The Nature of Things

I actually remember the summer of '69. I remember the excitement of watching on a black and white television screen as Neil Armstrong took his "one small step" into history, fulfilling President Kennedy's promise that we would go to the moon in that decade. I remember it and so it's hard for me to think of a novel about that time as "historical fiction" and yet I suppose that is what we must call Elin Hilderbrand's Summer of '69 . It was, in fact, fifty years ago this summer. In addition to being historical fiction, this is what I would call a great summer read, a great beach book even. After all, much of its action takes place on the beaches of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, places about which Hilderbrand seems to write instinctively. One feels that she knows them well. Kate Levin, the wife of Boston lawyer David, takes her family to her mother's Nantucket beach house every summer for three months, but in '69 some members of that f...

In Maisie Dobbs' world, it is the autumn of 1940 and London is suffering under Hitler's vaunted blitzkrieg. Most of Europe has fallen to Germany's onslaught and Britain now stands alone in opposing them. Churchill's "few," the RAF, are doing their heroic best to counter the blitz, and, in this effort, they are being helped by many American fliers who have come to join their fight.  Back in America, the isolationists, led by people like Charles Lindberg, still hold sway. FDR, sympathetic to the British cause, does all he can to aid them, but he is unable to actually send troops. Other Americans, particularly journalists, have also come to aid the British. Their aid is in the form of reporting events back to their country and giving their fellow Americans a bird's-eye view of what is happening under the blitz. Of course, the most famous of these was Edward R. Murrow, but in Jacqueline Winspear's telling, there is also a young woman journalist called Cath...

I've featured this poem here before but it seems like a good time to present it again. It was written in the mid-1930s at a time of strife and uncertainty in the country. Now we live in such a time again and perhaps we need to remind ourselves that we've been here before. Read that last stanza and take it to heart and remember that, as always,  We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain— All, all the stretch of these great green states— And make America again! Let America be America Again             by Langston Hughes   Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed— Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above. (It never was America...

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : Tufted Titmouse image from Audubon.org. Always a backyard favorite is the wonderful little Tufted Titmouse , sometimes seen in the company of the Carolina Chickadee , as they visit my feeders. The titmouse and the chickadee often visit the feeders with their chicks these days, as they teach their young ones where to find food.  *~*~*~* The entrance and recreation fees charged by the National Park Service at the nation's parks are primarily intended to be used to improve those parks, but this week almost $2.5 of that fund was diverted to pay for the military extravaganza in the nation's capital on Independence Day. *~*~*~* The high temperatures in Alaska were breaking records this week. In more than a hundred years of Anchorage history, weather stations there had never recorded a temperature of 90 degrees F . On July 5, that record was reached, breaking the previous high record of 85 degrees. *~*~*~* The magnificen...

Ocean Vuong's first book was a much-praised book of poems in 2016 entitled Night Sky With Exit Wounds . On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is his enigmatically named second book. It is a semi-autobiographical work of literary fiction, but it, too, often reads like poetry. And I never did learn where that title came from. Vuong is a Vietnamese-American writer who was born in Saigon, but his family became refugees after the Vietnam War and ended up in Hartford, Connecticut where he was raised. The family that he writes about in his novel also live in Hartford. His main character is a young writer, in his late 20s. He is the narrator of the story but he narrates through the medium of a letter to his mother. His mother who cannot read. In the letter, he writes of the family history, going back to the time of the war and the life of his grandmother who lived through it. At the time that we meet her, she is elderly and suffering from schizophrenia and cancer. During the war, she worked...

Kate Atkinson published the last of her Jackson Brodie novels, Started Early, Took My Dog , in 2010, but somehow I did not discover them until 2013. When I did, I read and reviewed all four, starting with the first, Case Histories , over a two month period. I thought they were all brilliant and I was eager for the next one in the series to be published. But it didn't happen. Instead, Atkinson produced two other brilliant but unrelated literary novels, Life After Life and A God in Ruins . I had to accept the fact that she was never going to produce another Jackson Brodie mystery.  Then a couple of months ago, wonder of wonders, I read that a new Brodie book was in the works and would be published in June. I immediately preordered it and as soon as it arrived in my Kindle queue last Tuesday I started reading. It was definitely worth waiting for. Kate Atkinson's books really defy categorization. There's certainly a mystery/thriller element to them and, of course, Jackson Brod...

Carl Sandburg was a poet of the people, writ large. He wrote of and for ordinary people, " the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes." In this poem, he seems to decry the fact that the people, the mob, the mass do not know their own strength and that they never seem to learn from history but continue to be played for fools by those in power. He longs for a time when the people no longer "forget" but remember that they have the strength and the numbers to change history. It is a lesson that we can only hope people today have learned and take to heart. I Am the People, the Mob by Carl Sandburg I  am  the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass. Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me? I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes. I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns. I am the s...