Luck and Global Climate Change

Even if I weren't studying luck this year, I would have found it a strange coincidence that I read Kurt Vonnegut's Hocus Pocus and Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes from a Catastrophe during the same week. I didn't think the 1990 Vonnegut novel (not one of his best; Cat's Cradle is just too excellent, but very good none-the-less) and the 2006 journalistic account of climate change had anything in common when I picked them up in our book room. In fact, I picked up the Vonnegut just because it had so little in common with Field Notes*. Then BAM! Both books are chopped full a quotes and luck and life and we are responsible for the state of the environment and WHAT IN THE WORLD AM I GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

Of course, I haven't figured out the latter yet. Much as I like to think that being a biology professor can help, I read the finals from last week, and if the global responsibility message stuck as well as the content facts I presented, well, I'm an abject failure. And I'm taking off for a long distance drive across the country tomorrow. So I'll ask you to help me figure out what I can do about it and what you are doing as well. We must do something. Of course China must also do something, but it is irresponsible, if not outright wrong, to do nothing to solve a problem just because others are making it worse. In the meantime, I leave you these quotes.

The 2 prime movers in the Universe are Time and Luck. (H.P. p. 21)

So what indeed! The lesson I myself learned over and over again when teaching at the college and then the prison was the uselessness of information to most people except as entertainment. If facts weren't funny or scary, or couldn't make you rich, the heck with them. (H.P. p. 67)

She said, moreover, that perpetual motion was possible, if only scientists would work harder on it. (H.P. p. 130)

Bergeron's epitaph for the planet, I remember, which he said should be carved in big letters in a wall of the Grand Canyon for the flying-saucer people to find, was this: WE COULD HAVE SAVED IT BUT WE WERE TOO DOGGONE CHEAP. (H.P. p. 143)

The earth is a twitchy system. It's clear from the record that it does things that we don't fully understand. And we're not going to understand them in the time period we have to make these decisions. We just know they're there. We may say, 'We just don't want to do this to ourselves.' If it's a problem like that, then asking where it's practical or not is really not going to help very much. Whether it's practical depends on how much we give a damn. (Robert Socolow in F.N. p. 143-144).

Q. "How worried should we be? " A. "How lucky do you feel?" (The New Scientist as reported in F.N. p. 187).

Luck and resourcefulness, are of, course, essential human qualities. (F.N. p 187).

We're going to need both to keep this mess from being a horribly bigger mess than its already going to become. And yes, I know it snowed in New Orleans this week. That does not mean that this is not a problem.

*I've read surprisingly few books about global warming. I'd like to believe it's because I've seen the evidence. With a clear cause, a demonstrated mechanism, and clear results, I've not doubted that CO2 emissions can lead to a change in global temperature. But really, it's that the bad ones offend me and the good ones depress me.

Graphs from Davies, a forestry company's website. They are based on ice core data from antarctica.

Wicked or just out of luck?

I just finished reading Gregory Maguire's Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.

It was much better and much less fun than I had anticipated. The book takes itself very seriously. This is a family drama and psychological case study that happens to take place in a fantasy land. Fortunately, Maguire did his homework. While it has been years since I read the Oz books, I know them beyond the Wizard, and I was impressed to find information about tiktokism, Dr. Nikidik and the geography of Oz consistent with my memory. The discussions of good and evil, family and obligation, timing and the soul can be a bit much, but some are genuinely thought-provoking and while there is plenty of preaching going on, the take home message, that there is more to situations than one person can see, is made without preaching. Altogether, a much more complex, compelling story than I expected.

As far as being less fun than I expected: well, this is a book with lime green edges to the pages. A giant fanfare of a musical is based on it. I expected light-hearted. I expected silly. It isneither. I have not seen the musical, but it is almost certainly not based on the book. The premise of the book would make an outstanding musical. The book itself is trying to be a soulless place where nobody ever ever breaks out is song. Well worth reading, but not with the expectation of a goofy romp.

Britches Update

Three weeks in I weighed in at -3.6 pounds this morning. Only one of the three weeks have I come close to my 70,000 step goal. All of the usual excuses apply: cold slippery dark weather, travel, end-of-semester craziness and a yucky cold. This week I'm going to make it despite the weather and the finals.

Knock on Wood

I've always shied away from blaming bad luck as a causal agent. I've lived with and adored black cats, have no problem with 13, and cannot see how a tails up penny could possibly hurt my fortune. Bad things obviously happen, but they just happen; good things are luck or of God.

Yet I do not like to tempt fate. I really do knock on wood when I predict something good is going to happen (and I have a very brief flashback to my dancing days with Happy Cricket and our "Knock on Wood" dance). So join me in tapping on my oak door frames as I mention that this year finals week is going to go smoothly.

My first year teaching my grandfather died during finals week. Last year I had a miscarriage and surgery. Finals begin on Monday and this year I am going to grade exams, bake cookies, shop for Christmas presents and clean my house. That's all. Knock.

Prairie Dog Hits Both Coasts

Prairie Dog made it to the Pacific Ocean in Washington State last week. The Little Lion was a bit disappointed to find that going to the beach in November in her home state was not like going to Maui in March, but altogether my parents, the Mister, my brother and family, Prairie Dog and I had a good time. Of course, neither the Mister nor I took any photos, so you'll need to make do with images from the Prairie Dog's summer trip to Atlantic Canada.

The bridges in Washington are impressive compared to those in central WV, but prairie dog had been more impressed by the Confederation Bridge linking Prince Edward Island with New Brunswick.

Waves were much higher on the Pacific, but tidal changes more impressive at the Bay of Fundy.

Wines were tasty on both trips, with Prairie Dog here pointing out two critical lessons I should have learned before Nova Scotia. I don't like sparkling reds and I don't like sparkling wine from a can. A nasty head cold kept me from fully appreciating the wines last week, but Prairie Dog definitely liked the Oregon sparkling and special Thanksgiving Pinot Noirs.

Finally, the Prairie Dog was thankful on the Pacific trip because nobody trapped him in a lobster trap. Meanwhile, I was thankful to have a family I want to spend time with and the ability to spend some time with them, if never quite enough.

Too big for my britches

This is not about conceit. This is literal about not fitting into my pants. This is not about being pregnant. This is about being fat*.
As it is snowing giant flakes right now, I thought I should wear a pair of my warmer pants this morning. While I could zip them up, when I did ghastly mounds of flesh extruded from the waistband. It was not pretty. I weighed myself. Also not pretty.

In past years, my college has had a workplace fitness program to encourage employees not to gain weight over the holidays. Apparently it is not happening this year, but I clearly need some external motivation to do something about fitting into my pants. If I weigh less than I do now when I return for second semester, I will use the money I would have needed for new pants and treat myself to a pedicure and make a $50 donation to Feeding America (formerly America's Second Harvest) to help those who food issues are far different from mine. If I don't, I buy pants and still make the donation.

I'm asking help for two ways: 1) exercise with me and don't encourage me to overeat over the holidays and 2) encourage me by agreeing to help increase my donation to Feeding America if I succeed (something like $1 for every week I reach my goal of 70,000 steps or a $10 donation if I make my January goal). Feeding America is a great organization and I would love to think that I can somehow eat less so that others can eat more. Talk to me about the possibilities (even you lurkers).

The starting weight is 0.0 pounds.

*This is also not a call for you to tell me that I look fine. I know I look fine. I know that my blood pressure is good and that I exercise enough not to be terribly unfit. I know that my family will love me regardless of my size. I also know that this size is bigger than I have been in my life and I do not want to keep it.

Heirloom, Hellion, Earthman and Buster Midnight: Book Update

In my reading memoirs, this season might go down as "the fall I read Pride and Prejudice for two weeks straight" (which is saying something, because I re-read all the good parts in one evening). If I try harder, I can recall more of the books I've read recently, but by next year they will largely be forgotten, with the exception of The Professor's House, which received its own post earlier.

The Essential Earthman by Henry Mitchell is a collection of gardening essays for the D.C. area. It's fabulous because it is specific, opinionated and the gardening advice is spot on. It's also frustrating for the same reasons, as well as being 25 years out-of-date. I found myself wondering what good is it to read a witty comparison of rose varieties for D.C. gardens when I desire no more roses and could not acquire the listed cultivars if I did. And then I'd encounter gems like this:

If I may venture one suggestion to the May-struck gardener it is this: do not
allow the total space occupied by irises, peonies, roses, poppies,
forget-me-nots, violas, clematis and other glories of late May to occupy more
than 63 percent of the space. Unless, at an absolute maximum, they are allowed
to occupy 76 percent. It is unthinkable that they should in any case hog so much
as 94 percent of the arable area. Usually.

and know that I was listening to a kindred gardening spirit* and read on. Mitchell reminds me, in many ways, of the Scottish gardeners I worked with at Threave. That is mostly, although not unequivocally, a good thing. The book is highly recommended for Molly and any lurkers who garden in the mid-Atlantic region.

Tim Stark is a gardener as opinionated as Henry Mitchell, and perhaps as good a storyteller, but I had problems with Heirloom: Notes from an Accidental Tomato Farmer. I could never figure out just what Stark was trying to do. He might be trying to serve as the Anthony Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential) of the truck farming world, or the Amanda Hesser (Cooking for Mr. Latte). He might be trying to catch the "my parents made me crazy and now I'm a name-dropping foodie" wave or take full advantage of the locavore moment. If he's trying to do those things, he largely failed. I'd far rather read Bourdain, Hesser, Reischl, Pollan or Kingsolver. Still, he's succeeding at something. I read the bulk of the 227 page book in one sitting and while I only left with two concrete thoughts ( 1) I will never be a commercial farmer at any scale and 2) there are now five more restaurants on my fictitious list of the places I must eat at in New York City when I have unlimited money for a food trip there), I enjoyed it far more than that. Maybe I just wanted more about the tomatoes and fewer disjunct but overlapping "This American Life" pieces. I'd like you to read it and tell me your thoughts, but I'm not sending you out to buy it.

I had the feeling that Stark assumed his readers were provincial New Yorkers and he was out to shatter our stereotypes by suggesting that the people who drive tomatoes in from Pennsylvania are people too. A very very different book, Christine Flynn's Hannah and the Hellion suffers from a similar problem. The author of the Silhouette Special Edition from 1998 seems to want to shatter stereotypes of small towns (one can find romance in a small town! not everyone in a small town is nice!) through a story which relies on more stereotypes (in a small town everyone knows everyone and opinions cannot change). Still, it was fun reading for an afternoon and if any of my readers is near a library sale at which they could buy a bag of assorted trash romance for a buck, I'd be grateful as my supply of such pulp is running low.

Stereotyping of the audience seems to be a common problem in my recent reading. The narrator of Sandra Dallas's Buster Midnight's Cafe starts out the book mocking reporters who come to Butte, MT to interview the locals, "then they go back and write us up like we're cuter than a bug in lace pants. Local color, it's called." At the end of the first chapter, when it became clear that Sandra Dallas (who lives in Denver) was going to use a down-homey cuter than a bug in lace pants narrator to add local color to the whole book, even when the narrator mocked the practice, I cast the book aside for a few weeks. I returned to read it quickly and found it overall charming with an interesting unresolved plot twist and an unexpected punch at the ending. I've read several of Dallas's other books (Persian Pickle Club, Alice's Tulips, Diary of Mattie Spencer) and liked them all more, perhaps because of the quilting connection. Still I'd recommend Buster Midnight for my mother, Prairie Quilter, and Lindsey and I'll read Tallgrass someday.

"He think someone might mistake him for a cowboy. But anybody who knows cowboys knows yellow scarves are bad luck," (pg. 5)

*If anyone has digital photos of my peony parties, I would love them. Such an image was supposed to go here, but I appear not to have any.