The Nature of Things

This is a story that, unfortunately, resonates with current events happening all too often on Indian reservations in this country. It involves violence against Native American women by white men. It is a problem which raises knotty jurisdictional issues for law enforcement. This may sound familiar to those who follow the news out of Washington. During the debate over reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act last year, certain Republicans in Congress balked at some of the provisions because they did not want Native American courts and law enforcement to have authority to arrest and prosecute white perpetrators of such crimes. This is the issue that is at the heart of Louise Erdrich's latest book about Ojibwe culture, the National Book Award winner,  The Round House. The events in the book take place in 1988. In the spring of that year, Geraldine Coutts, an Ojibwe woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is the victim of a horrific rape. It leaves her physically battere...

Ever since the latest episode in the HBO series Game of Thrones , "The Rains of Castamere," aired Sunday night, the internet has exploded with fans' reactions, mostly with the shock, outrage, and grief of those who had not bothered to read the books. And all I can say to that is, why haven't you bothered to read the books? Personally, I had not read the books either until I watched the first season of the show. In fact, I confess, hard as it may be to believe, I did not know who George R.R. Martin was! But after watching that first season, I certainly was not going to wait until the next season to find out what happened next. My husband enabled my new addiction by purchasing a boxed set of the first four books. While I was plowing through the thousands of pages of those books, the fifth one came out, and I bought it. I finished reading them all before the second season started. So, I knew what was coming this season. Even having read the books and knowing the plot, t...

Thirty years ago, Lance Corporal Jackson Brodie and his fellow soldiers were called out to do a search and rescue for a little girl lost. Six-year-old Joanna Mason had been walking along a quiet country lane with her mother, sister, and baby brother when they were attacked by a mad man wielding a knife. As her mother fought with the man, she screamed at Joanna to run. Joanna did and she was the only one who survived. After an extensive search, she was found and rescued by Jackson Brodie. Now, Joanna is a successful doctor married to a man who may be a fraud and a criminal. She has a baby son, the same age as her brother when he was killed, and she learns that the man who killed her family is to be released from prison. It looks like Joanna's life is falling apart again.  Jackson Brodie's life has taken a radical turn for the better. He thinks. He has no money worries thanks to a bequest and he is recently remarried to a woman he had only known for two months, but he is happy. H...

We have lived in our present home for twenty-five years and for all of those years, we have shared our half-acre yard with box turtles. Mainly, with one box turtle. For most of those years, there was a very distinctive box turtle that lived in our yard. We were able to recognize her from year to year because of an unusual patch of damage on her shell. This was Sam Box in 2009. Hard to mistake her for any other box turtle. We would generally start seeing Sam in May, once the weather warmed up sufficiently. I would encounter her at various times and places in the garden as I went about my activities there. But at some point during those years, Sam developed a cat food habit, and after that I saw her even more regularly. It happened like this. We have two outdoor cats who live in our backyard. They are both neutered and quite docile cats, now quite aged at fifteen. Charlie the cat at his bath. Both cats coexist with the wildlife that inhabits the yard, including the turtle. I feed Charlie...

If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda I want you to know one thing.  You know how this is:  if I look  at the crystal moon, at the red branch  of the slow autumn at my window,  if I touch  near the fire  the impalpable ash  or the wrinkled body of the log,  everything carries me to you,  as if everything that exists,  aromas, light, metals,  were little boats  that sail  toward those isles of yours that wait for me.  Well, now,  if little by little you stop loving me  I shall stop loving you little by little.  If suddenly  you forget me  do not look for me,  for I shall already have forgotten you.  If you think it long and mad,  the wind of banners  that passes through my life,  and you decide  to leave me at the shore  of the heart where I have roots,  remember  that on that day,  at that hour,  I shall lift my arms  and my roots wil...

Look out, cats. Your days as king of the internet may be numbered. There is an animal which affords you some major internet cuteness competition. Sloths. Sloths are very, very big on the Internet just now. And they got there by doing practically nothing and doing it verrry slowly. Unfortunately, their cuteness does not protect them from threats in the wild. The main threat to their existence, as with so many animals, is habitat destruction. But there are people devoted to their rescue. One of them is Monique Pool, a sloth rescuer and founder of the Green Heritage Fund Suriname . She recently rescued more than 200 sloths from 16 acres of forest that were being cleared for a cattle farm.  She harbors the animals for a few days before releasing them back into the wild, usually caring for one or two at a time. But the recent rash of deforestation led Pool to rescue many mothers and babies that will need to be cared for for months before they can be released. She also took in homeles...