The Nature of Things

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : It's that time of year when the birds in my backyard are often seen in varying states of undress - like this uncomfortable-looking Northern Mockingbird . One might think it is a reaction to the heat and perhaps it is in part, but this is a normal annual process called the molt. The birds lose their old worn feathers and grow bright shiny new ones that will see them through next winter and spring. All birds go through it, so if you see birds in your area looking decidedly disheveled, don't be concerned; soon they will be well-dressed once again. *~*~*~* As might have been expected, the new Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, has proved hostile to using the Clean Air Act to control the emission of greenhouse gases. His record on environmental law in general has been inimical to using current laws to protect the public and the environment.   *~*~*~* Southern California has already experienced extreme temperatures...

With a hat tip to Daily Kos ...

This book won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and is a Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction Nominee and an Andrew Carnegie Medal Nominee for Fiction. Is there an award for best comic novel? If so, this book should be a contender for that, too, because it is hilarious. I'm talking laugh-out-loud, coffee through the nose, tears rolling down the cheek funny. I don't know when I have enjoyed reading a book quite this much. It took me totally by surprise because I was not familiar with the writing of Andrew Sean Greer, although this is his fifth novel and he is apparently greatly admired in literary circles and by some of the best writers of the day. I definitely want to become better acquainted with him in the future. Less is Arthur Less, a writer who has so far had a mediocre career. His first book was a moderate success, but he has struggled to follow that up with anything of comparable or greater success.  But it is not just his writing career that isn't going well. Lif...

It is 1920 and the Great War has been over for a couple of years, but it continues to affect people's lives as both civilians and those who served in the military struggle to come back from the ongoing effects of that conflict. That is nowhere more true than in the remote villages of England which lost nearly a whole generation of young men in the terrible trench warfare in France. Inspector Ian Rutledge still struggles with the repercussions of his experience in those trenches. He suffers from PTSD (shell shock in that day) and is haunted by the spirit of Hamish McLeod, the young Scottish soldier whom he executed for insubordination and refusal to follow an order on the field of battle. Rutledge does, however, seem to have made some progress in dealing with his psychological problems. Hamish is still there and his voice pops up in the narrative from time to time, but it is not the overwhelming presence that it was in some of the earlier books and that is a relief. Rutledge continu...

Paul Laurence Dunbar was an African-American poet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was born in 1872, the son of former slaves. Dunbar's father had escaped slavery in Kentucky through the Underground Railroad and went on to fight in the Civil War in the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, one of the first two black units to serve in that war. After emancipation, his mother moved to Ohio with other family members including two sons from her first marriage and it was there that she met and married Paul Dunbar's father. Paul Dunbar was a successful poet, novelist, and playwright. He was something of a prodigy and he published his first poems at the age of 16 in a Dayton, Ohio newspaper. His life was tragically cut short by tuberculosis. He died in 1906 at the age of 33. Dunbar wrote poetry both in standard English and in what was referred to at the time as "Negro dialect." Here is one in standard English that is very evocative of this time of year. I love h...

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : Common Gallinule preening itself at Brazos Bend State Park. *~*~*~* All-time heat records have been set around the planet over the last week. Numerous places in the Northern Hemisphere, even places that normally have mild summers, have witnessed their hottest weather ever recorded . *~*~*~* One of those places is Canada where the sweltering combination of heat and humidity has been linked by health officials to the deaths of 33 people across southern Quebec. *~*~*~* Republicans in the Senate are seeking a massive revision to the Endangered Species Act . The bottom line of their overhaul would be to shift responsibility for the protection of endangered species to the states, so we could theoretically end up with 50 different sets of laws, with some states potentially choosing to have no protections for threatened species.  *~*~*~* The current administration in Washington is also seeking to revise protections for the endan...

“Much of life is timing and circumstance, I see that now.” Indeed. If only Roy and Celestial had agreed to spend that Thanksgiving night at Roy's parents’ house instead of going to a motel in Eloe, Louisiana, the woman in the motel would never have had an opportunity to wrongly accuse Roy of her rape that night. Roy would never have been arrested and charged with that rape, even though he had been with Celestial the entire time and she knew, and testified, that he couldn't have done it. But he was a black man in a small Louisiana town and he never had a chance. He was summarily convicted and sentenced to twelve years in prison. Timing and circumstance. Before that fateful night, Roy and Celestial had literally been the embodiment of the American Dream and the New South. Roy came from a middle class Louisiana family and Celestial was from an upper middle class Atlanta family. They had been introduced in college by Celestial's lifelong friend Andre (called Dre), but they had ...