The Nature of Things

A challenge I have set for myself in 2021 is to read more nonfiction books. This book was my first effort at achieving that challenge.  Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the American daughter of immigrants. Her mother is Filipina and her father is Indian. When she was growing up, her family moved around quite a bit in this country and she got to know different regions of the country well. She was always interested in the natural world and she was able to observe and gain some insight into it. She learned enough to realize that she preferred to live in an area where winters were not quite as harsh as in some of the eastern and midwestern areas where she had lived. It was for this reason that, as an adult, she turned her gaze southward. And that is how she and her husband and their two young sons ended up in Oxford, Mississippi, where she is a professor of English and writing at the University of Mississippi. Nezhukumatathil is a poet who has published four collections of poems to some renown...

  What does it mean to be "everlasting"? I am reminded of the old Arab proverb about the pyramids: "Man fears time, but time fears the pyramids." The city of Rome may not be everlasting on quite the same par as the pyramids, but it was founded in 753 BCE and thus is almost three thousand years old. It comes by its title of "the eternal city" honestly. Those 3,000 years of history are well-documented and provide a trove of subjects for writers to elaborate upon and from Shakespeare to the present, they've never been shy about doing it. Now comes a writer of historical fiction named Katy Simpson Smith, who I frankly had not heard of before, to give us a view of 2,000 years of that history. To do that she has employed a clever hook on which to hang her story. It is, in fact, a literal hook - a fishhook discovered in an archeological dig in 2015. Carbon dating showed it to have been forged around 130 CE. Smith takes us on the journey that this particular a...

This poem was actually written for President Barack Obama's second inauguration in 2013. It speaks of the fact that we live under one sky, one sun that rises every day, and we are one country still, in spite of those who would tear us apart. Perhaps it is a good time to remind ourselves of that. One Today by Richard Blanco Written for the 57 th  Presidential Inauguration, January 21, 2013. One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores, peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies. One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story told by our silent gestures moving behind windows. My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors, each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day: pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights, fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper— bric...

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment :  Image borrowed from AllAboutBirds.com. At the window of my office, I trained my binoculars on the bird feeder in my front yard and noted to myself, Pine Siskins , Pine Warbler , House Fin ... Wait a minute! That finch isn't red, it's purple. Purple head, purple chest, purple wash on the wings - it's a  Purple Finch ! And of course, my camera was nowhere nearby so I couldn't get a picture. And then it was gone. In the thirty-two years that we have lived here, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have seen a Purple Finch in my yard so Friday was definitely a red-letter day for me. Or a purple-letter day.  *~*~*~* By now, we must be fully aware that the current evil administration in Washington will do everything it possibly can to trash the environment on the way out the door. Those efforts continued this week , even as the president was also busily inciting insurrection and invasion...

I had no idea what I was getting into when I started reading this book. Even a third of the way through, I still wasn't sure. A labyrinthine world of endless halls filled with statues and inhabited by two living humans and thirteen dead bodies? Is this The World or is it a construct of a greater world that exists outside the labyrinth? And if it is only a piece of a greater world, who built it and why? And where is that "greater world"? Our narrator does not know the answers to these questions. He remembers nothing before the labyrinth, not even his own name. The second human in the labyrinth, referred to as the Other, calls him Piranesi, but he does not believe that is his true name. Piranesi is perfectly happy and content in his labyrinthine House. He sees the House as an entirely good entity that provides him with everything he needs to survive. There is one problem which Piranesi must face in regard to the House: Its lower levels are periodically flooded by tides from...

Twelve-year-old Giovanna is going through puberty and she is not having an easy time of it. She has always had a good relationship with her parents, especially her father who has always assured her that she is beautiful and brilliant. She believed him and her self-image and ego were healthy and strong. Then one night she overhears a conversation between her parents in which her father compares Giovanna to his long-estranged and thoroughly loathed sister, Vittoria. Vittoria's name has long been shorthand in their family for everything ugly and evil. Giovanna understands her father to be saying that she is ugly. She is completely devastated. In short order, she loses her moorings. She becomes moody and obstreperous with her parents and her school work begins to suffer. Her parents come to understand that she must have overheard and perhaps misinterpreted their talk and they attempt to repair the damage, but she is unresponsive. She has become obsessed with her Aunt Vittoria whom she ...

On the Texas coast, there are currently thousands, maybe millions, of Snow Geese spending the winter. Last week I saw a video of them that a birder had shot at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge. They lifted into the air, a great multitude, and the sky turned white with their wings. Such a thrilling sight! I thought of this poem by Mary Oliver. It's a different bird of which she writes but the description of an " armful of white blossoms" and " a snowbank, a bank of lilies" is apt. We only have to multiply that one by several thousand. The " shrill dark music" of their voices is unforgettable. And as we watch, we may feel in our hearts how this beauty pertains to everything, as the poet says. The Swan by Mary Olive r Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river? Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air – An armful of white blossoms, A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned into the bondage of its wings; a snowba...