I read this fourth of the books in the series so far and while I enjoyed it, I did think the later books are stronger. But, one simply must read them I read this fourth of the books in the series so far and while I enjoyed it, I did think the later books are stronger. But, one simply must read them all because McCall Smith is a treasure and such great company in the worst of times.
The dog...the dog is a character and it is absolutely imperative we know what goes on in his life. And he does get into some trouble...trouble I would never have guessed. But Marten is one that everyone feels comfortable expressing love for, so go with it and enjoy the crimes committed that are investigate by the Department of Stupendous Sensitive Crimes....more
For those who find animal emotions and inter-species friendships absorbing, this is a wonderful story about the ways rhinos, hippos, and elephants conFor those who find animal emotions and inter-species friendships absorbing, this is a wonderful story about the ways rhinos, hippos, and elephants connect with each other and with humans.
Françoise Malay-Anthony was wife to the original Elephant Whisperer himself, Lawrence Anthony, who wrote a book of that name with famed nature-writer Graham Spence about his experiences creating an animal preserve in South Africa, called Thula Thula. At first Thula Thula was simply a preserve for herds of elephants whose habitat was disappearing. Soon it became apparent that poaching of elephant tusks and rhino horns was leaving vulnerable and traumatized babies to fend for themselves in dangerous territory.
Thula Thula gradually became known for emergency treatment of large animals prematurely separated from their mothers. A dedicated team of young volunteers from around the world worked hard to save endangered rhinos and baby elephants abandoned by their herd.
Leadership for this turn in the direction of Thula Thula, also a game reserve with hotel and bush drives for tourists to bring in money, came at the instigation of Françoise Malby-Anthony after the death of her husband, a time when she was anxious about managing the property without the extraordinary skills her husband possessed.
We learn of her vulnerability in light of world-class scam artists who sought to divert from her goal to make the environment better for animals in the wild. Her education in the ways of the wild—the wild world of tusk and horn poaching—is painful.
The viciousness of poaching by unscrupulous actors with enormous cash reserves has changed the entire focus of those in Africa seeking to preserve large animal habitat and populations. Trained security has had to devise ingenious methods of divining poachers plans and methods. This change in focus from trying to create a nurturing environment to defending territory and wildlife against indescribable violence is a disheartening change and a difficult way to live.
Compare those horrors with a young male elephant seeking the limelight—turning his rump to a jeep full of camera-toting watchers and twerking for the crowd. And an exploration of the character of rhino surprises readers utterly for what it tells us of their fearfulness and gentleness.
We likewise meet a hippo initially very suspicious of being asked to step into a green wading pool with a scant amount of water. We meet the handlers who become these distressed animals’ best buddies, teaching them to play despite their trauma, and protecting them as best they can from the nightmares that plague them.
If readers enjoy the stories in this book, one absolutely must make an attempt to locate a copy of The Elephant Whisperer referenced above because of what it adds in richness to the story and the description of the environment and told by a world-class raconteur. ...more
This is the perfect book to pick up when you find yourself unable to read with concentration for any reason. Webb has such an easy, involving style, pThis is the perfect book to pick up when you find yourself unable to read with concentration for any reason. Webb has such an easy, involving style, personable characters, and smart insights about animal habits that it is hard not to be curious where she is going with the central mystery. In the end she relied on more than a few stereotypes to describe TV anchors, rich technologists, and wealthy beauty queens, but the path was enjoyable and what we want from mystery series: character development and movement.
Red-haired and freckled, the aptly nicknamed Teddy is an unlikely combination of enthusiastic zookeeper and reluctant heiress. Her beauty queen mother is intent upon marrying her off to a Silicon Valley man but Teddy herself tends towards the half-European half-Latin sheriff who cares for two kids from his first marriage. A new zookeeper is found dead under suspicious circumstances, and though her former boyfriend is taken into custody, the killings do not stop.
What I liked best about this was the sunny California feel of living just inland from the seaside quay where Teddy keeps moored her live-aboard boat. The low-key zoo is placed in scented environs near a eucalyptus forest and features photogenic blue-tongued anteaters and cuddly koalas. Webb’s writing is humorous and assured even while unraveling a complicated mystery involving lots of peripheral characters and possible murderers.
I have a niece who will be zoo-keeping at San Diego Zoo this coming spring, a zoo mentioned several times in the course of this mystery, so I admit to some focused attention on the animals mentioned and animal care. While the fiction may not all be accurate, it is a refreshing, inventive angle from which to approach a mystery, and gives the author a chance to indulge some serious research.
Webb was once a journalist for a Phoenix-based newspaper and began writing fiction at the turn of the 21st century with a Desert Series featuring Scottsdale-based investigator, Lena Jones. Webb’s work on that series is said to have been based on real cases, and always addressed some pressing societal issue like sex trafficking, despoliation of the environment, welfare fraud, native rights. It is said there is a strong frontier feel to the series.
Frankly, Webb seems a natural when it comes to fiction. She understands how to tell a story and chooses her topics well. She gives readers plenty of credit for following her into the intricacies of a mystery or knowing where to put the emphasis on an important topic. Webb also teaches creative writing at Phoenix College. My guess is the class would be worthwhile, and a blast.
This children's story reminds us that children may understand things instinctively that we adults have to be taught. A very old cat struggles to stay This children's story reminds us that children may understand things instinctively that we adults have to be taught. A very old cat struggles to stay cognizant in a world in which reality is slipping away. The book has a very slow and simple storyline that is both poignant and funny-sad.
Sometimes when the old cat sleeps, it makes noises or moves its legs in something like protest. It can't walk or jump as it did when it was younger; sometimes it seeks the house's warm spots and moves little. But it remembers what it can no longer see. It remembers what it means to be a cat.
There may just the moment for such a book in a child's repertoire. It allows them to grasp the world is much bigger than their nuclear family. Nothing to be frightened of, especially, but sometimes animals and people grow old and their memories are more vivid than reality....more
Kurlansky is justly famous for his earlier works about Salt and Cod, among other things, so when I saw this 2018 Bloomsbury Publishing nonfiction abouKurlansky is justly famous for his earlier works about Salt and Cod, among other things, so when I saw this 2018 Bloomsbury Publishing nonfiction about Milk, I was interested. I was particularly interested to see what he would say about humans consuming milk after infancy, when approximately sixty percent of the world's human population appear to lose their tolerance for and ability to digest lactose. Europeans, Middle Easterners, North Africans and some of the Indian subcontinent appear to lack a gene which shuts off production of lactase--an intestinally-controlled enzyme which digests lactose present in all milk.
In 2006 Cornell University's T. Colin Campbell published his thirty-year study on the eating habits of Chinese people called The China Study. The findings of Campbell's study blew me away, one of which was that consumption of milk products can cause osteoporosis in adults, a finding exactly opposite to what we have been told here in America. Kurlansky does not mention this startling information, sadly. But Campbell's study made me look closely at where the promotion of milk products was coming from—the industry itself, and lobbyists targeting government scientists, commercial attachés, and spokespeople.
Kurlanksy does remark on lactose intolerance briefly at the beginning and again in the section on China. He indicates that while there is a growing tolerance for dairy products gradually in China among the wealthier and more worldly citizens, it fights with the notion that the Chinese are genetically lactose intolerant. It may be that livestock was discouraged in a country which needed all possible land for food production, and that reintroducing dairy stimulates the production of lactase.
Kurlansky mostly elucidates the uses of milk in the part of the world that uses it daily, giving recipes that have survived the ages, showing some changes in those recipes over time. And certainly coincidentally but with a weird synchronicity he discusses breast-feeding throughout the world and throughout history. Breastfeeding has come and gone in popularity, with scientists in the past forty years generally concluding that until clean water and sterile bottles and low pricing for formula could be achieved throughout the world, perhaps breast milk was superior to any industrial formula.
It is now de rigueur to pump breast milk, offering convenience and nutrition. Pumping breast milk induces lactating mothers to produce more than they need, which has led to an oversupply. Some entrepreneurs have endeavored to sell soap made with breast milk; those selling breast milk ice cream in London found they couldn’t keep up with demand. Some sell breast milk on the internet to athletes who believe it makes them stronger. Some people buy it when they are ill, believing it has medicinal qualities. Some testing internet purchases found 10% of the time cow’s milk was mixed in, while 75% was contaminated with bacteria and/or pathogens.
It turns out that yogurt made from yak milk makes that made from cow’s milk seem boring and tasteless due to the high percentage of fat in yak’s milk. Consumption of milk in the United States has declined almost 40% since the 1970s, and now large scale industrial farming is the key to survival of the industry. At the end, Kurlansky takes another quick trip around the world to look at how dairy farms manage and what problems they are encountering now, including some of the profit calculations small producers are making.
Kurlanky is a wonderful writer of nonfiction who manages to take on big subjects and make them intelligible to the non-specialist. If you are looking for specific information, this book may simply be too diffuse, but Kurlansky is a wonderful host for a general reader....more
This detailed and useful book was published in the U.S. in 2010 by Timber Press and authored by three long-time North American experts on cephalopods.This detailed and useful book was published in the U.S. in 2010 by Timber Press and authored by three long-time North American experts on cephalopods. James Wood maintains his own website, called The Cephalopod Page. This collection includes 38 color plates, and the discussion is for the non-specialist. It includes recent developments in the field and offers information in a way that is inviting.
No one knows how many octopus species exist, but it is estimated there are 100 members of the genus Octopus. Octopuses (not octopussies, everyone) are found at every depth in the ocean and while some are very large (up to 80 lb), most can be measure in millimeters at hatching. And yes, octopuses lay eggs.
Many variations in observed habits are discussed here, but the important thing is that octopuses don’t generally have a long lifespan—usually around two years, though the range is six months to four years, depending on the species. Sexual activity takes place towards the end of the lifespan, the mother often dying shortly after the eggs have successfully hatched. During gestation the mother typically doesn’t eat, neither attracted to food nor interested to attract possible predators to the cave in which she is holed up with a bunch of developing eggs. Her last days are spent spurting oxygenated water over the eggs attached to the walls of caves.
Much of what we know about the octopus is that they are great escape artists: they squeeze into tight spots, change color, and will lose an arm to evade capture. They can also put on a dazzling camouflage called ‘Passing Cloud,’ which is designed to confuse potential prey, not predators. This display makes nearby prey think something large is passing over their environment casting a moving shadow. It is thought the intent is to startle a motionless prey into revealing their location so they can be captured by the octopus with spread arms and web.
One of the things I like best about this book is that the information is delivered painlessly and in a conversational tone. The authors freely seed the work with ravishing stories, like the one about finding ‘a cuttlefish singles bar’ on a small rocky reef in South Australia in 2002—a huge aggregation of giant cuttlefish (41,000 estimated, about one per square yard) ready to reproduce, four males for each female, all trying for courtship, changing skin displays & waiting for a guarding male to get distracted. It’s just hard to wrap one’s mind around. This is determined, thinking behavior. Isn’t it?
Anyway, this book reminds me of the kind of book many of us read as pre-adolescents, obsessed with dinosaurs or airplanes or something, and reading whatever we could find on the subject until… until we were teased out of our expertise or the lure of the opposite sex scrambled our brains. Even a child could enjoy reading this book.
The authors have side comments on argonauts (yes, the ones the Greek playwrights mentioned), cuttlefish, squid and specific individual octopuses that made a difference in the lives of countless scientists. This is a terrific gift for the not-yet-specialist....more
This is a fast and fabulous, smart and funny read…the kind that reads so effortlessly because the author has a lifetime of writing experience. There iThis is a fast and fabulous, smart and funny read…the kind that reads so effortlessly because the author has a lifetime of writing experience. There is a big-hearted generosity in Wright’s view of Texas, though he doesn’t hesitate to point out personalities or policies that diminish what he believes the state could be. Wright lived many years in Austin, the big blue liberal heart of Texas, a city that attracted so many people to what the city once was that it no longer resembles that attractive mixed-race, mixed-income diversity so rich with possibility.
Having read Wright’s big books on Carter’s peace talks at Camp David, and his exhaustive study of Christian Science, I was unprepared for the deep vein of “will you look at that” humor that richly marbles this piece. It is an utter delight to have Wright use his insider status as a resident to call out especially egregious instances of Texas bullshit.
The book is a memoir, really—the memoir of a natural raconteur from a state where cracking jokes about serious issues is an art form. But before page ten Wright makes clear his assessment of the state:
"Texas has nurtured an immature political culture that has some terrible damage to the state and to the nation. Because Texas is a part of almost everything in modern America—the South, the West. the Plains, Hispanic and immigrant communities, the border, the divide between rural areas and the cities—what happens here tends to disproportionately affect the rest of the nation. Illinois and New Jersey may be more corrupt, Kansas and Louisiana more dysfunctional, but they don’t bear the responsibility of being the future."
Wright is so skilled now at writing big books that he manages to give us lots of detail and information even in this more relaxed telling, all the while being really funny. He is clear-eyed about why Texas can be a big fail and yet he clearly loves the place.
"To strike it rich is still the Texas dream...Texans are always talking about how much they loved the state, but I wondered where was the evidence of that love."
Wright admits he considered leaving during the oil boom/bust in the 1980s when the state never seemed to live up to its obligations. He dreamed sometimes of decamping to liberal California, where he could flog his screenwriting skills...and make more money. He thinks that a country that can hold together two such immensely powerful and opposing forces as California and Texas has got to be something worthwhile and important. I used to think so, too, but feel less confident now. Sometimes I want to saw off those pieces of the country that claim to want so much freedom, and seal the borders. No trade. We’ll see then who comes out on top.
Music and art are sprinkled throughout this biography, obviously an important part of Wright’s attraction to the state. Each chapter sports woodcuts by David Dantz describing the chapter’s subject and Dantz’s endpapers illustrate the arc of the book. The art, like the prose, is rich with humor and attitude. Music is a part of Wright’s own biography and so he writes particularly well about the scene and historical influences. It’s rounded, this book, and interesting and fun and full of reasons to like Texas, despite its particularly awful politicians.
Texas was a reliably blue state until the 1990s. Houston is the only major city in America without zoning laws. AM Texas radio hosts Alex Jones. Ted Cruz makes jokes about Machine Gun Bacon on Youtube but as usual when Cruz is trying to be funny, it’s an epic fail. Dallas had been a city fostering extremism until Kennedy died there. After that humiliation, Dallas became more open and tolerant, more progressive…and developed more churches per capita than any city in the nation. Wright thinks Dallas has the ability to transform suffering into social change. I say we shouldn’t be blamed for being a little suspicious of all that supposed holiness. Evangelicals have shown what they are thinking where they are standing.
In the last chapters, Wright is open about searching for his final resting place. He is only seventy years old, but he is calling it for Texas. I really like that about him. He can conceive of life and death, Democrat and Republican, north and south in one sentence. He can love Texas and laugh at it, too. He has written a truly wonderful, un-put-down-able book about the biggest second-biggest state in the union.
The New York Review of Books has republished the Palmer Brown books that many people say they have never forgotten, having read them in childhood,The New York Review of Books has republished the Palmer Brown books that many people say they have never forgotten, having read them in childhood, 45 long years ago. The reprints are child-sized, about 4" x 6" and have lovely reproductions of the artwork that makes this collection so special.
In this story, a baby mouse wonders aloud over what she should get for Christmas for someone special (her mother) who seems to have everything. All kinds of things are considered until the mother helps her decide that to give one's love is the most precious gift of all. ...more
Berns uses what he’s learned about human cognition and emotion in the title of this book, which promises insights into the understanding of the dog brBerns uses what he’s learned about human cognition and emotion in the title of this book, which promises insights into the understanding of the dog brain. To be fair, the book does discuss experiments and findings involving what happens in a dog’s brain while commands are given and associations are made. But the book goes far beyond the dog to discuss cognition and sentience in animals of many kinds, principally by using evidence from MRI and fMRI brain scans. It is a fascinating look at the study of neuroscience on animals.
Despite the density of terms required to study neuroscience, Berns guides us easily through the basics, allowing us to understand the principal goal of their studies on dogs: to determine how dogs process information. I will admit to a degree of awe to think they could manage to get a dog to voluntarily crouch within a noisy MRI machine and stay immoveable long enough to be scanned while the scientists perform tests. Georgia dog trainer Mark Spivak was given a shout-out at the end of this book for his insights and indefatigable efforts to this end.
The decades-long work of Peter Cook of the pinniped labs in Santa Cruz, CA is highlighted for several chapters beginning with “Seizing Sea Lions.” Berns and Cook worked together to determine the effects of domoic acid toxicity on normal patterns of connectivity in the brains of dead sea lions. Domoic toxicity caused by agricultural runoff was determined to be the cause of a wave of malnourished sea lion strandings during El Niño years.
After the sea lions come dolphins, a discussion of how echolocation manifests in the brain, and some indication how dolphin brains resemble and differ from other mammals. Then back to dogs, where studies have shown a real possibility that rats and dogs may experience regret: regret for choices that do not turn out as desirable as anticipated. Berns acknowledges it is difficult to imagine regret in a rat, but he suggests that our word for it does not limit the experience of the emotion to those who understand the word. From here he moves from “what do words mean to animals”?
The detail in his discussion of dog training with words and visual cues may lead other scientists to suggest tweaks that may lead to even greater understanding of the emotional responses of animals. Enough work has been done now on a variety of mammals (and even crows!) to show emotions are a part of their brain activity and daily life. But what appeared to be almost a failure of dogs to recognize words led to a new insight:
“It may be that in a dog’s semantic space, actions and things are very close, which would explain why it was so difficult to teach the dogs the names of things. The semantic representation for ‘squirrel’ might be to ‘chase and kill,’ while ‘ball’ becomes ‘chase and retrieve.’…Human represent the world with nouns…it might require a shift in perspective—in this case, from a noun-based worldview to one based in action…In an action-based worldview, everything would be transactional.”
In one of the final chapters, called “A Death in Tasmania,” Berns tries something completely different. He writes of his experience traveling to Australia to view the habitat and scan the brain of an Tasmanian Tiger, a marsupial mammal species thought to be extinct. As an experience and as a piece of research, it is as different from his earlier work as studying the brains of placental mammals and marsupial mammals, two animals who evolved differently over millennia. Berns uses narrative nonfiction techniques to situate us visually, historically, physically in “one of the last great wildernesses on Earth…utterly unique and worthy of protection.”
The chapter on Tasmania really highlighted Berns’ special skills as a scientist—his ability to look beyond the lab to the wider meanings of neuroscience “for the rest of us,” as he emphasized in his final chapter on the “Dog Lab.” Working for so long on understanding the extent of animal cognition, consciousness, sentience, or self-awareness has led him to animal advocacy, if only for our own selfish reasons. “We, Homo sapiens, might soon be an animal in the eyes of our successors…” given our tinkering and experimentation with the human genome. One day unmodified humans may be considered undesirable, inferior.
Berns has skill in involving us, allowing us to follow his work. He would like to map the brains of the Earth’s megafauna with the best science and equipment available today.
“The WWF estimates that two-thirds of many species’ populations maybe gone by 2020. [Is 2020 a misprint?] Apart from the ecological catastrophe, scientific opportunities may be lost forever. It is imperative that we begin the archival process for all species, and especially for megafauna…”
On his website James McBride has a short biographical video in which he talks about his mother, his music, and his writing. Every one of the twelve kiOn his website James McBride has a short biographical video in which he talks about his mother, his music, and his writing. Every one of the twelve kids in his New York City family growing up played music and read books. McBride himself plays saxophone, and played in a traveling band while writing his first book, The Color of Water. McBride says “we’re all the same…there’s none of that black and white stuff when one gets to the nursing homes…they’re all just happy their body parts are still functioning.” That may well be, but please let’s not wait that long to get past race.
McBride’s yarn-spinning tone is in full voice right from the first story, “The Under Graham Railroad Box Car Set,” where we learn about the fabulously valuable toy railroad set made for General Robert E. Lee’s five-year-old son Graham by Horace Smith, of Smith & Wesson fame. Rumors of the train set swirled for more than a century before a photograph of it appeared one day at the home of a seller of vintage toys living in Buck’s County, Pennsylvania.
The very finest stories in this collection come at the end, including “Mr. P & The Wind,” a fable which really should be published as a stand-alone paperback storybook for adults with pen-and-ink drawings, like that of Chekov or Kipling at the end of the 19th Century. In this story, animals residing in a zoo discuss their lives before zoo-dom, what their real natures are like, and their understanding of reincarnation. One thing they’d learned very well in the zoo was that humans—the Smelly Ones—were able to kill expeditiously but they had little to no understanding of the Order of Life.
This piece ranks as a bedtime story for grownups, a just-long-enough, miraculously inoffensive and reassuring vehicle for dispensing wisdom and life experience, certainly exceeding the feel-good but ultimately empty bloviation of the Dr. Seuss book often gifted at graduations, Oh, The Places You’ll Go! The animals communicate in Thought Shapes which do not register to humans who have not learned the language. In this way, whales can communicate with lions and panthers, difficult and exciting though that is to comprehend. A Smelly One, Mr. P, learns to Thought Shape.
Four of the stories in this collection center around the five-and-a-half-member Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band, and we could see what they were learning from their neighborhood: Pig and Dirt were former members, Bunny, Dex, half-member Ray-Ray, Beanie, Goat, and Butter, our narrator. The time was different back then, when the band practiced over Mr. Woo’s grocery, before Mr. Woo killed “Buck Boy,” who had tried to rob him.
Then there was “Blub” the young man the band boys always thought was younger. He had a tender heart and was easily led, and ended up working a murder charge until Butter could tell the court a story about Blub back when he gave more love than he got, back when a girl with a cat could darn near break his heart. “It ain’t him,” Butter would testify. “They got the wrong man.”
In “The Moaning Bench” we get a whiff of the everlasting…the everlasting hellfire that awaits those who have not examined what it means to be penitent. In “The Christmas Dance” we review again the role of black soldiers in Italy during the Second World War. Two survivors of a horribly-ravaged regiment were surprised in a 1944 Christmas Day attack that took out most of their fellow soldiers. On Christmas Day every year they get together to dance, and to remember.
Two stories tell of Abraham Lincoln, whose difficult choices and grief binds him to us even now. “The Fish Man Angel” was my second favorite story in the collection. Lincoln’s loss is palpable as he curls up in the stable with his dead boy Wille’s favorite pony, sharing loneliness and warmth. From that vantage point he overhears the cruelty of one black man speaking to another and fixes that problem at least.
The second of the Lincoln stories, “Father Abe,” describes a young mixed-race orphan called Abe Lincoln seeking clarification about his parentage: surely if his name is the same as the president, wouldn’t that man would be his father? The 9th Louisiana Colored Infantry Regiment, briefly and exhaustedly paused in Richmond, VA near the end of the war, found Little Abe persistent in his demand to know which man was his father.
Stories like these seem designed to entrance even much-older children who have their own children. That’s the thing about McBride. His writing allows adults time to relax, to play a little. He feeds our credulous, childlike selves; we put aside his work to think on it a bit. McBride has a reservoir of humor and goodwill that saves his work from both despair and from too great an optimism....more
Mezrich picks interesting topics, I will concede that. Readers may already have heard some years ago that a Harvard lab was working on de-extinction oMezrich picks interesting topics, I will concede that. Readers may already have heard some years ago that a Harvard lab was working on de-extinction of the Woolly Mammoth. Mezrich brings us up to date on this project; indeed, the first and last chapters in this “nonfiction” are set in the future.
If you are familiar with Mezrich’s writing, the author weights the concept narrative nonfiction heavily on the narrative and fiction sides, ostensibly to stoke momentum and get folks interested. The only problem is that his very good instincts about what is intrinsically an interesting story fights with his method. Sometimes the reader has to thrash through pages of invented dialogue to reach a critical conclusion, a real buzz killer if there ever was one.
But this story works on many levels, and while we are following his careful step-by-step thrust with one eye, our mind is busy on the operations of a lab and the implications of the study for medicine, for wildlife, for every aspect of our visible and invisible world. Mezrich eventually addresses many of these key issues in the text, usually making the science sound responsible and considered.
I started to grow more uncomfortable towards the end of the book, when we are reminded that the science has progressed so far so fast that genomic modifications have escaped the lab environment and can be undertaken in a made-over garage for relatively small costs, and that billionaires of every stripe are lining up to make their money count for something big.
The real excitement of this story is in our imaginations, and what the skills and knowledge of present-day scientists can allow us to imagine. Mezrich places us in fund-raising meetings with billionaires, allowing the most humble among us to enjoy the same stories and sense of excitement that fuels movers and shakers. If the glamour of the whole thing begins to seem suspect at some point, I think you’ve caught my sense of unease.
Mezrich shares the history of the project, including the work by Nikita Zimov in Northern Siberia, determining that wooly mammoths seemed to have played a role in preserving the permafrost levels of the tundra, by upturning the soil and exposing lower layers to the freezing temperatures. His father, Sergey Zimov, apparently theorized that reestablishing animal herds that roamed Siberia earlier in human history might play a role in keeping escaping carbon and methane, now sequestered in permafrost, from accelerating the speed at which the earth warms.
The fact that woolly mammoth remains are discovered regularly now in thawing and melting ice and snow of the north is something I had not known. The ancient ivory from the tusks is not protected and is therefore an important source of income for hunters, sold in lieu of protected elephant tusks, for the same reasons, to the same buyers.
The scientists involved in the story at one of the Church labs at Harvard are fascinating individuals in their own right, each with a backstory that only fuels our interest. The project has been going on long enough now that the twenty-something personnel involved at the beginning of the project are turning it over to others, younger ones still, to ensure continuity of skills on such a forward-looking project. The whole concept and execution of the mammoth idea is sufficiently…mammoth…and complex enough to make readers feel as though they have been subtly changed by the experience.
(view spoiler)[The real life story ends with woolly mammoth DNA implanted in an elephant cell. Dr. Frank Church, the originator of this project, to his credit, decides not to use elephants to gestate the beast that might develop, but to construct a synthetic uterus. That is currently underway. Stay tuned. (hide spoiler)]...more
Years ago I remember wishing I could experience a bit of what immigrants experience, or that some could communicate their experiences in ways I could Years ago I remember wishing I could experience a bit of what immigrants experience, or that some could communicate their experiences in ways I could understand. They’d started out somewhere I’d never been, and they’d arrived somewhere they’d never imagined. Like Finland. Cold, white, communal, with few racial or religious tensions. I was eager to hear it all, but such stories, if they existed, were rarely published in the U.S. All that has changed now and I couldn't be happier.
This remarkable debut by the 27-year-old Statovci gives us that strangeness, familiarity, differentness, and similarity in a wild ride from Kosovo to Finland, from traditional society to an open society, from cultural acceptance to social ostracism. See how the arrows in that sentence seem to point in opposite directions? Therein lies the tension.
Two seemingly unrelated stories, one featuring a talking cat, twine and twist through the first part of the novel, both stories engrossing: a woman describes the lead-up to her traditional marriage…the clothes, the gold, the mother-to-daughter secrets, the preparations. The other thread features the cat and a snake, neither of which we want to take out eyes off for very long. They are both dangerous.
As readers we don’t object to the fact of the cat, though by rights we should. He is thoroughly obnoxious, insulting his host and then being falsely obsequious. He comes for a tryst and stays for meal, which he then refuses on the grounds such food would never cross his lips. He insists on eating meat in a vegetarian’s house, and he takes long, splashy showers…he is your worst nightmare, the height of self-regard.
The snake—I’d like to hear your take on the snake. A boa constrictor. He’s a wily one, seems to have formed a kind of attachment to his owner, in that he doesn’t threaten him, but he does threaten a guest…Throw a dangerous animal into a story and see if your attention flags. It’s a old trick that works every time. We don’t take our eyes from him whenever he appears from behind the couch.
But it is the story of the wedding that grabs us by the balls, as the expression goes. We are shocked, distressed, angry. We try to imagine how we would handle what comes up, both as a young person, and as an adult. We think over decisions we make so quickly, painlessly in adulthood that are so tortuous and fraught in youth.
All this is overlaid with the portrait of a family of seven living in one room provided by the Finnish government to refugees. The bunk-beds squeak so cannot be used. Mattresses cover the floor. Four or more families share a kitchen, a bathroom. It is nearly intolerable until they remember what they left, native Albanians in a Kosovo run amok. The Bosnian War was brutal beyond all imagining. There is that.
The stories twist and twine through one another like the loops of a snake, another of which, a poisonous viper, makes an appearance later in the book. The viper is only a meter long, and is captured in a plastic bag. It doesn’t provoke as much anxiety as it should. When a plastic bag reappears later in the story, holding not a snake but a book, The White King by György Dragomán, we wonder…can the snake represent his father, the bully whose influence stays around, silently inhabiting the places we live? Deadly, but sometimes ineffective, who might be deflected or exorcised with understanding and effort.
And the cat? There is more than one cat. The first cat talks. The second cat was abandoned, uncared for, unloved in the native country until rescued and restored to health. And finally, there is the black cat in a litter, “just normal, mongrel kittens,” in the author’s words, to distinguish them from the black and white cat who speaks, and the orange cat who doesn’t. The talking cat so full of himself could be the author himself, and the follow-on cats could be those who’d suffered during the war, coming finally to the children, those ‘normal’ integrated ‘mongrels’ who’d adjusted to their new environment in their adopted country and married with locals.
The disturbing shifting sexuality throughout this novel, in a person from a traditional culture with unresolved parent issues, has a touch of intimidation and coercion about it, in the beginning at least. By the end I am much more comfortable that our narrator’s sexual choices are healthy ones, and begin to wonder…is this one of the things that caused the rift between his father and himself?
Statovci succeeds in capturing our attention with this debut, recounting an agonizing childhood and an adulthood filled with sudden emotional traps. His use of a female point of view is extraordinarily effective in making us inhabit her choices. He shows us the distance an émigré may feel from his host country, no matter how conflicted these feelings are with gratefulness and surprise and ordinary, daily joy at being alive. He shows us the pointed, hateful bullying in town—a step up from ordinary school bullying—that may provoke withdrawal rather than a healthy resistance and reliance on home-grown values.
This is a thrilling debut. Bravo!
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Just came upon this terrific piece in Lit Hub by Statovic which explains much of the novel's imagery in straightforward terms. Gosh, I like this guy. What a miraculous job, to have written this novel....more
At the midway point in this graphic novel I was still smiling. It sort of clipped me upside the head as I read, and though it drew blood, I still thouAt the midway point in this graphic novel I was still smiling. It sort of clipped me upside the head as I read, and though it drew blood, I still thought it might be a little cute. I didn't reallylike the story--it seemed a bit grim--but... I thought it was going to come around.
The authors (it would have to be two, one couldn't bear that dark vision alone, for long) are making a comment on man's seemingly infinite capacity for evil--really banal, thoughtless evil. It hurts, this vision, because sometimes it looks like it could be interpreted: Hateful redheads (wearing the red caps) with virtual spears yelling their frustration into the startled faces of those without the scarcity--the scarcity of everything, including education & opportunity, but also love, generosity & kindness, warmth, food...you know...what those of us who have, call "basics."
I don't believe in this vision. It may be hurtful to even entertain a performance of it in art. But I personally am not threatened. I feel sure that there is more to us--stop chewing on my sneakers, kitty!--there is more to us than looking after our own needs...No! you may not have my last crust of bread...Arg...did you stab me for the crust? You can have half, but you know we should get more from...though we may have to fight them for it...
You know how bad it is when I have already thought of these scenarios. ...more
A family living in an apartment with a puppy looks for a new house out of the city and discovers the neighbors at their new place has a bigger dog than their own.
It is a wonderful little story that has tension and release, tension and release, with everyone getting what they want in the end. Best of all, it is the perfect length for a bedtime story--"one short one before bed"--and although my category is ages 4-6, I think ages 3-5 is most appropriate.
Definitely consider this one for Christmas this year. It's a gem from days gone by, but actually not so distant in terms of how we live now....more
I really like dogs, maybe because they can be so loyal. They are so smart and so dumb at the same time that they are an unending source of intrigue. TI really like dogs, maybe because they can be so loyal. They are so smart and so dumb at the same time that they are an unending source of intrigue. They are one link to the animal world that doesn't seem so remote as other pets can be. And I am intrigued with highly trained dogs, either in agility or in searching. Somehow I get the feeling that they probably love exercising to the limits of their abilities. The ones that don’t like this stretching of their skills probably don’t make the cut for difficult jobs.
The Belgian Malinois breed is the most common dog used for Secret Service training. They look like German Shepherds but have shorter hair and tend to weigh less. It is the only breed of dog used for the Emergency Response Team (ERT). Some dogs that are part of the Explosive Detection Team (EDT) are also Personnel Screening Canines (PSC) (all PSC are EDT), a job which is used in public buildings like the White House to check visitors. Some dogs are trained to walk through crowds and must have a measure of sociability as part of their natures. These are called Personnel Screening Canines Open Area (PSCO), or Friendly Dogs, or Floppy-eared Dogs: dogs which do not inspire fear. These dogs are often not German Shepherds or Belgian Malinois.
Selection of officers and canines for the relatively few dog units is very competitive, and it is usual in the Secret Service that an officer retires when his dog does, allowing other interested candidates to take a turn within that group. A few unusual dog handlers have been exempted from this rule, but it is rare.
I have an advance e-book of this title, access granted through Netgalley, so I am not sure my reading experience will be the same as others who will purchase this title. There are lots of anecdotes and information in this book, too much really, and there is an unforgivable lack of organization that makes one feel as though one is wading through vast swathes of unedited and out-of-order interviews. Because I am interested in the material, I managed to get through it, but it was an exasperating struggle.
On the other hand, reading the manuscript is excellent practice for an aspiring editor to see what is involved in producing a decent piece of work from massive amounts of lightly-handled raw material. Whipping this manuscript into shape would require a huge investment of time and skills, but the end result could be worthwhile. It might even get you a job with a publisher, if you shared the before and after.
Dan Flores has done something fascinating in this book, rehabilitating the image of a persecuted carnivore lowest on our opinion roster of animals, in Dan Flores has done something fascinating in this book, rehabilitating the image of a persecuted carnivore lowest on our opinion roster of animals, including cockroaches and rats. He makes the case that coyotes should be America’s national avatar, displacing the bison or buffalo. Extremely clever, adaptable, and pioneering, the coyote was designated a principal deity by American Indians--North America’s oldest deity, responsible for creating all of North America.
Flores tells us that coyotes live within a couple miles of us at all times now…even those of us in major metropolitan areas. Coyotes are cosmopolitan, and have been living in urban areas since the time of Columbus at least. They are perceptive, wily fellow-travelers with us.
”Suffice it to say here that as we humans head off into an uncertain and probably dangerous future of our own making, it might be wise to keep an eye on [coyotes]. I, for one, am going to be very interested in how coyotes cope with the twenty-first century and what insights we might draw about our own circumstances from a coyote history that so often seems to mirror ours.”
Coyotes are predators, feeding mainly on small mammals, birds, or fruits and they are sociable, hunting in packs. Contrary to the notion that coyotes were responsible for cattle kills, they were nearly always scavengers of large animals as befit their position in the ranking of predators in the larger ecosystem. Very nearly killed off as pests since the end of the nineteenth century, they have none-the-less persevered.
Flores suggests we look to the Indian coyote stories, of which there is a rich seam, to understand human nature: “who better to illustrate that than self-centered, gluttonous, carnal Coyote?”As we began to understand our own animal natures, the study of other social animals leaves “little doubt that…canines also understand equality and inequity…and experience both a rudimentary form of empathy and some basic theory of mind…an essential sense of what in human terms we would call 'right and wrong.'”
Employees of the Wildlife Services’ Predator Research Center, whose greatest advocate is the American sheep industry, is responsible for killing by aerial shooting roughly 35,000 coyotes from the air annually. Even they readily admit that coyotes have personality: “They’re individuals. Like people, some get into trouble.” Sheep farmers claim to lose some percentage of lambs to coyote packs every year. The federal government spends an equal amount of money (the cost of the lambs) to kill or sterilize coyote. Hmmm...a good use of federal tax dollars?
This book is a wildlife biologist’s dream. Readable, eloquent, well-argued, it looks at coyote history from many angles and leads even those of us with reason to dislike the disruptive canines to a grudging admiration and wonder. Of course, sport hunters probably don’t read peer-reviewed ecological articles, but Flores points out that ecosystems tend to develop some balances in response to threats and flourishing in their environment. Trying to kill coyotes takes natural balances out of the equation.
Flores ends with examples of coyote in art, and reminds us again how the animal is portrayed as a caricature of human nature, for example Wile E’s comic overconfidence (remind you of anyone?), unswerving obsession with a goal, and unfailing faith in technology. (Even that swath of red-gold hair has something of the coyote about it.) But I don’t want to carry the metaphor too far. After all, coyote in modern day parlance means a person who sneaks illegal aliens into the U.S. from Mexico.
Dan Flores is a historian, A.B. Hammond Professor Emeritus at University of Montana-Missoula, who has written several books about the American West and the animals who reside there. This year he also published a book called American Serengeti: The Last Big Animals of the Great Plains, perhaps in conjunction with the movement by Sean Gerrity, president of American Prairie Reserve, committed to wildlife conservation and hoping to create the largest wildlife complex ever assembled in the continental United States. "When complete, the reserve will comprise some 3.5 million contiguous acres (more than 5,000 square miles) of native grassland in northeastern Montana, with a goal of restoring the wildlife abundance the landscape once contained." [National Geographic bio].
Here is Dan Flores addressing the 32nd National Cowboy Poetry gathering about the history of America's Serengeti, and here is Sean Gerrity at an Aspen Institute gathering to elicit donations for his project....more
This isn't bad, and I'll come back to it. Was surprised Chernow intimated that Hamilton was homosexual. Never heard that before. He had close male friThis isn't bad, and I'll come back to it. Was surprised Chernow intimated that Hamilton was homosexual. Never heard that before. He had close male friends. Chernow says he "loved" them. It isn't fashionable now, but I think it is kind of normal for men to have close male friends. Women do, too. We don't actually have to have sex with them to find them lovable.
The other thing I just learned tonight is that in the Broadway musical Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda apparently made a bigger piece out of the closeness of Hamilton and his wife Eliza's sister, Angelica. Apparently they were in love as well. Seems to be unlikely that Hamilton was homosexual and in love with his wife's sister, but Chernow churns it up.
I'd like to finish this, and I really want to see the play....more
Penguin Young Readers has selected several storybooks from their G+D Vintage archives for reprint in time for Easter this spring, in advance of furthePenguin Young Readers has selected several storybooks from their G+D Vintage archives for reprint in time for Easter this spring, in advance of further titles coming along in early summer. Long out of print, these books are selected for their retro-chic appeal and classic illustrations.
This particular story features a little bunny who should be dazzled by the long lists of fun hats and delightful candies he discovers in the abandoned factory where he makes his home. It is only when he comes upon the field of carrots lying outside the factory doors that he finds true excitement. I love it when children turn up their noses at candies and go for the fruit—or vegetables--so this one is high on my list for big punch lines.
One senses the societal change in the fifty or sixty years since the book’s original publication when the list of jobs attached to the hats the bunnies find seem as distant as Shakespeare.
My family has long experience with rabbits, both the domestic variety and with the ones that nibble tender greens in my city garden. There is still something about bunnies that remind us of spring, so bring a little of the past into the present and share with your kids, grandkids, and great grandkids the truth about bunnies.
On sale Jan 26, 2016, ISBN: 978944844495, 32 pages, Ages 3-5, $9.99, G+D Vintage
More titles this Spring:
• Bunny Hopwell's First Spring by Jean Fritz, Illustrated by Rachel Dixon;
• The Noisy Clock by Jean Horton Berg, Illustrated by Art Seiden;
• My ABC Book by Art Seiden;
• The Too Little Fire Engine by Jane Flory.
Upcoming in June 2016: • The Animal's Vacation by Shel Haber;
• The Bingity-Bangity School Bus by Fleur Conkling;
• Mr. Wishing Went Fishing by Irma Wilde, Illustrated by George Wilde....more
This is my favorite among Abani’s published poetry collections and I think it might be because it is completely accessible. One doesn’t have to know aThis is my favorite among Abani’s published poetry collections and I think it might be because it is completely accessible. One doesn’t have to know anything about Chris Abani to understand the language and heartache and courage. “Om” appears first and has seven parts on five pages. I take one phrase from each:
"I never told anyone that every sliver of orange I ate was preceded by words from high mass…" and "The dog’s black tongue was more terrifying than its teeth." and "Sorrow lodged like a splintered bullet next to the heart." and "Sand, where there is no water, can ablute, washing grain by grain even the hardest stone of sin." and "The way a photograph cannot remember the living." and "Sanctificum."
Abani can talk about sadness, about places that are sad, without being sad:
A LETTER TO ROBERT PINSKY
This is wood, enchanted wood. Still the fire scorches and we say wood still the pain burns from the club and then we say wood still the planks dovetail and we caress the smooth and the rough sensuous, delectable, and yet sorrowful and then we say wood.
My favorite poem is too long to quote, twelve sections on ten pages, called “Pilgrimage.” It talks of words and their meanings, faith and its lack, history and hope, fear and courage, love and rage. Well, I will quote just a little because it speaks to the sadness without being sad:
"Some may call me a pessimist, but I am not. There is nothing gained from loss. I drink tea in the shade and believe in poetry. I am a zealot for optimism."
In a short poem near the end called “Dew,” Abani writes
"My desire is struggling up the mountain. My fear is a shower of pebbles. Your son is trying to be a good man, Mum. Your son is going to be all right. There are no names for red."
That is not the poem in its entirety, and it does not end there. But that phrase that appears again and again in Abani’s work is perplexing to me. I don’t know what he means, “there are no names for red.”
The real strength in Abani’s work is his willingness to see and not be ruined by the seeing. He has enough reserves to still give succor to those of us stumbling along beside him. "I have always envied the stigmata," he tells us of those wounds that will not heal…"I want to put my fingers in the wounds and swirl them around." And so he does. ...more
Somehow the word “novelist” doesn’t quite capture Yann Martel’s art. If I had to describe what he does, I might say he writes storybooks for adults. TSomehow the word “novelist” doesn’t quite capture Yann Martel’s art. If I had to describe what he does, I might say he writes storybooks for adults. They often have talking animals and a kind of magical realism. They can be extraordinarily effective in reflecting us back at ourselves. He questions the ordinary, celebrates the fantastic. “Stories benefit the human mind.” We understand through stories, and each of us interprets a story differently.
Martel’s new novel drops us into a strange and distant land, at a time before any of us can claim first-hand knowledge. While he presents the facts of the case, we wonder what knowledge we are meant to bring to aid understanding. We listen, feeling homeless, unsure. He then leads us homeward, and in the last third we find ourselves quite at home and at peace…with a chimpanzee…in Portugal.
Religious belief, the bond animals and humans share, and big questions (“That’s the great, enduring challenge of our modern times, is it not, to marry faith and reason?”) are enduring themes in Martel’s work. We move through a century in one family’s history, collecting wisdom, only to have to succeeding generations keep the form but not the reason for an added custom, like walking backward in a state of grief, or the name and circumstance of one they worship as a “saint.” In three parts we have three married couples, all of whom have lost one lifelong partner, searching for meaning in their grief.
“Grief is a disease. We were riddled with its pockmarks, tormented by its fevers, broken by its blows. It ate at us like maggots, attacked us like lice—we scratched ourselves to the edge of madness. In the process we became as withered as crickets, as tired as old dogs.”
Martel’s stories are always filled with symbolism, some sitting on the surface and easy to discover, and others discovered only after much contemplation. Real issues critical to our understanding of the world are treated with whimsy and humor, not scorn or disdain.
Martel makes the point that neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi makes in his memoir When Breath Becomes Air: that the goodness and blind faith required of us by religion is too hard to live up to on a daily basis. Reason is easier, both to comprehend and to use as a kind of measure of goodness. Neither faith nor reason is enough on its own: neither explains the world adequately. “Reason is blind. Reason, on its own, leads us nowhere, especially in the face of adversity.” And what of joy? Love? Reason doesn’t explain those, either.
Martel creates a character who suggests that an Agatha Christie murder mystery might combine the two: “the solution [is] stories that put reason on brilliant display while keeping one close to Jesus of Nazareth.” He compares the form of Agatha Christie novels to the gospels and hypothesizes that both are stories with a central murder mystery. The facts are laid out with great formality and ceremony, but no one ever seems to remember who the murderer is. Who killed Jesus? It is true that murder mysteries are compulsive reading material for adults, as are our bibles, whichever religion we examine.
Martel goes further. He takes the central imagic trope in the novel, an ancient carved wooden crucifix, and proposes us that the figure of Christ on the Cross might actually be a Chimp on the Cross--a crudely-carved naïve attempt at perspective, a statement on the development of man from ape, or a challenge that man was more pure, present, and godlike before he developed reason. That would be to say nothing of the literal: that humans have lorded over and crucified wild animals, even those so close in genealogy to ourselves, bringing us shame and not salvation.
Martel has no sacred cows. Reviewers have criticized him in the past for challenging the sanctity of well-protected myths and histories. I find Martel dazzling in his fearlessness, rigorous in his thinking, and deep in his conclusions. He is not dismissive of faith: he thinks it both interesting and necessary, providing a kind of useful moral structure. The formal ritual of organized religion does not impress him: “architectural modesty best suits the religious sentiment. Only song needs to soar in a church; anything fancier is human arrogance disguised as faith.”
There is something intoxicating and deeply reassuring about the final section of the book in which is recounted the story of Odo the chimp, rescued from the research lab in America’s southwest. Odo is old and wise enough to have developed a kind of culture and a rudimentary understanding of language. He can communicate, if not without misunderstandings. Odo seems to have no notion of past and future; he is all about the present. His human companion, Peter, discovers that he would prefer to become more Odo-like in his “profound simplicity of means and aims...members of [Peter’s] own species...are too noisy, too fractious, too arrogant, too unreliable. He much prefers the intense silence of Odo’s presence, his pensive slowness in whatever he does…”
A couple of last things: There is a profoundly affecting marriage consummation scene in this novel which gives readers a glimpse into what kind of man the author is, for who else could create such a scene? Both husband and wife are virgins; he twenty-one and she seventeen. Sex itself is all still a mystery, but they work it out together. The bride had never known desire, nor where hers lay, but her new husband searched for, and found, her hidden place and they lived and loved passionately ever after. Martel makes it beautiful, sexy, joyous, and absolutely right-sounding.
Was there ever an Iberian Rhinocerous? I doubt it, though he had me believing, just a little.
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