Two Women and Their Extraordinary Journey Across Antarctica
In late 2000 and early 2001, these two women, an American (Ann) and a Norwegian (Liv) trudge, ski and wind-sail across Antarctica, pulling sleds behind them loaded with all their gear. They were well-prepared, both having had previous polar adventures, and very fit and strong. Obviously, they lived to tell the story.
It cost a LOT of money, a good bit of it to pay for a plane to fly them from South Africa to Antarctica, and for a helicopter and ship for take-out near McMurdo. They endured as they figured out their sails, had setbacks and mishaps, were alternately exhausted, elated, discouraged, depressed, jubilant and ultimately successful. One of the cool things they did was keep in touch via satellite phone with schools all over the world. Thousands of kids vicariously went along on their trip.
"The terrain Ann and Liv would head into for the second leg of the trip was new for both of them. Certain portions of their intended route had existed for thousands of years untouched by man. They would be the first expedition to descend the Shackleton Glacier. For both women, this second leg was the true milestone of the journey. "
At the research station at the South Pole, the staff were "friendly, but they are not allowed to give you 'official' help. Ann and I still slept in our tent there, and our use of the showers and cafeteria was as guests of individuals there, not as part of South Pole policy. These rules came about because the station did not wish to be accused of helping too much or unequally. And, mainly, it did not want to become a Motel 6 for explorers."
"My heart was pounding and I felt almost in shock from my own fear. I had no idea what she was so wound up about. I would find out later that she was warning me not to push the sleds from behind; had I shoved too forcefully getting out the crevasse, I would have pushed her forward into a crevasse in front of her."
They were enormously gratified to be allowed to visit Shackleton's hut..."like a museum, perfectly preserved just as he left it. Canisters of cocoa and food sit on the shelves, along with shards of pottery...A row of boots and shoes are lined up near the stove..." Which, for them, was like touching the hem of his garment.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Book: Little Century by Anna Keesey
This is a grand, old-fashioned novel with a heroine named Esther which, of course, I liked. It is set in the high Oregon desert about 100 years ago and in large part is a story about the conflicts sheepmen and cattlemen. The nearest town is Century with Klamath Falls, Prineville and Redmond to the west. Esther comes out on the train from Chicago after the death of her mother to connect with Pick, a distant relative, with hopes of starting a new and different life. She is young and has a sense of adventure.
Esther is persuaded to file a claim near Pick's land. She will have prove up by living on it, which she does, in an old cabin on the shores of a little lake.
And the story evolves from there as the social fabric of Century and the neighboring ranches and those who work both in town and on the land is examined. The reader leans of their blessings and tragedies, their goodness and evil, their work and ease, along with lovely descriptions of weather and geography and many credible characters who move in a dynamic dance through this good novel.
"Pick accompanies Esther to the cabin turnoff. There he polished the pommel of his saddle with his thumb. 'I don't have any explanation. I used to think, she's doing this because she's an Indian, she's doing that because she's an Indian. Sometimes she looked strange to me. Once, when she was sleeping, I measured her face with my finger. Maybe it was too wide, or her nose too short. Of course I couldn't tell anything by it. It was wrong of me. '"
"Joe doesn't like the piling up of the words into great heaps. He tells Esther that reading Whitman is like watching someone glut on a large meal and then pick the debris out of his beard. Esther herself likes the poems, and privately she thinks that someone who keeps his store the way Joe Peaselee does should think twice before objecting to someone else's debris."
These are a couple of random passages. It helps to have seen and driven through this country, but not necessary to appreciate the fine writing in this debut novel.
Esther is persuaded to file a claim near Pick's land. She will have prove up by living on it, which she does, in an old cabin on the shores of a little lake.
And the story evolves from there as the social fabric of Century and the neighboring ranches and those who work both in town and on the land is examined. The reader leans of their blessings and tragedies, their goodness and evil, their work and ease, along with lovely descriptions of weather and geography and many credible characters who move in a dynamic dance through this good novel.
"Pick accompanies Esther to the cabin turnoff. There he polished the pommel of his saddle with his thumb. 'I don't have any explanation. I used to think, she's doing this because she's an Indian, she's doing that because she's an Indian. Sometimes she looked strange to me. Once, when she was sleeping, I measured her face with my finger. Maybe it was too wide, or her nose too short. Of course I couldn't tell anything by it. It was wrong of me. '"
"Joe doesn't like the piling up of the words into great heaps. He tells Esther that reading Whitman is like watching someone glut on a large meal and then pick the debris out of his beard. Esther herself likes the poems, and privately she thinks that someone who keeps his store the way Joe Peaselee does should think twice before objecting to someone else's debris."
These are a couple of random passages. It helps to have seen and driven through this country, but not necessary to appreciate the fine writing in this debut novel.
Book: Pass the Butterworms by Tim Cahill
Most books nowadays have a subtitle also and so it is for Butterworms: Remote Journeys Oddly Rendered
I really, really enjoy what Tim Cahill does with his penchant for describing trips to here and there, to Mongolia, Alaska, the Amazon river basin, New Guinea, Honduras....
His tales are very funny, full of adventure, self-deprecating; he is inquisitive, sensitive, courageous, willing to try nearly anything, anywhere.
In a long chapter, he goes to Honduras with a guy who is scouting possible eco-tourism venues.
"And here we had the problem and paradox of eco-terroism in a clamshell. Git rid of the local people, who, it was clear, were overfishing the reef, thereby raising property values of the surrounding islands, which were, by and large, owned by wealthy foreigners...The argument is that traditional fishermen could be retrained to make good money busing tables at the luxury resorts....five dollars for a few found shells strung together with a length of discard fishing line would feed the Garifuna woman's family for a week. Eco-toursim. Of a type."
"And yet...the poverty in San Jose could make your heart ache in dozens of small ways every day. Look at the children...There was no dentist anywhere nearby, no money to get one up to the village, and no real understanding of the techniques of oral hygiene. When the children, these beautiful children smiled up at you, their mouths were full of rotting black stumps. So, yes, Peggy supposed, you could put in a visitor's center, charge a small fee of each trekker, and pay for monthly visits from a dentist. Thing was: Where did something like that end?"
He goes to Utah to learn to ride a horse more proficiently in The Purple Sage, at 180 Miles an Hour.
"We weren't on any trail but were galloping at 85 over a gently rising plain littered with sage so thick that if I fell off, no part of my body would actually hit the ground."
He scuba dives in Bonaire. "I stop to examine a truly alien being: the peacock flounder is a flat gold-and-purple-spotted fish, quite round and about the size of a 33 rpm record. The creature was born a symmetrical fish, but a few days after its birth, one eye migrated to the other. The fish swims a few inches about a sandy bottom, looking up at me, mildly, with two closely space extraterrestrial eyes."
He tells of wild sea-kayaking in The Tsunami Rangers. Totally serious wild sea-kayaking. "It is reasonable to assume--as the Coast Guard does--that a man paddling a small kayak through fifty-foot spumes of spray exploding off immovable rock is a man about to die. So Soares camouflaged the pads to prevent rescue attempts. He wanted to put himself in precisely those areas where small boat disintegrate, where men are picked up by the sea and hurled into jagged rocks, where bad timing and inferior equipment are worth a man 's life"
Awaiting his next book.....
I really, really enjoy what Tim Cahill does with his penchant for describing trips to here and there, to Mongolia, Alaska, the Amazon river basin, New Guinea, Honduras....
His tales are very funny, full of adventure, self-deprecating; he is inquisitive, sensitive, courageous, willing to try nearly anything, anywhere.
In a long chapter, he goes to Honduras with a guy who is scouting possible eco-tourism venues.
"And here we had the problem and paradox of eco-terroism in a clamshell. Git rid of the local people, who, it was clear, were overfishing the reef, thereby raising property values of the surrounding islands, which were, by and large, owned by wealthy foreigners...The argument is that traditional fishermen could be retrained to make good money busing tables at the luxury resorts....five dollars for a few found shells strung together with a length of discard fishing line would feed the Garifuna woman's family for a week. Eco-toursim. Of a type."
"And yet...the poverty in San Jose could make your heart ache in dozens of small ways every day. Look at the children...There was no dentist anywhere nearby, no money to get one up to the village, and no real understanding of the techniques of oral hygiene. When the children, these beautiful children smiled up at you, their mouths were full of rotting black stumps. So, yes, Peggy supposed, you could put in a visitor's center, charge a small fee of each trekker, and pay for monthly visits from a dentist. Thing was: Where did something like that end?"
He goes to Utah to learn to ride a horse more proficiently in The Purple Sage, at 180 Miles an Hour.
"We weren't on any trail but were galloping at 85 over a gently rising plain littered with sage so thick that if I fell off, no part of my body would actually hit the ground."
He scuba dives in Bonaire. "I stop to examine a truly alien being: the peacock flounder is a flat gold-and-purple-spotted fish, quite round and about the size of a 33 rpm record. The creature was born a symmetrical fish, but a few days after its birth, one eye migrated to the other. The fish swims a few inches about a sandy bottom, looking up at me, mildly, with two closely space extraterrestrial eyes."
He tells of wild sea-kayaking in The Tsunami Rangers. Totally serious wild sea-kayaking. "It is reasonable to assume--as the Coast Guard does--that a man paddling a small kayak through fifty-foot spumes of spray exploding off immovable rock is a man about to die. So Soares camouflaged the pads to prevent rescue attempts. He wanted to put himself in precisely those areas where small boat disintegrate, where men are picked up by the sea and hurled into jagged rocks, where bad timing and inferior equipment are worth a man 's life"
Awaiting his next book.....
Monday, February 18, 2013
Book: Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
I have always liked Barbara Kingsolver's writings and this book didn't change my mind. I decided when I finished it that I like 90%, maybe 95%.
There are two main threads running through the novel. One is climate warming; the other is life in Appalachia when money and opportunities are scarce.
The heroine is Dellarobia Turnbow. She has two small children, a kind, stolid husband who works whenever he can but for low wages. Money is always scarce, and they live in a precarious financial condition, making do, with money and bills never not a concern. Dellarobia does smoke and her husband, Cub, does grab a McDonald's meal occasionally while working, but they both feel guilty about spending money for these small pleasures; Dellarobia is always trying to quit smoking.
So one day Monarch butterflies stop in their Tennessee valley instead of moving on down to Mexico. Millions of Monarchs hanging from the trees in huge clusters, filling the skies. It is a phenomenon that changes Dellarobia's life.
The writing is rich with details of lives spent just getting through a day, a week, a season. But people persevere, as her community and her in-laws have done for decades, and there is a social fabric that sustains them, with neighbors, church, farming, extended families, the lack of options accepted.
A team of scientists comes to study the Monarchs. There are some absolutely lovely passages about Dellarobia's small son and his curiosity about and interaction with these people, their methods and equipment and their general willingness to give back to Dellarobia and her family when she facilitates their endeavor.
There are vignettes of sheep raising, of weather, of a second-hand store in the next town, of Dellarobia's kids, her husband, her mother-in-law. There is the real possibility their land will be logged; there are the protestors and workers who come and get involved, or just come to see the spectacle of the butterflies.
Through it all, Dellarobia is real, honest, conflicted...and this is what Kingsolver does so well: describe what must be her neighbors and their lives since she also lives in southern Appalachia. I thought that was worth reading the book even without the global warming part. She is at times critical in general (of local educational resources for instance) but sympathetic in particular, showing how difficult it is for people with few available jobs and second-rate schools to make significant changes. It is definitely a social study.
So how to make global warming also real? how to change minds? how to present the irrefutable science that the earth is changing, with implications for all of us? and convince people to accept this? In this regard, Beautiful Flight tries, although, truthfully, it remains an ephemeral concept for most of Dellarobia's social network in her tiny town of Feathertown, just like the butterflies.
Ambitious, like An Inconvenient Truth.....
Book: Howard Zinn by Martin Duberman
A Life on the Left
A biography of Howard Zinn. The last sentence in this book pretty much says it all about HZ: "Howard always stayed in character--and that character remained centered on a capacious solidarity with the least fortunate."
He died in January of 2010, while visiting in California. He was to give a few lectures and visit two of his grandchildren, still vital and engaged at age 86, but had a heart attack while swimming in a motel pool, quickly and without suffering. A good death....
He was a man of courage and principle who never stopped fighting for what he perceived as gross social and economic injustices. He also persisted in a life-long vilification of the militaristic posture of the US. His activism continued throughout his life, as he publicly protested segregation, unfair labor practices and the war in Vietnam. He was also a college professor, an author and playwright, teaching at Spelman and then Boston University where he was always at odds with John Silber, the president of BU. They became "instant antagonists" but were both "articulate, intelligent and energetic." Their clashes and philosophical differences are detailed and illustrative of how stalwart Zinn was while holding firm in his beliefs, not giving up, not backing down.
His best-known book is The People's History of the United States. Howard wanted to tell the stories of the common people, those stories not always "noble, but real.... the Cherokees, black soldiers in the nation's wars, sharecroppers, Chinese laborers, landless farmers, and the radical Wobblies [IWW organizers]". The People's History had (and continues to have) mixed reviews, the biggest criticism being he that Howard was simplistic, with a black and white approach to classes of people, governments, politicians, ideas. When he was interested, he was passionate and deeply committed, but he also ignored major social issues like feminism and gay rights. Still, he had a lot on mind throughout his long life. He was very active in the Civil Right's movement, and he never wavered in his positions against war and the United States' involvement in third world countries WHEN the well-being (materialistic / access to resources) of the US was threatened.
The People's History sold over a million copies and eventually premiered (as The People Speak) at Jazz at Lincoln Center on 11/19/2009, and then on the History Channel on 12/13/2009 "with 9 million people watching." Morgan Freeman, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan Marisa Tomei, Viggo Mortensen, Matt Damon....among other actors were committed to and participated in this project. How gratifying it must have felt to Howard to see this. He died only a few weeks later.
He was married to Roz, a life-long love and a remarkable woman in her own right, and they raised two children. But Howard did not want his private life made public, and in his 80s took pains to remove from his archives anything that pertained to personal matters. The author did glean some tidbits from friends and others who knew him, but most of the book is about Howard's tireless efforts to help the disenfranchised, to further causes of justice for all.
A biography of Howard Zinn. The last sentence in this book pretty much says it all about HZ: "Howard always stayed in character--and that character remained centered on a capacious solidarity with the least fortunate."
He died in January of 2010, while visiting in California. He was to give a few lectures and visit two of his grandchildren, still vital and engaged at age 86, but had a heart attack while swimming in a motel pool, quickly and without suffering. A good death....
He was a man of courage and principle who never stopped fighting for what he perceived as gross social and economic injustices. He also persisted in a life-long vilification of the militaristic posture of the US. His activism continued throughout his life, as he publicly protested segregation, unfair labor practices and the war in Vietnam. He was also a college professor, an author and playwright, teaching at Spelman and then Boston University where he was always at odds with John Silber, the president of BU. They became "instant antagonists" but were both "articulate, intelligent and energetic." Their clashes and philosophical differences are detailed and illustrative of how stalwart Zinn was while holding firm in his beliefs, not giving up, not backing down.
His best-known book is The People's History of the United States. Howard wanted to tell the stories of the common people, those stories not always "noble, but real.... the Cherokees, black soldiers in the nation's wars, sharecroppers, Chinese laborers, landless farmers, and the radical Wobblies [IWW organizers]". The People's History had (and continues to have) mixed reviews, the biggest criticism being he that Howard was simplistic, with a black and white approach to classes of people, governments, politicians, ideas. When he was interested, he was passionate and deeply committed, but he also ignored major social issues like feminism and gay rights. Still, he had a lot on mind throughout his long life. He was very active in the Civil Right's movement, and he never wavered in his positions against war and the United States' involvement in third world countries WHEN the well-being (materialistic / access to resources) of the US was threatened.
The People's History sold over a million copies and eventually premiered (as The People Speak) at Jazz at Lincoln Center on 11/19/2009, and then on the History Channel on 12/13/2009 "with 9 million people watching." Morgan Freeman, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan Marisa Tomei, Viggo Mortensen, Matt Damon....among other actors were committed to and participated in this project. How gratifying it must have felt to Howard to see this. He died only a few weeks later.
He was married to Roz, a life-long love and a remarkable woman in her own right, and they raised two children. But Howard did not want his private life made public, and in his 80s took pains to remove from his archives anything that pertained to personal matters. The author did glean some tidbits from friends and others who knew him, but most of the book is about Howard's tireless efforts to help the disenfranchised, to further causes of justice for all.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Book: Budding Prospects by T.C. Boyle
Some of Boyle's novels are worth reading and some aren't. This one isn't, although the writing is deft and the story moderately amusing. I did finish it, but put aside another Boyle novel (Talk, Talk) after reading 20 pages. Then I read San Miguel (report to follow) which was a wonderful story.
Boyle certainly can write, even if some of it is drivel.
In Budding Prospects, three friends agree to plant and tend a crop of marijuana for a share of the profits. The farm is near Willits in the coastal mountains of northern California. They live in a ramshackle broken-down building for months, fearful of discovery by the law or the locals.
They have great expectations.....of course.
"In June, the weather altered abruptly. Whereas before we'd shivered through a perpetual riveting downpour that made every moment of hole-digging or fence-stringing a curse and a trial, now suddenly we blistered under an unmoving sadistic sun. It was as if we'd bee magically transported--house, weeds, garbage and all--from the windward coast of Scotland to the desert outside Tucson....Lizards appeared from nowhere, as if they'd been conjured from the air, hummingbirds hung like mobiles over the bells of flowers, streams fell back and left their banks exposed like toothless gums. Mud caked, dried, fragmented to dust. The arid season was upon us."
"Dried, that is deprived of the water weight that composed seventy percent of its bulk, the crop took on an increasingly withered and reduced look. Leaves shriveled buds shrank. Plants that had been big as Christmas trees now seemed as light an insubstantial as paper kites."
Maybe if you've tried growing pot for profit, you might like this book more than I did. And you know who you are...
Book: A Memoir of Misfortune by Su Xiaokang
A sad story....written by the husband of a woman named Fu Li who was hurt very badly in a car accident near Niagara Falls on June 4, 1993. She suffered a traumatic brain injury. (I just thought how this story must be similar to Gabriel Gifford's...how one moment changes lives forever.)
The author had fled China after the horror of Tiananmen Square. He was considered a "criminal" as he had written "the script for a six-part television series, River Elegy, which probed so deeply into the core of Chinese beliefs and values that it galvanized the entire country in an explosion of intellectual debate."
He left behind his wife and young son Su Dan in China and came to the United States. They joined him a few years later and then the accident happened. This book is a love story, a grieving, a search for what might help Fu Li; it is a tale of regrets and recriminations, written in Chinese and translated into English, and most of the references are to Chinese writers and poets.
Meanwhile his son becomes an American teenager: "Fortunately, the kid can still speak Chinese with a perfect accent, thought he slips into English grammatical forms, which makes it sound weird. He's not going to walk out. After all, his mother is there. He surfs on the Internet, has his own website and home page, and calls himself Zen in that world. I asked him why Zen. He said no reason, he just liked the word. I wanted to ask him the meaning of Zen; then I thought to myself, Why bother? Possibly it has something to do with the Qigong and karate he started practicing after the accident. An unconscious reaching out for the East, I guess."
The writing is the inner dialogue of the author as he perseveres in his family's misfortune...
The author had fled China after the horror of Tiananmen Square. He was considered a "criminal" as he had written "the script for a six-part television series, River Elegy, which probed so deeply into the core of Chinese beliefs and values that it galvanized the entire country in an explosion of intellectual debate."
He left behind his wife and young son Su Dan in China and came to the United States. They joined him a few years later and then the accident happened. This book is a love story, a grieving, a search for what might help Fu Li; it is a tale of regrets and recriminations, written in Chinese and translated into English, and most of the references are to Chinese writers and poets.
Meanwhile his son becomes an American teenager: "Fortunately, the kid can still speak Chinese with a perfect accent, thought he slips into English grammatical forms, which makes it sound weird. He's not going to walk out. After all, his mother is there. He surfs on the Internet, has his own website and home page, and calls himself Zen in that world. I asked him why Zen. He said no reason, he just liked the word. I wanted to ask him the meaning of Zen; then I thought to myself, Why bother? Possibly it has something to do with the Qigong and karate he started practicing after the accident. An unconscious reaching out for the East, I guess."
The writing is the inner dialogue of the author as he perseveres in his family's misfortune...
Book: Letter from Point Clear by Dennis McFarland
Three siblings, Bonnie, Morris and Ellen, connect to sort things out after the death of their father. Of course there are surprises, the biggest one is that Bonnie, the younger wilder sister, has married a charismatic young preacher man and the two of them are now living in the ancestral home on the coast in Alabama.
Ellen and Morris both live in New England and have relatively settled and orderly lives, but they travel to Point Clear, Alabama when they receive the startling news that Bonnie has married.
Morris is homosexual, and of course Bonnie's new husband (his name is actually Pastor) knows this isn't right....
Good characters....nice vignettes of life in the deep South.
Ellen and Morris both live in New England and have relatively settled and orderly lives, but they travel to Point Clear, Alabama when they receive the startling news that Bonnie has married.
Morris is homosexual, and of course Bonnie's new husband (his name is actually Pastor) knows this isn't right....
Good characters....nice vignettes of life in the deep South.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)