The Nature of Things

Gary Clark is a well-known naturalist and writer on Nature in my neck of the woods. He's also an educator who has taught "leisure-living" courses on birding at the local college, one of which I took several years ago. He is a very knowledgeable guide to all the birding hot spots in Texas, of which there are many since this is one of the birdiest states in the union.  In  Enjoying Big Bend National Park,  Clark has not focused on the birds of the park but has given a general guide to the interesting geology and history, as well as the wildlife and flora of that wild and beautiful area. Big Bend, named for its placement at a big bend in the river that separates Mexico from the United States, is one of the wildest and largest of America's national parks. It covers more than 800,000 acres, making it slightly larger than Yosemite National Park. Moreover, it encompasses a vast variety of ecological systems that include the Chihuahuan Desert, the rocky Chisos Mountains that ...

Stories about sociopathic and apparently invincible serial killers who love to torture their victims are not my cup of tea. Thus, I am still trying to remember how this book came to be on my to-be-read shelf. I believe it was given to me by someone who knows I read a lot of mysteries with tough women as the protagonists and probably thought I would enjoy it. Wrong. I just found it irritating, frankly. Perhaps it would have made a difference if I had ever read any of the other Irene Kelly books. This was the eleventh in the series, apparently a successful series with a lot of fans. If I had read any of the other books, it's possible I would have had a greater appreciation of the characters. There was little character development or explication in this book. I guess the assumption was that the reader  would  have already read those earlier books.  So, the reader meets Irene Kelly here as an investigative reporter for a failing newspaper, the  Las Piernas News Express ....

Who was that sweating man in the presidential debate last night? It certainly wasn't Mitt Romney, at least not the Mitt Romney we've come to know over the last eighteen months or so. No, this was a much milder version, a candidate who thinks we "can't kill our way out of this." That'll be a big surprise to the neocons with whom he surrounds himself and who he trusts as foreign policy advisers and who would likely serve in a Romney administration. Secretary of State John Bolton, anybody? Last night Romney shook that Etch-A-Sketch for all it was worth. No longer is he panting to get into another war in the Middle East. Belligerence toward China is all but gone. It's right that we should get out of Afghanistan by 2014. And, of course, President Romney would have taken out Osama bin Laden! What president wouldn't?   He essentially reversed every foreign policy position he has taken in his entire campaign. He hopes that the stupid voters, especially the st...

In  The Corrections , his National Book Award-winning novel from 2001, Jonathan Franzen gives us the Lamberts, an American Gothic family from the Midwest: Alfred, the emotionally constipated paterfamilias, who sacrificed himself for his family in many ways that we discover as the novel proceeds and who now faces a slow death from Parkinson's Disease; his wife, Enid, a woman who longs for a warmth from her husband and children that she has never received, a woman who lives on the expectation that things will get better; Gary, the oldest son, married and living in Philadelphia with his manipulative wife Caroline who is teaching their three young sons the art of the disdainful manipulation of their father; Chip, the middle child, who we first meet as a self-absorbed twit but who grows into something more fully human by the conclusion of the book; and Denise, the youngest child, a talented chef who betrays her employer in Philadelphia through her ambiguous sexuality and loses, if not e...

George McGovern 1922 - 2012 George McGovern was always a hero of mine. He was a war hero, a decorated bomber pilot in World War II, who understood the costs of war, and always tried to stop his country from rushing headlong into ill-conceived testosterone-driven military adventures. He spoke out against what he considered the tragic mistake of the American war in Vietnam and he opposed the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. He was a man who was firm in his convictions and never backed away from them, even when it might have been politically advantageous to do so. When he was derided by conservatives for his liberal ideals that endorsed a progressive federal government that would protect the weak and vulnerable and expand economic opportunity to everyone, he continued to stand strongly for those ideals. As a senator, he championed civil rights and anti-poverty bills. He helped to expand food stamp and nutrition programs. Even after he left government, he continued to write and ...

It's been a long and in many ways frustrating week. I'm so tired of politics. So tired of lying politicians. So tired of lazy journalists who refuse to do the research and take the time to expose the lies. So tired of billionaires trying to buy my country. So tired of dishonorable state officials trying to steal the election for their party by intimidating voters to discourage them from exercising their constitutional right. I NEED SOME JOY IN MY LIFE! Through the magic of YouTube, all the E-Streeters live again, and help the Boss to once again bring the joy of "Thunder Road." Even in Barcelona, they know the words and sing along. Of course, Springsteen concerts are always audience participation events. If you surveyed all Springsteen fans, this would probably be our number one favorite of his songs. I know it contains one of my favorite bits of lyric in all pop music: "So you're scared and you're thinking That maybe we ain't that young anymore Show a...