To read or not to read "Go Set a Watchman"

My daughter says she doesn't think she can read Go Set a Watchman, the just released first draft of Harper Lee's beloved book, To Kill a Mockingbird. Both of my daughters grew up with To Kill a Mockingbird and the image of a morally impeccable Atticus Finch. He was one of their heroes.

That heroic image was enhanced by the wonderful movie in which the sainted Gregory Peck played Finch to such perfection. It is hard to think of that image being tarnished and changed by the knowledge that the author initially had an entirely different profile in mind for Atticus Finch, and I understand that many of those who loved Mockingbird are very troubled by that. I feel quite ambivalent about it myself.

But having now read several reviews of Watchman and more about the history of how it came to be, I think I better understand what Alabama writer Harper Lee was trying to do with her first draft and why her editor in New York wanted her to change it to focus on the voice of the younger Jean Louise (Scout) Finch and her childish vision of the world and her father.

At the time that To Kill a Mockingbird was written in the 1950s and published in 1960, perhaps that was the story that we needed to hear, the story that would resonate with us. The noble white Southern man with the vision to see that people of any color should be treated with respect. That was the more palatable representation of Atticus' character and one that gave inspiration to many, including me.

There were such white Southern men, but, truth to tell, they were outnumbered by the kind of men represented by the darker version of Atticus that appears in Go Set a Watchman.

By all accounts - and, again, I haven't yet read the book, only the reviews - the Watchman Atticus seems like a much more nuanced and much more human character. That seems thoroughly normal to me, because the first version that we had of the man was what was seen by his six-year-old daughter. Most men are spotless heroes to their six-year-old daughters.

The next version that we see is from a twenty-six-year-old daughter who has left her small hometown and lived in other places in the world, most recently in New York, and she now sees her beloved father and hometown with different, perhaps clearer, eyes. She sees the warts and hairy moles that grow on the skin they present to the world. She recognizes ugly racism for what it is.

I grew up in a place not unlike Scout's hometown and have had a somewhat similar journey in life. There are things that I was not able to see about the place where I lived when I was six, because I was a child, and I lived in the protected cocoon of my family and church and community. I never questioned the view of the world that I was fed by them.

Then I grew up and learned to look at the world without those hometown-imposed blinders. I learned to think for myself, and I learned that the world vision that had been presented to me in childhood was one-sided, that I needed to open my heart and mind to other views of the world. To try to see society in its reality, not the rose-colored-glasses version.

Harper Lee supposedly based Atticus on her own father. In that way, she fulfilled the first commandment of writing: Write what you know. I suspect that the nuanced Atticus is closer to the view that the grown-up writer had of her father and perhaps the sainted Atticus of Mockingbird is closer to her childish view. Maybe they are two parts of the same whole. If Lee had written another draft later in her life, the character might have evolved and changed once more. The two parts might have meshed more closely to present the reader with an even more nuanced character.

Harper Lee is an excellent writer. I think she is also a very brave writer - braver than her New York editor perhaps. It's my understanding that the one thing she required for the long-delayed publication of Go Set A Watchman was that it be published as is, without editing. She may have feared that it would be watered down in the editorial process to make it fit better with the beloved To Kill a Mockingbird.

Yes, she has shown courage and that courage deserves to be honored and so I will read her book.

Throwback Thursday: Mimesis

In July of 2013, I featured a poem by a local poet in one of my Poetry Sunday posts. The poet is a Palestinian-American and his poem touched me on many levels. It spoke of the way that we treat others, even non-human others, and it still seems particularly relevant this summer. Here is that two-year-old post once again.

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On July 9, the local Houston Chronicle featured a story about a local poet, Fady Joudah. Joudah is a Palestinian-American, a physician, husband and father, and all of these roles inform his poetry. He has a new volume of poetry, Alight, out this year.

I admit I had not heard of Joudah before, but I was touched by some of the examples of his poetry that were included in the story and, in particular, this one:

Mimesis

My daughter
            wouldn't hurt a spider
That has nested
Between her bicycle handles
For two weeks
She waited
Until it left of its own accord

If you tear down the web I said
It will simply know
This isn't a place to call home
And you'd get to go biking

She said that's how others
Become refugees isn't it? 

This poem is powerful for me first because I have two daughters who would do that. And secondly because of the girl's reasoning and her understanding of the situation as expressed in that final question, "She said that's how others become refugees isn't it?"

In those few words, she identifies one of the major tragedies of the human race - our tendency to disregard the rights of others when they conflict with what we see as our own. And so we push them out, make them refugees, condemn them to lives with no place they can call home. What we fail to realize is that when someone more powerful comes along, they will evict us. We will become the "others" who are "refugees." And so the sad cycle continues.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - July 2015

Welcome to my July garden, located in subtropical zone 9a, near Houston, Texas. 

It is hot and humid here in July - well, actually that's true of most months, but July and August are the worst. The rains that we had in spring and early summer have slowed down and things are beginning to dry out, but there are plants that thrive in such weather. Here are some of them.

July in the South, of course, means crape myrtles in many colors, including pink.

Lilac.

White

And watermelon red.  

The milk-and-wine lilies start blooming in mid-July. That's summer phlox next to them.

The crinum 'Ellen Bosanquet' also is at its best in July.

Some of the daylilies are still blooming - or reblooming as this one is.

This is a mid-summer bloomer.

'Black and blue' salvia continues to flower.

Marigolds are beginning to bloom.

'Pride of Barbados' which I showed you last week.

Butterflies, like this Gulf Fritillary, love the 'Pride.' 

And bees love the African blue basil. You can't really see them in this view, but, trust me, they are there. The plants are busy with bees all day long. 

The groundcover wedelia is full of yellow, daisy-like flowers.

A stand of yellow and orange cosmos is often visited by bees and butterflies.

It's an old-fashioned plant, but still pretty and still useful in the garden, particularly for nighttime pollinators. It is the 4 o'clock, so called because it opens its blooms in late afternoon. I have it in several colors.

Here's another color.

And just one more multi-colored variety.

The clerodendrum 'Cashmere Bouquet' blooms in July.

The Meyer lemon tree, which is already full of little lemons, is still blooming and attracting large carpenter bees. 

Crocosmia, a favorite summer bloomer.

Ornamental peppers and, in the back, wax begonia. 

The pomegranates are getting heavy on their limbs.

Philippine lilies are blooming.

The firecracker fern is still exploding.

And, of course, what would July be without sunflowers?

Thank you for visiting my garden this Bloom Day and thanks to Carol of May Dreams Gardens for hosting us once again. I look forward to visiting your garden this month.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey: A review

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first read The Daughter of Time long ago in my callow youth. I can't recall much about that first reading experience. I don't think it made much of an impression on me. I was not well-versed in English history and knew little of the Plantagenets, the Wars of the Roses, or the Tudors except what I had gleaned from Shakespeare, so there was very little background for my understanding of what Josephine Tey was doing with this novel.

Since that long ago time, I have read dozens of books about that period of history, especially during the past couple of years when it has been something of an obsession of mine. The result is that I'm now much better equipped to follow Tey's plot and the reasoning of her protagonist Inspector Alan Grant.

When I ran across a reference to her book recently, I was intrigued and decided it was time to read it again. I'm very glad that I did.

The plot of the book is that Inspector Alan Grant has been seriously injured in a fall while chasing a miscreant and is now bedridden in the hospital with a broken leg and injuries to his spine. He must lie flat on his back. He is extremely bored.

In order to divert him, his friends have been bringing him piles of books, but he can't get interested in them. One of his friends, an actress, knowing of his fascination with faces, brings him pictures of several historical figures who have mysteries attached to them. Most of the pictures do not pique his interest, but finally one of them does capture his imagination. It is a copy of the famous portrait of Richard III.

Grant knows little about Richard III except what he remembers from Shakespeare which is, basically, that he killed his two nephews, the "Princes in the Tower," and that he died on Bosworth Field calling for a horse, but, as a student of faces and one whose career depends on being able to read faces, he begins to doubt, while studying the portrait of Richard, that this man was a murderer. He determines to conduct an investigation, four hundred years after the fact, to determine the accuracy of the charges against the man.

His actress friend is delighted to have found something that will occupy Grant's mind and distract him from his predicament. What he needs is someone to do research for him and she happens to know just the person, a young American friend of hers who has an interest in history. Soon he is introduced to Brent Carradine and the two form an alliance and a working partnership in search of the truth.

The two pore over history books and historical accounts of events of the late 15th century, but they soon discover that the most famous accounts of the period - that of Sir Thomas More, for example - were not contemporaneous but were actually written later, during the Tudor period. Since the Tudors were mortal enemies of Richard, can their accounts really be trusted? Grant, the consummate detective, doesn't think so.

At length, the two investigators find that none of the reports that were actually written during the time of Richard's life refer to the death of the two princes and that there is evidence that the mother of the two remained in a friendly relationship with Richard and that her daughters continued to attend events at his court. None of that seems to be the action of a mother or a family who considered Richard to be the murderer of their sons and brothers. Grant and Carradine come to the conclusion that the princes were, in fact, still alive in the Tower throughout Richard's reign.

So, what happened to them? Were they killed, and, if so, who killed them?

Grant decides to follow the clues, as he would in any murder investigation, to try to uncover the culprit. The first question he asks is, who stood to gain from the princes' death?

It wouldn't have been Richard, since after his brother Edward IV's death, Parliament had declared his children with Elizabeth Woodville as illegitimate because there had been an earlier, undissolved marriage with another woman. But there were other children, those of his brother George, who stood ahead of Richard in line to become king, and yet those children continued to live and thrive.

After Richard's death, Henry VII, the first of the Tudors, rescinded all of that and made the Woodville children legitimate again because he wished to marry the oldest of them, the young Elizabeth. In short order, he also sent the children's mother (his mother-in-law) to a convent to live out her days. He also began to systematically rid the government and the aristocracy of the various Woodville relatives who had permeated it during the Yorkist reigns. No mention is made of the princes.

Grant forms the theory that it was Henry who caused the princes to be killed since, by the order of succession, the older one would have been legitimately seen as king and would have provided a rallying point for his enemies. He sent the princes' mother to a convent so that she would be out of the way and have no means of protesting. He then purged other members of the extensive family.

Tey, through Grant, lays out a very plausible case for her theory. She was not the only one who believed Richard innocent. Throughout the more than 450 years since Richard lived and died, there have been loyal groups in Britain who have continued to believe that he had been falsely maligned and to work to rehabilitate his reputation. Tey's book, which was published in 1951, influenced that movement and convinced many to join it. Such has been the far-reaching influence of this unique murder mystery.

This was a work of fiction, of course, and yet it offered a fascinating journey through English history. It also gives us a study of a high-minded obsession, as well, as Grant becomes thoroughly convinced of the falsity of the charge against the accused and he is determined to prove him innocent and bring the guilty to justice. It is, after all, what he does.

Some have noted the obvious relationship between this story and Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. Since the movie came a few years after the publication of the popular book, it is possible that Hitchcock was influenced by it. Certainly, the obsession of a wheelchair-bound James Stewart with the activities of his neighbors that he is able to view from his window is comparable to the obsession of the bedridden Grant with the idea of balancing the scales of history.

Most likely we will never know with one hundred percent certainty what happened in the Tower of London long ago, but Josephine Tey through Alan Grant at least makes a strong argument for reasonable doubt about the guilt of Richard III and she makes us hungry to read more about that period. Yes, my obsession continues.

Sixty-four years have passed since the publication of this book, which has been voted number one among the top 100 British murder mysteries, and archaeology has added to Richard's story. A few years ago, his remains were found near Bosworth Field where he had been hastily buried after the battle. After excavation and confirmation of his identity, those remains were reburied with full honors and great ceremony at Leicester Cathedral, with the service conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury and royalty in attendance. Truth may be the daughter of time, but irony is its son. 

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The Broken Places by Ace Atkins: A review

The Broken Places by Ace Atkins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It begins with a prison break. Three inmates from Mississippi's notorious Parchman Prison manage to abscond from the place. One in a big truck goes through the gates, while two others escape on horseback.

The two on horseback cut their way through the wire fence around the prison farm and manage to find a car to steal. Then they are on their way to North Mississippi, Tibbehah County and the little town of Jericho, where they plan to confront the man who they believe has the money from an armored truck robbery they pulled off before they were caught and sent to prison.

Meanwhile, in Jericho, Quinn Colson, the veteran of the war in Afghanistan who returned to his home town and was elected sheriff, is, one year later, still adjusting to his new life after several years as an Army Ranger.

His latest challenge is an ex-con named Jamey Dixon who was convicted several years before of killing a local woman. He had made use of his time in prison to earn a degree from a seminary through distance learning. Dixon has been pardoned by the outgoing governor and has returned to Jericho claiming to have been cleansed by Jesus from all his sins. He's trying to establish a ministry in the town, using an old barn as the meeting place.

The family of the woman that Dixon was convicted of killing still think he's guilty and unworthy of a pardon, but many seem to believe in his redemption. One of those, to Quinn Colson's chagrin, is his younger sister, Caddy, a troubled young single mother of a five-year-old son who has been trying to clean up her act and turn her wasted life around for the sake of her son. She completely believes in Dixon and they are planning a life together.

Colson's own love life is not exactly a paragon of rectitude. In fact, it is quite messed up as he continues an affair with his high school sweetheart who is now married to a local doctor with whom she has a daughter.

So, we have a typical small Southern town where everybody knows everybody and everybody's business and most of them are related in some way.

Ace Atkins is a talented writer and he has a genuine ear for North Mississippi speech and for human relationships there. I speak as one who grew up in the area. I recognize these people and I could hear their voices in my ear as I read The Broken Places.

This was the third installment in Atkins' Quinn Colson series and it is definitely my favorite so far. All of the books have been very well written, but this one shows an even stronger sense of place than the earlier two. Moreover, the plot is well conceived and the action is non-stop. It is a real page-turner, one that you don't want to put down once you are into it.

The story of the escaped convicts and their quest to regain their ill-gotten loot moves along briskly with a few dead bodies littering their progress, but then, in the middle of it all and in the middle of law enforcement's search for the killers, a massive storm hits the little town of Jericho, almost destroying it. The search for the hardened criminals takes a back seat to an emergency situation that requires all the resources that the town, the state, and nearby communities can provide.

The miscreants couldn't care less about an emergency situation. They just want their money and a way to get out of town to freedom. It all heads for a showdown - bad guys against good guys.

After all the complications of the plot, Atkins provides the reader with a satisfying climax, and still manages to keep us in suspense as to Colson's fate following the showdown, giving us a reason to look for the next book in the series. His strategy sure worked on me.


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Poetry Sunday: A Wedding

We lost another poet last week. James Tate, a much-honored American poet, left us much too soon at the age of 71. He was a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Wallace Stevens Award, the Tanning Prize, a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Poetry, among many other recognitions of his unique talent.

His poems were variously described as tragic, comic, ironic, absurdist, hopeful, lonely, haunting, and surreal, and perhaps they were all that. I can't personally claim any special knowledge or insight into his work, but I do like what I've read. I particularly liked this one. It was published in 1991.

A Wedding

BY JAMES TATE

She was in terrible pain the whole day,

as she had been for months: a slipped disc,   

and there is nothing more painful. She

herself was a nurse’s aide, also a poet   

just beginning to make a name for her   

nom de plume. As with most things in life,

it happened when she was changing channels   

on her television. The lucky man, on the other   

hand, was smiling for the first time

in his life, and it was fake. He was

an aspiring philosopher of dubious potential,   

very serious, but somehow lacking in

essential depth. He could have been

an adequate undertaker. It was not the first   

time for either of them. It was a civil

service, with no music, few flowers.   

Still, there was a slow and erratic tide

of champagne—corks shot clear into the trees.

And flashcubes, instant photos, some blurred   

and some too revealing, cake slices that aren’t   

what they were meant to be. The bride slept

through much of it, and never did we figure out   

who was on whose team. I think the groom   

meant it in the end when he said, “We never

thought anyone would come.” We were not the first   

to arrive, nor the last to leave. Who knows,   

it may all turn out for the best. And who

really cares about such special days, they   

are not what we live for.

              ~~~

"And who really cares about such special days, they are not what we live for." That's true, I think. The important thing is not what happens on "such special days" but what happens on all those ordinary days that follow. That seems a perfect insight, a perfect summing up of the event that we call A Wedding.

This week in birds - #164

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

The sentinel of the backyard - the Blue Jay. Jays are noisy, rambunctious birds and some people find them obnoxious, but they are beautiful and intelligent and of great benefit to other birds in their ecosystem because they are always on the alert for predators and are quick to give the warning when they spot one.

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The idea that walking in the woods is good for your physical and mental health seems like a no-brainer, but if we needed confirmation, we now have it. A new study conducted by Stanford University compared ninety minutes of walking in natural areas to the same period of time walking in urban areas and discovered that the body and mind get more benefits from Nature walks. Perhaps we should consider the National Park Service as part of the public health service.

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The American Birding Association has announced through Twitter that it believes that the amendment that would have stripped the protection of birds through the Migratory Bird Treaty Act is now dead, after massive protests from across the country from people who care about birds. It is best to remain vigilant for other such efforts, because the people who would kill that law are implacable. And very, very rich.

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In the last 15-20 years, Texas has seen a massive relocation of many Mexican species of birds. We are seeing more and more of those species moving into our area and even farther north. A wide-ranging study indicates that changes of temperature due to climate change are the main reason for the redistribution of species. 

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One of the problems of implementing wider use of solar power has been its cost and accessibility. The Obama Administration has come up with a plan to address that and to try to make solar power more affordable and accessible to lower and middle income households.

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Did you ever wonder why birds will accept the eggs of nest parasites like the Brown-headed Cowbird into their nests? It seems like they would simply push the egg out of their nest. Problem solved! But a new study seems to confirm that birds that accept the eggs generally cannot tell the difference between their own and the parasite's egg. Birds whose eggs are much different in appearance are more successful in rejecting the interloper's egg. 

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Bumblebees are rapidly declining in numbers in both North America and Europe. A comprehensive analysis published in Science magazine this week finds that the main culprit is - no surprise, really - climate change. The complicated domino effect on ecosystems that is started by a change in climate is difficult for a creature like the bumblebee to make adjustments for survival.

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The Spoon-billed Sandpiper is a critically endangered Asian species. A recent survey of the bird along the mudflats of the Yellow Sea coast in Jiangsu Province in China found 62 of them present among the flocks of birds there.

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The blacklegged tick, carrier of Lyme disease, has been present mostly in the Northeast and portions of the Midwest. It has now been found to be moving into new areas in the Northeast through short-distance migrations.

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The story of Charles Darwin's observation of the finches of Galapagos and how that helped him reach his conclusions about evolution is well-known. If he had been making observations in the Hawaiian Islands, he could have reached the same conclusions while looking at the differences among honeycreepers there. 

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Most birds do not have a strong sense of smell, but new observations of seabirds called Shearwaters indicates that these particular birds are an exception to that rule. They appear to navigate at least partly based on scent.

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Leafroller caterpillars can be the bane of the gardener's existence in summer. Especially if that gardener has cannas in her garden as I do. These plants are magnets to the critters that lay the eggs from which those caterpillars hatch and they can make a real mess of a nice stand of plants. The caterpillars have their enemies, of course. Wasps are among them. "Bug Eric" recently made a video of a wasp capturing a leafroller caterpillar.  

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The Chinese Crested Tern has been driven to the brink of extinction by a combination of factors, both natural and man-made. At present, there are only 50 of the birds known to exist in the world.

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The Piping Plover is another bird that faces threats to its continued survival. Recently, "Birding Dude," a beginning naturalist, had the thrill of observing a banded female with two chicks at a beach on Long Island, New York.

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An example of beating swords into plowshares: Germany is turning 62 former military bases from the Cold War era into wildlife sanctuaries. Good for them!

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Around the backyard:

I had thought that all hummingbirds had abandoned my yard for the summer, but this week I observed two feeding from flowers and from this feeder - which also attracted bees. They were both Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. One was an adult female and the other appeared to be an immature bird. I made the rash assumption that they were mother and chick because they seemed to exhibit a rare tolerance for the presence of each other that I don't often see in hummingbirds.