The Nature of Things

Kristin Hannah is the hugely popular author of at least twenty books, many of which are best sellers. I had never read any of them. I'm not sure if Firefly Lane is typical of her writing, but it is essentially a love story between two best friends. It follows the history of their friendship, begun in high school, for thirty years. Kate Mularkey is the least popular girl in her school. In 1974, she is the nerd with glasses that everybody ignores. Then Tully Hart moves into the house across the street. Tully is the absolute opposite of Kate. She is the coolest girl in school and everybody wants to be her friend. But something terrible happens to Tully at a party one night and when she goes home, she happens to meet her neighbor Kate. Still distraught from her experience, she confides in Kate and Kate is sympathetic and comforts her. On the basis of this shared moment, the coolest girl in school chooses the most unpopular girl in school to be her friend. And soon they are best friend...

  I really am not sure how this book ended up in my reading queue. I must have read a note about it at some point that convinced me it might be something I would enjoy reading. It certainly isn't something that I would normally have picked to read, but I am trying to diversify my reading this year, so maybe that's why I included it. It seems to have been written for men who like fast, loud cars, and who really get off on driving them. It is basically a heist story and the main protagonist is a getaway driver extraordinaire. Nobody can catch him when he's behind the wheel. That protagonist is a Black man called Beauregard "Bug" Montage. He has a checkered past, but now he's attempting to go straight. He has his own garage. He is a family man who is trying to take care of that family and set a good example for his two children. But he has money troubles and one of his former associates takes advantage of that. He offers him a chance to make one big payday. All h...

Love can be a mystery, a conundrum. It can addle the brain and make you stupid at times. It can even cause you to flip "the grammar of the spoken word" and make nonsensical comments. Jennifer Michael Hecht explains.  Love Explained by Jennifer Michael Hecht Guy calls the doctor, says the wife’s    contractions are five minutes apart.    Doctor says,  Is this her first child? guy says,  No, it’s her husband. I promise to try to remember who    I am. Wife gets up on one elbow, says, I wanted to get married.    It seemed a fulfillment of some several things, a thing to be done.    Even the diamond ring was some thing like a quest, a thing they    set you out to get and how insane the quest is; how you have to turn    it every way before you can even think to seek it; this metaphysical    refraining is in fact the quest. Who’d have guessed? She sighs, I like...

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment :  Dark-eyed Junco photographed at Davis Mountains State Park in West Texas.  *~*~*~* Most of us are well aware of the effects of a drought that come from lack of rain, but there is also such a thing as snow drought and parts of the western United States are suffering from it. The impact of such a drought can be significant.  *~*~*~* A federal judge in Montana has vacated a rule established by the previous administration that limited what science the Environmental Protection Agency could use in its decisions. *~*~*~* Neotropical songbirds such as warblers employ a method called high-intensity molting which means the birds can molt and grow new feathers quickly to be ready for migration. *~*~*~*   Up to a quarter of known native bee species have not been seen since 1990 despite the best efforts of museums, universities, and citizen scientists on the lookout for them. *~*~*~* Nature has a way of filling...

In the late twentieth century, there was an abundance of discoveries of hominin fossils and things related to them. In the 1970s, I was a devoted reader of "National Geographic" magazine and it seemed that almost every month's issue had news of some new discovery, most of them in the Great Rift Valley of Africa. Many of those discoveries were made by members of the Leakey family and their teams of searchers.  The family was led by Louis and Mary Leakey, who themselves had made many of those discoveries. The Leakeys were not only fossil hunters but were also supporters and instigators of much of the research taking place in the area at the time. For example, Louis had been instrumental in starting Jane Goodall in her work with chimpanzees and Dian Fossey with mountain gorillas, work that would consume the two women's lives and, in Fossey's case, cost her her life. In the late 1960s, he also hired a young woman named Meave Epps to head a research project on monkeys....

  This is one of those rare books that grabbed me from the first page and didn't let go until the last sentence.  The story begins outside Oxford in 1999. Three teenage siblings, two brothers and a sister, had expected their dad to pick them up from school that day, but he didn't come and so they started walking home along a country road. Along the way in a hayfield beside the road, the sister, Zoe, noticed something that looked out of place among the bales of hay, and she went to investigate. She found a boy, a young man really, who looked a bit older than the siblings. Someone had obviously left his body in the field. He was alive but seriously injured and unconscious. It appeared he had been stabbed. While Zoe and Matthew the older brother stayed with the boy, Zoe talking to him and trying to comfort him even though she wasn't sure he could hear her, the younger brother, Duncan, went back to the road to try to flag someone down to get help. (These, of course, were the da...

We have made it through January and Monday the calendar turns to February. Edith Nesbit vividly describes this month which is still mostly brown and gray. The trees stand brown against the gray, The shivering gray of field and sky; It's still winter, even here, but by the end of this month things will begin to green up and spring will be right around the corner.  February by Edith Nesbit The trees stand brown against the gray, The shivering gray of field and sky; The mists wrapt round the dying day The shroud poor days wear as they die: Poor day, die soon, who lived in vain, Who could not bring my Love again! Down in the garden breezes cold Dead rustling stalks blow chill between; Only, above the sodden mould, The wallflower wears his heartless green As though still reigned the rose-crowned year And summer and my Love were here. The mists creep close about the house, The empty house, all still and chill; The desolate and trembling boughs Scratch at the dripping window sill: Po...