Our national park system has been referred to as "America's Best Idea." I would not argue with that. And to think, it was all started by a Republican.
The national park system and the rangers who are its caretakers have some of the highest approval ratings of any institution in the country. Everybody loves parks; what's not to love? And everybody appreciates those guys (and gals) in the funny hats who are always around to offer directions, explain the features of the land under their care, tell us about the history of our country, and tell us that, no, we should not try to pet the bears or the bison.
Park rangers are civil servants and, as such, they are nonpartisan. They serve an ideal not the political party that happens to be on top at any given time. I, myself, was a civil servant for my entire working life. During more than 30 years in various jobs, most of my service was done during times when I strongly disagreed with the governing philosophy of the elected officials at the head of the government. But I was not there to serve an elected politician; I was there to serve the people and I always tried to do that to be best of my ability. Most civil servants do.
Perhaps because of my personal history, when I see someone showing contempt for these caretakers of our land and our system of government and trying to bully them into either being quiet or lying to support the party line, it frankly makes my blood boil!
I found it very interesting and heartening this week to see the response of many civil servants, including those who work in the national park system, to efforts by the new administration in Washington to get them to be quiet or to support the lies that the new president was telling about the size of the crowd at his inauguration, as well as being silent about public health issues, dangers to the environment, the progress of climate change and anything else that doesn't fit with the "alternative facts" promulgated by this president and his spokespersons. Instead of sitting down and shutting up, they stood up and they spoke out.
It started with Badlands National Park and a tweet about the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere being more than at any time in the last 650,000 years, but soon other parks joined in, tweeting out inconvenient truths to the nation. Soon other civil servants were speaking out, sometimes anonymously and as whistleblowers, and some forthrightly, even to the extent of resigning their positions rather than serving a lie. They make me proud to be one of them.
But what of the future? The pressure on civil servants to toe the political line will continue and is likely to become intense. So far the lies they are asked to support are relatively inconsequential, always, it seems, something to do with the size and enthusiasm of a crowd. But what is going to happen when those same civil servants are asked to support a lie about a foreign threat or about job numbers or the national deficit? Let us hope that their truth-telling will continue. At this time in our history, we badly need heroes to step up. Who cares if they wear funny hats?
And now for something completely different. At least different from all the literary fiction I've been reading lately.
No one could accuse Ace Atkins of writing literary fiction, but his books are well-written and are fast-paced reads. The Innocents, the latest in his Mississippi noir series featuring ex-Army Ranger Quinn Colson, is no exception.
I enjoy reading this series, first because it is well-written and carefully plotted, but also because I know from my childhood growing up in the area that Atkins writes about that he's got the place just right. The cadences of speech, the interactions between people, the insularity of that society, Atkins, who still lives in Oxford, Mississippi, understands it all and he writes about it with clear-eyed vision while retaining his empathy for his characters who live in this hidebound place. Which is all probably just a long way of saying that Atkins' characters are believable, and that is some of the highest praise you can give a writer.
As we meet Quinn Colson this time around, he has recently returned from Afghanistan where he had been working under a contract to train the Afghanis in police work. He took this job after he had lost the election for sheriff.
But almost as soon as the new sheriff was sworn in, he was killed. That left Colson's friend and chief deputy Lillie Virgil in charge and she is still the acting sheriff.
Colson returns to the messed up personal life that he had left behind. He's still carrying on his affair with a married woman, who is now talking divorce from her husband. His long estranged father, Jason, is back in town and has big dreams about establishing a dude ranch on property adjoining Quinn's. Unfortunately, that property is owned by Quinn's nemesis and now federal prison inmate, Johnny Stagg.
Quinn's sister, Caddie, seems to have straightened out her life and is now running a church/homeless shelter/food pantry called The River. And his mama is still the rock of the family and still in love with Elvis.
Evil still lurks in Tibbehah County. (Tibbehah is fictional but seems to be an amalgamation of Tippah and Octibbehah, both of which are quite real.) Even though Johnny Stagg is gone, there's a new owner of the local pole-dancing, lap-dancing, and assorted other activities club; she is a tough, no-nonsense woman named Fannie Hancock, and she immediately butts heads with Lillie Virgil.
But there is a greater evil abroad in this county. We don't see its black heart revealed until late in the book, although I admit I began to suspect the truth fairly early in the game. The impetus for getting to the bottom of this terrible corruption is another horrific event - the murder of a young woman.
Millie had once been the top cheerleader at the local high school, but she had dropped out and seemed on a fast track to nowhere. She came from truly awful family circumstances and the great tragedy of her life was the apparent suicide of her brother, Brandon. Then one night a trucker finds her walking down the highway engulfed in flames. He stops to help her and she's taken to the burn unit in Memphis but she does not survive her ordeal.
It looks like a torture/revenge killing. Lillie asks Quinn to come back and work for the sheriff's department in investigating the crime. He had been planning to return to Afghanistan but accepts her request, and we watch these two as they run down every lead in attempting to find a killer. In the end, they get help from an unexpected quarter in solving the mystery, but the truth is not something the people of Tibbehah County want to hear and soon the community is in turmoil.
Well, there's another election for sheriff coming soon and the candidates are lining up - one who (figuratively) wants to build a wall around Tibbehah County and one who wants to ban Muslim immigrants from the county and enforce the law according to the Ten Commandments. And then there's Quinn Colson, who Lillie has persuaded to stay and run for his old office. Wonder who'll win?
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
What do we know about the narrator of Rachel Cusk's novel? Her name is Faye. She is a writer. She lives in London and is divorced. She is the mother of more than one child. She has taken a job teaching a summer writing course in Athens. That's about it. We never get below the surface with her. She remains a cipher.
This cipher, however, seems to have the ability to inspire other people to reveal their deepest secrets. Throughout this very unusual and very intelligent book, Faye has a number of conversations with people that she encounters and all of these people end up telling her stories about themselves and all the people they are closest to in their lives.
Her first encounter happens on the plane when she is flying from London to Athens to take up her summer job. She sits next to an older man, a Greek who is returning home. He unburdens himself about his failed marriages. Initially, he mentions only two but we learn later that he has actually had three. He talks about his children who have various problems. The conversation will continue in Athens when he contacts Faye and takes her out on his boat a couple of times and eventually makes a pass which she spurns.
But there are several other encounters; with her students in the writing class; with fellow writers; with people whom she meets for coffee or for dinner. Always these meetings turn into confessionals with the other person revealing intimate details of his/her life to Faye.
All of these conversations are reported to us in the voice of Faye, the observer and writer. Faye shares several characteristics with the author and it is tempting to see this as a kind of memoir. It is difficult to tell where the line is drawn between autobiography and fiction.
Somewhat curiously, while these people's stories are told in Faye's voice, we almost never hear that voice as a part of the conversations. She's simply telling us what the other person said, but she's not saying much about herself or voicing her opinions. Hers is a disembodied voice and she remains a cipher. Even her family - the children she left in London - seem to factor only very minimally in her day-to-day life and to have no impact on her interactions with others.
So this book is a collection of conversations. It is reporting on an intellectual level. Very little emotion is involved. And yet one feels an intimacy in these interactions that might not have been present if the stories were told emotionally. The reader has a clear-eyed view of the encounters and is able to make up her own mind about them without being prompted by the author.
This is one of the more unorthodox books that I have read in a while. In fact, I can't think of another that is quite like it. Perhaps the closest was Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. I thought the writing was brilliant and inspired. It certainly was original in its concept and execution.
I've learned that this was the first in what is planned as a trilogy. That's very good news. I look forward to reading the later entries.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Here's a poem that I will dedicate to all the phenomenal women around the world who marched yesterday to say, "We are strong and we are not going anywhere!"
Phenomenal Woman
by Maya Angelou
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
The palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:
Eastern Bluebirds are searching for nesting sites and starting to build their nests already. If you have a bluebird box, make sure it is cleaned and ready for habitation. If you are thinking of putting up a nesting box, now's the time! A few weeks from now will be too late.
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The first act of the new administration in Washington was to take down the climate change page from the White House website. There you go, America! Problem solved. No more climate change.
*~*~*~*
Back in the reality-based universe, scientists announced this week that 2016 set a new record for high temperatures on our planet. It was the third consecutive year that Earth's temperatures have reached a new high. It is the first time in the modern era of global warming data that temperatures have surpassed previous records for three years in a row.
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Since the 2009 accident when a jetliner was forced to land on the Hudson River after birds were sucked into its engines, nearly 70,000 birds have been killed in New York in an attempt to clear a safer path for planes landing and taking off.
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Red-breasted Nuthatches are one of those northern birds that periodically irrupt far south in their winter wanderings. In some years they even reach my backyard here in Southeast Texas.
I haven't seen any of the little birds this winter but here's a photo (not particularly good) of one that visited here in the winter of 2012-13.
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Birds flock together as a defense against predators. The larger the flock, the more likely the predator is to be confused and unable to focus on one bird as its prey.
*~*~*~*
National parks are places where wild things can exist in their natural habitat, but they are also popular tourist spots and at times it can be a challenge to manage Nature while also allowing access to it.
*~*~*~*
Core samples from Pelham Bay in New York City have provided scientists with a glimpse into the past to study historic sea levels and to see what may lie ahead for the area as sea levels continue to rise in response to the melting of ice packs around the poles.
*~*~*~*
A new study in The Auk: Ornithological Advances uses the mitochondrial DNA of Heermann's Gulls to draw conclusions about how their population has expanded in the Gulf of California since the time of the glaciers, and, by extension, how human-caused climate change may affect them in the future.
*~*~*~*
There is alarming news for primates this week. According to recent studies, over half of the world's wild primates are facing extinction. Researchers warn of an approaching "major extinction event" if effective action is not taken to protect around 300 species of gorillas, chimps, lemurs, and lorises.
*~*~*~*
The Black Rail is a reclusive, secretive little creature, sometimes called the "feathered mouse." So it may be hard to notice that the bird is disappearing. But that is what is happening. It is already gone from much of its historic habitat along the East Coast and the continuing sea level rise is rapidly robbing them of their habitat, triggering what could become a catastrophic decline in population.
*~*~*~*
The fleshy frontal shield, like the one that appears above the beak of this Purple Gallinule, is a sign of dominance in birds of the swamphen family. The condition of the shield is a measure of the dominance of the individual bird. The bigger and flashier the shield the more dominant the bird.
*~*~*~*
Since humans have appeared on Earth, the planet has never experienced a time when global sea ice was so weak and reduced. Why is this important? Blogger robertscribbler explains.
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The domestic terrorists who invaded Malheur National Wildlife Refuge early last year dug a couple of trenches into archaeologically significant sites in the refuge. So far repairing those trenches has cost more than $100,000 of taxpayers' funds.
*~*~*~*
The tomatillo is the tomato's oddball cousin, a member of the extensive nightshade family of plants and the main ingredient of tasty and tangy salsa verde. Scientists had estimated that the nightshade family was about 30 million years old, but recently, paleontologists in the Patagonia region of Argentina have discovered fossilized tomatillos that date to 52 million years ago. So, it is possible that the dinosaurs nibbled on nightshades.
*~*~*~*
The attack on the Endangered Species Act has begun with the introduction of a bill in the Senate (sponsored by two Republicans and two Democrats) to remove protection from the gray wolf. The sponsors insist that the bill will not modify the Endangered Species Act, but many conservationists see it as the opening shot in a war whose ultimate aim is the repeal of the act and the rescinding of protections for wildlife and the environment.
Nathan Hill begins his novel by retelling the Buddha's story of the blind men and the elephant. A king commands that all the blind men in the town be brought into the presence of an elephant. Each of the men experiences a different part of the animal. One feels an ear, one the trunk, one the tail, and so on. Then they are asked to describe what they have felt and, of course, they all describe different things, even though they have touched the same animal. The king is highly diverted.
Hill then proceeds to show us his "elephant" as it is seen by many different characters. Although it is the same story, each one has experienced it from his/her own unique perspective and so each person's truth may be different from all others.
The New York Times review of this book referred to it as "the love child of Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace." I can see that. The multiple story lines, the wordiness, the different styles of writing that are employed at various times throughout the book, and the seeming reluctance of the author to edit out any anecdote or observation that he's ever heard or made; these could all remind one of those authors. But frankly, I found this book much more enjoyable than anything I have read by them.
I don't know how to even begin to sum up the plot of The Nix. It's a novel that encompasses political history from 1968 to the present, that discusses addiction to playing online games, childhood tragedy and grief, academic entitlement, social mores, the decline of journalism, and military misadventure. It flits from the midwestern U.S. to New York to Chicago to Norway to Iraq and back to New York. It sounds like a crazy mix and it is, and yet somehow the author manages to make it all hang together in a way that makes for a prodigiously entertaining read.
We start during the presidential campaign of 2011. The authoritarian demagogic governor of Wyoming is running for president. At a campaign appearance in Chicago, he is pelted with a handful of gravel thrown by a woman described as an aging hippie.
That aging hippie turns out to be the mother of Samuel Andresen-Anderson, professor of English literature at a small midwestern college and an online gamer too addicted to a game called World of Elfscape to notice what is happening in the real world. He has recently challenged a young woman student over her plagiarized work and told her she will be given a failing grade. She admits the plagiarism but sees nothing wrong with it and fights back by complaining to the dean.
Now, the aging hippie gravel-thrower had abandoned Samuel and his father when Samuel was eleven years old and he has had no contact with her since then. But her lawyer contacts him for help with her case and he meets her for the first time in twenty years.
Flashback to 1968 and the riots around the Democratic convention in Chicago. The aging hippie was there, although she was then a young college student and not really a hippie. She has friends who are hippies, though, and she is caught up in their demonstrations and ends up spending a night in jail because of it.
During his adolescent years, young Samuel was friends with twins, Bishop and Bethany. He was in love with Bethany, who was a talented violinist. She later becomes an acclaimed professional musician and, after many years absence, comes back into Samuel's life at about the same time as his long, lost mother.
Along the way, we also meet other Elfscape addicts, as well as Samuel's father and his Norwegian-American grandfather, Walter Cronkite, Hubert Humphrey, Allen Ginsberg, and other assorted relatives, business associates, friends, and enemies of Samuel and his mother. The book goes on for more than 600 pages and it is full of wit and energy and brilliant writing. Even though I can't help but think that it might have benefited from some judicious editing.
This is Nathan Hill's debut novel, hard as that is to believe. It seems like the work of a much more experienced writer. It is a sprawling story, both funny and sad at times.
Of all the themes that are tackled here, the one that stands out for me, probably because this is January 2017, is the political one; the presidential candidate who is a wildly gesticulating billionaire bully running on an offensive platform of xenophobia and bigotry. In portraying a society that could conceivably elect such a person as president, audacious surrealism may be the only path to take. Nathan Hill treads that path without inhibition but he always seems to know just where he's going.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
