The Nature of Things

  A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : Ruby-throated Hummingbirds continue passing through in migration, but I've still only seen immatures and females like this one - no adult males yet.  *~*~*~* Do you live in a "fun state" ? (I note that Texas is #7 on the list.) *~*~*~* Wildlife populations are collapsing in many areas.  *~*~*~* That collapse may be exacerbated by the fact that Earth's vital signs have reached record extremes. *~*~*~* Meanwhile, in the Sahara Desert, a rare deluge of rain has fallen.  *~*~*~* Back in this country, the Supreme Court has refused to block new Biden administration efforts to address climate change and air pollution. *~*~*~* A UN biodiversity summit in Colombia will assess the progress made on countries' promises to help save the developing world's ecosystems . *~*~*~* The Northern Lights have put on quite a show this week. *~*~*~* The highest peak in the Great Smoky Mountains had been named aft

A new book by one of my favorite authors will definitely cause me to cast aside my planned reading list and jump right on it! So it was with Elizabeth Strout's latest, Tell Me Everything . I regret nothing. Strout takes us back to Crosby, Maine, to check on some of the wonderful characters we have met in her other books. There's the iconic Olive Kitteridge , now in her nineties and living in a retirement community at the edge of town. There's Lucy Barton who now lives with her ex-husband, William , in a house by the sea. And there is Bob Burgess who has developed an abiding friendship with Lucy. The two of them go on walks where they talk about their fears and regrets and how they came to be who they are.  The first lines of the book introduce Bob:  "This is the story of Bob Burgess, a tall, heavyset man who lives in the town of Crosby, Maine, and he is sixty-five years old at the time that we are speaking of him. Bob has a big heart but he does not know that about hi

So Han Kang has won the Nobel Prize for Literature . I read her book, The Vegetarian , back in 2017 and gave it five stars. In 2019, I read The White Book by her. Also five stars! I very seldom have five-star reads so obviously I was impressed, just like the Nobel judges. I see she has a new book, We Do Not Part , that will be out in translation next January. I'm putting it on my read list now.

This book has three timelines, 2012, 1983, and 1950, and the narrative goes back and forth among the three. The setting of the story is an old tuberculosis sanatorium in northern Iceland and it involves the murder of a nurse and the apparent suicide (or maybe it, too, was murder) of the chief physician in 1983.  In 2012, a student named Helgi who is a lover of whodunits, has returned to Iceland after finishing his studies in the United Kingdom. He begins work on his Master of Arts dissertation on criminology and takes as his subject the murder and suicide (or possibly second murder) that took place at the sanatorium back in 1983.  The murder was never actually solved. The detective assigned to the case, a man named Sverrir, was eager to close it as soon as possible and he arrested the facility's caretaker on the flimsiest of evidence. Detective Hulda Hermannsdóttir had misgivings about her superior's action but did not have the authority to prevent it. A few days later the chie

October is usually one of the most pleasant months of the year for us here near the Gulf Coast and so it is (so far) this year. Beautiful blue skies, goldenrod, gold and scarlet fallen leaves, and temperatures that generally top out in the high eighties Fahrenheit. It is, indeed, the best of times. October's Bright Blue Weather by Helen Hunt Jackson O suns and skies and clouds of June, And flowers of June together, Ye cannot rival for one hour October's bright blue weather; When loud the bumblebee makes haste, Belated, thriftless vagrant, And goldenrod is dying fast, And lanes with grapes are fragrant; When gentians roll their fingers tight To save them for the morning, And chestnuts fall from satin burrs Without a sound of warning; When on the ground red apples lie In piles like jewels shining, And redder still on old stone walls Are leaves of woodbine twining; When all the lovely wayside things Their white-winged seeds are sowing, And in the fields still green and fair, Late

  A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : The Eastern Bluebird  is an always welcome visitor to my yard. *~*~*~* It's that time again - time for Project Feederwatch . Sign up to document the birds around your yard and contribute to the accumulation of knowledge about their ranges. The count begins on November 1. *~*~*~* Humanity has a finite carbon budget and wildfires around the world are burning right through it. In South America, huge tracts of land are being decimated by fire and the skies are shrouded by smoke. *~*~*~* Meanwhile, the southwestern United States is being scorched by an exceptional heat wave. Temperatures as high as 117 degrees F. have been recorded. *~*~*~* Rachel Carson's Silent Spring has had a profound effect on how the public views chemicals , creating, in some instances, an irrational fear of them.  *~*~*~* Colombian environment minister Susana Muhamad has been called the "Frida Kahlo of environmental geopolitics."