The Nature of Things

  A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : A young Purple Gallinule perches on a sunken log in a duckweed covered lake in Brazos Bend State Park in southeast Texas. These gallinules were once fairly rare in this area but they have become more and more common in recent years. *~*~*~* The western states are burning . Many of the fires in California, Oregon, and Washington are still uncontrolled. Thousands of people have had to evacuate from their homes and the death toll is expected to rise further. Several states, including Texas, have sent firefighters and equipment to aid in the effort to bring the fires under control. The fires have not been mentioned by the country's president and help from the federal government has been minimal. *~*~*~* The Cima Dome fire in California has burned 42,700 acres of the Mojave National Preserve, sweeping through and destroying a large and dense Joshua tree woodland. *~*~*~* The frequent wildfires in the West are changing t...

I would have bought the book for its cover alone, a picture of a swift in flight. I have a lifelong love of swifts, those magical birds that live their lives entirely on the wing, except for when they are nesting and brooding eggs or chicks. They eat, drink, mate, and even sleep in the air. They have tiny little feet that are too weak for perching but are able to cling to the vertical side of a chimney or similar opening and in such places, they build their nests and rear their young until they too are ready to take to the air. Macdonald's swift is the Common Swift of Europe. On this continent, we have the Chimney Swift which nests in my part of the world, and the Vaux's Swift of western states. There are slight differences between them but all three live their lives in the air. Macdonald's new book, a collection of essays about nature and our relationship to it, includes an appreciation of the swift in the essay which gives the book its title, "Vesper Flights."  ...

  This is one of the books that I had been highly anticipating this year and so I pounced on it as soon as it was released. This completes Ali Smith's seasonal cycle of books that began with Autumn (2016), followed by Winter (2017), Spring (2019), and now Summer . Each of the books stands alone but it seems to me that reading them is enriched by reading them in the order that they were produced. Each story is of the time in which it was released and one can follow the progress of ideas and, to an extent, the progress (or lack of it) of western civilization in the narratives. Thus, we get, in Autumn , the Brexit vote; in Winter , Trump's election; in Spring , the issue of border barriers being erected to deter immigrants; and finally in Summer , the pandemic and resultant lockdown. This book also includes some of the social unrest caused by the endemic racism of our society. For instance, there is a brief reference to George Floyd and the demonstrations that followed his murd...

Tomorrow is Labor Day in the United States, a day set aside to honor those who keep our society going through the work that they do. It's a day to celebrate the dignity of work and the importance of workers. In another sense, the day honors the brotherhood (and sisterhood) of workers. In this year when so many are out of work and looking desperately for jobs, the day has a particular poignance which Philip Levine catches in his poem. What Work Is by Philip Levine We stand in the rain in a long line waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work. You know what work is—if you’re old enough to read this you know what work is, although you may not do it. Forget you. This is about waiting, shifting from one foot to another. Feeling the light rain falling like mist into your hair, blurring your vision until you think you see your own brother ahead of you, maybe ten places. You rub your glasses with your fingers, and of course it’s someone else’s brother, narrower across the shoulders than yours...

  A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : A Great Blue Heron stands tall in a field. Great Blues are common around here but they are always striking in appearance and we always pause to look at them. *~*~*~* This week David Bernhardt, acting secretary of the Department of the Interior and former oil-industry lobbyist, announced a plan to remove gray wolves ( Canis lupus ) from the protection of the Endangered Species Act throughout the lower 48 states. It's  déjà vu  all over again. There have been repeated efforts to delist gray wolves over the years. Once again the wolf's defenders will be fighting the plans in court. *~*~*~* Efforts to return jaguars to Argentina's wetlands are underway. If successful, the planned rewilding of the great cats could restore the health of an entire ecosystem, but the project is not without its challenges. *~*~*~* As devastating as the western wildfires are, there are actually some species that benefit from them. ...

  If you drive for a bit over an hour southeast from Memphis, you might come across the little (fictional) town of Pitchlynn, Mississippi. Pitchlynn is virtually indistinguishable from dozens of other dusty, hardscrabble, mostly rural towns scattered over the northern part of that state, but to those who live there, it is a place like no other. It is home. The people who live in Pitchlynn have mostly lived there since birth. Most have never traveled very far afield. Some did move away for short periods but have inevitably returned as if they couldn't be comfortable living anywhere else. One of those who went away and came back was Colleen. She joined the army right out of high school and was eventually deployed to fight in Iraq. She returned home after her service and stayed with her parents. The scenes from that war continued to haunt her. She suffered from PTSD and sought relief in drugs. Her life was seriously headed off the rails until a local beautician befriended her and made...

  I don't dream about the books that I am reading - at least not dreams that I remember upon waking. But in the middle of reading this book, I found myself dreaming vividly about it one night. I was there on the great ship of the Oankali orbiting Earth somewhere beyond our moon. I was standing with one of the tentacled aliens who was showing me the view from space and I could see the "blue marble" of Earth far, far away, looking about the size of a marble. It was such an amazing feeling that when I woke up it seemed to me for a moment that it had really happened. That is the power of Octavia Butler's prose.  She tells us of a time when Earth has been made uninhabitable for humans by a nuclear war between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. (The book was written in the 1980s.) Humans who survived the catastrophe were rescued (captured?) by the Oankali, an extraterrestrial race with multiple tentacles extending from their bodies. The tentacles are described in one place as looking li...