull lifelessness.-------------------------------------- A nameless s There is nothing so disturbing as a creature born to flight being bound to dull lifelessness.-------------------------------------- A nameless sadness, the fading away of the birds. The fading away of the animals. How lonely it will be here, when it’s just us.Franny Stone has always had large volumes of wanderlust coursing through her veins. From? To? Both? Neither? It seems that this is an ancestral gift. Excellent for seeing vast swaths of the planet’s landscape. Maybe not so good for establishing a secure base of operations in, say, maybe, a family, living in, oh, a home. [image] Charlotte McConaghy - image from Fantastic Fiction About twenty minutes into the future, a breathless Franny turns up at the town of Tasiilaq, in Greenland. The fauna of planet Earth have been vanishing at an alarming rate for a long time already. Mass extinctions are no longer the exception, but the rule. Franny wants to hitch a ride with a fishing boat. Her mission? To track the last Arctic terns on the planet as they make their globe-spanning annual migration from the Arctic to the Antarctic. She is happy to take on seamen’s chores while aboard, although her skill-set is somewhat slim. But what she can offer of value is tracking hardware. Terns with trackers on them and a computer that can check where they are. This is of significance to a particularly hard-core fishing boat captain, Ennis Malone, as terns are excellent locators of large schools of fish, and Malone is desperate for one last ”golden catch” before he, and all other fishermen, are banned from practicing their trade, the oceans having been pretty much drained of sustainable piscine life. [image] Tasiilaq Greenland - image from Travel with 2 of us Franny’s time talking her way onto, and then shipping out on, the good ship Saghani, is our home-base present for the novel. From here we flip back to several times in Franny’s life. Two, four, six, ten, twelve, nineteen years, and one year before. Each peels back a part of her life. We learn more of Franny’s many secrets with each look back. McConaghy sustains tension by showing us just enough, getting us to bite, then yanking us into the next chapter, the next time and place. Franny has several loves as well as secrets. She is a creature of the sea, an amazing swimmer, having an unnatural tolerance for oceanic chill, which she demonstrates by diving into such frigid water on rescue missions, with no apparent attention being paid to her personal safety. You wouldn’t be surprised if she crawled out of the water sporting an Ariel-like flipper instead of legs. The sea for her is one of the great loves of her life. Maybe it’s the family she never had. She feels more connected to her body, and weightless, and almost able to fly like the birds she loves. - from the -WriterUnboxed interviewShe is smitten with birds. We learn that she had had a particularly connected dealing with crows as a child. In another one of the lookbacks she is working at a University, decides to pop into an ornithology class, to bolster her innate interest, and finds, unsurprisingly, that she loves it, that she has an excellent feel for the course material. This does not go unnoticed by the professor, who is soon gaga over her. Niall’s love for the natural world, birds in particular, is as great as Franny’s love for the sea, but he is able to fulfill this passion by study, research, and teaching, without having to give up everything to pursue his interest. His is a stable passion, although no less a passion than hers. Niall is absolutely symbolic of the birds for Franny. He represents the idea that you can study what you love without taking away from the magic in those things. - from the Dead Darlings interviewTheir relationship takes flight, Franny’s third true love, but her wanderlust remains overpowering. It was always there, still is, and e’er will be. I tried for Niall, like I did for my mother. I really did. But the rhythms of the sea’s tides are the only things we humans have not yet destroyed.The family piece is important. Her mother encouraged her to read a lot. In addition to expanding her brain, it was a way for Franny to leave, without having to physically take off. And it worked. Her mother was particularly sensitive to leaving, having been abandoned by her mother as a child. Franny knew about this, and her mother’s promise that if Franny ever left it would be the last straw for her. The call comes when Franny is ten, and she does an adventurous runner with a fellow adventurer. But when she comes back two days later, Mom is gone. And Franny is packed off to her grandparents in Australia, her father having been out of the picture for a long time. Adult Franny goes on a search to find out what had happened to her mother, one of several lookback threads. It was really important to me to write the moments in Franny’s past that make her who she is, and for the reader to be able to experience those moments on an intimate level with her, because I felt that this would allow readers to connect more deeply with her and what drives her through the story. There’s also a lot of tension to be built in using suspension and mystery—you leave clues peppered throughout and only reveal information at moments that will create catharsis for your readers. - from the Amazon interviewFranny sustains a number of secrets. Aboard the boat she suffers from night terrors, even to the point of some life-threatening somnambulism. Why? What’s the deal with all those letters she writes but fails to send? What happened with her mother? Is that even a secret or just a mystery? There are more. And she is not the only one. Some of the Saghani crew have plenty of their own. [image] Arctic Tern – image from Discover Magazine The migration theme is worked vigorously. Franny’s innate pull to here or there is certainly of a kind with the migration urges of birds. We get to see the migration of the terns in action. There is even mention of a very long-term migration involving ocean currents. The fishermen must migrate to follow the fish, who also migrate. One of Franny’s needs is to try to find or construct a family. Niall presents one way in which to have an actual home base. He offers her a lot of space to be who she is. One can also see the Saghani crew as a kind of family. They certainly look after one another in a familial way. She can be herself to a significant degree with them, salve her loneliness as they have theirs. Franny’s searching for her mother is also driven by this familial need. Even if you are going to be in and out, you need a place to hang your hat, or maybe it is not so much defined by the place but by people. Home, then, is wherever you are, when you are with the people you love. The future McConaghy portrays is grim, but she had not set out to bum everyone out, or parade back and forth wearing a sandwich board, screaming “Repent!” She is not interested in tossing harpoons. One measure of this is how sympathetically she portrays the fishermen, even knowing that their work is part of the problem. It is a very human look at things. I didn’t want to write a dystopian novel about the physical impacts of climate change, such as what would become of our food supply. I wanted this to be an existential look at the way the loss of the animals would make us feel, and I think this was a refusal of the idea that humans are the most important things on this planet, and that everything exists in service to us. I wanted the world I drew to look almost identical to the world today, apart from that one major difference, hoping that this would be a more confronting way to predict how close a future without animals really is. - from the Amazon interviewFranny Stone is a fascinating and engaging character. Admittedly, most of us will not share her compulsion to just go. But, while it is likely that our traumas do not match hers, we have all suffered trauma of one sort or another. And while few of us have had to endure the chained up, tied down feelings or experiences Franny has, many of us have spent long stretches of time in places and/or situations we would rather not inhabit (I certainly have). And while we may not have the NEED that Franny experiences, we all have things we want, desires that are unfilled, whether in lower case or bolded caps. So, while we may or may not identify with the specifics of her experience, we can certainly identify in one way or another with Franny’s pain, with what remains unquenched, fueling potential movement. Migrations is a remarkable book that will transport you, but to a place you will want to see. You will meet interesting characters along the way, try to figure out some mysteries, uncover some secrets, and consider that we are not all made alike. There is on offer here a look at love made difficult by what is inherent, but also a look at how that might be managed. Hopefully, you will consider optimism, the possibility that courses through these pages as well as the dark future they portend. Migrations is a journey well worth taking. A shiver of delight finds me as we set out into the dark water. We hug the coast, traveling north by the ceaseless circling light of the lighthouse. The salty smell of the sea and the sound of its crash, the sway of the waves and the black abyss of its depths, the reaching dark of it, up to where it meets the inky velvet sky pricked through with glitter. With the stars reflected in the water we could be sailing through the sky itself; there is no end to it, no end to the sea or the sky but a gentle joining together. Review posted – August 14, 2020 Publication dates ----------August 4, 2020 - hardcover ----------July 6, 2021 - trade paperback I received an e-book ARE of Migrations from Flatiron via NetGalley. No long-distance travel was entailed. I did, however, feel unshakably pulled to write a review. And thanks too, to MC. You know who you are. Ok, sometimes I get a dark urge, a compulsion that I cannot resist, try as I might. The result is safely tucked under a spoiler tag to protect the innocent. But if you are driven by investigatory instincts, I urge you to reconsider before going there. (view spoiler)[ Ok, my real closing line… In writing Migrations Charlotte McConaghy has left no Stone un-terned. Ok, there it is done. Yes, I know I have a problem. Don’t judge me. (hide spoiler)] =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Instagram, Twitter and FB pages This is the author’s first book for adult readers My review of McConaghy's 2021 follow up, Once There Were Wolves Interviews -----Amazon - An interview with "Migrations" author Charlotte McConaghy by Al Woodworth on 8/6/20 -----Bookpage - Charlotte McConaghy - To the moon and back three times by Cat, Deputy Editor - 8/4/20 -----Bookweb - A Q&A With Charlotte McConaghy, Author of August’s #1 Indie Next List Pick By Emily Behnke – 7/21/20 -----Dead Darlings - Interview with Charlotte McConaghy, Author of Migrations - 8/4/20 -----Libro.fm Audiobooks - Author Interview: Charlotte McConaghy by Kelsey Norris – 8/8/20 -----Writer Unboxed - A Glimmer of Hope from a Dark Future: An Interview with Charlotte McConaghy by Julie Carrick Dalton – 8/6/20 Items of Interest -----Chasing daylight - tiny trackers reveal the incredible flight plans of the Arctic tern -----Nemo’s Point -----Reading Group Guide -----The Wild Geese - a poem by Mary Oliver – it is referenced in chapter 2 – four years ago in Franny’s life - not really a spoiler, just a piece of the poem (view spoiler)[ Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things. (hide spoiler)] Songs/Music -----Luke Kelly - Raglan Road - Franny gets weepy in Chapter 22 on hearing this song ...more |
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really liked it
| On January 13, 2017, a brief article from Washoe’s [Washoe County, in Nevada] public health officials was published in the Centers for Disease Cont On January 13, 2017, a brief article from Washoe’s [Washoe County, in Nevada] public health officials was published in the Centers for Disease Control’s Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report, and it sent shockwaves around the world. It was the first report of its kind—never before had a US county public health official written about a complete failure of every single antibacterial drug that they had available to them.It was darkly serendipitous that I was reading this book in March, 2020, and that the book would find its way to bookstores in April, when, no doubt, we would still be facing considerable personal and global, medical and economic challenges from what must be deemed public enemy number one, COVID-19. If you will indulge me, I would like to talk a bit about the current [2020] crisis which, while very much related to the book under review, is only one element. I promise to get to the actual book review part before too long. The SARS epidemic began in 2002. According to the National Health Service in the UK “There’s currently no cure for SARS, but research to find a vaccine is ongoing.” Tick tock, guys, I mean eighteen years is not enough? It gives you some idea of the level of concern about COVID-19. Even the nomenclature can be a bit confusing. “CO” is for “corona,” the type. “VI” is for virus, duh-uh. “D” however, may not be obvious but will be after you read this. Disease. See? The “19” is not the 19th iteration of this malady, but represents the first year in which it was identified, or 2019. You will not find a COVID-18. The actual virus is called “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2”, or SARS-CoV-2 by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. And Yes, it is very much related to the earlier SARS virus and disease. Two days before my wife was due to return to NYC where she worked several days a week, the first case was confirmed in Manhattan. She still went in. Work is work. In the absence of a corporate ok, most people were reluctant to just call out. How many other people were faced with the same challenge? Go in or stay home? How can one judge the risk if there is no good information yet on how vulnerable one might be to picking up the virus at, say, the Port Authority Bus Terminal, or at Grand Central Station or on the A train, or on the local bus? Maybe your Uber or taxi driver is a carrier and does not even know it. Paranoia can be understandable at such times. For myself, I do not need to interact much with the world, relatively. A good thing, given that I am in the age group most susceptible to the worst results from the virus. But the world does come to me. My wife’s trips to NYC stopped for now, corporate encouraging employees to work from home as much as possible, but we still have a truck-driver relation in the house on a daily basis, and we still have to shop, for food, meds, and other things. COVID-19 is a global peril because there are currently no drugs available that can dispatch it. [well, there weren't in 2020] Forget a vaccination that is probably well over a year away, if even then. The best one can hope is that, if you get it, you can endure the flu-like symptoms for the duration of the infection, and that your symptoms do not become severe. For the optimistic, The National Institutes of Health reports that they are testing a possible treatment. No date was offered on when the test period would end, or when a decision could be made as to the efficacy of the treatment, the drug Remdesivir, nor, if proven effective, how long it might be before production could be scaled up to provide the vast volumes of the drug that will no doubt be needed. It used to be that afflictions were named for the place where they were first discovered. MERS, or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, comes to mind. And it should be known that the Spanish flu actually originated in Kansas, but was first copped to in Spain. Locality use in nomenclature for diseases is now considered unacceptable, as stigmatizing. Of course, there are cynical folks on the right who are deliberately attempting to distract political attention from the colossal failure of the Trump administration in the face of this crisis by poking racist nerves and referring to COVID-19 as the Chinse flu, the Wuhan flu or the Wu-Flu. The hope is that it will prompt Dems to go after them for their racism, and then they could be talking about the attack by Dems and not the administration’s lies, failures, cover-ups, and cluelessness. This week, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. My wife did not travel to Manhattan, but worked the full week from home, and will (and did) until directed otherwise. But the reality of the threat continues to grow (the NBA just postponed the entire 2020 season), MLB has postponed all games, Spring training and regular season, a pointless ban on travel from most of Europe has been announced, and tests for COVID-19 remain in mortally short supply here in the USA. If you can’t test anyone, you can’t confirm an increase in the number of cases, or so I expect the thinking goes in some quarters. Thanks for indulging me, now on to the book. [image] Muhammad H. Zaman - image from NTNU Returning to the opening quote from the book, people and bacteria have been engaged in an arms race for a long time, or it might be better called an AMRs (Antimicrobial resistance) race, and it appears that the microbes are one up on us at present. This is a biography. One might think of it in terms that some of us of a certain age might associate with a TV show from the way-back, This Is Your Life. A celebrity guest would be introduced, then we watched her or him react to a procession of people from their life, usually teachers, old friends, mentors maybe, arresting officers, whatever. I suppose one might think of Biography of Resistance in a similar vein. We are told at the beginning that a malady has been found (see opening quote) that has proved resistant to all known antibiotics. The bug in question was a CRE (carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae). Many Entero bacteria are harmless, but this family member was Klebsiella pneumoniae, the culprit behind not only many a UTI, but life-threatening sepsis and pneumonia, as well. All known antibiotics (26 at the time) were tried. The patient died of sepsis. So how did this particular bacterium come to be, or, more importantly, how did this level of resistance come to be? We travel back to when we first found out about our previously unseen fellow Earthlings, and track the advance of our knowledge of them through the centuries. From seeing them at all to understanding that not all our fellow passengers were benign. The action picks up in the mid-late 19th century, as, now recognizing some true enemies, means are found to do battle with them. Then they develop longbows, and we develop armor-plated vehicles, and they develop rocket fired grenades and we develop aircraft and on and on it goes. This history is often fascinating. One of the things that many popular science books do is to use people as vessels with which to deliver historical and scientific information. (Maybe like inserting a curative virus inside a friendly-looking bacterium in order to slip past defenses of the malignant microbe?) We can more easily relate to other people than we might to raw descriptions of science. And if the scientists in question sometimes have oversized personalities, so much the better. It makes for better story-telling. Some of the names here will be familiar, particularly to any who work or dabble in the life sciences. Maimonides, for example, nailed a description of pneumonia symptoms in the 12th century. Robert Locke’s Micrographia, published in 1665, showed that there is an entire world of living things inside the smallest objects. Antonie van Leeuwenhook built a better Where there is discovery there is often ego, sometimes to the point of personal, professional, and decidedly dickish competitiveness. Some early work in the examination of pneumonia descended to this level, sadly. You will learn about Robert Koch, a German microbiologist who, in addition to doing breakthrough work on fighting the black death, ran an institute that produced world class international researchers as if he had found a magic way to clone genius. You will also learn of household-name science icons who were not above fudging data when necessary to prove a point. [image] Robert Koch was the Professor Xavier to a generation of microbiological superheroes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, training such household names as Kitisato (a household name in Japan), Julius Petri, yes, of that dish, and Paul Ehrlich, notable for his concerns about population growth, finding a cure for syphilis, and a for being the father of chemotherapy. - image from NobelPrize.org It is worth knowing how antibiotics actually work, what it is that they do, and how they do it. (Teachers and classmates report how the biographed bac snuck off the schoolgrounds and got into all sorts of trouble, while somehow maintaining top grades) Zaman offers a very readable description of ways in which antibiotics (ABs) go after bacteria and utterly fascinating material about the defenses, some of which are remarkably complex, that bacteria have developed (evolved) to fend off such attacks, including using antibiotic attackers as food. He also reports on different sorts of ABs that have been developed over time, things like bacteriophages, (bacteria eaters) aka phages, sulfa drugs, and a kind of fungus that disarms bacteria. One large surprise is that bacteria develop antibacterial defenses independent of the presence of humans. (Brothers and sisters appear on stage, telling about what a rotten sib the bacterium was) It would appear that we have joined a battle that has been raging for as long as bacteria have been on the planet. Another is the sources that are used when looking for new AB materials to bring to bear in the ongoing war. It was also heartening to learn of a particular confluence of disparate scientific disciplines joining forces to advance our knowledge, and hopefully enhance our armory. [image] Actually, resistance, despite some temporary setbacks, seems to be working out pretty well for pathogenic (hostile) microbes (Lifelong friends, business associates and rivals offer some final praise for the guest of honor) Bringing us up to the present, Zaman catches us up on the dangers we face in the globalization of infection, the misuse of antibiotics as a contributor to the growth of AB resistance, the latest insight on how resistance is replicated, and delves smartly into sociopolitical elements of international health care politics and economics. Some of this is unsurprising, as companies that make their money selling antibiotics lobby against any restrictions, and too many have reduced or eliminated investment in AB research and development, because such products are less likely to earn an optimal ROI than drugs intended for regular, ongoing use. He points out how important it is to involve people other than scientists in the drive to develop new defenses. Economists, politicians, social scientists, anthropologists, writers and more all need to play a part in helping us find ways to survive in what has become, and what we have helped make, a hostile environment. Mother’s milk for policy geeks. [image] Chart is from AMR review Gripes - I did not keep a running total, but the sheer number of named researchers did seem a bit encyclopedic at times, as if the author felt compelled to incorporate as many people as possible into his narrative. I expect, in reality, he was pulling hair out because of having to leave so many other scientists out of the narrative, but the number left in seemed a bit excessive. I doubt this can be defended as a gripe, more of a personal preference, really. But I find that science writing is hugely enhanced by the presence of a degree of levity. Mary Roach is the most stunning example of the application of (often jejune) humor to otherwise serious popular science narratives. You will be in no danger of having your latte shoot through your nose as you are ambushed by something totally hilarious in this one. Sip on in confidence. At the very least, The Biography of Resistance will give you some perspective, a more informed look at just how challenging it is for medical science to keep ahead of (or more accurately catch up to) the resistance that diverse, harmful bacteria keep coming up with to make us ill. Doctor Zaman covers a lot of territory in this very readable, relatively brief (263 pages) book. From the history of our learning what microbes are to showing how antibiotics attack bacteria, and how bacteria fight back, to showing the impact of antibiotics in the world, showing how their overuse has worsened an already challenging problem, pointing out what is currently being done, and offering a broad strategy for moving on, incorporating diverse disciplines. You will learn a lot, and I cannot imagine a timelier book as we try to make our way through what could well be called by future historians 2020: The Year of the Plague If nothing changes, and we continue on the path we’re now on, by 2050 the world will lose 10 million people a year, every year, to resistant infections. Review first posted – March 13, 2020 Publication date – April 21, 2020 =============================EXTRA STUFF - See below ...more |
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0316412007
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it was amazing
| There is a vast arterial power humming all around us, hiding in plain sight. It has shaped our civilization more than any road, technology, or poli There is a vast arterial power humming all around us, hiding in plain sight. It has shaped our civilization more than any road, technology, or political leader. It has opened frontiers, founded cities, settled borders, and fed billions. It promotes life, forges peace, grants power, and capriciously destroys everything in its path. Increasingly domesticated, even manacled, it is an ancient power that rules us still.---------------------------------------- …not only are we humans an urban species, we are also a river species. Indeed nearly two thirds (63 percent) of the total world population lives within 20 kilometers of a large river Some 84 percent of the world’s large cities…are located along a large river. For the world’s megacities the number rises to 93 percent.We are river people, most of us anyway, although we may or may not be aware of it. The places where we live, work, and gplay tend to center around our streaming waterways. Even settlements at the coast of seas and oceans tend to be located where rivers empty into the larger bodies of water. As significant as light, land, breathable air, and tolerable temperature ranges, rivers have powered the development of homo sapiens from hunter-gatherer to space traveler. As with most things that underlay, and power our lives, I expect that most of us do not give our rivers much thought. [image] Laurence Smith - (looking suspiciously like the character Bernard Lowe of Westworld – we presume Smith is human) - image from Institute at Brown for Environment & Society I grew up, as most of you probably did, near a river. At the breakfast table in our third-floor apartment in the Bronx, the morning light was so bright, so glaring that we had to pull down the shade in our single kitchen window. The golden beams came at us from the west, reflected off the windows of George Washington High School in Manhattan, across the Harlem River, which was about four blocks to the west. I never thought much about the river, although it was so close by. Unlike the morning glare, it was not directly visible from any of our windows, and was not in clear sight from most of the places I frequented. In Rivers of Power, which could as easily have been titled The Power of Rivers, geographer Laurence Smith offers a drop of geological history on how they came to be, but focuses mostly on how rivers and humans have worked together throughout our shared time on Earth. His analysis cites the challenges rivers present to their neighbors, but mostly the benefits they offer, which he divides into five general categories, Access, Natural Capital, Territory, Well-Being, and Means of Projecting Power. He then looks at major rivers of the world through this quintuple lens to broaden and deepen our appreciation for this very necessary, but sometimes unseen partner. [image] The Sherman Creek Generating Station on the Harlem River, the Hudson River visible at top – image from Hidden Waters blog The river was bordered on the Bronx side by Penn Central tracks, accessible through holes nicely cut in chain-link fences. It was a good place to tape coins to tracks allowing rolling stock the chance to flatten and stretch them to the delight of wastrel urchins. The most frequent floating stock I recall passing by just beyond the tracks consisted of barges loaded with coal for a local powerplant. [image] A Nilometer on Rhoda Island, Cairo – image from Wikipedia It will come as no great surprise that the first great societies in human history arose around rivers. You will know about early Mesopotamia on the Tigris and Euphrates, and Egypt on the Nile. But you may not know about another that far pre-dated both, the Harappan civilization of the Indus and Ghaggar Hakra river valleys. It is one of the great joys of this book that it brings to light such nuggets of information that were completely new, well, to me, anyway. I had never before heard, for example, of a nilometer (see image above), a significant tool used by Egyptian leaders. It allowed those in charge to see the clarity of the water and depth of the river at a given moment and thus be prepared for excessive or insufficient annual flooding of the Nile River Valley, with huge implications for the harvest to come. [image] Guns along the Hudson - Saratoga Battlefield - my shot Laurence looks at how civilizations grew up along rivers. There are obvious advantages, from fresh water for drinking and cleaning to irrigation, from transportation to military defense. While rivers provided water for community needs, and as technology progressed, could be used to power waterwheels and cool manufactories, they were also a tool that could be used by those upriver for political and/or military advantage. A nation, or community located upriver could divert so much of the river’s water that a downstream community could find its crucial resource seriously diminished or totally gone, and, in addition, the disadvantage of being downstream from polluters. Rivers allow for the emplacement of forts and armaments that could protect a community from a naval invasion, and offer highways on which raiders could attack poorly defended communities (think Vikings). [image] The Ganges - image from Encyclopedia Britannica - © Jedraszak/iStock.com But there are many other ways that rivers impact our lives, and have done so for as long as there have been people living in communities. They have served as a focal point for religious practices. The Ganges is used as a site into which Hindus deliver the cremated remains of their dead. The river Jordan was a memorable site in Christian lore as the place where Jesus was baptized, and today rivers are still often used in baptismal rites. And let us not forget underground waterways in myth, like the Rivers Styx, Acheron, and Lethe. River as judge-and-jury has a place in history too, not necessarily a good place. In the Hammurabi Code, for instance, a charge of sorcery was adjudicated by tossing the accused (one wonders if a local rat-bastard accused some poor schmo of turning him into a newt) into the Euphrates. If the newly dunked swims to shore, not guilty. If the accused drowns, oh, well. (that turning people into a newt thing would have really come in handy). I expect there are probably books to be written (undoubtedly some already have been) about rivers, real and imagined, in religion, literature, and mythology. Smith touches on this in this book, but it is not a major focus. I had a small unfortunate intersection with the Harlem as a young man. A friend and I were at the water’s edge, very close to the Washington Heights Bridge. I was there helping him clean his car, at some point in the late 60s, on a summer afternoon. I availed of a very lengthy bit of rope that some daring soul had tethered to the underside of the bridge. There was a knot at the bottom, but I did not have the firmest grip on the rope with my hands or on the knot with any other body parts, and my arm strength not being what I might have hoped, I soon found myself swinging out over the Harlem River, for a brief bit of fun, then desperately plunging toward the water as my grip gave way. I can’t say it was awful, no body parts or other unspeakables floated past, but it was not considered an ideal bathing venue, so I swam back to shore, soaked, somewhat gritty, and mortified. Smith offers a considerable survey of what is happening in the great rivers of the world today, physically and politically. The great dam building that is going on echoes the burst of dam building that took place in the early-mid twentieth century in the West. When the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), across the Blue Nile, was completed in 2022, it became the largest hydroelectric plant in Africa. The Three Gorges Dam in China, across the Yangtze, achieved a generating capacity of 22,500 megawatts when it was finally finished. It has also required the displacement of over a million people and has caused significant ecological damage. Many older dams in the west are being taken down, with an eye to reviving stifled ecological systems. [image] The Three Gorges Dam - as of 2009 – image from Wikipedia Not very far west the Hudson offered a much grander vista, and probably cleaner swimming, although it would take some years before environmentalists, led by Pete Seeger, forced a river cleanup. The view from the train on the Hudson Line, of what is now Metro North, is ta-die-faw. The Palisades formation on the western side of the Hudson was and remains magnificent, particularly celestial in its autumnal finery. The view is even better at the more leisurely pace afforded by the Day Line cruise from the western piers of midtown Manhattan up-river to places like Bear Mountain Park and West Point. This was a most welcome respite for someone who had experienced worlds that were not entirely composed of brick and concrete only on day trips in summer camp. There has been considerable change in the use of river-front land in cities across the world. Rotting piers of earlier mercantile and industrial ages have given way to increasing development of waterside property for high-priced residences, office towers, and commercial spaces, AND for public use. Smith points out the history of law that preserves riverine access for all. It has certainly been far from universally applied. But today, most major world cities have been working to make their rivers accessible to the general public. As people become more urbanized, the need, and yes, it is a need for most, for exposure to the outdoors, for a connection to nature, can be satisfied at least somewhat by walks along or other activities in riverfront parks. There came a time when my ancient car still ran, when I could still drive to work in Queens late at night, and drive (if you can call the stop-and-go nightmare of NYC rush hour traffic driving) home to Brooklyn in the morning. But on Sunday mornings, after my overnight shift, I went elsewhere. Eventually I would diversify, but for a while I would tote my digital SLR to Brooklyn Bridge Park, and environs, to shoot urban landscapes, as the more remote ones were no longer within my means. The need to shoot was powerful, but equally as strong was the comfort to be had in being in a place where the East River was coursing under a series of bridges, on it’s way to meeting up with the outflow of the Hudson en route to the Atlantic. It was an idyllic time of day to be there, early morning, as the sun rose, or soon after. Floods of tourists have yet to arrive. A trickle of joggers trot past. Winter is best for relative solitude there. I told my son once that seeing the beauty of such places, whether urban or wilderness, filled me with a kind of transcendental joy that seemed to my atheistic self something like religion. “Why something like?” he asked. Why indeed. [image] While most of my BB Park shots were taken early in the morning, I did manage an evening outing there once or twice. Smith concludes by looking ahead at what amazing new tech promises for the future, and for what global warming portends for rivers. Advances in coming technology, particularly small hydro power installations, amelioratives like a project planned for New Orleans, Los Angeles working on finding new sources of fresh water, new satellite swarms that allow incredibly greater monitoring of earthly waterflows and conditions. I cannot say that I have any real gripes about the book. It is well-written and informative, presenting a wealth of information about the history of humanity’s relationship with rivers, and explaining how rivers have helped found and shape civilizations. It will definitely remind you of Jared Diamond’s work. Not a gripe, but I do enjoy a bit of levity in non-fiction. I guess it serves a similar purpose to comic relief in dramas. No danger of running into that here. Still, Rivers of Power will get your gray cells flashing, and maybe push you to think a bit about the river that is nearest you now or the river you recall from when you were growing up. Instead of memory lane, it might be more like memory creek. Today it is bedrock legal principle across the globe that rivers cannot be owned. Even in countries with strong capitalist traditions, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, rivers are a class apart, reserved for the public good. This puts rivers in a category distinctly different from other natural resources. It is extremely common for land, trees, minerals, and water from other natural sources (e.g. springs, ponds, aquifers) to be deemed private property. Rivers, air, and oceans, however, are treated very differently. Review first posted – March 20, 2020 Publication date – April 21, 2020 ==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved it to the comments section directly below. [image] ...more |
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Mar 17, 2020
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Feb 07, 2020
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| 1324003316
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| Oct 08, 2019
| Oct 08, 2019
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it was amazing
| Yes, the universe wants to kill us. But on the other hand, we all want to live. So let’s find a way together to deflect the asteroids, find the cur Yes, the universe wants to kill us. But on the other hand, we all want to live. So let’s find a way together to deflect the asteroids, find the cure to the next lethal virus, mitigate hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanoes, etc. This can only be enabled by the efforts of a scientifically and technologically literate public. Therein lies a hope on Earth far greater than ever promised by the act of prayer or introspection.It can be a bit of a challenge when talking about Neil deGrasse Tyson, deciding just where to start. Overall, one would have to say that He is the public face of space, this side of fiction, anyway. And speaking of fiction, he was cast in a recent Neal Stephenson novel, SevenEves, albeit with a nom du plume. He has published 14 books, hosted several science-focused TV series, including Cosmos, Star Talk, Origins, the Pluto Files and more. He is only the fifth ever head of the New York Planetarium, served on presidential science advisory councils, has been awarded NASA’s highest non-government-employee award. He is the teacher you wished you had for science, enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and encouraging, and with a wonderful sense of humor. [image] Neil deGrasse Tyson - image from his site And if that is not enough, he is a remarkably charming guy, and a wonderful writer. In a recent Late Show interview with Whoopi Goldberg (at 7:21 of the clip), when Stephen Colbert asked her who her favorite ever guest was, she said Tyson, because he could talk for three hours straight, and they would all be wonderful, informative hours. And if Whoopi loves spending time with the guy, really, who are we to argue? How do you defend yourself when you have received a letter that proclaims you a “pooh-pooh head” for your role in downgrading Pluto to dwarf-planet status? What can you say to people who challenge you on religion, God, philosophy, who see responsibility for the 9/11 assaults in celestial alignments? This book consists of NDT’s responses to about 75 letters he’s received over the years, on a wide range of subjects. He also writes about some personal feelings and events, like his relationship with his father, or more ethereal considerations of nature. And some are just for fun, like his selection of the most scientifically BS movies of all time, or a museum visitor picking up a display information error that had been there for a very long time, and which NDT had had a hand in approving. Oopsy. There are some very heart-warming passages in which he encourages young learners. He opens with a look at his early exposure to NASA, not as the inspiration it was for so many, but as consistent excluder of people like him. He writes a birthday note to NASA, which was born the same month as he was. …you should know that among my colleagues, I am the rare few in my generation who became an astrophysicist in spite of your achievements in space rather than because of them. For my inspiration, I instead turned to libraries, remaindered books on the cosmos from bookstores, my rooftop telescope and the Hayden Planetarium.NASA moved forward in its employee selection with time, and Tyson would serve as an advisor to America’s space agency. He looks at extraordinary claims, the Cosmos, science denial, philosophy, matters of life and death, his experience with 9/11, religious faith, school issues, and parenting. A chapter titled “Rebuttals” is reserved for special smackdowns. Some chapters are more potpourri than focused. There is a fair bit of overlap among the chapters in subject material, but not enough to negate the structure of the book. Some notions are repeated maybe a time or two too often, but that is a small blemish. Tyson, above all, defends science as the way to understand the workings of the world and the universe. And castigates those who would substitute scriptural revealed truths for the objective, testable approach science offers. His correspondents include men, women, children, prisoners, celebrities, folks of diverse political stripes and religious persuasions. He responds to scientists, teachers, athletes, and morons. All with charm, knowledge, and wisdom. The incoming letters are querulous, admiring, and sometimes hate-filled. Tyson offers some surprising observations on things like the value of IQ, the best books to read, and an actual diamond in the sky. He remembers some people he admires. There is occasional snark in his replies, but, IMHO, not nearly enough. He offers a moving message to a fan who is about to lose a dying mother, and tells how Richard Holbrooke’s interest in science informed his diplomatic work. Like Whoopi says, listening to Neil for three hours is perfectly fine, and I expect you will find the time you spend with him in the pages of this book to be just as rewarding. Not only is NDT great at what he does, which is working to educate Americans about science, he is very warm, human company, who is blessed with a gift for explaining science, and an ability to write that smooths that educational element even more. In that interview Stephen Colbert did with Whoopi, she notes that after spending time with Tyson, she remembered more, of the science things he had been talking about, than she’d expected. Maybe you will too. It most certainly won’t hurt to try. And you have any questions, you could always just send the guy a letter. Review first posted – October 4, 2019 Publication date – October 8, 2019 I received an ARC of this book from Norton in return for a review that would stand up to scientific scrutiny. =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages It would be redundant to add here the vast number of links one could use to connect with Tyson’s various activities. His primary site, at the Planetarium, offers those in abundance. But here's one anyway -----NY Times - April 17, 2021 - Neil deGrasse Tyson Thinks Science Can Reign Supreme Again by David Marchese ...more |
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really liked it
| ...the sensors jammed into a mako’s head resemble the cockpit of an F-35 fighter jet. [presumably without the design flaws and cost overruns] The mako ...the sensors jammed into a mako’s head resemble the cockpit of an F-35 fighter jet. [presumably without the design flaws and cost overruns] The mako’s sensors are equal in sophistication to the fighter jet’s advanced systems except they are bundled in nerves, flesh, and blood.Not comforting. It was the shark tournament that spurred him to action. William McKeever has had a lifelong interest in sharks, ever since his father took him fishing in Nantucket Sound as a kid. An encounter with a caught (and released) dogfish led to long curiosity-driven hours at the library, hunting down, then devouring all he could find on sharks. A few years ago, a lifetime later, on a weekend in Montauk, he got to see appalling scene after appalling scene, large numbers of sharks on display, most thrown away post photo, a Breughelesque scene of mindless genocidal mayhem, otherwise known as the Montauk Shark Tournament. A bit more research revealed that, despite the bad rap sharks have gotten from our popular media, (I mean you, Spielberg) most shark “attacks” are the equivalent of a dog bite. It really is the sharks who are probably wondering if it’s safe to go back into the water. While sharks kill an average of four humans a year, humans kill 100 million sharks each year. That is not a typo. Humans kill 100 million sharks each year. [image] William McKeever - image from McKeever’s site Many of us engage in small ways to try to help when we see outrages in the world. Whether that means trying to help elect public officials who share our concerns, contributing to non-profits engaged in doing battle in our particular areas of interest, maybe volunteering to help out in some way. McKeever was a Wall-Street managing director at Paine Webber, UBS, and Merrill Lynch, and an analyst for Institutional Investor magazine, sharing his expertise on NBC, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal. But it turned out he had bigger fish to fry, and his financial success on Wall Street allowed him the means to pursue his passion. Bringing to light the damage that recreational fishing, particularly scenes of carnage like the one he had seen at Montauk, and the even greater mass annihilation of the world’s shark population by commercial fishing, became his mission. In 2018, he founded a conservancy tasked with helping protect sharks and other fish that man is wiping out, by showing sharks in a new light, as the magnificent creatures they are, survivors extraordinaire, who were here before the dinosaurs, and will probably still be here after people are gone, if we don’t wipe them out first. [image] Hammerhead Shark - image from McKeever’s site In order to put together educational materials. You need to learn what there is to learn. Although McKeever’s interest had been of long-standing, and although he knew a hell of a lot, having produced two documentary films about sharks, McKeever visited major oceanographic facilities across the planet, interviewed leading scientists and conservationists, and distilled what he learned down to a very readable and informative 295 pages. In addition to producing this book, he and his team are working on a documentary film. It was hoped that it would be available in 2020, but it does not appear it was ever completed. [image] Tiger Sharks - image from McKeever’s site His investigative sojourn took two years, and was truly global, from Montauk, and Cape Cod, to the Florida coast and Keys, the Dry Tortugas, and Hawaii. He traveled to Taiwan, Cambodia, Australia, South Africa and the Bahamas. And I am sure I missed a few. He also interviewed experts, without literally diving in, in many other locations. [image] The Dry Tortugas - Bush Key - from our vault While occasionally these field trips were duds, not sighting anything more than a descending dorsal fin in Shark Alley, SHARK bloody ALLEY in South Africa, (although to be fair, not seeing sharks in Shark Alley does speak to the impact humans have had on shark population, so maybe not a dud after all), or noting his arrival in a place just to tick the box and then off to some other place. But mostly the first-person accounts of his meetings with a diverse set of experts, and his observations, both land-based and in the water, are illuminating, sometimes very surprising, and sometimes somewhat grim. [image] Shark Alley in rush hour - image from National Geographic McKeever concentrates on four sharks in particular, the Mako, Tiger, Hammerhead and Great White, offering fascinating information about each. Numerous popular articles have described the brain of a white shark as being the size of a walnut, a misleading and inaccurate comparison. The brain of an adult white shark is shaped like a “Y,” and from the scent-detecting bulbs to the brain stem, a shark’s brain can measure up to approximately 2 feet in length…relative to the body weight of birds and marsupials…the great white’s brain is massive.Makos and Great Whites hunt using their blazing speed, then close the deal with insanely powerful jaws, nicely lined with many large, very sharp teeth; Tiger sharks are also deadly fast, but they prefer to swim slowly and ambush prey with a sudden burst of speed. Tiger sharks like to sneak up on divers, disappearing and reappearing like a magician’s trick, which unnerves many. Can’t imagine why. [image] Mary Lee - a great white with over 75,000 FB followers- image from her site Sharks serve a very useful function in marine ecology. An impressive list of items found in very omnivorous Tiger shark stomachs, boat cushions, tin cans, license plates, tires, the head of a crocodile, for example, reinforces the notion that the shark is a high-tech machine assigned the modest job of ocean cleanup. When tigers remove garbage—weak and sick fish—they remove from the ocean bacteria and viruses that can harm reefs and seagrass. However, the tiger’s work extends beyond mere custodial work: as apex predators, tiger sharks play an important role in maintaining the balance of fish species across the ecosystem. Moreover, the research shows that areas with more apex predators have greater biodiversity and higher densities of individuals than do areas with fewer apex predators.Sorry, no Land Sharks. [image] Land shark - image from from SNL Fandom Sharks face considerable dangers beyond the risk of chowing down on diverse awful flavors of tire and tags that are not to their liking. You will share McKeever’s outrage when you read his description of the Montauk Tournament. There are gruesome descriptions of the vile, cruel behavior engaged in by people on commercial, and some sport fishing vessels. It makes one ashamed to be a human. You will shudder when you read of the practice of finning, done to satisfy the booming Asian demand for shark fin soup. Sharks face huge perils from sports fishermen, but the greatest danger is from long-lining. Ships drop fishing lines that are sometimes tens of miles long, with a baited hook every few feet. The catch is massive, but only part of what is caught is what the fishermen want. The rest, called bycatch, is thrown overboard, usually dead, sometimes not. It is the equivalent of clearcutting forests or mountaintop-removal mining. Kill them all and toss what you don’t want. Thus the stark disparity in shark-deaths-by-human versus human-deaths-by-shark. McKeever looks at what is likely the impact of climate change on some places where one might expect sharks in abundance but in which they have become scarce. [image] Denticles on a hammerhead – image from hammerheadsharks.weebly.com There are many details about sharks that may force the word “wow” or “cool” from your lips. Like denticles. Rub a shark’s skin (a small, friendly shark) one way, and it is smooth. Reverse direction and it will feel like sand paper, or worse. Millions of years ago, sharks traded scales in for dermal denticles. These are small scale-like growths that function both as a sort of chain-mail protection and as an aid to swimming speed, as they reduce friction. Ok, you may have known about those, but what about a cephalofoil? Yeah, go ahead, look it up. [image] The Rainbow Warrior - image from Greenpeace McKeever spends some time on The Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace’s well-known vessel, learning a great deal about the challenges marine creatures face from unregulated international fishing. The chapter on human trafficking in the fishing industry is must-read material. You will be shocked at what he learned. It is clear that owners of fishing vessels that use and mistreat slave labor have no more regard for human life than they do for the sharks they slaughter by the millions. It was news to me that many of these ships remain at sea for years at a time, offering not even the possibility of escape for desperate captives. I had no idea. While the book is not suffused with the stuff, McKeever shows a delightful sense of humor from time to time. This is most welcome in a tale that can be quite upsetting at times. His writing is clear, direct, and mostly free of poetic, rapturous description, which is just fine. He tells what he has learned and believes is important for us to know. His personal experiences with close encounters of the shark kind are engaging and relatable. [image] Shark brain -image from wikimedia You will learn a lot from Emperors of the Deep. Some information may be a bit familiar, but I found that there was a lot in here that was news. I expect most of us have some general knowledge of sharks, and the image in our heads is probably the one created by Steven Spielberg in 1975. One of the best things you will get from this book is at least some appreciation for the range of sharks that share our planet, and what differentiates them from each other, but much more importantly an appreciation for how critical they are to the ecosystem, how much of a threat to people they aren’t, and how quickly we are wiping them out. There is a shark that swim sideways. Whoda thunk? You will gain a new appreciation for the significance of sea grass as a key player in the sustenance of marine ecosystems. [image] Seagrass - image from Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary Gripes – The book could really use an index. There is a center section with color photographs. These are fine. I would have preferred graphics, whether drawings or photos, that illustrated the notions he was describing, particularly as regards shark anatomy. There are times when the author seems to lose his focus. For instance, his visit to Brisbane and a bit of attempted kayaking in a rough sea may have been a fun memory for him, but had not much to do with the mission of the book, as he dashes off 340 miles to catch a ferry to the Coral Sea, where the subject at hand is re-engaged. Descriptions of a shark brain, or denticles, differences in the eyes of diverse species, and sundry more items would have been greatly enhanced by the presence of right-there images. More curiosity than a gripe, I wondered about what McKeever had been up to between the time he left Merrill Lynch and when took up conservation. Finally, the book could have used a list of organizations mentioned in the book, with contact information. [image] Lego Mako Shark - image from ideas.lego.com The shark week schedule for 2024 can be found on its Discovery Channel site, here ==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved it to the comments section directly below. [image] I have also (August, 2023) put the entire, unbroken-up review on my site, Coots Reviews. Come on in. The water's fine. ...more |
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| 3.83
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| Mar 19, 2019
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really liked it
| Within groups, selfish individuals win against altruists, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals. Within groups, selfish individuals win against altruists, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals.What we understand about the mechanisms of evolution has to do mostly with competition, one-on-one, or one-on-many dueling, whether in actual combat, which leads to bigger, tougher, stronger, faster characteristics, or sexual selection, which gets pretty extreme in other ways. But it was not so obvious, even to folks like Darwin, how it was possible for altruism to evolve. Where is the gain for a worker ant that does not reproduce? How are there still any worker ants at all? This is the focus of Edward Osborne (aka E.O.) Wilson’s latest book, Genesis. In case you have been living inside a termite mound for the last 60 years or so, Wilson is the world’s greatest expert on ants. [image] Marvel’s Ant-Man - image from movieweb.com He is a biologist, naturalist, theorist and author. He is also an authority on and originator of the theory of sociobiology, which looks at the genetic basis for social behavior of all animals, including you, me, and our peeps. ( From an early age I was fascinated by the parallels between the worlds of insects and humans. We seem to have so much in common.) He originated the theory of “character displacement” a process in which populations of two closely related species, after first coming into contact with each other, undergo rapid evolutionary differentiation in order to minimize the chances of both competition and hybridization between them. – from the Britannica profileHe has been a proponent of theories that have drawn considerable criticism. In 1990 Wilson was awarded the Crafoord Prize. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences offers this award to support areas of science the Nobel Prizes do not recognize. He has won two Pulitzers for his writings. I leave it to Wikipedia to list his publications, far too many to show here. Wilson is, arguably, the closest living person we have to Charles Darwin, in terms of his impact on his field(s) during his lifetime. [image] Edward O. Wilson- the real Ant-Man, shown with some of his closest associates - image from Cosmos Magazine He begins at the beginning, noting the first appearance of life on Earth, probably somewhere near an oceanic vent. Step 2 was invention of complex (“eukaryotic”) cells about 1.5 billion years ago. (bya) The division of labor within cells allowed for more and more complexity. Step 3 was the arrival of sexual reproduction, leading to a controlled system of DNA exchange and the multiplication of species. (and discos) Lots more potential for adaptation to get supercharged. Next up was when organisms began being made up of multiple cells, about 600 mya. Now we begin to get to specialized organs within a larger critter and lots of variety in size and shape of movable beasts. Almost there, just a couple more, hang on. From multiple organs we move up to multiple critters forming what are called “eusocial” groups. This is where we begin to get “altruism,” the origin of societies. The termites were the first that we know of, about 200 mya, ants had such groups at 40 mya, and hominids (not all, but beginning with Homo habilis) about 2 mya. The strangeness here being that some members of society behaved in socially cooperative ways that did not always leave them with baby antlings, tiny termites or babies, but which promoted the well-being of the nest, with a bit of extra attention to helping out close family members. And finally, ta-da, comes, well, for us anyway, speech and then literacy, which makes every thought potentially global. (not saying that many of those thoughts should go global, but the potential exists.) In looking at how we (homo sap) have evolved to be what we are today, (insert snide comment here) it is instructive to look at other creatures to see how they evolved. Individual genetic selection will not keep producing non-reproductive creatures. By definition biological entities that do not reproduce offer only a dead-end for their DNA. So how do worker ants keep getting made? Is there a unit of the reproductive mechanism that exists at a higher level than the individual, maybe at, say, a group level? Wilson argues that this is indeed the case. Not all societal creatures are “eusocial.” (pronounced you-SO-shul, although I can imagine rugged individualist sorts pronouncing it EWWW, SO-shul) In fact, only about two percent of social groups develop this capacity. [image] Not all shirkers get off easily. Some non-contributors are killed and eaten by the colony (By the way, how much tax has Trump paid in the last twenty years?) – Image from Coffee Table Science The key here being that there has to be a large enough gene pool in the group to provide a sufficient base of reproducing DNA that the needed traits (in this case the altruism element) will keep coming along even if the worker ants are not making more worker ants. Overall, if the group, taken as a unit, is successful, the favored altruism genes will keep generating worker ants, but if the group is producing say, lazy bum ants who do no work and just feed off the labor of the others, the group as a whole will be less able to survive in the world. And therein lies the Darwinian selection. Voila! Darwin had also alluded to such a solution in the 19th century. There is plenty more in here, of course, interesting bits on the growth in hominid brain size, our changing posture and diet, the impact of grassland vs forest/jungle living. Considering how slender this volume is, it is quite packed with information. Wilson is a good writer (two Pulitzers), so this is readable pop science. It did seem to get a bit thick here and there, enough that it might put off some casual readers. The main audience for Genesis would be anyone interested in the science and theories of biological and social evolution, and people with an interest in the mechanisms of nature. Definite brain candy. E. O. Wilson has not only studied nature, and been a leading scientific theorist, he has become a champion for biodiversity, urging that half of our planet be set aside to save a majority of plant and wildlife species from extinction. He has changed how we see the world, changed how we see ourselves. At 90 years of age, it remains to be seen how much more we can hope for in Wilson’s contributions, but I expect we will be carrying the fruits of his labor back to our nests for as long as people keep making more people. If you are new to Wilson’s work, Genesis would be a great place to begin learning from one of the great minds of our time. Review first posted – April 12, 2019 Publication -----March 19, 2019 - hardcover -----March 17, 2020 - trade paperback =============================EXTRA STUFF Wilson’s foundation and FB page Profiles -----The Academy of Achievement -----Wikipedia -----Britannica -----PBS - a beautiful, feature-length biography- video - worth the time – check this out -----Scientific American TED Talks -----My Wish: Build the Encyclopedia of Life - 22:21 -----Advice to a Young Scientist Items of Interest -----Colbert Report -----Smithsonian – April 2012 - Edward O. Wilson’s New Take on Human Nature by Natalie Anger ...more |
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it was amazing
| This is the story of the summer I disappeared - Cora McCloud I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more - Dorothy Gale …the tornado was not an act of God This is the story of the summer I disappeared - Cora McCloud I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more - Dorothy Gale …the tornado was not an act of God, but an act of nature. The wild had come to Mercy that day, as she and her siblings cowered in the bunker, the full force of the wild had roared above them, erasing everything it touched.Cora McCloud, an adult now, recounts the summer when her brother, Tucker, invited her to join him on what he claimed would be an excellent adventure. It all begins when a very Oklahoman (and Kansan) event shattered the McCloud family. A piece of bad luck in the form of a killer tornado made orphans of the McCloud kids, catching their father before he could make it to shelter. ( I remember Tucker telling me that luck was no lady; luck was a mean drunk who didn’t know when to stop punching.) Mom had not survived Cora’s birth, so it fell to the oldest, Darlene, eighteen, to look after the family. Buh-bye college. Seventeen-year-old Tucker, unable to cope, takes off a few months after the disaster, after a fight with Darlene, falling in with eco-warriors, but has a falling out with them as well and heads home several years later. A local cosmetics plant had been producing noxious chemicals, legally, but the tornado did an excellent job of spreading the stuff around, making neighborhoods uninhabitable, with no one being held responsible for footing the bill or taking care of the cleanup. There were also a lot of animals on the property, used in lab testing. It’s enough to focus the attention of the peripatetic Tucker. Pipe bombs are planted. Damage is done. And Tucker is now a wanted man. Thing is, he also has an amazingly sweet nature, has a way with animals of all sorts, horses in particular, and a special bond with Cora. He asks her to go away with him (”It’s time for magic, Cora,” he said. “Let’s leave this place behind.”) and she signs on to follow his particular and very winding yellow brick road. [image] Abby Geni - image from Ksiazka.net (a Polish publication) There are two stories in play here. We alternate, pretty much, between Cora’s tale of her time with Tucker, and Darlene’s struggle to keep the family afloat. It takes all she has. Hostile townspeople do not help. After the storm, the media had descended on the town, and identified the remaining McClouds as The Saddest Family in Mercy, surely an ironic name for a town that seems pretty light on that form of humanity. You do what you have to in order to survive. The McClouds pick up some money from all the coverage, which allows them to live large, if you consider their trailer a castle, Darlene’s gig as an assistant manager at a grocery store a cushy sinecure, and her loss of a college education, somehow, a benefit. People can really suck sometimes. Everything native to Oklahoma was tough and warlike. Only the strong survived here. Our snakes came with venom and a warning signal. Our insects were armored against predators and dehydration. Our birds possess talons, telescopic vision and hollow bones. These animals were designed for hardship. All weakness had been driven out of their genetic lineage by the dust storms, the droughts, and the tornadoes.There is some celestial writing here. Geni has poetry in her pen, particularly when writing about nature. And a feel for craft when she applies the images she describes so beautifully to her characters. Here’s an example: The night was awash with the screech of cicadas. These insects had reached the molting stage of their annual transformation. They first emerged in May as sluggish, flightless, dun-colored beetles, but after enough exposure to heat and sunlight, they would undergo an unpleasant metamorphosis. First they would find a tree or a house or a telephone pole and start to climb—slowly, clumsily, driven by mindless instinct—until they reached a particular height known only to themselves. They would then cling tight, hold still, and gradually become translucent. Their outer skin would slough away. They would burst out through the napes of their former shells and rise into the sky as steel-spun creature with wings as loud as joy buzzers. They left their spent husks everywhere.Geni follows this line of thought to the changes Cora and Tucker are experiencing. They alter their outward appearance to slip beneath police notice, but it nicely reflects an internal metamorphosis as well. The tornado was a gift, Tucker often said. It opened my eyes. Over the past few weeks, he had explained this to me. Most people, he said, were not capable of understanding the plight of the animals. They were too sheltered to comprehend it. Too safe. Even if they knew the facts and figures, they could not imagine the full measure of that kind of devastation.The McCloud kids were all changed by the devastation wrought by the tornado, but, on their summer-long journey, are Tucker and Cora sloughing off useless shells and becoming more advanced, more aware people? It remains to be seen. Tucker has already chosen a path of violence. Will Cora be swept up by his charisma, by the fairy tales he tells every night of their day’s adventures? Cora is pretty much the definition of an innocent caught up in events outside her control, despite her making an overt decision to ditch the strictures of her Mercy family for the adventure of the road with a warm, fascinating character. Twelve-year-olds are not responsible for such things. We are pulled along with her in her adventures with Tucker and become increasingly alarmed and concerned for her moral as well as physical safety. I began The Wildlands with this idea: a twosome on a crime spree. But I didn’t want to explore romantic love or even friendship; those stories have already been told. I wanted to write about siblings. The relationship between siblings—its power and effect—often goes unexamined. Then I began to wonder what a crime spree would be like for a child. How would it shape her mind? How would it alter her identity? What kind of person would she be afterward? That led me to Cora, and soon after, Tucker. - from Chicago Review of Books interviewDarlene has suffered unspeakable losses, but has stepped up and done her absolute best to take care of her family. She may not have Tucker’s free-spirit energy, but she is more than pulling her weight under insane conditions. So, we have two, maybe three, people here to really, really care about. And you will. In Tucker, I wanted to write a character who is right in his beliefs but wrong in his actions. He has the facts, he’s fighting for animal rights, and he talks about justice and saving the world. How could Cora not fall under his spell? How could she discern what’s right about his cause but wrong about his choices? Honestly, I agree with Tucker sometimes myself. I’m not on board with his methodology or his violence, but his sense of urgency is something I share. - from the Tinhouse interviewThere is considerable concern here for matters ecological. Tucker may have gone too far with his actions, but his concerns are not bizarre. Is it possible to care too much, or too immaturely? There is a look at the wastefulness of land use in Oklahoma, but also at the remnant wildness of it. Geni offers a nice consideration of the meaning of the title, which I will not spoil here. It is moving, and effective. There is a bit on what are considered Sooner toughness characteristics, although the historical telling made it sound to me more like a celebration of cheating than anything else. In The Wildlands…I’m writing explicitly about what’s happening to the environment. It’s more urgent than ever. The changes are coming faster than scientists predicted, and the government’s lack of response is terrifying. The Wildlands talks in no uncertain terms about the fact that we are in the middle of the sixth mass extinction on our planet. During the previous mass extinctions on Earth—caused by meteors or volcanoes or natural disasters—up to 90% of all life on earth perished. It’s happening again right now, and this time we’re the cause. - from the Tinhouse interviewCora suffers identity slippage while on the road with Tucker, a real existential crisis. We want her to come back to herself, but there is no certainty she will. On some level, I understood that something irrevocable had happened. I had crossed a threshold I could not come back from. I did not know yet what it meant for me, but I could feel the transformation; I was changing deep inside, at a level beneath flesh, beneath words.Needing to find out what will happen to Cora, (will she vanish into a new identity?) Tucker, and Darlene will keep you turning the pages. Challenges, real and manufactured, are faced, or not, overcome, or not. The McClouds, to the extent possible, try to be the best people they can be, whether that means huge personal sacrifice in order to step in for late parents, or engaging in various forms of eco-terrorism in order to try righting a global imbalance, whether that means allowing the media to tell their story as a way of keeping food on the table, or kowtowing to town disapproval of what, it is claimed, is profiting from the misery of the whole town, whether that means trying to protect a wayward sibling by keeping information from the police, or trying to protect a wayward sibling by sharing information with the police. Cora engages in no heel-clicking to whisk herself back home to the familiar and newly appreciated at her journey’s end. The magic of her time with Tucker was episodic, and, like Dorothy Gale’s, also fraught with existential peril. There are damaged souls in the Oz through which she travels, some of that damage occurring at her hands. There are ordeals and trials, physically and morally. The story comes on you like a sudden storm, lifts you up here, then drops you down there. It is an amazing ride, fast-paced, engaging, soulful, rich with beautiful description, and social and moral perspectives. And the climax to the story is as gripping as it is inevitable. Abby Geni is an amazing young writer whose technicolor future has already arrived. No directional rainbow required. Review first posted – October 26, 2018 Publication date – September 4, 2018 I received this book from Counterpoint in return for an honest look. Would have had this out a couple of weeks back, but was laid low by a tummy bug, and posted no review (Oh, the horror!) that week. No animals were harmed in the writing of this review. Ok, I had to toss my editor off the desk more than a few times as he cannot seem to grasp the concept that his large feline self and my keyboard cannot occupy the same space at the same time and both remain operational. Sorry, Blue. But other than that… [image] [image] [image] [image] =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal and FB pages Geni’s site is a cornucopia of information. For example, there are links to seven interviews. I will not duplicate that. So the list below is limited to interviews quoted in the review. There are also links to several of her stories. Check out her site. You won’t be sorry. Interviews -----Tinhouse.com - Writing a Disappearing World: A Conversation with Abby Geni - by Liz von Klemperer -----Chicago Review of Books - Abby Geni Tackles Eco-Terrorism in ‘The Wildlands’ - by Rachel Leon If you liked this… Some other novels with environmental issues -----Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver -----When the Killing’s Done by T.C. Boyle -----Inferno by Dan Brown -----Barkskins by Annie Proulx -----State of Wonder by Ann Patchett Songs -----Somewhere Over the Rainbow -----Born to be Wild ...more |
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Sep 24, 2018
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0316399264
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| 3.85
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| Sep 2018
| Sep 04, 2018
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it was amazing
| I'm standing next to my table, everything neatly lined up, and I'm just hoping that my professors can see how much effort I've put into making my desi I'm standing next to my table, everything neatly lined up, and I'm just hoping that my professors can see how much effort I've put into making my designs practical and ergonomic and sustainable. And I'm starting to get really nervous, because for a long time, no one says anything. It's just completely silent. And then one of the professors starts to speak, and he says, "Your work gives me a feeling of joy."…I asked the professors, "How do things make us feel joy? How do tangible things make us feel intangible joy?” They hemmed and hawed and gestured a lot with their hands. "They just do," they said… So this got me thinking: Where does joy come from? I started asking everyone I knew, and even people I just met on the street, about the things that brought them joy. On the subway, in a café, on an airplane, it was, "Hi, nice to meet you. What brings you joy?" I felt like a detective. I was like, "When did you last see it? Who were you with? What color was it? Did anyone else see it?" I was the Nancy Drew of joy. - from the author’s TED talkJoyful is what she found out. [image] Ingrid Fetell Lee - image from her FB page The answers are directed at the immediate senses, and how external elements, form, color, shape, texture, scent, or sound can offer joyful sensate experience. Seeing it all laid out, it was clear that joy was not a mysterious, intuitive force; it emanated directly from the physical properties of the objects. Specifically, it was what designers called aesthetics—the attributes that define the way an object looks and feels—that gave rise to the feeling of joy.She notes commonality in the joyful things she found in the world, and breaks that down to ten subject areas she labels the Aesthetics of Joy; Energy, Abundance, Freedom, Harmony, Play, Surprise, Transcendence, Magic, Celebration, and Renewal, looking at how each can be applied to improving our lives. She offers diverse, interesting, and enlightening examples from the real world of how each has been approached. While her focus is on our living and working spaces, selecting how to shape and what to put on our walls, desks, coffee tables, and mantles, to create more enriched environments, she also looks a bit at where and how you might find joy in the outside world. [image] Jihan Zencirli has made an uplifting business out a familiar joyous object – reflecting points about the joy of celebration and the impact of large objects in our festivities If you are trying to engineer more joy into peoples’ lives, that is a form of psychological practice, whether board certified or not. (IFL does consult with several psychologists in trying to get a handle on joy.) But is this really so much different from any other artform that attempts to help us feel? Painting, writing/performing music, dance, writing poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, all seek to evoke a response. A body of research is emerging that demonstrates a clear link between our surroundings and our mental health. For example, studies show that workers with sunny desks are happier and more productive than their peers in dimly lit offices.She finds in the dominant modernist minimalism architecture and internal décor of contemporary life, the places we work, the buildings in which we live, the places where we learn, or secure needed services, a soul-sucking drain on our need for joy. She sees joy as a form of sustenance, no less than food, water, light, clothing, and shelter. We need at least some joy to keep going on. We all have an inclination to seek joy in our surroundings, yet we have been taught to ignore it. What might happen if we were to reawaken this instinct for finding joy?[image] Pierre Cardin’s iconic Bubble Palace designed By Antti Lovag – image from nine.com.au – the author writes on the impact on creativity of curvy shapes in one’s environment IFL offers some concrete examples of the impact of design on behavior. A non-profit took on the task of repainting schools, to make them more stimulating and inviting. The results were eye-opening, both in attendance and performance metrics. I suppose it is possible that the schools thus impacted might have been self-selected, and might have improved anyway. I did not dig deeply into the report, but it does at least seem like a wonderful idea, and ther results were encouraging. [image] Even aprons designed for professional use can make restaurant workers feel a bit better - Image from Hedley and Bennett I was talking about this book with a dear friend who was a chef, had owned and run a restaurant or three in her time, but is out of the business now. She said that one of the things that was very important to her was that the plates on which a meal was served complemented the food, drew the eye, made for a presentation that was about more than just aroma and flavor, but built anticipation. IFL is doing that here, on a much larger table. The repeating joy in my experience, outside of things interpersonal, is the visual stimulation of the natural world. During a period of several years, my wife and I managed to visit many National Parks, and each experience was most assuredly joyous, seeing so much rare and exquisite beauty in American landscapes. But those days ended and I had to find something else to fill that need. When I got out of work on Sunday morning, I took to driving to different NYC parks and shooting what I could of local visual delights. The combination of natural light and man-made elements was no less joyous and filling than seeing the Grand Canyon or Death Valley. My park tour days are also a fond memory now, but there is singular joy to be had spotting a late afternoon cumulo-nimbus in glowing white, while its neighbor clouds are in shadow. Or the god-light rays of a setting sun visible from the upstairs deck in the back of our house. No, the visions do not pay the bills, but they do provide significant moments of feeling at one with the world. One thing IFL looks at is how to incorporate into one’s personal and/or work spaces ways to reproduce such natural salves, ways to remind ourselves of things that are natural. Turns out there are many ways to fill that bill. [image] Are we going that high? - my shot from a joyous ride over the Willamette Valley in 2008 – (It is clickable, if you want a higher rez) IFL writes about the joy of transcendent feelings, and the correlation of upward movement with joy One of the joys of this book is trailing along with the author as she talks with experts on design across the planet. I added some (ok, many) links in EXTRA STUFF. You will really enjoy checking out the linked designers and their work.[image] Work by Eva Zeisel – image from the British Museum – reflecting the Renewal aesthetic, as Zeisel’s design shapes suggest nature and growth Here’s a bad idea for design. Yes, a newborn’s first cry is a source of joy. Replaying it over and over is something less than joyful. Small repeating elements can, however, evince joyful feelings, as in confetti, sprinkles, or glitter. But I suppose they can also become distracting and intrusive, not to mention no fun for the cleaning staff. [image] A “Reversible Destiny Loft” in Tokyo – The author tried it for a few days - Can enough physical stimulation in a living space reverse aging? One may wonder, does the aesthetic IFL espouses reflect anything more than her own personal preferences? There is certainly a danger that confirmation bias might play a role here. By offering thoughtful discussion, and the assistance of professional practitioners, she made me feel pretty comfortable with there being a minimum of such sample soiling here. There might be real issues with the values espoused and the degree to which one might take the recommended strategies. For example, IFL looks for examples of order as joyful. The notion is reminiscent of the broken-window theory that projected an increase in crime in places where unrepaired, publicly viewable damage was left untended. There was a basis for that and the policy was effective in the real world. But on a personal level, it is also possible that one man’s mess is another man’s nirvana. This is not hard science, with firm edges, but scientifically informed advice for directions that may lead you to a place you want to go. [image] Starburst lights at the Metropolitan Opera illuminate the Sparkle and Flare element of F-L’s Celebration aesthetic The Brain Candy Corner Here is a list of some notions from the book that provide food for thought, or, you know, brain candy. They are legion here -----The impact of variable rather than uniform light -----Preferred human landscape – both to live in and see in paintings on our walls – there appears to be one in particular that is favored almost universally -----Can a living space that is stimulating enough slow aging? -----Consider the diversity of our senses – thought you had five? Nah, many more. -----A sparse environment numbs our senses -----On minimalism as anti-sensory -----On the shifting baseline syndrome – what seems wild today is less wild that what seemed wild a generation ago -----On the relationship of joy to play -----Association between play and circles -----Yarn bombing -----Ways to see the unseen -----Fear of loss of personal interaction resulting from on-line life -----On the roots of Carnevale -----The appeal of balloons -----Seasonality brings the promise of joy, while a simple one-way time flow makes the future always uncertain -----On anticipation as an enhancement to joy [image] Yarn bombing in action – an element of the Surprise aesthetic – image from wiki – Bet this photo made you smile One aspect that kept me wondering was a question of definition. Where does joy leave off and pleasure begin? Amusement? Enjoyment? Where do fun and happiness fit into this spectrum? How is joy different? Need joy be a purely positive thing? Can one have fun doing something awful? Sure, if one is psychologically damaged. But can one take joy in dark doings? Did Charles Manson experience joy when he was killing people? Maybe fun is less substantive. Like having had a fun time at a party, the beach, or a baseball game. Fun is ephemeral. It tickles our senses and then abates. How is this different from pleasure? Can pleasure be an ephemeral experience too? Joy, somehow, seems richer. I do not defend this notion at all. Going on feelz here. Joyful does not really address all this, and I guess it does not really need to. It seems perfectly ok to accept the presenting notion that joy is an absolute good thing, and that we human sorts have a need for joy in our lives, in the same way that we need more readily defined physical inputs. Is joy a sustaining experience? Can it become ecstatic, transcendental even? I think it can, based on personal experience. I once said to my son that the joy I experience from the beauty of the world was like a religion for me. His response was, “why like?” The lines between the sundry joy-like feelings remain squishy for me. But then, IFL is a designer, not a researcher in psychology, and it would be wrong to hold her to a requirement that she explain everything that goes on in our tiny minds. In short, (yeah, I know, too late), Ingrid Fetell Lee has done an amazing job of explaining the impact of design on our lives, while offering a wide array of potential correctives. In doing so, she has accomplished that major victory of combining the imparting of information with delivering that intel in a manner that is engaging, entertaining, energetic and fun. Your brain may explode with all the possibilities on display in this book, but I expect I am not alone in reporting that Joyful is a thing of beauty, a classic of its kind, and will, I expect, be a joy forever. Wonders never cease, as long as we are willing to look for them. Review posted – September 7, 2018 Publication date – September 4, 2018 =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter, Instragram, and FB pages The author’s TED Talk, Where Joy Hides and How To Find It Some of the People (mostly designers) mentioned in the book (there are more, really) -----Ruth Lande Shuman - founder of the non-profit Publicolor, which offers a group of design-based programs aimed at helping high-risk students in their education. -----Ellen Bennett, while working as a line cook, decided to upgrade the aprons that kitchen staff wear, so designed a line of more interesting apparel and got her business started -----Shusaku Arakawa and Madeline Gins started The Reversible Destiny Foundation to design and promote “procedural architecture,” claiming that certain sorts of living spaces could reverse human aging. Color me skeptical, but their work is worth checking out. -----Dorothy Draper (no relation to Don) is noted in Joyful for her attention to texture, vibrancy, and richness of interior environment, particularly in the resort hotel The Greenbrier in West Virginia -----Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, Russian emigres, devised a test to determine a universally favored painting. Turns out their “Most Wanted” project found its way into Darwinian Aesthetics -----British geographer Jay Appleton devised the “prospect-refuge theory” of human aesthetics. -----Landscape architect James Corner designed the High-Line park in Manhattan [image] -----Summer Rayne Oakes works in ecologically-minded design -----Piet Oudolf is a world renown expert in horticultural design -----George Van Tassel’s Integratron Dome has a mind-bowing origin story, and peculiar qualities that may be out of this world. Of all the links provided here, this one may be the most fun. You might also want to check this site, and this video and its sequel. [image] ----- The Quilts of Gees Bend -----Architect and designer Gaetano Pesce is the creator of bubble housing, what he calls habitologue. -----Leanne Prain, Yarn bomber extraordinaire -----Gavin Pretor-Pinney is the founder of The Cloud Appreciation Society -----Psych professors Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt write about awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion -----Conceptual artist Olafur Eliasson delights in the inexplicable Music -----from Ludwig Van - Ode to Joy, via Lenny B -----Joy to the World - Three Dog Night -----You Bring Me Joy - Anita Baker -----Joy to the World - The MT Choir My editor was worn out from all the joy [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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Aug 24, 2018
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Sep 03, 2018
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Sep 02, 2018
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Hardcover
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0062661396
| 9780062661395
| 0062661396
| 4.10
| 2,761
| Aug 07, 2018
| Aug 07, 2018
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it was amazing
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All right, USA, who wants to go first? Come on, come on someone, anyone. Let’s see some hands. No? No one? All right then, Mother Nature will just hav
All right, USA, who wants to go first? Come on, come on someone, anyone. Let’s see some hands. No? No one? All right then, Mother Nature will just have to choose one of you. Eenie meenie, miney mo, which will be the first to go? All right, Tangier Island, looks like you’re it. Congratulations! You are the premier official global warming refugee site in America. Come on down and receive your prize. Free ferry tickets to the mainland. Don’t let the waves hit you on your way out. [image] Tangier Island - photo credit – Andrew Moore for the NY Times It is a community unlike any in America. Here live people so isolated for so long that they have their own style of speech, a singsong brogue of old words and phrases, twisted vowels, odd rhythms. Its virtually amphibious men follow a calendar set by the Chesapeake Bay blue crab, and they catch more of the prized delicacy than anyone else. It is a near-theocracy of old-school Christians who brook no trade in alcohol, and kept a major movie from filming in their midst over scenes of sex and beer. And not least, this is one big, extended family: All but a few islanders can trace their lineage to a single man.[image] David Schulte, from the Army Corps of Engineers, on the beach in what’s left of the Tangier region called Uppards – image from the NY Times – photo by Andrew Moore Earl Swift was a reporter for the Virginia Pilot when he got his first briny taste of Tangier island in 1999. He wrote several pieces about this little-known place, that was not only isolated (as isolated as one can be only twelve miles from the mainland), but facing considerable long-term challenges. Tangier had been used by Native Americans for hunting and fishing. It was first mapped in 1608 by one John Smith (you may have heard of him) and not regularly occupied, by Westerners anyway, until 1686, when the Royal Marines built Fort Albion there. It is expected to be claimed by the bay by the mid/late 21st century. It will be rendered uninhabitable long before that. Sparked by a significant item from Scientific Reports in 2015, Swift’s interest was rekindled and he opted to take a closer, deeper look. …little Tangier is important in one respect. As the Scientific Reports article concluded, it’s likely to be the first to go. That experience—and the uncomfortable questions it forces the country to confront—will inform what the rest of us on and near coasts can expect in the decades to come. What makes a community worth saving? Will its size alone prompt the nation to fight for its survival—or are other, less tangible factors as important? Which such factors count the most? And if size is the chief consideration, what’s the cutoff, the minimum population, that’s worth rescue? What, in short, is important to us?[image] Earl Swift - image from the University of Missouri - Saint Louis For some the potential demise of Tangier is a crying shame, the loss of a culture that has grown its own ways and language, a real community of real people. Not exactly a lost Stone Age Bornean tribe in their differences from the rest of us, but with enough uniqueness to mark some lines between here and there. For others, the loss of Tangier would be just another manifestation of the ongoing global warming that is raising sea levels and making much of the planet hotter, and much of our weather harsher. The question posed by this book is whether the island is worth saving, given that saving it will entail a considerable public investment. [image] A backyard of a home on Tangier Island gives way to marsh, a trend affecting more and more homes, as erosion, land subsidence and sea level rise afflict the island. Photo taken on Saturday, July 1, 2017 – image and text from The Virginian-Pilot – by Steve Earley To inform our answers Earl Swift spent considerable time on the island getting to know its residents, learn the local culture, patois, values, personalities, values, beliefs, and concerns. His more deskbound research offers us both a history of the place and a look at the climatic and geological conditions that seem certain to doom Tangier to a watery grave. The value of the island, and related islands is not just the human history and culture that is at risk. There are natural features that impact the survival not only of local avian life, but the underwater fauna and flora that support a wide range of species, including the blue crab and oyster. There is value to sustaining existing environments and species, for environmental, aesthetic, and commercial reasons. If (when) this island disappears, how will its loss affect the Chesapeake Bay blue crabs that fill so many bellies? How will that loss affect the men and women who bring this renewable resource to our tables? If the potential crab harvest is severely reduced there will be secondary impact, as the shutting down of a significant economic force sends waves through the adjacent economies. What about, for instance, the truckers who deliver crabs and oysters from the Tangier watermen to the rest of the nation, the shops and restaurants that depend on them for customers and product? [image] The Amanda Lee, a typical Tangier workboat – image from OutsideOnLine.com - photo credit Matt Eich In reading Chesapeake Requiem, you will pick up some terminology, will learn to differentiate a jimmy from a sook from a peeler, and appreciate the significance of a sponge on a crab. What might a progger be, or a come-here? What is a doubler, and what are the differences between jumbos, primes, hotels, and mediums, and what is a sugar toad? It is also a place where, when a couple learned that their adopted Asian children had been taken from their birth parents illegally, they gave the kids the chance to meet their biological parents, and choose where to live. [image] Image from The Virginia-Pilot It is a place where an overzealous cop shot a kid for violating a blue law when he was buying his mother milk on a Sunday. It is also a place where someone later shot dead the cop who had been convicted of a crime for that action, but who had been subsequently pardoned. No one will say who. It is a place where being a cop is a considerable challenge when everyone who calls in a complaint is a friend or relative and every one they are calling about is a friend or relative. It is a place where, when a pastor, who was deemed insufficiently conservative left the Methodist church and started his own parish, he was vandalized by locals. Outside intervention was needed to make the attacks stop. And when the national Methodist Church expressed support for Palestinians wanting their own state, member of the local Methodist church rebelled, creating a schism. [image] From New Yorker article - photo by Gorden Campbell It is a place where, when one of their most respected captains went down in a stormy sea, fifty boats launched into awful conditions, Dunkirk–like, to try to rescue him. It is also a place where flinty boat owners sometimes skimped on known needed repairs or safety equipment to their own peril, and the endangerment of those seeking to come to their aid. It is a place where a clothing factory that employed mostly women was burned to the ground when the local men were put off by the independence this new employment provided to the island women. It is a place where the vast majority of land-based jobs are held by women, and the vast majority of water-based jobs are held by men. It is a place where plans to build a seawall to protect the island keep getting buried under years of studies, funding denials at federal, state and local levels, and presidential impediments. [image] Wind and waves have ravaged Tangier, including the island’s public beach, shown here – image from The Virginia-Pilot – photo by Steve Eearley It is a place that welcomes newcomers guardedly, and has benefited mightily from some of the advances those invasive species brought with them. But it is a place that becomes toxic and shunning when those outsiders do not fully accept all the local norms. As individuals, the islanders are fiercely independent and self-sufficient—modern-day cowboys, or so they like to think. As a group, however, they show precious little initiative.It is a place where a man called Ooker knows the local ospreys by name, and feeds them, where feral cats abound, where if you have seen a squirrel on the island, it is really the squirrel, not a squirrel. It is a place where a respect for the land is not always obvious. …objectively speaking, islanders were poor stewards of their island and its waters. The marshes were studded with their discarded kitchen appliances, bicycles. And outboard motors. Litter made eyesores of the ridges. Watermen routinely threw trash, including motor oil, overboard; the harbor’s shallows had acquired a sharp-smelling and colorful sheen. And Tangiermen had nothing but enmity for environmentalists, who warned that the bay’s blue crab population was overfished, teetering on collapse, and would rebound only with tighter regulation of the commercial harvest.[image] Cameron Evans, 17, looks for artifacts from Canaan, one of the communities that once existed on Uppards. This stretch of shoreline, about a 10-minute boat ride from tangier Island’s harbor, has been receding at a rate of 15 feet or more a year recently – image from The Virgina-Pilot – photo by Steve Earley – Friday, June 30, 2017 It is a place that has survived an invasion of parasites that almost wiped out the oyster crop entirely, a place where limits on crab takes were routinely ignored, forcing the state to intervene to keep the resource from being wiped out. It is a book that generates few gripes. I recommend that if you are poring through this on or near a digital device, you keep a window open with a map of the islands. It makes it much easier to track where things are while reading. Of course, the full, hardcover edition may offer more visual aids than did the ARE I read for this review, so take that concern with a grain of sea salt. At 380 pps it felt long, but not terribly so. I did think, though, that at times there might have been too much local culture. That made it seem a bit longer. But not much else. Swift is a gifted writer, with a smooth style, a keen eye for detail, and a very useful ability to get up close with people he started out hardly knowing. [image] An old deadrise workboat sits in a marsh at Tangier island. The island’s three ridges, where people live, are not much more than 4 feet above sea level – image and caption from The Virginia-Pilot – photo by Steve Earley – taken July 1, 2017 ==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved it to the comments section directly below. OR, you could see the entire, unchopped-up review, as it is cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews, all in one piece. Stop by and say Hi! [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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Aug 06, 2018
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Aug 06, 2018
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Hardcover
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0062490427
| 9780062490421
| 0062490427
| 4.20
| 33,160
| Apr 24, 2018
| Apr 24, 2018
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it was amazing
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[image] Image from the Smithsonian Wait, what? You’re [image] Image from the Smithsonian Wait, what? You’re kidding, right? Say it ain’t so. Well, there is some disagreement about this among paleontologists, but, according to Steve Brusatte, while they may not have matched up to Marc Bolan in a boa, and the feathers in question were maybe more like porcupine quills than the fluffy sort of plumage one might find on, say, an ostrich, those things poking out of the T. rex’s body were indeed feathers. And if you think the notion of a 40-foot, seven-ton eating machine, with ginormous, dagger-like, railroad-spike-size teeth bearing down on you, is scary, consider this. They travelled in packs. Sweet dreams! I have to confess that after reading this chapter, I did indeed have at least one dream that night that included multiple representatives of the T. Rex family. Not a wonderful image to induce one back to the land of Nod, after having bolted suddenly upright from REM sleep in fight-or-FLIGHT mode. [image] Hello, lunch - Image from The Real T-Rex BBC special – this one from the Mirror But I promise, not all the revelations in The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs will make you reach for some extra alcoholic or pharmaceutical sleep inducement. What we know about dinosaurs has continued to evolve, at an accelerating rate. Some revelations in the book are surprising and delightful, like the fact that new dinosaur species are being discovered at the rate of about one a week, and that this has been going on a while. There is a lot of catching up to be done since we mastered the basic few, Triceratops, T-Rex, Brontosaurus, Archaeopteryx, Stegasaurus, Dimetrodon, and the usual gang of idiots. Much bigger gang to keep track of these days. [I strongly urge you to check out Brusatte’s U of Edinburgh lecture, linked in EXTRA STUFF, for some very decisively feathered other members of the T. rex family. Fluffy indeed!] [image] Steve Brusatte - looking for Triassic vertebrate footprints in a quarry in Poland – image from palaeocast.com (Sorry, dear. I could have sworn I dropped the engagement ring right here!) Dinosaurs had a pretty long reign as kings/queens of the hill, but they had to begin sometime. Once upon a time all the land was one, linked from north to south, called Pangea. Monster monsoons raked much of the Earth, blistering heat, deserts, jungles, except of course at the poles, which were relatively balmy. This time, from about 300 to about 250 million years ago (mya) is called The Permian Period. Then, boys and girls, the earth split a seam. All that hot material that is constantly coursing through the earth found a way out and spewed forth. Not a good time to be an earthling. It is referred to as The Permian Extinction. 90% of all life was wiped out, by lava flows, fire, global warming, airborne particles blocking the sun, and thus a dramatic, if temporary end to photosynthesis, which killed off most plant life. And the ensuing acidification of water did seriously unpleasant things to aqueous life. But, after things settled down again, which took a while, a new class of critters came to dominate, dinosaurs. Yay! [image] From Pangea to now – image from LiveScience.com The Permian period was followed by the Triassic, from 250 to 200 mya, fifty million years of nature gone wild (I have that videotape in the attic, I think). Over the course of the Triassic, things on the land started to look like the world we know today. But the continents would have to drift for many millions of years yet before they would resemble our current landmass configuration. The first true dinos showed up around 230 to 240 mya. But they did not have the planet to themselves. There were reptiles, fish, birds, insects, even mammals, small ones, around at the time. [image] Metoposaurus, Kermit’s g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-grandma, was an amphibian the size of a Buick, with a coffee-table-sized head, and, unlike those little critters you had to work with in bio lab, these pups had hundreds of very sharp teeth. It hung out by water’s edge to capture anything straying too close. Mostly fish, but watch your ankles. There is interesting material in here about what came before the dinosaurs, (dinosauromorphs, yes, really) and where the line is drawn (arbitrarily) between dino and pre-dino. You, here, you, over there. Like Middle East borders. Brusatte walks us through the timeline of the dinos, from conditions being established at the end of the Permian, their arrival in the Triassic, to their sudden farewell at the end of the Cretaceous. Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous. Go ahead, repeat that a few times. It’s the sequence of periods Brusatte covers here. The first three come in at around 50 million years each, with the Cretaceous hanging on for about 80. The last three, taken together, comprise what is known as the Mesozoic Era, aka The Age of the Dinosaurs. (Which makes no sense to me. Shouldn’t it be The Era of the Dinosaurs? Or the Mesozoic Age? It’s so confusing.) He shows what changed geologically, and how the changes allowed this or that lifeform to arise. (often by wiping out the competition). He also takes us along with him to dig sites around the planet, Scotland, Portugal, Poland, The American Southwest, South America, China, and more, and introduces us to some of the foremost scientists in the field. The characters in Brusatte’s tale are not all of the ancient sort. He populates each chapter with modern specimens notable for their diversity and sometimes colorful plumage. While they may all be brilliant scientists, many could easily be classified as Anates Impar. It would not be a huge stretch to imagine them populating a nerdish Cantina scene. Here are Brusatte’s description of three of them. There are many more. You can spot Thomas Carr, now a professor at Wisconsin’s Carthage College, from a mile away. He has the fashion sense of a 1970s preacher and some of the mannerisms of Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory. Thomas always wears black velvet suits, usually with a black or dark red shirt underneath. He has long bushy sideburns and a mop of light hair. A silver skull ring adorns his hand. He’s easily consumed by things and has a long-running obsession with absinthe and the Doors. That and tyrannosaurs.Brusatte also shamelessly namedrops every A-list paleontologist he has encountered. Of course, it sounds like those encounters were substantial, so I guess it’s ok, but… I was reminded a bit of Bill Clinton’s memoir, in which it seemed that every person he mentioned had either changed his life or was a close personal friend. In a way, the book constitutes a this-is-your-life look at Brusatte’s paleontology career (boy meets bone?), with appearances by many of the people he had learned from or worked with. (they are legion) In addition to the studies mentioned in the book, he is the author of a widely taught textbook, Dinosaur Paleobiology. He is the paleo expert in residence on Walking with Dinosaurs (so much better than the sequel, Fleeing from Dinosaurs) on the BBC. One of the things that has allowed modern paleontologists to make and continue to make ground-breaking discoveries about Earth’s former tenants is the major advance in technology at their disposal. It’s a lot easier, for example, to see inside a fossilized skull to measure the size and shape of internal cavities with the help of a CT scanner than it was before they were available. [image] A new dinosaur, feathered, winged Zhenyuanlong from China - image from The Conversation You will learn some fascinating new information about dinos, some of it startling. This includes how sauropods managed those looooooong necks, why wild diversification happened when it did, why it took dinosaurs as long as it did to get large and take over. There is a fascinating bit on how some dinosaurs can pack an extra punch by getting air while they breathe in and out, surprising intel on how some of the critters you thought were dinosaurs aren’t, and directions on where you can look to see actual living dinosaurs today. He punctures some of the notions from the Jurassic Park movies. If trapped by a T-Rex, for instance, do not remain motionless. Rex has binocular vision and can see you perfectly well, whether you are sitting down in a port-o-san or hiding in or under a vehicle. Wave buh-bye. [image] If you do not know what this is from you need to get out more Speaking of un-fond farewells, Brusatte take us up to and through the biggest bang of them all, on Earth anyway, 66 mya. His description of the horror that marked the end of the dinosaurs is graphic, and disturbing. It was the worst day in the history of our planet. A few hours of unimaginable violence that undid more than 150 million years of evolution and set life on a new course. T. rex was there to see it.[image] Look, up in the sky. It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s…Oh, shit Artwork by Donald E. Davis Brusatte has written an eminently readable pop-science history of the dinosaurs, with accessible info on geology, biology, and the work of paleontologists, who are laboring tirelessly (and maybe obsessively) to find out the answers to questions that are as old as humanity’s awareness of the erstwhile inhabitants of our planet. This is one of those books that should be in every household. You do not need to be a scientist to get a lot out of it. The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, bubbling with the enthusiasm of its author, will be an enjoyable and enlightening read for homo sapiens of all ages from pre-teen through fossil. Learning more about Earth’s illustrious, impressive, sometimes terrifying, and sometimes adorable former tenants never gets old. Really, who doesn’t love dinosaurs? Review posted – April 13, 2018 Publication date – April 24, 2018 December 2018 - Dinosaurs may no longer rule the earth, but The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs rules the 2018 Goodreads Choice Award for Science. Reached for comment, a spokesman for Mr. Brusatte offered the following response. =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal and Twitter pages Episode 37 of Palaeocast features Steve talking about Therapods and Birds - December 1, 2014 – 44:00 A presentation by Brusatte, who is a wonderful speaker, on Tyrannosaur Discoveries, at the U of Edinburgh – Watch this, really. Great stuff. [image] In the above, Brusatte talks about feathered dinos, among other things. Meet Yutyrannus huali, (artist’s interpretation) a feathered tyrannosaur from China (but you can call him Fluffy) – image from The Conversation A fun article from the BBC - Legendary dinosaurs that we all imagine completely wrong - By Josh Gabbatiss - 3/21/16 NY Times – April 4, 2018 - Brusatte is keeping busy, publishing, with his team, a new study about the presence of dinos in Scotland, specifically in the Isle of Skye. In Footprints on Scotland’s Isle of Skye, Signs of a Dinosaur Playground - by Nicholas St. Fleur [image] This image of a sauropod print accompanied the above article – from the University of Edinburgh An interesting lecture (33 minutes) on how paleontologists research dinosaurian social behavior and what they have found - Social Behaviour in Dinosaurs - with David Hone Hone's delivery has a sing-song rhythm that can be a bit soporific, but the content is fascinating. Of particular interest is the basis for juvenile clustering. [image] This cluster of dinosaur egg fossils, on display at the Tianyu Museum, dates back 70 million years to the late Cretaceous era - shot by Stefen Chow - text and image from above article It reminds me of that scene in the first Alien film when they discover the nesting site [image] [image] [image] [image] ==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I moved it to the comments section directly below. [image] But then in 2021, GR opted to ban the use of external links in Comments. [image] So I had to chop off bits here, which hurts. However, you can see the entire review, including the links deleted here, and the links in Comment #2 below, on my site Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! ...more |
Notes are private!
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not set
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Apr 10, 2018
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Apr 10, 2018
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Hardcover
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1101902787
| 9781101902783
| 1101902787
| 4.40
| 11,433
| Oct 17, 2017
| Oct 17, 2017
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it was amazing
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There was a time when millions of us roamed the continent. We fed when there was need. We played in forests and open places. Our kind lived well, from
There was a time when millions of us roamed the continent. We fed when there was need. We played in forests and open places. Our kind lived well, from the warm woodlands of the south to the frosty forests of the north and in the gentler landscapes between. We raised our pups in cozy dens, and raised our voices at night to call out to others. Sometimes, we joined our brothers and sisters in joyous chorus for no reason at all. We lived in a world with many others, hunters, prey, and creatures who seemed to have no great part of our existence. There were people here then. We lived with them, too. But other people came, people with guns, poison, and traps, people armed with fear, hatred, and ignorance. They took our food sources, and when we were forced to look elsewhere to feed, they turned their quivering, murderous hearts toward us. And there came a time when there were practically none of us left across the entire land. [image] Nate Blakeslee - image from Texas Monthly In Eurasia and North America, at least, where there have been people there have always been wolves. They have been a significant feature in the lore of most cultures, usually in a negative way. While the tale of the she-wolf Lupa nurturing Romulus and Remus gives wolves some rare positive press, and native peoples of North America offer the wolf considerable respect, wolves have not, for the most part, received particularly positive press in the last few hundred years. The obvious cultural touchstone for most North Americans and Europeans would be the story of Little Red Riding Hood, followed closely by tales of lycanthropy, and maybe a shepherd boy who sounded a false alarm a time too many. The wolf is embedded in our culture as something to be feared, a great and successful hunter, a rival. Homo sap is a jealous species and does its best to eliminate other apex predators whenever we take over their turf. Such has been the case with Canis Lupus. And we have been taking over lots and lots of turf. [image] O-Six - image from StudyBreaks.com As is so often the case when people are involved, action precedes understanding. European settlers in North America, carrying forward Old World biases, saw wolves as a threat to their safety. Incidents of wolf attacks on people are quite rare, though. Settlers feared for their livestock as well. There was certainly some basis for concern there, but not nearly enough to warrant the response. In fact, wolves serve a very useful function in the larger biome, culling the weaker specimens from natural populations, and thus helping secure the continued health of the overall prey population. The settler response was wholesale slaughter, a public program of eradication, a final solution for wolves. But actions have consequences. The result, in Yellowstone Park, was a boom in ungulate population, which had secondary effects. Increased numbers of elk and other prey animals gobbled up way too much new growth, impacting the flora of the area, unbalancing the park’s ecosystem, seriously reducing the population, for example, of cottonwood and aspen trees, with many other changes taking place as well. Where wolves live they contribute to the balance of their environment. When they are removed, that balance is destroyed. As a science, wildlife management [in the early 20th century] was still in its infancy, and park officials genuinely believed that predators would eventually decimate the park’s prey population if left to their own devices. They didn’t realize that wolves and elk had coexisted in Yellowstone for thousands of years, that the two species had in fact evolved in tandem with each other—which explained why the elk could run just as fast as the wolf but no faster. Wolves were the driving force behind the evolution of a wide variety of prey species in North America after the last ice age, literally molding the natural world around them. The massive size of the moose, the nimbleness of the white-tailed deer, the uncanny balance of the bighorn sheep—the architect of these and countless other marvels was the wolf.It is eminently clear that people are quite accomplished at ignoring reality, and extremely proficient at substituting the mythological for the actual, often helped along by the unscrupulous self-interested, who promote falsehoods in order to preserve their personal investments, enhance their proprietary interests, or enrich themselves or those they represent. But sometimes science breaks through the veil of obfuscation and is able to get a hearing for the truths it has unearthed. Such was the case with our understanding of how wolves impact our world. It was due to this understanding and the persistent efforts of ecological activists that a plan was approved to reintroduce wolves into a few locations in the lower 48 states. Yellowstone was the primary site for the program. [image] Rick McIntyre - image from Earthjustice.com The first wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone in 1995. That year a star was born, “21M.” Even before 21 left his natal pack, Rick had known he was unusual. One morning in the spring of 1997, two years after Doug Smith and Carter Niemeyer rescued 21 following the death of his father, Rick watched the handsome young wolf returning from a hunt. With him was the big male who had become the pack’s new alpha when 21 was still a tiny pup. The pair had killed an elk, and 21, already an outstanding provider, had brought a massive piece of meat back to the den, where a new litter of pups had been born.21 becomes the alpha of the Druid pack, manifesting that most important of leadership qualities, empathy. The Druids were like the Kennedys to some, lupine royalty. In 2006, one generation removed, 21’s granddaughter is born, O-Six. It is her tale that Blakeslee tells here. Well, one half of the tale, anyway. There are two paths followed here. One is the life and times of O-Six, a remarkable creature, and another remarkable creature, one who stands upright, Rick McIntyre. [image] Half Black – a Druid pack female - image from the National Park Service We follow O-Six’s life from her puppyhood in the Agate Creek pack to her gathering together the wolves that would make up the Lamar Valley Pack. She is a wise leader, a skilled hunter. As she births pups, the pack grows. But there are other packs of wolves in Yellowstone, and conflict among them is a natural condition. In battle, O-Six demonstrates remarkable courage, in one instance standing fast, seriously outnumbered, against an invading pack, and engaging in Hollywood level derring-do to save the day. She succeeds despite having in her pack an Alpha male and his sibling referred to by watchers as Dumb and Dumber for their limited hunting skills. We see her relocate as needed to take advantage of propitious territorial openings, or quarters removed from hostile forces. One of her moves put her in a location where wolf watchers could follow her pack’s exploits from the safe remove of a park road cutout. It is publicity from the group that gathered to ardently keep track of O-Six and her Lamar Pack’s exploits from this convenient watching site, (and others) that made her the most famous wolf in the world. [image] Wolf watchers - image from the National Park Service Rick McIntyre was constitutionally more of a lone wolf sort, a National Park Ranger, happiest out in the field, whether studying grizzlies in Denali, where he became a top-drawer wildlife photographer, or studying wolves in Yellowstone. He was introduced to wolves by a top wolf biologist, Gorbon Haber, building his expertise and writing A Society of Wolves. The book was published in 1993. It expounded on the culture of wolves, significantly broadening our understanding of the species. His work was instrumental in providing support for reintroduction efforts. This work landed him a spot at Yellowstone, where he slowly improved his people skills, and became a fixture around which study and monitoring of the park packs centered, the leader of the wolf-study pack. He is a charismatic, passionate character and you will enjoy getting to know him. [image] O-Six howling with her mate and his brother - image from NatGeo Wild There are other elements in the book. The growth of the wolf-watching culture and the Yellowstone watchers club is given plenty of attention. The politics of reintroduction, protection, and attempts to remove protection get their share of ink as well. There is much in here that will raise your blood pressure. Impressively, Blakeslee includes a depiction of the man who shot O-Six. It is not the drooling monster portrayal one might expect. Blakeslee takes pains to consider the perspective of hunters. There is a description of a marauding, death-dealing pack, the Mollies, that will remind you of the Borg, or a zombie apocalypse. It is as tension, and fear-filled a portrayal as you will find in any of the best action-adventure fiction. [image] Yellowstone wolf pup - image from NatGeo Wild When studying wildlife, researchers are discouraged from forming emotional attachments to the objects of their study. Few animals live nearly so long as people, so your favorite [insert species here] will, as likely as not, perish before you. But readers of this book are under no such caution. Sitting in a laundromat, parked on a backless bench, book on an attached table, looking through the plate glass, rain soaking Hazle Avenue, drops cascading down the window, my eyes join the mass drip on reading Blakeslee’s description of the death of O-Six. I will admit that this happens sometimes when reading about people, but it does not happen often. I am saved from a public exhibition of heaving shoulders and stifled sobs by the buzzer announcing the end of a wash. If you have any tears left after this, you will turn them loose in an epilogue tale of 21’s mountain top trek as he neared death. [image] O-Six - image from NatGeo Wild I only had one small beef about the book. I understand that researchers are discouraged from naming their study subjects, but it was quite inconsistent in application. Some had names, others were just numbers, and, frankly, it became a bit tough at times, keeping track of which number came from which pack, and was that one with this pack and this one with that pack. Really that’s it. Otherwise, no problemo [image] Wolf #10 of the Rose Creek pack - image from the National Park Service American Wolf is a complex work, offering some science, some history, some political analysis, some prompts to raise your spirits, some that will make you cheer, and some dark moments that will make you turn away, fold the book closed, and wonder just what is wrong with some people. You will learn a lot, particularly about wolf culture. But primarily, it is a tale of hope, of reason triumphing over ignorance, of courage and heroism besting villainy. It joins the intellectual heft of offering considerable information with the gift of being incredibly moving. [image] Unidentified Yellowstone wolf – 1996 - image from National Park Service Tail high, standing tall, the gray alpha raises his muzzle and howls a long call. Pack members miles away lift their heads, point their ears toward the siren summons and begin loping home. There are fewer now than there were, an inexperienced young adult having found mortal peril on the fringes of their land. But still, enough of the pack remained, strong and healthy. They would gather. The gray knew where they would go once joined, into the valley. Caribou were plentiful there. They would fill their bellies before grizzlies stole their prize, and then would carry large chunks in their jaws, for the nursing alpha female. It was not the best of all possible world, but it would do, for now. [image] image from wolf.org Review – October 12, 2017 Published – October 17, 2017 =============================EXTRA STUFF The author’s Twitter feed and a list of his articles at Texas Monthly Video -----a clip from She Wolf -----Learn to draw a wolf -----An admirer speaks fondly of wolves howling - what beautiful music they make -----A familiar item from Duran Duran -----Another from Sam the Sham -----Not quite a video, more an an app about wolves with images and sound -----Yellowstone Wolf History with Rick McIntyre Articles -----Heroes: Life Lessons from Yellowstone’s Wolves - by Haleigh Gullion -----The Call of the Wild - interview with Rick McIntyre -----July 5, 2018 - NY Times - Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf Scientist? - Wolf researcher, Rob Wielgus, reports what he can discover, then has to deal with the death threats - by Christopher Solomon [image] Rob Wielgus – Credit - Ilona Szwarc for The New York Times -----July 27, 2021 - The Guardian - ‘An abomination’: the story of the massacre that killed 216 wolves by Nate Blakeslee - the killing occurred over a matter of days -----December 18, 2023 - AP - Colorado releases first 5 wolves in reintroduction plan approved by voters to chagrin of ranchers - by JESSE BEDAYN Other -----Gray Wolf Conservation ----- The International Wolf Center offers a lot of information -----Yellowstone’s Photo Collection - wolves -----The Call of the Wild - free on Gutenberg -----Get your howl on -----My review of Charlotte McConaghy's 2021 novel, Once There Were Wolves in which a small number of wolves are reintroduced to Scotland -----Of particular relevance to this subject is the Farley Mowat enhanced memoir of his field research experience with wolves, Never Cry Wolf, published in 1963, and the excellent 1983 film that was made of it [image] From the film November 9, 2017 - American Wolf is among the nominees for Amazon's book of the year - Science ...more |
Notes are private!
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Aug 16, 2017
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Sep 13, 2017
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Aug 16, 2017
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Hardcover
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1443451517
| 9781443451512
| 1443451517
| 3.57
| 327
| Sep 05, 2017
| Sep 05, 2017
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really liked it
| The presence of death brings life into sharper focus, makes some things more important and others less so. I couldn’t stop my friend’s death, or fi The presence of death brings life into sharper focus, makes some things more important and others less so. I couldn’t stop my friend’s death, or fight against it. I stood out by the log cabin and the dead tree that night and thought that what I could do was make a journey alongside Joanne—a journey that was about something life-affirming something as basic and fundamental as an apple.Our primitive senses can open pathways long sealed, if not necessarily guarded. I do not think I have ever had a Proustian moment in which the taste of something, madeleine or otherwise, has summoned a rich palate of memory, let alone several autobiographical volumes. My remnant memory cells seem more receptive to tactile and olfactory sensations. A cool breeze on my cheek summons images from decades long past. The scent of mold emanating from a building, for example, reminds me of a house where old Mrs Kelly lived when I was a kid. I worked for her for a brief span, running errands. She had a dog named Johan, which was a name I had never heard before, and another pooch whose name has slipped away, if in fact it had ever settled in. She was not there long, at least I was not long aware of her presence in our neighborhood. But I remember well sneaking into her abandoned house with other youthful criminals, feeling the old floorboards sag, fretting about the possibility of falling through, and twitching my nose at the pervasive aroma of mold. Helen Humphreys is more in the flavor camp. It is the taste of an apple that connects her to other things, although not necessarily memories. [image] Helen Humphreys - image from Chatelaine.com It is an intimate act, tasting an apple—having the flesh of the fruit in our mouths, the juice on our tongues. Ann Jessop bites into an apple in an English orchard in the hot summer of 1790 in the middle of her life, and I bite into the same kind of apple in 2016, in the middle of my life, and taste what she did. For the time it takes to eat the apple, I am where she was, and I know what she knows, and there is no separation between us.[image] Malus Domestica: Acker – 1901 - by Bertha Heiges – from the USDA Pomologic Watercolor Collection The MacGuffin here was the passing of a dear friend, Joanne Page, and the madeleine the associated sensation of tasting, fresh from a tree near an abandoned cabin near her home, specimens of what is reputed to be the best tasting apple in the world, the White Winter Pearmain. I was never entirely clear on how looking into the history of this amazing fruit connected much to her friend. I found the connection between friend and apple mushy, except in a very broad sense, but one can certainly still enjoy her beautifully written recollections of their friendship for their own sake. The book focuses on apples. How had an apple I had never heard of ended up in my particular pocket of southern Ontario? It seemed an impossible task to determine the apple’s thirteenth century beginnings in Norfolk, but surely, if the fruit had made its journey to America, I could find out who had brought it over from Europe.[image] Malus Domestica: Admiral Schley – 1904 - by Bertha Heiges – from the USDA Pomologic Watercolor Collection You will learn a fair bit about this most common of fruits (not the Pearmain, the apple, generically), where it is thought to have originated, how it was brought to North America, and spread once here. (There was a second seeder). How apples were cultivated, how their placement impacted where people lived, and vice versa, their usefulness, their diversity, the difference between wild and cultivated sorts. I have come to think of apple trees as akin to human beings, not just in the fact of their individuality, and their diversity, but also in the brief tenure of their lives. A hundred years is very old for an apple tree, as it is for a person. An apple tree exists for the same length of time that we do, and this gives our relationship to the trees a certain poignancy.[image] Malus Domestica: Alabama Beauty – 1903 - by Bertha Heiges – from the USDA Pomologic Watercolor Collection Humphreys’ historical digging turns up some very interesting information on relations between European invaders and Native Americans around apples. She looks at the importance of apples to the Native, settler and early American economies. It was a great benefit, for example, for different kinds of apples to ripen at different times of year, to ensure a food supply as long as possible. With the central interest being tracing the history of this most delicious apple, Humphreys grafts onto that a bit of art history. The United States Department of Agriculture, in order to be able to answer thousands of queries from apple-growers across the nation, decided to create a national catalogue of the various breeds of apples (among other produce) extant in the USA. A team of artists was employed in this task for decades, producing thousands of watercolor illustrations. Not only does Humphreys tell us a bit about how this came to be, but offers seventeen of these beautiful paintings in the book, lovingly presented on high-quality glossy paper. In writing of this project Humphreys tells of the artists’ lives, a bit, anyway, and relates their experience to visual artists she has known, and also to the art of writing. After years of being an artist, or a writer, it is hard to separate who you are from what you do. I don’t remember a day—a moment, even—when my grandfather wasn’t painting or drawing or talking about art…He believed, and made me believe, that the role of the artist was the most important in the world, and the hand of the artist was everywhere and in everything. “Someone had to think of that,” he would often say, about anything—a book cover, the design on a packet of tea.[image] Malus Domestica: Alstott – 1897 - by Bertha Heiges – from the USDA Pomologic Watercolor Collection This leads to a look at one of the best known (tastiest?) practitioners of that art form and his relationship to apples, Robert Frost. He planted several orchards on sundry properties in New England after gaining an appreciation during a spell in England. She transcends Frost to include some reporting on Thoreau’s affection for apples as well. HDT insisted that they taste better when eaten outdoors. Each of the sundry elements of this book is interesting on its own. I would have preferred a bit, (a lot, actually) more about the science of apples. How did they come to be in the first place? I wanted more of a blow-by-blow of how they ripen, their parts, the diversity in skin types, thicknesses, color, the importance of cider, alcoholic and not, to early growers, more deep core stuff. The strength of the book is Humphreys’ inquisitive mind, and beautiful, lyrical writing, her contemplations of life, death, history, remembering, preserving, rediscovering, friendship, art and plenty more. There should be a word for how the dead continue, for how the fact of them gives over to the thought of them.’[image] Malus Domestica: Alton – 1903 - by Bertha Heiges – from the USDA Pomologic Watercolor Collection You will learn some pretty fascinating information about the pedestrian apple. (no, that is not a breed), not least of which is the impressive number of breeds that once grew in North America. You will learn the size of the largest recorded apple, and some surprising similarities between you and the apple tree. And that she managed to do this with no mention of Eden or of Adam’s laryngeal prominence is impressive. There is knowledge and joy to be had here, and taking a bite out of this scrumptious remembrance and appreciation of people and things past will not cause you to be cast out of anywhere but the shade of pomological ignorance. PS – The watercolor images here are all taken from the same source Humphreys uses, the US Department of Agriculture, but none of the images used in this review are in the book. Review Posted – September 1, 2017 Publication – September 5, 2017 =============================EXTRA STUFF The author’s personal site The USDA National Agricultural Library Digital Collection - The Pomology Collection - mouth-watering ...more |
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Aug 15, 2017
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Aug 16, 2017
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Aug 16, 2017
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Hardcover
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0743288785
| 9780743288781
| 0743288785
| 3.83
| 19,261
| Jun 14, 2016
| Jun 14, 2016
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it was amazing
| ...the newcomers did not care to understand the strange new country beyond taking whatever turned a profit. They knew only what they knew. The fore ...the newcomers did not care to understand the strange new country beyond taking whatever turned a profit. They knew only what they knew. The forest was there for them.Barkskins is Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx’s (the author of Brokeback Mountain and Pulitzer winner for The Shipping News) magnum opus, a wide ranging historical novel in which the central character is the land itself, more particularly the primeval forested land of (primarily) North America. Proulx plants a pod with two seeds, the arrival in New France of René Sel and Charles Duquet in 1693. They are contracted to remain with a local seigneur, in essence a feudal lord, for a limited number of years. Duquet flees the seigneur’s cruelty, and uses his considerable native intelligence, strength, guile, and ruthlessness to become a fur trader and much more. Sel suffers greatly at the hands of the lord, even being forced to marry a native woman. From these roots, there grows an overview of more than three hundred years of history, as the Sel (towards the Native American side) and Duquet (to a logging dynasty) lines branch out in numbers and geography, are periodically pruned back by disasters both natural and political, but persist through time, like the trees some of their representatives are often so eager to fell. Proulx takes us all the way up to 2013. For me, the chief character in the long story was the forest, the great now-lost forest(s) of the world. The characters, as interesting as they were to develop, were there to carry the story of how we have cut and destroyed the wooden world. - from The New Yorker interviewIt was not solely the wooden world that was ravaged. The native peoples who lived in and near those woods were cut down no less than the trees that had helped sustain and define them. [image] Annie Proulx - Photo by Wiqan Ang for the Wall Street Journal There are ten parts in the book (not noted by rings) covering diverse durations, from 10 years at the low end to 227 in the final, hurry-up part. Proulx walks us through stages in the denuding of North America’s woodlands, beginning in what is now Canada, then moving east and south to Maine, heading west to take in the Ohio Valley, then up to Michigan and touching briefly on southern and western woodlands. There are forays outside the continent as well, with looks at forestry practices in the Old World of Germany, a look-see at some of the magnificent old giants of New Zealand and a quick trip to take in the unimaginable diversity of the Amazon. She shows us how native peoples were driven off the land, pressured into accepting European ways and interbred, willingly and not, with the eastern invaders. Proulx paints a bleak portrait of what life was like for those unlucky enough to make their living at the bottom of the logging world power structure. Death was a daily visitor, danger a constant companion, and discomfort and worse from wet, cold, fire, disease and buzzing pests offered persistent hardship. One of the lumber barons, a female head of a logging business family, demonstrates how the media was used to manipulate workers. She urged editors to praise the manliness and toughness of shanty men, inculcating axmen with the belief that they could take extreme risks and withstand the most desperate conditions because they were heroic rugged fellows; the same sauce served settlers into the third generation, who believed they were “pioneers” and could outlast perils and adversities. Loggers and frontier settlers, she thought, would live on pride and belief in their own invulnerability instead of money.The European loggers’ approach to their work was not based, at least at first, on pure greed. There was that, of course, but there was also a considerable shortage of actual knowledge. “How big is this forest?” asked Duquet in his whinging treble voice. He was scarcely bigger than a child.While the book is a long-term scan of the despoilation of landscape by the ignorant and avaricious, it is not entirely charcoal and birch. We know a lot more now about the worldwide supply of woodland than it was possible to know then. This is reflected in Proulx’s characters, who consider decisions made in the light of what was known at the time. This changes, as eventually it becomes known that the woodland is not mythically eternal. But she also points out that in certain areas there was indeed knowledge available of less horrific forestry practices used in other parts of the world that was largely ignored by the North American logging industry. Even if everyone knew it was too late, we’d still keep on. There seems to be something in the human psyche that is unable to stop and step back and repair and fix things. It’s not willing to. It’s like we can’t shift easily. There’s just something in people. It’s the fatal flaw in humanity, I think. Once we start doing something, we keep on. - from the Globe and Mail articleThere is much in here about what one might call the American spirit, or more likely the entrepreneurial spirit, as there are plenty of representatives more than willing to undertake daring ventures, risking much and sometimes all in hopes of reaping a reward. But there are several sorts of enterprise on display. When a logging executive, newly arrived from Europe, sees a relative greasing the palm of a state official to ensure access to attractive parcels of forest, he remarks that the man had truly become an American. Strong women play key roles here. I was reminded in one case of Jeanne Anne McCullough from the The Son, another historical of eastern invaders and local devastation. [image] A Maine clearcut From the Forest Ecology Network Proulx offers some beacons of hope (a light in the forest?) in her grim landscape. One European forester brings a notion of sustainability to the lumber business. We are thus exposed to extant theory of the era of how it might be possible to carve out a modus vivendi between humanity and nature. Not that this happens, of course, but the ideas are introduced. There are also sprigs of the family bush that find more interesting ways to think about the land than in terms of potential board feet. One dedicates his life to studying the diversity of the Amazon, another, well, several others, devote themselves to studying the complex interactions and interdependence of ecosystems. And just as some seek to restore a sense of understanding, of sanity, to human interaction with natural resources, others feel the pull of their family, of their cultural roots, and seek those remaining stands of tribal knowledge and life. Proulx tosses into each chapter bits about the time that allow us to place where we are, and what is happening Oh, that first came in there? Cool. And that began there, and then? She accomplishes this quite deftly, so that it does not at all come across as excess exposition. More like easily identifiable road signage that fits in nicely with its surroundings. Changes in fashion and foods mark the times as well. Part of the progression is a look at the step-wise changes in logging technology. The downside of this book is that because it takes in such a long period, it is impossible to give enough time to any of the many wonderful characters that inhabit the space. Of course, had she attended to more of them fully, the book could easily have tripled in length. And there are certainly plenty of characters who will engage your interest and many episodes that will touch your heart, however brief the encounter. Proulx is a master of saying a lot with few words. [image] From the Forest Stewardship Council There is a considerable body count here, as one might expect in a novel covering more than three centuries. Character A is dispatched so we can move on to characters B and C in the next step of social and economic development, or landscape rape, as the case may be. And they are carried off in diverse ways, some that were new to me. One unlucky fellow is tossed overboard during a cold-weather storm and is later found encased in ice. (a corpsesicle?) Infections, fires, starvation, a scalping, More than enough to fill an Edward Gorey couplet book or three (S is for Steve who got stuck in a tree, T is for Tom who was frozen at sea). A cough here or a pain there are likely, within a page or two to turn terminal. Hi, lovely to meet you. Where are you going? Oh nooooo! There is definitely a “They’ve killed Kenny” vibe that pops up with some regularity. I suspect Proulx had a bit of fun figuring out how to off so many of her tale-bearers. Not as much as Tim Dorsey, maybe, but still. Perhaps she uses Annie’s Spin-the-Death wheel. Ok, what are we gonna do to this one? Crushed by floating logs? shot by invaders? a surprise scalping? (could we call that skullduggery?) nifty house fire? forest conflagration? done in by unfriendly natives? infected cut? heart attack? contract assassination? Go ahead, give it a turn. (I think we’re gonna need a bigger wheel.) The list goes on. these things happened to people. ... I mean, if you've got to kill off a character, you might as well do it with a bit of panache. - from the NPR interviewThere are some magical scenes of sylvan idylls as native people traverse remote lands to engage in a traditional hunt. And moments of beauty dapple the tale as those open to the glory of the wild allow the wonder all about them to find its way inside. But beyond that there is nothing enchanted about these woods, although a cleric at a residential school for Indians might bear a strong thematic resemblance to the woodland resident encountered by Hansel and Gretel. People are indeed transformed by their experiences in the forest. But, while it may be a place of opportunity, it is hardly a place of refuge. There are indeed dark scenes in this book that would seem suitable for the woodsy horrorlands of the Grimms. Plenty of two-legged troll-like monsters to go around, more than happy to engage in unspeakable acts of violence and cruelty. Were Tom Bombadil to have been found by the invaders, his home would soon have been burned to the ground, and he would have been lucky to escape with all four limbs, his head on his neck, and his scalp still covering its top. And were any ents to wander in from Middle Earth they would well recognize the sort of holocaust being practiced on their cousins. The enchantment has been driven from these woods, with sharp steel edges and fire. For North American forests after the arrival of Europeans, it is winter all the time and never Christmas. In his seminal look at how human societies have gone to ruin, Collapse, Jared Diamond identifies one of the most important elements in furthering this destruction as national deforestation. While Proulx looks primarily at forests here, she is using them to stand in for a range of short-sighted activities that are ruining our home planet. Reliance on fossil fuels, for example, overpopulation, over-fishing, pollution. That is not in the book, per se, well, not much, but it is pretty clear that this is what her intended larger picture includes. Film rights have been bought by National Geographic and are being developed by Scott Rudin. It seems to me that the best possible cinematic outcome for this work would be as a lengthy series of The Game of Thrones sort. This would allow the story to be told without racing off to the morgue every ten pages or so to clear a path for the next set of characters. There are many wonderful personalities in this book, and a more leisurely look at their experiences would be most welcome, and well supported by the material. Fingers are crossed. Barkskins is a triumph. It cuts a swath through a large historical spanse, offering a brilliant and engaging look at how the traditional rape-and-plunder formula for resource extraction has scarred the landscape, ruined many of its inhabitants, destroyed endemic culture, and contributed to making our planet one that is choking on its own smoke, warming to the boiling point and threatening to extinguish those who have treated it so fecklessly. In folklore the forest may be a place where people are afraid, but today, and for many centuries now it has been clear that it is the forest that must shiver at the sight of man. Many have gone into the woods, but far too few have allowed the woods to go into them. In the Anthropocene we have become the darkness we feared. Published - June 14, 2016 Review First Posted – August 26, 2016 ==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved it to the comments section directly below. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 07, 2016
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Aug 24, 2016
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Aug 07, 2016
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Hardcover
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my rating |
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4.25
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it was amazing
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Feb 09, 2022
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Feb 09, 2022
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3.95
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it was amazing
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May 10, 2022
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Nov 22, 2021
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3.84
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really liked it
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Oct 23, 2021
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Oct 27, 2021
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4.34
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it was amazing
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Aug 09, 2021
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Aug 02, 2021
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3.57
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it was amazing
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Sep 13, 2021
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Jun 30, 2021
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4.33
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it was amazing
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Mar 07, 2021
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Mar 09, 2021
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4.14
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it was amazing
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Feb 10, 2021
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Jan 13, 2021
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4.14
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it was amazing
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Jun 22, 2020
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Jun 22, 2020
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3.88
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really liked it
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Mar 09, 2020
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Mar 09, 2020
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3.86
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it was amazing
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Mar 17, 2020
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Feb 07, 2020
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4.07
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it was amazing
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Sep 20, 2019
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Aug 18, 2019
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3.98
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really liked it
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Jul 31, 2019
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Jun 30, 2019
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3.83
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really liked it
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Apr 09, 2019
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Mar 04, 2019
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3.91
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it was amazing
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Oct 04, 2018
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Oct 04, 2018
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3.85
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it was amazing
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Sep 03, 2018
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Sep 02, 2018
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4.10
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it was amazing
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Aug 06, 2018
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Aug 06, 2018
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4.20
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it was amazing
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Apr 10, 2018
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Apr 10, 2018
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4.40
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it was amazing
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Sep 13, 2017
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Aug 16, 2017
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3.57
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really liked it
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Aug 16, 2017
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Aug 16, 2017
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3.83
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it was amazing
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Aug 24, 2016
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Aug 07, 2016
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