The Nature of Things

  A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : Photo courtesy of All About Birds. For the rest of my life, I will remember the winter of 1977-78. We lived in East Texas at the time and it was a magical time, first because I was pregnant and second because there was a massive irruption of Evening Grosbeaks that came south that winter. Our yard was covered all day long with hundreds of the birds and we struggled to keep feeders full for them. Such wonderful birds! I've never seen the like again but the memory was enough to last a lifetime. *~*~*~* Here's a list of some of the people being considered for energy and environmental posts in the Biden administration. The list is distinguished by its extensive experience in the fields for which the individuals are being considered. *~*~*~* Meanwhile, the current administration is still attempting to rush through plans for selling leases on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. *~*~*~* Selling those leases...

  I had heard a lot of good comments about John Grisham's latest book, his third featuring attorney Jake Brigance, and I decided that I would like to read it. But first, I thought I should probably read Sycamore Row , the second in the series. The events of this novel take place in 1988, three years after the trial that made Jake famous as depicted in A Time to Kill . I never actually read that book but I saw the excellent movie based on the book so I was very familiar with the story. Jake had lost just about everything except his wife and daughter as a result of the earlier trial, but he had hoped that the notoriety that it brought might help him to build his practice and bring in some more lucrative cases. That has not really happened and so three years later we find him and his family living in a rented house and struggling financially. In October of that year, something happens that seems as though it might provide Jake with an economic boost. Seth Hubbard is a wealthy Ford Cou...

  Back in 2010, I read and enjoyed The Pillars of the Earth . ( Here's a link to my Goodreads review.) When I saw this book was billed as a prequel to that novel, I was intrigued and added it to my reading list. Follett has also written two sequels to that first novel which I have yet to read. I'll get to them one of these days.  Reading a Follett historical novel takes a commitment of time. Pillars was just over 1000 pages long and this current book is just a bit less than 1000. Moreover, the narrative encompasses multiple alternating storylines and a mind-boggling cast of characters from all levels of society. In this instance, the society is late tenth century and early eleventh century England in a place that would evolve over time into the town of Knightsbridge. Follett recreates this period with all of its hazards and physical realities and the competing influences of religion and politics. The time period covered is just ten years but it is a jam-packed ten years full...

The leaves are falling or have already fallen and I've heard rumors of snow in the more northerly climes. Around here we are still easing slowly through autumn with occasional returns to summer-like days. But it's almost December and we usually get our first frost sometime around the middle of the month. And on the long nights, the owls cry in the sifting darkness, and the moon has a sheen like a glacier.  Falling Leaves and Early Snow by Kenneth Rexroth In the years to come they will say, “They fell like the leaves In the autumn of nineteen thirty-nine.” November has come to the forest, To the meadows where we picked the cyclamen. The year fades with the white frost On the brown sedge in the hazy meadows, Where the deer tracks were black in the morning. Ice forms in the shadows; Disheveled maples hang over the water; Deep gold sunlight glistens on the shrunken stream. Somnolent trout move through pillars of brown and gold. The yellow maple leaves eddy above them, The glitterin...

  A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : I freely admit that my sparrow identification skills are poor. I'm not 100% sure of this bird's identity so I won't label it. (Maybe you can help me out?) I photographed it in winter at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge on the Texas Coast a few years and it has languished unidentified in my files. Here's another view:  *~*~*~* President-elect Biden has named John Kerry, one of the architects of the Paris climate accord, as his special presidential envoy on climate change and has indicated that it will be a cabinet-level position. Moreover, Biden has said that he intends that the fight against climate change will be an integral part of each of the executive branch agencies' mission in his administration. *~*~*~* Meanwhile, the current administration continues attempting to weaken rules regarding clean water and air, and career civil servants in the Environmental Protection Agency are stalling and dela...

This is one of William Butler Yeats' most famous poems. I have featured it here before, but it seems especially appropriate to these times when "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.  The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and  everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned..." So here it is again. The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats     Turning and turning in the widening gyre    The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere    The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst    Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand.    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out    When a vast image out of  Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert ...

 Imagine how all of those publishing houses that rejected Douglas Stuart's debut novel must have felt after Grove Press finally took a flyer on it, published it, and subsequently it was nominated for practically every literary award in the world. A bit chagrined I would imagine. And now the book has won perhaps the most prestigious of those awards, the Booker Prize for Fiction. All the accolades are well-deserved in my opinion. It is an amazing work of art.   The action of the novel takes place in the 1980s and 1990s in Glasgow. It is the coming-of-age story of young Hugh (Shuggie) Bain. The child Shuggie lives with his parents and older step-brother and step-sister and for a while with his maternal grandparents as well. But that doesn't last long. The father moves his family out to a council house in a poor neighborhood and then he abandons them. The sister marries and moves to South Africa. The brother stays on for a few years but then his mother tosses him out and Shug...