”To stop global warming and avoid the worst effects of climate change, humans need to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
This sounds diffi”To stop global warming and avoid the worst effects of climate change, humans need to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
This sounds difficult, because it will be. The world has never done anything quite this big. Every country will need to change its ways, because virtually every activity in modern life--growing things, making things, getting around from place to place--involves releasing greenhouse gases.
If nothing else changes, the world will keep producing greenhouse gases, climate change will keep getting worse, and the impact on humans will in all likelihood be catastrophic.”
The moment I became politically cognizant was about the same time I started to think about the ongoing health of the little blue planet I called home. President Jimmy Carter was the first president I actively supported; I was nine years old and soon discovered that nearly every person I knew, family, friends, and nodding acquaintances, were Republicans, so my support for Carter had to be kept a carefully guarded secret. I didn’t need to give people more reason to think I was...weird. They already had plenty of reasons to think there was something odd about me because of how much time I spent reading books. When Carter won the election, shocking the vast numbers of Republicans in my life, I realized that there were a lot of like-minded people out there, beyond the small pond I’d been spawned in.
There was hope.
But that is just backstory. When I first realized I was an environmentalist was when President Ronald Reagan had the solar panels, installed by Carter, removed from the White House. I was frankly shocked. It was, in retrospect, a relatively small thing, but it sent a message of disdain to those of us who cared about the future of clean air, clean water, and embracing our responsibility for being good stewards to our planet. Interestingly enough one of those thirty-two solar panels now resides in the Smithsonian and another is in a science museum in Dezhou, China.
The politicalized nature of our society became a much starker reality in recent years when an irresponsible president proceeded to do everything he could to destroy decades of progressive environmental policy. Bill Gates does his level best to keep this book nonpolitical, but he does mention how difficult it is to achieve progress when innovative research is greenlighted by one administration only to be defunded four or eight years later.
One step forward, two steps back.
The purpose of this book is to introduce the extent of our environmental problems and present a viable, flexible plan as to how to save our planet from climate disaster.
Gates is a fan of the book Weather for Dummies, which is actually a fantastic intro to those of us who are not weather experts, and that book may have been a model for the way he wanted to present the facts in this book. So, those people who are well versed with the issues of climate change will probably not find a lot of new information here, (although for me the section on geoengineering was fascinating), because you are not the target audience. You are already on board, or you decided a long time ago that climate change is fake news, and no mountain of evidence to the contrary will change your mind. To me, this book is directed towards our younger generations, millennials and zoomers. They are the generations who will bear the brunt of our evolving environmental disasters, and they are the ones who will ultimately have to flock in large numbers to the polls every two years, not just every four years, to make sure that environmentally progressive representatives are elected at all levels of our government.
That’s not to say that Mr./ Ms. Savvy Environmentalists will not enjoy the book or benefit from reading/listening to the way that Gates formulates his arguments. I’m always working on refining my presentation skills to those who are ambivalent and nonbelievers. I even still try, with bloodied forehead, to convince those who are willfully embracing ignorance because of their right of center political affiliation. Whenever I want to see my brother, who manages our family farm, start frothing at the mouth, I mention any public policy with Green in the title. He isn’t interested in any science that will force him to change his business practices. He wants the past to remain the present and continue into the future, regardless of whether it is irresponsible for the planet. So instead of embracing responsible innovation now, he would rather deny that climate change even exists. He considered wearing a mask during the pandemic an infringement of his riiaaghts, but I have a sneaking suspicion he might have been afraid of missing the pungent smell of cattle flatulence.
He loves the smell of methane in the morning.
It’s hard to believe that something like the future of our planet could be a political issue, but then who would have believed that a pandemic could become a political issue. Our country was nearly evenly divided down party lines on whether COVID was a real threat. The inability of our country to unite against a common enemy, a vicious virus, cost thousands of lives. This shows the size of the boulder that has to be moved uphill, and all of us must channel our inner Sisyphus to have any hopes of uniting our country, our world, in the fight for our planet. We have to keep talking. We have to keep convincing people that this threat is already changing our climate, and we ignore the science at our peril. By the time a majority of people start to feel the effects of severe cold (Hey Texas, you got a small taste just a few weeks ago), extreme heat, drought, flooding, and the devastation of superstorms, it will be too late. I say we keep all our post apocalyptic B movies on the SyFy Channel and start to make real changes for getting our emissions down to zero.
I’ve noticed there are a number of negative reviews on GR that seem to focus on Bill Gates the rich a$$hole instead of Bill Gates the climate expert and writer. I guess I’ve always been fairly neutral about Gates. I never was caught up in the whole Gates vs. Jobs rivalries. I am one of those philistines who used PCs and Macs in equal measure. I’ve never been a big fan of rich people in general because I don’t really believe in the concept of billionaires or even millionaires, and I would rather dissolve big corporations and allow small businesses to thrive again, but that is a discussion outside the scope of this review. So, I can dislike the concept of billionaires without despising the man behind the wealth. In the case of this book, any animosity that someone feels about Bill Gates the successful businessman is certainly misplaced against Bill Gates the environmentalist. The sincerity of his concern for climate change and his willingness to do everything he can to move the needle of public understanding regarding this critical issue is readily apparent throughout the book.
This book is about climate change issues, not about Bill Gates.
”As for the ideas you can’t support, you may feel compelled to speak out, and that’s understandable. But I hope you’ll spend more time and energy supporting whatever you’re in favor of than opposing what you’re against.” This quote can be applied to any aspect of your life. I’m not sure when we became a nation of grumbling pessimists, but it’s no way to live. I encounter people all the time who are consumed about what they didn’t like about a book or a movie and give no consideration to what they liked about them. They are equally consumed about what has gone wrong with their lives and completely disregard what is right about their lives. They write one star reviews of books that they haven’t even read to display their caustic wit for the entertainment of the witless. *Sigh* I may have just revealed one of my pet peeves.
As I was writing this review, one of the things that became clear to me was how much climate change is entwined with every challenge we face.
Gates has no illusions about how hard it will be for the world to move from pumping 51 billion tons of global emissions into the atmosphere to pumping zero. We have to shoot for zero because that is the only way to ensure sustainability for human endeavor on this blue planet for eons to come. We have to be leaders on this important issue or we will be the losers. As Europe becomes more focused on green issues and even China with their electric bus fleets shows a willingness to hopefully take reducing future emissions seriously, we could find ourselves left behind. They will be the innovators while we will continue to crumble under the weight of our own irresponsible behavior.
I was sent a free copy of this book by the office of Bill Gates in exchange for an honest review.
”Those poor bastards didn’t want a rural life. They expected an urban life in a rural setting. They tried to adapt their environment instead of adapti”Those poor bastards didn’t want a rural life. They expected an urban life in a rural setting. They tried to adapt their environment instead of adapting to it. And I really can sympathize. Who doesn’t want to break from the herd? I get why you’d want to keep the comforts of city life while leaving the city behind. Crowds, crime, filth, noise. Even in the burbs. So many rules, neighbors all up in your business. It’s kind of a catch-22, especially in the United States, a society that values freedom, when society, by nature, forces you to compromise that freedom. I get how the hyper-connectivity of Greenloop gave the illusion of zero compromise.
But that's all it was, an illusion.”
Kate and Dan Holland have bought into the Greenloop concept. The beautiful view of Mount Rainier, the superb hiking trails, the clean air, and a house that can be almost completely controlled from their iPad. If something breaks, maintenance fixes it. Their food is one click away on a grocery website. Everything they could possibly want is delivered right to their door.
Paradise.?.?
Well, all is fantabulous until Rainier’s volcano erupts bringing chaos, ash, and flowing lava with it. When the road is overwhelmed by lava, the residents of Greenloop are cut off not only from civilisation but from help. They are a dark spot on a satellite map. Barely anyone even knows they are there; that’s the point of the small community. This natural disaster form of isolation goes well beyond their comfort zones. They still have power, but the internet is out, and there is no cell service. Welcome to homesteading, folks!
No one has a large stock of food on hand. Why would they when they can buy food whenever they want? They don’t own tools, not a hammer, not a screwdriver, not a pair of pliers. I use something from my toolbox nearly every day, so not owning tools is a very foreign concept for me. I’m sure there are many people who will read this review who will tell me they exist quite fine...toolless. The people of Greenloop are, in other words, once disconnected from the internet and their phone...completely helpless. Well, humans are never helpless. That is why we have that big oversized brain sitting on our shoulders.
Charles Darwin is always associated with the statement “survival of the fittest,” but the fittest in his estimation isn’t always the strongest or the wiliest, but the people who adapt and adjust. Max Brooks explores this concept with this small band of privileged people who are stripped of the protection of their money and are forced to set aside the individualism they have always cultivated and learn how to exist as a tribe. This becomes even more important when rather large animals, pushed down the mountainside, start to invade their space.
”It was so tall, the top of its head disappeared above the doorway. And broad. I can still picture those massive shoulders, those thick, long arms. Narrow waist, like an upside-down triangle. And no neck, or maybe the neck was bent as it ran away. Same as the head. Slightly conical, and big as a watermelon.”
Well, I don’t know about you, but seeing something like that would turn my backbone to jelly and my knees to water. And let's not forget they smell like sulfur and rotten eggs, bad enough to make your eyes water. Oh yes, we might also want to mention their gigantic feet. Max Brooks has provided a nice diagram on the cover of this book just to give the reader an idea of the difference in a human foot and a Bigfoot foot. Yes, we are talking about an infestation of Sasquatch.
As if our tiny band of Greenloop survivors don’t have enough issues, but they now have to contend with a hungry predator who is stronger and faster than they are and sees humans as just another animal to fill their bellies with. ”To be someone else’s food. You’re a person. You think, you feel. And then it’s all gone, and what used to be you is now a mushy mess in something else’s stomach.”
I’ve been trying to decide how to dispose of my body once I’m finished with it. I don’t want it shot full of toxic chemicals and stuck in the earth. Maybe I need to put on the list the possibility of leaving my body out for a Sasquatch to eat?
The people are annoyingly naive, and some adapt much faster than others. ”Denial is an irrational dismissal of danger. Phobia is an irrational fear of one.” Either side of the equation can get you killed. Being in denial too long can close the open window to escape the dire circumstances, but also being paralized by an irrational fear can leave you vulnerable to a very real threat. There are a myriad of differences in reactions by the different people, and you as the reader will have ample opportunity to explore your own reactions to the situation. Who am I most like? Would I survive? Or will I be instant bloody oatmeal for Bigfoot?
This is certainly a page turner, not as deep as his book World War Z, which could very well be the most literary book ever written about zombies, but this book certainly provided me with some chilling sequence of events that kept me entertained deep into an autumn night.
”Before we get properly acquainted please allow me to introduce myself: My name is Thaddeus C. Noble and I currently reside in an unfinished stone tow”Before we get properly acquainted please allow me to introduce myself: My name is Thaddeus C. Noble and I currently reside in an unfinished stone tower, on the otherwise uninhabited island somewhere along the North Atlantic coast of the United States of America. Although, when I say that the island is uninhabited it is not strictly true. Besides the ever present sea, I do have a companion. He is a jet black Raven that I perhaps for obvious reasons named Poe.”
In the dead of night, Thaddeus has a hood thrown over his head. He is bound and bundled off without a by-your-leave from his captors. He awakes to find himself on an island with the aforementioned bird, a well stocked pantry, a stack of bottles, and no indication as to why he has been placed in captivity upon these rocky shores. While exploring the island he finds a pool of a heavy liquid that is not water but seems to be a living entity with the texture of liquid silk. While immersed in this pool, he dreams, or does he really see the truth? The blending of his mundane life and these fantastical stories becomes the story of his life. He soon puts the bottles to use. He pens missives of his plight and relates stories that his feverious imagination believes to be true. He places these letters into the bottles, seals them with wax, and flings them out in the ocean in the hopes that someone will someday read them.
Thaddeus is, by his own admission, an ordinary man, certainly not a rich man or a man who will be missed. He walks through life as gray as the sidewalks he trudges upon. He even avoids the bawdy house, located so conveniently at the end of his employer’s block, though someone so devoid of human contact would certainly benefit from even the purchased caresses of a demimondaine. ”Not that he didn’t have the urge. As a matter of fact, the young soft skinned girls looking down on the street from the upper windows, scanning the street with vacant eyes, looking for something or other to occupy their weary minds, were quite frequently unwitting but amenable companions in his nightly fantasies. However, the main reason he didn’t go was because he was deeply afraid that none of the girls would notice him, and although he was used to an exceptional high level of abandon, he nevertheless feared that the spurning or avoidance of a girl of easy virtue would exceed the amount of rejection he could bear.”
Of course, what someone needs to explain to Thaddeus is these girls of easy virtue will never ignore him, especially with a fistful of proffered cash.
So the question remains, why would someone kidnap such a nondescript man and go to all the trouble of Robinson Crusoeing him?
And why won’t the damn bird talk to him?
Thaddeus knows he can talk. He knows he can understand him, but Poe steadfastly refuses to converse with him. With what Thaddeus is seeing while immersed in the pool, he would relish the ability to chat with someone, even a raven, about what exactly he is seeing. Thank goodness the whale talks to him, but the whale seems decidedly less informed than what Thaddeus knows Poe can tell him. Poe could be the key to understanding everything.
Wait, a talking whale? Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that. You’ll start to believe this reviewer has become as barmy as Ahab.
As far as the bird, if I were Thaddeus I might start to consider what raven soup will taste like with maybe a side salad of wild lettuce.
I have known Lars Boye Jerlach for a number of years. I harass him. He harasses me. He takes time out of his busy schedule to read some of my desultory attempts at writing. He loves words. If words were a prostitute, he would lavish all of his money on her. If words were cake, he would be corpulent. If words were Scotch, he’d be a drunk. He is, without a doubt, a Sesquipedalian.
Before everyone burns up the internet googling the word, I will supply the definition. A sesquipedalian is described as someone or something that overuses big words, like a philosophy professor. I take exception with the concept of the word “overuses” though. In an age of diminishing vocabulary, I must say it is refreshing to find myself luxuriating in the opulence of words, many of which have nearly disappeared from our vocabulary. I did have to blow the dust off of a few of these words before the meaning became clear, but after reading several recent novels that failed to challenge my knowledge of vocabulary, I was enjoying and, yes, occasionally laughing at the audacity of Jerlach to use some of these words like... nugatory or how about tintinnabulated?
If you are feeling anxiety at the thought of wrestling with words, strangle that thought, murder that thought, become a serial killer of such thoughts. Don’t allow such fears to make you miss a good story. Nay more than that, you will miss an experience. So use your fingers to tweezer a few messages from the depths of Thaddeus’s bottles, and if you live on the coast of New England, peer out across the horizon and wonder...where could he be?
”Even the darkness at night is poriferous, like our memory. Enough to allow just a passable amount of light for us to see things that we would rather were kept buried in the impenetrable layers of the cold blackish mud of the river Styx.”
Word of Warning! Do tie a stout cord about yourself before venturing into The Poriferous Darkness. I've heard there are readers who have become lost and are now hurling their own bottled missives into the ocean with the hope that one of us will read them.
I challenged Lars to a thumb war, and fortunately, for a Viking, he has weak thumbs. After much cursing and copious swillings of cheap ale, he shook off his misgivings and decided to answer my questions.
Jeffrey D. Keeten: Your books revolve around an ancient and now nearly extinct form of communication. We have a generation or two of people who have never written or received a letter. Certainly, because people were writing letters without autocorrect, more consideration, more pondering was given to what they were going to write before they ever set pen to paper. Letters have been of such historical importance to scholarship that one wonders if generations in the future will know less about us than our ancestors. Our digital communications are so disposable it is hard to imagine that they will be available for future historians. Are we living in what will prove to be a lost age of communication?
Lars Boye Jerlach: I think about this all the time, especially in lieu of the younger generation mainly communicating in the language of icons, snapchat, and emojis. However, I’m also aware that we historically have passed information in hieroglyphs, sanskrit, runes, and other forms of imagery that in many ways mirrors contemporary iconography. If you look at the paintings in the Lascaux Cave that basically depicts simple forms from the world around the people who painted them, they are not too different from a contemporary approach to utilizing simple understandable images in communication. There’s always a danger that we historically will look back at this age as the era of lost communication, but I have faith in the inherent power of the written word, and I believe that future generations will be able to decipher and understand where we are coming from, although they might have a much depleted “traditional” information to draw upon.
JDK: I think of your books as the Letters trilogy because missives play a major part in the plots of each book. Do you have a more spicy or interesting title for the trilogy? And is this going to remain a trilogy or do you plan to add more volumes to this particular body of work?
LBJ: Although I never intended for the independent novels to be read consecutively, and thus have never really thought about a combined title, you are certainly not the only reader who thinks about this body of work as a trilogy. Besides the structural and formal use of letters that obviously connects the novels, there are several references in the later books that decidedly point to characters and/ or situations in the earlier novels that hopefully bring a self-referential and introspective feel to the entire body of work. At this point I’m not sure that I will add more volumes to this particular body of work, but as my mind often wanders along very similar lines of enquiry I am keeping my options open.
JDK: You work with a small cast of characters, which really helps focus the plot. I have so many characters coming and going in my writing you would think I was Balzac, so I do envy your ability to keep such a tight control on your character list.This small cast also contributes to a general feeling of loneliness. You might be only second to Anita Brookner in your exploration of isolation and people who don't fit in easily to normal society. Where does all this loneliness in your work come from?
LBJ: The subject of loneliness in literature is so profound and complex that it is difficult to address in just a couple of sentences, but I have obviously been influenced by writers in history who have so successfully introduced the concept of loneliness in their work. Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Herman Melville's Ahab, Franz Kafka’s Joseph K, Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way, Ernest Hemingway's Old Man of the Sea, and many existentialist writers, such as Sartre, De Beauvoir, and Camus, have all impacted the way I think about this issue. I have come to think of my characters' inherent loneliness as an intermittent literary loneliness as well as a poetic situational loneliness. I believe that a certain amount of loneliness is of great use to writers, musicians, artists, thinkers, and other creatives, and that there must be a newfound tolerance for not only being alone, but for the sense of solitude that brings a greater understanding of self to the surface.
JDK: Is English your second or third language? Your command of the English language reminds me of Joseph Conrad, who learned English in his twenties and yet left an indelible imprint on the English language. I have this image of you with your OED open on your desk with a magnifying glass dangling on a chain around your neck. I frequently found myself smiling when I would run across one of your more obscure words. I enjoy being challenged by your word choices, but when I was going through college, the mantra was, if there is an easier word...use it. Most of the books being published now feel like they have been written at an eighth grade reading level. You obviously reject the notion of easier is better, and by choosing these more obscure words you leave the seasoning in your sentences. Talk to me about the way you go about selecting words?
LBJ:Though it is my second language, I exclusively read and write in English. I completely understand that I’m swimming against the continuous stream of easy reads, but I fundamentally reject the notion that easier is better. I probably think about the word use in the same way a painter thinks about slight differences in color or a musician thinks about nuances in tonality. I believe a single word can be an incredibly powerful tool when used selectively, and I think a lot about the structure of sentences and how each word fits within the context when I write.
JDK: I have this silver Hopi bolo tie of the man in the maze. The cover of The Poriferous Darkness reminds me of that same motif. I think your choice is perfect to reflect the theme of the book. I guess you didn't hear that orange is the new black. :-) Symbolism is important in your books, so how much did you agonize over the design?
LBJ:Someone once mentioned that orange is the new black, but I didn’t believe them, or rather I chose to ignore it…… As with the other novels, I forwarded a brief synopsis to my designer Kyle Fletcher. He designed the cover art with very little additional input from me, so I really didn’t agonize over the design at all. I completely trust his discerning eye, and in my opinion he has perfected the link between the cover and the content in all three books.
JDK: What is next for Lars Boye Jerlach the writer? When can we expect a new book from you, and what type of book will it be?
I have a lot of other irons in the fire at the moment, and I honestly haven’t had the time to sit down and think about my next steps. I will obviously continue to write, but at this stage I can’t really tell you what is next for me. Perhaps I’ll try my hand at something completely different, but I have a strange feeling that when I start writing again, it’s going to be in the same vein as the other novels. I somehow seem unable to resist the temptation of pursuing scenarios of enforced loneliness, so who knows? The next book could quite possibly involve an astronaut…
”A wave of intense sadness soaked through me. I felt completely alone. I sat quietly for a minute or two gathering myself, unable to move, letting the”A wave of intense sadness soaked through me. I felt completely alone. I sat quietly for a minute or two gathering myself, unable to move, letting the storm pass. All day I filmed amongst the seeds, knowing that I was not well, knowing that this was not good, knowing that if I let go, I might never put the pieces back together again.
I drove home, a grown man sobbing on the motorway, and got back to the empty house. I rang Sarah and from the other side of the country she lovingly talked me down, like a flight controller bringing a flaming plane safely in to land.
Something breaks. Something shatters, and it takes a long while to put it all together again.”
Monty Don is perfectly content whenever he is working in his home garden. It is when he is away from it too long or the winter months make it impossible for him to putter as he likes among the flowers, the vegetables, and the trees that his crippling depression, always lurking like a beast in the shadows, seizes the opportunity to storm the cells deep in the dungeons of his mind and release the creatures of self-doubt, dissatisfaction, recrimination, and lassitude and allow them to run freely through his mind, overturning pots, tearing up rose bushes, and smashing down fences.
I equate it with what would happen to me if I were not allowed to read books for several months out of the year. What kind of wreck would I be once I emerged from such a jail sentence? It would not be pretty.
I am late in finding Monty Don. He has had a long and successful career without ever crossing before my path. I am zooming around Netflix, looking for something fresh and different to watch, when I find Monty Don’s French Gardens. I’m always on the lookout for a travel show with a host old enough to be interesting to listen to. Those plethora of millennial hosted travel shows are like being assaulted by the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. I am, obviously, not their target audience. I’m not far into episode one of French Gardens before I find myself becoming enamored with this awkward, brilliant, caring, square jawed Englishman who is not only, with a few words, making me care about gardens on the other side of the world, but also awakening in me a desire to get back into gardening in my backyard here in Kansas.
I blow through French Gardens and then find his series on Italian Gardens. I have now started watching an episode of Gardeners’ World several times a week, while drinking a cup of Earl Grey and ruminating on what I’m learning from Don that can be applied to my own feeble efforts here in the States.
He wrote this book with his wife, Sarah, and I must say I enjoyed her contributions as much as I did Monty’s . Here is a good example.
”I like the way that at this time of year the garden fills its spaces on its own. The poppies grow inches every day and marigolds seed everywhere. The garden becomes almost unbearably beautiful. Every second is precious. But time goes so fast and I can hardly breathe with the pace and excitement of it. I keep thinking, this is it. This is the moment.”
The interplay between what he writes and then what she writes adds depth to the story of their garden. For they are a team effort. They began designing jewelry together, and their company became wildly successful, only to have the company fall upon its own bejewelled sword when the economy went bust. That part of their life is reflected in the section of their property they now call The Jewel Garden.
It is pure chance that this is the first Monty Don book I read. I found it for $7.98 on clearance, and really, I have to believe that the book goddesses were looking out for me. It gives me some much needed background on Monty and his wife. It is filled with lovely pictures of their garden, as well as themselves. It proved to be the perfect diversion from a winter storm outside my window that was adding layers of ice to my trees and bushes every hour. The ice was beautiful and mystical, but potentially destructive. I felt strangely peaceful wandering around in their spring and summer gardens, while occasionally looking up to contemplate the changing weight load of ice on the precious limbs of my trees.
The book and the storm all turned out fine.
”The year flows through the garden like a river that brings you back somewhere near to where you started. But by the end of February there is an atavistic, irresistible urge to be outside. Half an hour of warm sunshine and a drying wind in February can wipe away weeks of December gloom. As we get older we realise that the days are more precious and half-moments of intense joy are more valuable than jewels.”
”But it was Tucker who worried Darlene the most. Something was happening to him--something she could not identify. He was speeding up, growing more in”But it was Tucker who worried Darlene the most. Something was happening to him--something she could not identify. He was speeding up, growing more intense by the day. Their great loss had created a mechanism inside his person--buried in his chest or the core of his brain--and it was always humming. She could practically see the vibration of the engine beneath his skin.”
It all begins with a storm. The swirling finger of a vengeful god spins down out of the sky and destroys Mercy, Oklahoma. The McCloud family has already suffered loss with the death of their mother, but now they find themselves orphans and homeless. They are the unluckiest family in a county of unlucky people. ”I remembered Tucker telling me that luck was no lady; luck was a mean drunk who didn’t know when to stop punching.”
Tucker always sees things differently. After the storm, it is as if something tears loose in him that has been held together by slender tendrils of what we call normal. He was always high strung an emotional whirlwind who was cursed with feelings that ran too deeply. ”My Category Five Brother.”
Darlene is the oldest, and when this storm takes away the McCloud house and their father, it also blows away all of her dreams of what she has planned to become. She sells their story to every news organization that is willing to pay. This creates conflict with Tucker, who sees it as unseemly. All Darlene is trying to do is get enough money to buy a dilapidated trailer and keep the family together.
I grew up in a small town so I understand the inherent jealousies, the prideful assertions about what is right and wrong, the cliquishness of the church going crowd, and a misguided concept that they are the righteous and all those folks in the big cities are fools on a one way express train to Hell. Small town values, my ass. The town of Mercy might be split on whether Darlene is doing the right thing, but the ones that think it is shameful make sure to let her know how they feel.
Pride is a luxury most can’t afford to buy.
Darlene is stuck in the caldron, trying to keep her two sisters, Jane and Cora, fed and having some kind of normal life. Tucker takes off. The McCloud unit, already destabilized by the missing pieces, now has to adjust to yet another smaller orbit. It is as if a moon has disappeared from the sky.
If truth be known, Tucker wants to bring down the Age of Humans. He would have fit in fine with Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang. He tries to team up with like minded individuals who ultimately disappoint him. Their commitment to saving the Earth is more of a hobby than based on a firm set of convictions. Tucker is untethered from the law. I keep thinking of the American-abolitionist John Brown, who was considered bat shit crazy, but who, through his actions, raised the awareness of the plight of slaves in the South. He forced people in the North, who may have been indifferent, to have to reconsider the issue. James McBride in his National Book Award winning book The Good Lord Bird really brought John Brown alive for me.
Maybe we just have to have a Tucker McCloud or a John Brown come along occasionally who will shake us out of our indifference and have us start to wonder, why is this cause so important to these seemingly insane men? Are they insane or are they the only people seeing clearly? Just by forcing people to ask WHY, the needle moves from indifference to an openness to wanting to understand.
When I lived in Arizona, I knew some people who were members of Earth First! This was an environmental awareness group started by Dave Foreman, who was inspired by Abbey’s book The Monkey Wrench Gang to become more involved in the fight to save the environment. They were considered terrorists (before that word took on even more meaning) by the FBI. I guess, if inspiring terror in the greedy capitalist pricks who were clear cutting timber in Arizona is considered terrorism, then yes, they were. It was a doomed organization, just like most environmental efforts have proven to be. The government squashed them.
Tucker, unable to find the properly motivated partner, finally decides that he needs someone who can be taught his vision of the world. He convinces his nine year old sister Cora to come on his quest to save the world. He can say he needs help, but what he really needs is a witness. He needs someone to observe and understand exactly what he is trying to do. ”Studies showed that 80% of people on the lam traveled west.” Well, Tucker is no exception. They are going to create havoc from Oklahoma to California.
This was a solid four star book for me until Abby Geni let me spend some significant time with Tucker McCloud. You can disagree with the young man, but you can not deny that he is committed to what he believes. He sees the end of days, but in some ways, just the fact that he chooses to fight back shows that he still thinks the tide can turn in favor of the Earth. He isn’t spouting rhetoric in some classroom in a university. He is creating the smoke and walking through the center of it, limping and grinning.
I also really enjoyed Abby Geni’s book The Lightkeepers, which is set on a small island off the coast of San Francisco. She is a storyteller who is shining a light on the plight of nature. She isn’t even crazy like John Brown or insane like Tucker McCloud, but maybe there is a part of her that wishes she were.
My thanks to Counterpoint Press and Megan Fishmann who sent me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
”There is a wonderful violence to the act of photography. The camera is a potent thing, slicing an image away from the landscape and pinning it to a s”There is a wonderful violence to the act of photography. The camera is a potent thing, slicing an image away from the landscape and pinning it to a sheet of film. When I choose a segment of horizon to capture, I might as well be an elephant seal hunting an octopus. The shutter clicks. Every boulder, wave, and curl of cloud included in the snapshot is severed irrevocably from what is not included. The frame is as sharp as a knife. The image is ripped from the surface of the world.”
Miranda has pulled every string available, applied for all the grants, and finally receives an invite to join the scientists already ensconced in the sanctuary on the Farallon Islands. These islands are so small and so close to sea level that if the ocean rises half an inch they will disappear forever. The scientists are there to study the birds, the whales, the seals, and the sharks that all use these islands to battle for mates, to feed, to reproduce, and raise their young.
The scientists are there to record and not interfere with the workings of nature. They adhere to a prime directive that reminds me of the same command that was regularly spouted by the crew of the Enterprise. ”Star Trek, the Prime Directive (also known as Starfleet General Order 1 or General Order 1) is a guiding principle of the United Federation of Planets prohibiting the protagonists from interfering with the internal development of alien civilizations.” If a baby seal is toddling off to certain death, all you can do is watch it die.
The scientists call her Melissa, Mel, Mouse Girl, really anything but her real name. She doesn’t correct them. Being someone else for a while is just fine with her. She writes letters to her dead mother. She gives her cameras names as if they were children or pets. She has been running from any permanence in her life. Mortgages, relationships, children, picket fences, car payments are foreign concepts to her. She wants to be able to leave anywhere at a moments notice and head for somewhere else that she can capture images she has never seen before with her camera.
”Your death made me into a nature photographer.
I was always going to be an artist. There was never any question about that. I need to take pictures of the world around me the way a whale needs to come up for air. For as long as I can remember, I have been driven by beauty. I am talented; I don’t mind saying it. Photography was a given. Nature was the wild card.”
It is not that Miranda is unfriendly. She just doesn’t put any work into developing friendships. Friends become weights that can potentially keep her anchored to the Earth. The constant presence of her mother’s ghost is, in many ways, all consuming. When one of the scientists tells her about the ghost that lives in her quarters, Miranda is not scared, nor is she skeptical. ”’I believe you,’ I said. ‘I believe in ghosts.’”
The ghost of her dead mother is like an ethereal talisman. Something she doesn’t have to hold anywhere but in her mind.
Everything is going great. She is fitting in well enough with everyone. She knows where she stands in the pecking order. Everyone helps everyone else with their projects. She is capturing some amazing images.
And then a late night assault is committed.
This leads to a suspicious death, which leads to an unravelling of the symbiotic relationships they have achieved. Trust has been breached. ”In truth, there were a hundred ways to die on the islands. It was amazing that we were not all six feet under--lost to the wind, the ocean, and the dreadful, human capacity for misadventure.” The island is trying to kill them, and now no one is sure whom they can trust among the people they must trust to survive.
The most dangerous part of the island are the kamikaze gulls. ”But the gulls are the worst. They kill for food. They kill for pleasure. They kill for no good reason. They are expert assassins. They soar around the islands with bloody beaks and a mad glint in their eyes.” When Miranda is first pecked in the head, I can’t help thinking about the lovely Tippi Hedren, sitting in that small boat on the water being dive bombed by gulls in the Hitchcock film The Birds.
No, thank you. I would not be able to adhere to the Prime Directive. I’d be carrying around a blood crusted bat, waiting for the next dive bombing gull assassin.
One of the things I became aware of while I was reading this book is the powerful thirst I have for nature writing. I read a lot of Edward Abbey, Charles Bowden, and others as I was going to college in Tucson, but I haven’t really pursued the genre of nature or nature fiction much since I left the desert. I recently read Bearskin, which is set in another nature preserve in Virginia, and enjoyed it immensely. Fortunately for me and for you, Abby Geni has a new book coming out September 4th, 2018, called The Wildlands . She also has a collection of short stories called The Last Animal, which I also intend to read. Geni describes nature in vivid detail. I was transported to this wind swept, bird shit splattered, rain battered, gorgeous island. I settled in...well...not with the gulls, *shiver*, but with this dedicated crew of people intent on doing everything they can to advance our knowledge of the mystical world of nature.
”Perhaps there were only two kinds of people in the world--the takers and the watchers--the plunderers and the protectors--the eggers and the lightkeepers.”
”She spread out the old map and a modern-day map of the same area, side by side. As she pointed to the town of Yampa and then indicated where it might”She spread out the old map and a modern-day map of the same area, side by side. As she pointed to the town of Yampa and then indicated where it might be on the old map, she pointed to the blotch and X. ‘This looks like an interesting place to look. I would guess it’s about a hundred miles in a straight direction from Yampa. See the kind of circular dot with an X over it?’
Warren leaned over to get a better look, then picked up the magnifying glass and zeroed in on it. ‘That’s not a dot and X,’ he said as a matter of fact. ‘That’s a skull and crossbones.’”
Or as the local Indians refer to it...The Mountain of Death.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
This all begins with Warren reading an article about the discovery of a long lost ghost town. He shows this article to Joe Evans, who by the fickleness of fate sits next to him at meals at the boarding house they both stay in. Both are in their sixties. When they add up the scope of their life and the list of their accomplishments, it is less than impressive. In fact, it is downright depressing. So why can’t they do something like this, have an adventure, discover something interesting? They are unlikely explorers, both well past their “best years” and absolutely stone cold broke.
The idea, mildly insane, certainly improbable, begins to take hold on both of them. There is nothing like the fever of shared passion to stoke the fires of craziness. To even keep the dream alive they need to start working up a plan. First step is money. Warren gets a job in a small mom and pop store that has been reduced to a mom store. Emily’s husband passed away, and though she has enjoyed running a grocery store, it just isn’t the same without her husband. Warren shares his dream, and when Emily reads the article, she doesn’t think the idea is crazy. She thinks it is exactly what she has been looking for, to put some new purpose back in her life.
What may have been an impossible dream for Joe and Warren takes on new layers of possibility with an organizer like Emily involved.
This book has me thinking about how many people have no clue of what to do after retirement. My dad used to talk about the guys who would retire from the shingle factory or from farming, and his comment was, they will be dead in a year. Unfortunately, a lot of times he was right. I think more people need to either keep working until physically they can’t anymore or have a real plan to do something worthwhile once they retire. Sitting around all day in a rocking chair, watching Judge Judy reruns, with the highlight of their day being the pepperjack cheese sandwich they are going to make for lunch is not any way to spend the remaining years of your life.
Most people can’t do something as grand as what Emily, Joe, and Warren get up to, but they can start a hobby, or maybe discover how wonderful reading is, or join community activities that let them meet new people. I take an adventure every day, usually to exotic locals, in my time machine...my library. Which reminds me, we need to get back to the place on the map with the skull and crossbones.
Our heroes are not deterred by the skull and crossbones on the map. Really it just means there is more probability they will find a ghost town that hasn’t been pillaged. They start the prep work, and it isn’t quiet, and it isn’t easy. They are basically preparing themselves the same way someone would have gone out into the wilderness 140 years ago. Wagons instead of cars, mules instead of combustion engines, hay instead of gasoline.
What I really enjoyed about the prep work and the trials and tribulations was the fact that Daniel Parks engages his engineering mind. The supplies needed are extensive; the resupply possibilities have to be figured out, and there are many points on the trail where ingenuity is necessary to be able to continue.
Necessity + Ingenuity = The Mother of all Invention
I couldn’t help thinking of The Little House on the Prairie books that I read as a child while I was reading this book. The language is straightforward. Parks is here to tell a story, not to wow you with extravagant literary phrase work. It took a few pages for me to settle into his writing style, but once the adventure began, I had to see what the heck was at that spot on the map in the wilderness of the Flat Tops of the Western Colorado Rockies.
Our heroes are beset by extreme weather, landslides, skulls and skeletons, Monopoly madness, bear attacks, and a very pungent smell that keeps stalking them from beyond the firelight. This is all before they reach The Place of the Skull. If you need a little inspiration to put some giddyup into your life, then let Gold River Canyon’s Dead grab you by the britches and yank you right out of the polished planks of your favorite rocking chair.
”The giant trees were like dormant gods, vibrating with something he couldn’t name, not quite sentience, each one different from the others, each tell”The giant trees were like dormant gods, vibrating with something he couldn’t name, not quite sentience, each one different from the others, each telling its own centuries-long story. On the forest floor, chestnut logs dead since the blight had rotted into chest-high berms soft with thick mosses, whispering quietly. Something called out and he turned to face a looming tulip tree, gnarled and bent like an old man, hollowed out by rot, lightning, ancient fires.
Rice Moore felt the pain of parting from a dear friend when he left the desert around Tucson. He could see those thousands of saguaro cactuses in his rearview mirror and wondered when he would be able to see them again. Circumstances were against him ever see that gorgeous desert again because he had gotten himself on the wrong side of a Mexican drug cartel.
”While Apryl crouched beside him with her .22 in her hand, cursing, Rice experienced a sensation of detachment, thinking here he was in his first firefight, and that instead of a scientist he’d become some kind of ridiculous desert outlaw--a dilettante Clyde to Apryl’s only slightly more credible Bonnie, and that the bullets going by sounded sibilant, like insects.”
Any romanticism he might have felt about locking horns with the cartels was quickly dispelled when he found himself in a Mexican jail, and Apryl...well, there are things worse than a Mexican jail.
He took a job in Virginia as a caretaker of a nature preserve. He used the name Rick Morton, which slid around on his skin like an ill fitting suit. The previous caretaker had been viciously attacked, so the theory in hiring Rice was that any gringo who could stay alive in a Mexican jail might be able to handle himself with bear poachers and biker gangs.
Rice started spending so much time in the woods, laying in wait for poachers, that he had trouble returning to the meager civilization of his cabin. He began having hallucinations and hearing forest voices talking to him. He was certainly a man who threw himself into his work. He became part of the woods he was protecting. He even went beyond that. ”He tried to fit the cow pelvis over his head to wear it like a ceremonial Pleistocene headdress, but several fused vertebrae at the sacrum got in the way. He laid it on the ground and broke off part of the sacrum with a a rock, and this time it fit, resting on his crown, and he could see through the holes.”
Rice’s father gave him some great advice that could almost be my creed.
”When you slack off, what you’re really doing is choosing to fail because you didn’t try hard enough. It was a rational choice, his father had said, for people who would rather fail on purpose than risk finding out they’re not good enough, but if you made that choice you should at least be honest with yourself about what you are doing.”
When people write me and ask me how I’ve done so well on GR, they always seem disappointed when I say hard, consistent work. They were hoping I had a trick of some kind that would help them be successful without having to do the heavy lifting.
Read. Write. Repeat.
This is a slow burn of a novel with mystery elements, but really James A. McLaughlin wrote a book that ventures more into the realm of a literary novel. The lyrical prose, of which I’ve shared some in this review, are to be savored like biting off hunks of wild honeycomb. Your tongue will tingle with the resonance of the words. There is plenty of action, but it is low key, more personal, and more like real life than the explosive action flicks that fill movie theaters. Between pissed off local bikers, aggressive bear poachers, a DEA agent with an unnatural interest in Rice, and a Cartel assassin, people are having to wait in line for a chance to try and take him down. One thing I can assure them all about is that Rice ain’t going anywhere...bring it on.
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