Whodunit?

All the politicos, pundits, and journalists in Washington are currently obsessed with discovering the identity of the anonymous op-ed writer in The New York Times. Not least among them are the president and the people who work in the White House. Well, at least some of the people who work in the White House; presumably some (or at least one) know who it is. The rest of us look on bemused and in some cases amused by all the scurrying around looking for answers.

It's not like this op-ed writer, whoever he or she is - and I'm going to refer to him as "he" - is telling us anything that any of us who have been paying attention didn't already know. The president is amoral; he serves no "first principle" except that of his own egotism. He doesn't believe in free minds, free markets, or free people; he continually attacks all of these ideas to inflame his deplorable and deluded true believers. His natural impulses are anti-trade and anti-democratic. He "engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back." 

Well, duh!

One has to wonder what this writer was hoping to accomplish by his screed. My personal opinion is that he was trying to insulate himself and buy insurance for his future. He was trying to have it both ways: By being anonymous, he's trying to maintain his position in the administration and, when everything eventually goes into the crapper, he'll stand up and say, "But I told you so and I tried to save the country. Remember when I wrote that op-ed?"

I really believe this person expected to be hailed as a hero for his writing. He must have been somewhat surprised by the majority reaction, namely that a hero would not remain anonymous. A hero would stand up and say, "This is what I have observed and here is the evidence. This man is mentally unfit for this job and the country and the world are in grave danger as long as he is in this position. The Constitution gives us the means to remove him by the 25th Amendment. We must suck up our courage and do it." 

If the writer actually could find the courage to do that, then perhaps all the other anonymous members of the "resistance inside the Trump Administration" would also stand up and say, "I am Spartacus!" 

Then they should all offer their resignations and get out of this fetid cesspool of an administration. At that point, it is possible that even the majority of Republicans in Congress could no longer ignore the grave danger to the country of allowing this man to continue. Then we might actually get somewhere. 

But whodunit? Who wrote the op-ed? 

Charlie Pierce's wife has a theory and I have to admit it makes a certain amount of sense. I won't give a name to the possible writer but I see him as a sanctimonious, self-serving individual, one who believes himself more righteous than others, who sees himself always as "the adult in the room" (a particularly Republican phrase), and one who perhaps burns to someday be president himself and who thinks that tax cuts for the wealthy (even if they increase the deficit by a trillion dollars), scrapping environmental regulations, confirming right-wing judges, and spending billions more on the military are all super-good ideas. But whoever he is, he is no Spartacus.

Desolation Mountain by William Kent Krueger: A review

I read a review of this book recently that intrigued me. So much so that I decided to break my cardinal rule for reading series: Start reading with the first entry and read the books in order. This is the seventeenth book in the series and I decided that life is just too short for me to go back and read those other sixteen books before I get to the one that I'm really interested in. 

So, new rule: Read what you want to read when you want to read it.

Thus, free at last, I proceeded to read Desolation Mountain.

I'm sure if I had read all of those previous books I would have had a more complete understanding of the recurring characters and their relationships, but I thought the author actually did a more than adequate job of slipping in the details that a new reader who was reading this book like a "stand-alone" would need in order to understand what was going on.

The main protagonist is Corcoran "Cork" O'Connor, former sheriff of Tamarack County in far north Minnesota, and now in business as a private detective and owner of a hamburger joint. Cork is Anishinaabe and lives next to the Iron Lake Reservation, home of many Ojibwe. Ojibwe cultural practices and beliefs factor heavily in the plot, which was one of the things that intrigued me in that review that I read.

The plot concerns the crash of a private plane on Desolation Mountain, a plane which was carrying one of Minnesota's U.S. senators and her family. All aboard the plane were killed in the crash. (This was all eerily similar to the story of Sen. Paul Wellstone and his family, killed in a crash in 2002.)

Cork and his son, Stephen, along with several first responders from the reservation are first on the scene of the crash but find no survivors. Soon, all manner of federal investigators descend upon the crash site to try to figure out what happened. Initial public statements from them blame pilot error, but things don't quite add up.

One thing that doesn't add up is a recurring vision which Stephen has of an eagle with red, white, and blue tail feathers being shot out of the air by a boy with a bow and arrow, and as the eagle falls, an egg drops from it. In the vision, Stephen is filled by a sense of dread by some monstrous presence behind him. Stephen feels instinctively that his vision is the key to what happened to the plane but he struggles to understand it. 

Meanwhile, there are reports of intruders, poachers, on the reservation and Cork's son-in-law, Daniel, a game warden, tries to find and stop them. There are other mysterious presences about and it seems likely that all of these events are somehow connected. But how?

As Cork and Daniel explore the mountain and spy on the investigators, trying to learn what they are doing and what they are looking for, they encounter an old friend of Cork's. It is Bo Thorson (who apparently figured in an earlier book) who is now a private security consultant but when Cork knew him was a Secret Service agent charged with guarding the First Lady. Now, he, too, seems to be watching the investigators. For whom?

Then, some of the first responders who had been early to the scene start disappearing. And what exactly is up with that? Where are they? Are they being held prisoner somewhere?

Cork, Stephen, and Bo team up to try to solve the mystery, or mysteries, and they encounter more evil than they've bargained for as all of the various government agencies as well as a right-wing militia in the area have different agendas, none of which seem to be to expose the truth. 

At some point, the plot just sort of descended into a mishmash of conspiracy theories, "evil government men" stereotypes, and cardboard characters that didn't really excite my interest. The solution to the mystery seemed overblown and unrealistic, but maybe I'm just not cynical enough (yet) to accept the  convoluted conspiracies necessary to explain that solution.

Overall, this was not a bad book but it wasn't one that will encourage my interest in reading more of the series.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars   

Wordless Wednesday: Distress signal

Billy Boyle by James R. Benn: A review

This historical mystery series set in the World War II era has been recommended to me on several occasions over the years. It seemed churlish not to give it a try, starting of course with the first in the series, the eponymous Billy Boyle.

William "Billy" Boyle was a 22 year old Irish-American policeman in Boston when the United States entered World War II in 1941. He had just made detective and was looking forward to a long career along the lines of his father and uncle who were also Boston cops.

His family was naturally concerned about the thought of Billy being swept into the war and they pulled all the strings they could lay their hands on to get him into Officers Candidate School. The family, on his mother's side, had a connection to Gen. Eisenhower through Ike's wife Mamie, and they were hoping that Billy could be assigned as an aide to Ike in some cushy office in Washington. It didn't quite work out that way. Billy was assigned to the general but, after he graduated from OCS, he was on his way to London where Ike had taken over as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe. 

Billy was to serve as Ike's own discreet investigator and his first assignment is to root out a spy. He is sent to Beardsley Hall, the seat of the Norwegian government in exile, where it is believed there is a German spy operating. Operation Jupiter, supposedly the Allied invasion of Norway, is being planned so the spy must be found and stopped.

The inexperienced Boston cop is out of his element and has little faith in his own abilities. His confidence in himself and others' confidence in him is tested further as he soon finds himself looking not only for a spy but for a murderer. First, one of the Norwegians, a confidante of the king, is murdered. Then a young woman who had been assigned as a driver and assistant to Billy is killed and a Polish officer who was also helping is critically injured. Had they learned something about the first murder that put them in jeopardy? Are there two murderers or only one? Billy must find out before more deaths occur.

Benn did a very good job of describing the English countryside and the atmosphere of fear in London under the Blitz, as well as the stiff upper lip, keep calm and carry on attitude of the average resident. He also conveyed the awkwardness of a young man who had never been out of Massachusetts and now found himself thrust upon a much larger stage and feeling very unprepared. Billy Boyle, though, proved to be a tough and resilient character and a better detective than anyone had a right to expect.

This was a highly entertaining read and it's good to know that there are at least twelve more in the series. I'm looking forward to spending more time in Billy's company.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars 

The faux Nobel

The Swedish Academy canceled the awarding of a Nobel prize for literature in 2018 because of a sexual assault and harassment scandal that wracked the committee that would have made the decision on the award. While they try to sort all of that out and recover their reputation from the scandal, another group of Swedish cultural figures has stepped up to fill the void. The New Academy will present a prize in literature, adhering to the same schedule as the Nobel award.

The New Academy, however, is following a radically different process in selecting its winner. Rather than a small secretive panel choosing a winner, the more than 100 Swedish cultural figures who make up the academy asked for nominations from Sweden's librarians. 

There were 47 names put forward and those were opened up to a public vote, from which an expert jury selected a shortlist of four authors. Last week, the New Academy announced the names on that shortlist. They are: Neal Gaiman, described as "a true superstar in the fantasy community"; Haruki Murakami, "one of our most celebrated authors and translators"; Maryse Condé, "one of the Caribbean's most outstanding authors"; and Kim Thúy, a Canadian who was born in Saigon and whose stories "paint the colours of Vietnam and the scents and flavours too". 

I am familiar with and have read Gaiman and Murakami, but I admit Condé and Thúy are new to me and I look forward to making their acquaintance. The Nobel prize often brings attention to authors that I have not read before. I'm glad to see the New Academy is following in that tradition.

I think it is admirable that this group has chosen to make its selection process transparent. It is something the Swedish Academy should perhaps consider adopting. A statement from the New Academy makes their dedication to openness manifest: “The New Academy was founded to warrant that an international literary prize will be awarded in 2018, but also as a reminder that literature should be associated with democracy, openness, empathy and respect.” They have also said that the New Academy will be dissolved in December, once the prize has been presented. 

The Swedish Academy has said it plans to present two awards in 2019 - one for 2018 and 2019. That is, I suppose, if they can recover their tattered reputation in time.

Poetry Sunday: To the Light of September by W.S. Merwin

It's still hot here, still summer, but in the freshness of the early morning and late afternoon breezes I swear I can feel just the merest hint of autumn to come. Welcome, September. 

To the Light of September

by W. S. Merwin

When you are already here
you appear to be only
a name that tells of you
whether you are present or not

and for now it seems as though 

you are still summer 

still the high familiar 

endless summer 

yet with a glint 

of bronze in the chill mornings 

and the late yellow petals 

of the mullein fluttering 

on the stalks that lean 

over their broken 

shadows across the cracked ground 

but they all know 

that you have come 

the seed heads of the sage 

the whispering birds 

with nowhere to hide you 

to keep you for later 

you 

who fly with them 

you who are neither 

before nor after 

you who arrive 

with blue plums 

that have fallen through the night 

perfect in the dew

This week in birds - #318

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

Red-tailed Hawk photographed at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge on the Texas coast. The Red-tailed has the most widespread range of any hawk on the continent. Although not necessarily common in all areas, it is found everywhere except for the most northern parts of North America.

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Good news for the grizzly bears of Wyoming and Idaho: A federal judge has blocked the hunts that were planned for this weekend while he considers whether the government was wrong to lift protections for the animals. The delay is temporary until he makes a final decision. This would have been the first time that hunting of the grizzly was allowed in those areas in forty years. 

*~*~*~*

After the last ice age, sea levels rose, glaciers receded, and global average temperatures increased by as much as seven degrees Celsius. Now Earth's ecosystems are undergoing a transformation once again because of human-assisted global climate change and some of those ecosystems could become unrecognizable.

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One byproduct of climate change could be to make hundreds of millions of people more nutrient deficient because crops grown in a high CO2 atmosphere are less nutritious because they contain less protein, iron, and zinc.

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The "red tide" of algae that is killing animals and tourism in Florida has gotten quite a lot of attention but Lake Superior is also having a significant algae bloom this summer. It is only one of several major bodies of water that have drawn scientific scrutiny because of the unusual bloom.

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It seems that the cave bear, thought to have been extinct for 25,000 years, may not be quite so entirely extinct. At least some of its DNA still exists in today's brown bears, according to a new study, much like DNA of Neanderthals exists in many of today's humans.

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The beetles of 99 million years ago were apparently effective pollinators of the cycads of that period. (Cycads predated flowering plants.) Proof of that has been found in a piece of amber from that period which contained a beetle that had cycad pollen collected on hairs around its mandibles.

*~*~*~*

From the "It's better to light one candle..." file: A Palestinian ornithologist is trying, against seemingly impossible odds because of the political situation, to increase knowledge of birds and their distribution in the West Bank area. The ornithologist, Anton Khalilieh, founded a non-profit conservation organization called Nature Palestine and is doing his best to encourage people in the area to become birders. 

*~*~*~*

Legislators in California have voted to require that 100% of the state's electricity come from carbon-free sources. If the bill is approved by the state senate and signed by the governor, the law would require the state to shift entirely to clean energy by 2045 and that electric utilities get at least 60% of their energy from renewable sources by 2030. 

*~*~*~*

And here's a good argument in support of California's action: A new study argues that air pollution causes a huge reduction in intelligence. The impact of breathing a high level of toxic air can be "equivalent to having lost a year of education."

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The Florida Everglades have become a haven for many invasive species that are slowly destroying it. Now comes word that one of those invasives is a super-predator - a hybrid python that is displacing the American alligator as top predator since a number of python pets were released in the area back in the 1980s.

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In 2017, 207 environmental activists around the world were murdered because they were standing up for the environment against the interests of agribusiness, mining, and wildlife trafficking.

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Color vision is an important weapon for hawks. The color of prey animals helps the hawks to detect, pursue, and capture them. Research has found that the Harris's Hawk has the best color vision of any animal tested so far; in some cases it is better than humans.

Harris's Hawk image from Audubon.org.

"I see you!"

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Mysterious green orbs of algae, called marimo in Japan where they are protected, occupy cool lakes in the Northern Hemisphere in places like Scotland, Iceland, and Ukraine. They seem to follow a biological clock that makes them float by day to get closer to the sun and then sink to the bottom at night.

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An Interior Department staffer who worked to get national monuments and other public lands reduced and the lands opened up for oil drilling is leaving the department and going to work as a lobbyist for...wait for it...BP! And why am I not surprised? 

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We all have an obligation to do whatever we can to protect and defend the environment from those who would despoil it. Alfred Lawson of Idaho is certainly doing his bit. He is known to his admirers as "the bluebird man." That is because this 96-year-old man has built more than 300 bluebird boxes over the years and has set them up on five different bluebird trails in southwest Idaho. He continues to maintain the boxes, sometimes getting help from other bluebird enthusiasts.

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The key to preserving endangered species is protecting their key habitats, not just wilderness writ large. Species must have their appropriate habitat in order to survive - like bluebird boxes and trails for bluebirds.