Cowboys and the Internet

Since this blog is called "Reader's Corner", most of the things I post will be book reviews. But occasionally I will post things that I've come across that I find interesting, or write about something I've been thinking about, that have to do with the world of books and reading

Recently I read an article at Economist.com called "Why Cowboys Read" that was complimentary to libraries in this internet era, but one of the things that surprised me in the article was the fact that Wyoming residents checked out nine books in 2005-2006 compared with an average of five in California and two in Washington, D.C. I wondered how Kentucky measured up to these numbers. After doing a google search and coming across the National Center for Education Statistics, I found out that Kentucky ties with California (not as good as Wyoming, but not as poor as Washington, D.C. either). For years I have kept a list of the number of books I have read in a year. During good years, I have read as many as 51, and in poor years I have read as little as 15. That's probably better than some and a whole lot worse than others. But I would certainly be more comfortable in my profession and also with the country in general if these statistics were at least in the double digits for a year's time.

Another interesting thing I came across lately was an article at the Atlantic.com called "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" This one made me really stop and think, because as a Librarian I use Google a lot (just like I'm sure the average internet user does). No wonder we all love Google. It gives us what we really want: an end to our search, our questions answered, instant knowledge. It gives us the instant gratification we all crave. But Nicholas Carr says it exacts a price, and I think he makes a lot of valid points. See what you think.

Black Belt Patriotism: How to Reawaken America by Chuck Norris

I have always loved Chuck Norris, even before he became fodder for a book called "The Truth About Chuck Norris: 400 Facts About the World's Greatest Human" by Ian Spector. I'm sure you've heard the jokes going around the Internet: Guns don't kill people, Chuck Norris does; Chuck Norris can eat just one Lay's potato chip; Chuck Norris's blood type is D.O.A.; and Superman owns a pair of Chuck Norris's pajamas. But Chuck is much more than a 6 time world karate champion who retired undefeated. He's an actor, political activist, and humanitarian. In 1988 he wrote his autobiography "The Secret of Inner Strength" that became a New York Times best seller and then followed it up with "The Secret Power Within".

In this book Chuck outlines what he thinks are the 8 most important challenges we face as a country

1) No national legacy
2) No control over spending
3) Not enough border control
4) No moral compass
5) Not enough value for human life
6) No future for children
7) No traditional values
8) No might to fight

He has appendices that include the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Ten Commandments.

In ten practical chapters he gives us insights from our founding fathers applying that wisdom to the problems of today. Among other things, he says we need to recall the purpose of government, return to a pay-as-you-go government, implement a fair tax (the ultimate economic stimulus package), cultivate a culture of peace to curb spending, secure and protect our borders, reclaim the value of human life, protect and reconnect our youth, honor and care for the family, educate ourself on health and nutrition so we will be fit for the fight, and finally reawaken the American Dream. Sounds like a pretty attractive proposal to me. Why don't you see what you think by picking up a copy of this book.

Brother to Dragons by Robert Penn Warren

[There are several versions of this book. The version I read is from 1979]

[The title is a Biblical reference, Job, 30:29, listing his reasons to mourn: "I am a brother to dragons and a companion to owls."]

The year is 1811, "annus mirabilis," the year during which history records strange happenings. Floods change the courses of rivers, create lakes, sickness strikes the valley dwellers, squirrels migrate in huge numbers, pigeons scour the grain fields, a total eclipse of the sun, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes rock the county. And in December of 1811 a savage crime was committed. A negro slave was brutally murdered. The perpetrators of this crime were the nephews of Thomas Jefferson--sons of his sister Lucy. Lilburne and Isham had the slave tied to a table in the meat-house and hacked him to death with an axe, casting his mutilated body parts into a roaring fire before the eyes of the other slaves. The supposed reason for this brutality was that the slave had broken a favorite pitcher of Lilburne and Isham’s dead mother. Eventually news spread about the murder (a fire-blackened bone was discovered, having been sniffed out and gnawed by a curious dog) and the brothers were arrested and indicted. After they were released on bail, Lilburne convinced his younger brother to engage in a suicide pact, according to which each brother would fire a fatal shot simultaneously into the other. Things did not go according to plan, and Lilburne was killed, while his brother survived unscathed. Isham was taken into custody again, but escaped and fled before being brought to trial.

Jefferson, despite the fact that the act was common knowledge, apparently could not bring himself to comment on or even acknowledge it, possibly because he could not accept that he, such a wealthy, prominent leader, could carry within his blood the capacity to perform such evil.

Robert Penn Warren in this long narrative poem examines the fact that while we are capable of great good, we are also capable of despicable evil. The events leading up to the murder, and the more astonishing aftermath, provide the framework for the poem. He uses multiple voices in his poem in order to give the reader a sense of fairness and lend more authority to his text. So we have a list of characters that includes Thomas Jefferson (the third President of the United States), Meriwether Lewis (with Clark, the co-commander of the Voyage of Discovery), Colonel Charles Lewis (Husband of Lucy Jefferson), Lucy Jefferson (sister of Thomas Jefferson), Lilburne Lewis (son of Charles and Lucy), Letitia Lewis (wife to Lilburne), Aunt Cat (a slave in the household of Charles Lewis, and black Mammy to Lilburne), Brother (to Letitia Lewis), Isham Lewis (brother to Lilburne), and John (the young slave). Warren himself is also a participant in the story as he moves in and out of the text contributing to the dialogue. Instead of setting the poem in 1811 and making it a traditional historical narrative, he has a set of characters meeting at a place and time not named to try and make sense of their actions.

Warren alludes to a human nature at odds with Jefferson's vision of perfectible humanity. But it is the inherited violence of slavery that profoundly impacts everybody in the poem, black and white. The ramifications of slavery are so widespread that all the poems figures are somehow complicit in the brutal act. And by inference that complicity extends to every reader.

This narrative poem says a lot about the human condition and the nature of the human heart. It's an extraordinary book.

Aunt Jane of Kentucky by Eliza Calvert Hall

"Eliza Calvert Hall" was the pen name of Mrs. Eliza (Lida) Calvert Obenchain (1856-1935), a native of Bowling Green, Kentucky. This book is well known for it's gentle folk wisdom, provided by an elderly fictional Aunt Jane, a plain old Kentucky woman. But it is more than a collection of reminiscences about the region of Western Kentucky where the author was born and raised. The author worked hard to win rights for women in the areas of property ownership and divorce.

The first entry is called Sally Ann's Experience. It pits a group of women against the organized church. It was first published in Cosmopolitan in 1898. This one piece was popular in Chautauqua performances in the early twentieth century and even prompted Teddy Roosevelt to say in a speech in Lansing, Michigan in May of 1908 "I cordially recommend the first chapter of Aunt Jane of Kentucky as a tract in all families where the menfolk tend to selfish or thoughtless or overbearing disregard to the rights of their womenfolk."

These stories recall Sunday dinners, church meetings and county fair competitions and her lively and folksy comments are often sly comments on the society of her time. Her insights on women's lives and work are showcased in these clever tales. As an example, at one point in her essay "The New Organ" after an old yellow rooster flutters up to the door-step and crows ominously Aunt Jane says "There, now! You hear that?...There's some folks that gives right up and looks for sickness or death or bad news every time a rooster crows in the door. But I never let such things bother me. The Bible says that nobody knows what a day may bring forth, and if I don't know, it ain't likely my old yeller rooster does."

Humor plays a big part in this book and the tales are delightfully told. She uses eccentric characters to illustrate simple values, and she does it in such a way that no one would take offense. It is comforting to go back in time to a community where everybody knew one another and people worked together despite their differences. That is part of the charm of this book. This is what accounts also for the popularity of books like Jan Karon's The Mitford series.

In a story called Mary Andrews' Dinner-Party the character Aunt Jane says "He preached about Nebuchadnezzar and the image he saw in his dream with the head of gold and the feet of clay. And he said that every human being was like that image; there was gold and there was clay in every one of us. Part of us was human and part was divine. Part of us was earthly like the clay, and part heavenly like the gold. And he said that in some folks you couldn't see anything but the clay, but that the gold was there, and if you looked long enough you'd find it. And some folks, he said, looked like they was all gold, but somewhere or other there was the clay, too, and nobody was so good but what he had his secret sins and open faults. And he said sin was jest another name for ignorance, and that Christ knew this when he prayed on the cross, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' He said everybody would do right, if they knew what was right to do, and that the thing for us to do was to look for the gold and not the clay in other folks. For the gold was the part that would never die, and the clay was jest the mortal part that we dropped when this mortal shall have put on immortality."

I think the character Aunt Jane was presented as loving life and enjoying it and not just enduring it, and she seemed to live a very happy and fulfilled life, and believed that there was value in all spheres of women's life and work. I think that is a very endearing lesson for all of us and that is why this book is popular still to this day.

Clear Springs by Bobbie Ann Mason

In this wonderful memoir, Bobbie Ann Mason writes about her family (the narrative of three generations) on their farm in Clear Springs. Water was right under the ground, that's why they called it Clear Springs.

The land is part of the Jackson Purchase of 1818 when Andrew Jackson signed a treaty with the Chickasaw Indian nation and the states of Kentucky and Tennessee were enlarged by approximately 2,000 and 6,000 square miles respectively. About half of the settlers were of English/Scots/Irish descent.

The charm of this book is that Mason is such a talented writer that when she concentrates her attention on her home place and home folks the lessons learned there are surprisingly applicable to the world beyond those borders.

Bobbie highlights a way of life that is fast disappearing. She talks about her ancestors being lured over the ocean to America by what she calls false advertising: "The Promised Land". Once here, they discovered they had to work hard, clearing rocks and stumps, raising livestock, killing hogs, breaking new ground, gathering dried corn in the fall, herding cows with dogs, churning, quilting, etc. Bobbie's Mother uses idioms that are dying out along with those small family farms.

Bobbie's generation left home and abandoned the old ways. They succumbed to the highway calling and the radio calling. They wanted to go places and find out what was there. They didn't want to be slaves to nature. They had found out that maintaining the Garden of Eden was too much work: hoeing, mending fences, baling hay, milking cows.

She questions this. Why wasn't it satisfying? Why did they lose their knowledge of nature? The problem with leaving is that you have to keep looking back to see where you've been. What about the charms or idealized portions of that existence? You did have to know about the Earth and her seasons; the wind, weather, and soil. What about the slow enduring pace of regular toil and the habit of mind that goes with it? The habit of knowing what is lasting and of noting every nuance of soil and water and season. She bemoans the fact that what her ancestors know is gone and only idioms linger.

These are things that we would do well to pay attention to, since Kentucky is an agricultural state ranking 4th in the nation in the number of family farms. And she concentrates on the central dynamic of the area, which is the tension of holding on to a way of life and letting in a new way. When land is spoken of these days it's in an opportunistic tone about a buck to be made. But the big money always seems to be made by someone else, not the people who know the land. There was an interesting dichotomy involved in her growing up on the farm. Though her family was clearly very self sufficient and quite capable she always felt like the country clodhopper and very inferior because they worked the soil.

Bobbie traveled around the south as president of the Hilltoppers Fan Club, spent a year in New York City, but basically spent the decade of the sixties in school. And with the 60's came the dramatic shift in society. Suddenly everything that she had strived for were the wrong goals and with the racial violence and bigotry that flooded the newsmagazines she was even more ashamed of being from the south, the home of so many lynchings. But the counterculture saved her and she met her husband and turned back towards home.

Eventually Bobbie learned to draw on that same culture that made her feel inferior and turn it into her wellspring. She became a writer and her mother was her chief inspiration. She and her husband bought a place in Kentucky and she returned to her home state because she said she had unfinished business. But she did not move all the way home to her homeplace. The land they bought was a long way from Mayfield. She had thankfully escaped the hardship of the old ways, but she wanted to live near an airport. She wanted to keep some distance and keep her options open.

When Bobbie's father dies, she has to come to terms with what to do about her Mother. All her mother's widow friends tell her the old farm is too much for her that she'd be happier moving to town and getting a smaller more manageable place. When they talk about the old times and how hard they were, her mother says "The men didn't see any need in making life easier for the women. I look back and see how women were treated and what we put up with, and I just wonder why we did it. I'm amazed." "Then don't you think it's high time you had a little something for yourself?" Bobbie answers. "Well, I'm too used to the old ways, I guess," her mother replies. Her mother manages alone for a few years, and Bobbie takes her around to look at other smaller places in Mayfield that she knows well. But her Mother finds fault with each one, and Bobbie comes to realize how important it is for her mother to keep the place in the family. It is the place where she was raised and she raised her own. It's home. She wants them to care about it and inherit it and carry it on somehow, as they used to in the old days. It is the value and meaning of the homeplace to her.

So they compromise and buy her Mom a house so that she won't have to sell the farm. She can still have her garden and go fishing and they'll rent out the farmhouse and continue to lease the fields. The farm will remain in the Mason name.

This is a wonderfully heartfelt book about home, and leaving, and coming home again, and all those life lessons learned along the way. Bobbie's prose is lyrical, like this excerpt about her parents:

"I read so much into my parents. I read the character and history of America in them as if they were a book. I read them in the ground, in the patch of grass where their barn used to be, in the sentinel yuccas by the driveway, in the lightning-scarred oak trees at the edge of the woods. I link them to the early journeys over the ocean, the revolving generations, the plow turning the furrow. While riding the rows on his tractor, Daddy mulled over the way the world works, just as I've done while sitting at the controls at my desk. I reach to know his mind, as I grab for a post, an anchor. But I always knew where my center was--here, on this land. This is my parents' greatest gift--this rootedness, this grounding. It is what has let me roam. I've been like a hawk on a gyre, flying off, ranging as far as I can--yet always spiraling back, securely tethered to home."

This is a lovely book about home and hearth, family and roots, and a touching tribute to Bobbie's mother, who was at the center of it all.

Entertainment Weekly's 100 Best Reads from 1983 to 2008

1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006) Loved this book. Love Cormac McCarthy
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000) OK, who hasn't read Rowling
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World's Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998) Love all things Kingsolver
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001) I love muckraker books
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001) Another muckraker...great book
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators' Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)

When I came across this list recently, I thought I would add it to this blog. It might be fun to compare your own Best Reads list to EW's. I have listed in red the ones I've read from the list. Just keep in mind, it is from Entertainment Weekly, so don't feel too bad if your list doesn't match up. I only scored 23 out of 100.

Sweet Man is Gone by Peggy Ehrhart

Peggy Ehrhart is a former college English professor (her academic specialty being medieval literature) who in mid life bought an electric guitar (a red Stratocaster) signed up for guitar lessons and formed a band (The Last Stand Band). Based on those experiences, she has now written a sweet little Cozy Mystery in which her amateur detective, Maxx Maxwell, the smart, gutsy, talented and gorgeous lead singer of Maxximum Blues takes center stage.

Maxx lives in a scruffy little apartment in Hackensack, New Jersey and works at a waitress job that she really doesn't like very much (and is driving her crazy), but needs in order to make ends meet. Her band is finally getting some recognition, thanks to the talents of guitarist, Jimmy Nashville, who Maxx would be totally in love with if she hadn't sworn off guitar players. Which is probably just as well, because Jimmy seems to have a sea of girlfriends.

Then Jimmy plunges to his death from the window of his 9th floor apartment. Police seem inclined to believe it is a suicide, but Maxx resolves to sort out the mystery on her own. Maxx's quest to unravel the mystery takes place amidst a backdrop of blues and bar music scenes that really ring authentic and true and the blues lover will easily recognize the many references to blues tunes sprinkled liberally through the book. As Maxx digs deeper into the mysterious past of Jimmy Nashville, another death occurs, and despite a skeptical cop involved in the case and some surprising developments Maxx manages to persevere until the puzzle is solved.

With a likeable spunky sleuth and quirky characters, this book is the perfect blend of music and mystery and manages to strike just the right chords. Let's hope that this debut book is just the first of many to star Maxx Maxwell. Now, you'll have to excuse me while I go search for my blues CD's. Reading this book made me realize just how much I love that musical genre.

America! What's my Name?: The "Other" Poets Unfurl the Flag Edited by Frank X Walker

This book reminds me a little of slam poetry, a style that has become very popular among teenagers, as one of its goals is to challenge the authority of anyone who claims absolute authority over literary value.

In the Introduction to this book, Frank X Walker writes: "America needs poetry more than it needs prisons; ill-conceived government policies, inadequate schools, political spin, or exit polls. Poetry, when used correctly, is the most democratic thing we own. It belongs to the people. It is for the people and it rings truest when written by the people." So he offers this poetry anthology as a whole grain bread offering for the hungry to balance out the elitist caviar mystique of the writings of dead white males promoted by university professors and academics.

These poems range from the angry (the opening poem called "will [my] America know me when i land?" was written by Kathy Wilson before jumping from a 2nd-story window, and it is a fiery bombastic piece that is truly magnificent in its ire) to the passed over and forgotten ("Of Refuge and Language"). One of my favorites was a post 9/11 poem called "The Letting Down of Milk" which beautifully illustrates a mother's horror as she watches the skyscrapers accordion into sidewalks. There is even love interwoven in its pages with a sweet poem called "Bandit Memory".

These poems showcase angry powerful voices that cry out against gender bias, political bias, and cultural bias. As one of the poems called "Reality" says, "What we have killed in this world will rise up against us." And yet there is hope interspersed here as well, as one of the poems titled "Mother Love" says...

I lay my bones down
upon the earth
listening
to the voices
of all my relations
their lyric melodies
filling the empty places
inside of me
I lay
my bones
down
upon the earth
I rise
up
renewed

Bare Bones by Kathy Reichs

Kathy Reichs is a practicing forensic anthropologist for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in the state of North Carolina and for the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Medecine Legale for the province of Quebec. She is one of only 50 forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology and is on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the American Academy of forensic sciences. The Fox TV program "Bones" is based on her life. Pretty impressive credentials don't you think? What's more amazing to me is that she has the time to write quality books starring her fictional forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. This book is her sixth Brennan novel.

It's a sizzling summer in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Temperance is looking forward to her first real vacation in years. A vacation that she hopes will have some romantic moments in store for her. But before she can leave a newborn's charred remains are found in a woodstove, a small plane crashes in a North Carolina cornfield, and bones (many of which seem to be of animal origin) are discovered at a remote farm outside Charlotte. So everything is put on hold until the bones are examined. At the same time that all this comes about, Temperance is dealing with her daughter Katy's new boyfriend (who she takes a dislike to) and trying to sort out her personal decisions about emotional commitment. Then someone starts trying to keep Tempe from discovering the answers. Someone is following her and her daughter and that someone needs to be stopped before it's too late.

I had always heard it said that if you like Patricia Cornwell, you'll love Kathy Reichs...that she actually does Patricia Cornwell better than Patricia Cornwell. I think I would have to agree. I like Cornwell's writing, but Reichs is undoubtedly a master crime-writing star. The book is fast paced, the dialogue engaging, and you flip the pages engaged fully in the story and curious as to how it's all going to play out. Being a forensic anthropologist must be a pretty grim job at times, and Reichs does a good job describing what those days are like. At one point in the book, Temperance says "Sometimes I think goodness and charity are racing toward extinction faster than the condor or the black rhino...Greed and callousness are winning out...Love and kindness and human compassion are becoming just a few more entries on the list of endangered species." Well said.

The other aspect of this book I really loved was the glimpse into the trade in illegal wildlife. Another direct quote from the book..."Fifty thousand plants and animals become extinct each year. Within half a century one-quarter of the world's species could be gone...one third of all U.S. plants and animals are at risk of extinction...at least 430 medicines containing 80 endangered and threatened species have been documented in the U.S. alone--at least one third of all patented Oriental medicine items available in the United States contain protected species...deer are killed for their antler velvet, Siberian tigers are hunted for their bones and penises, sea horses are killed to help men grow hair, and rhinos are shot, electrocuted, and driven into pits lined with sharpened bamboo stakes so men in Yemen can make dagger handles." That's enough to cause even the most casual animal lover to have fits of outrage.

I recommend this book highly as an entertaining and riveting read. I know I'm going to read more by Ms. Reichs now.

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

This author's debut work has been called an enchanting Goth for the 21st century, and I think that's a pretty apt description. Gothic literature, a style that was popular during the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th, portrayed fantastic tales that usually dealt with dark subjects. It was named apparently because of the influence of the dark gothic architecture on the genre. And in addition, many of these tales took place in such surroundings. They could combine elements of horror and romance, and are believed to have been invented by the English. I have always liked gothic literature, from the time that I discovered Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart" and Shelley's "Frankenstein", and have continued to read it off and on.

I wanted to read this book because there is a love of reading, books, and stories that permeates and saturates it on every page. Let me quote a couple of passages to show you what I mean.

"There are times when the human face and body can express the yearning of the heart so accurately that you can, as they say, read them like a book."

"As one tends the graves of the dead, so I tend the books. I clean them, do minor repairs, keep them in good order. And every day I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head. Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so. For it must be very lonely being dead."

"He removed the thermometer from my mouth, folded his arms and delivered his diagnosis. You are suffering from an ailment that afflicts ladies of romantic imagination. Symptoms include fainting, weariness, loss of appetite, low spirits...However, unlike the heroines of your favorite novels, your constitution has not been weakened by the privations of life in earlier, harsher centuries. No tuberculosis, no childhood polio, no unhygienic living conditions...I reached for the prescription. In a vigorous scrawl, he had inked: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes. Take ten pages, twice a day, till end of course."

The plot itself revolves around this love of a story well told. Vida Winter, England's most popular and reclusive writer, is dying. But before she dies, she wants to reveal the long-held secrets of her extraordinary life. She engages a young biographer, Margaret Lea, who has a few secrets of her own. This sets the stage for a multitude of plot twists and surprises that include ghosts, murder, and mayhem, and a wonderful tying up of loose ends at the end of the ride. Ms. Setterfield knows how to use the english language and her descriptive scenes remind me of a renaissance painter putting layer after layer on his canvas until just the right picture unfolds.

This is a haunting novel, rich in language, that will keep you guessing as you peel away the layers of the story. It will grab you and won't let go until the last shocking secret is revealed.

Books: A Memoir by Larry McMurtry

Larry McMurtry is a novelist whose books have been made into movies that most people would recognize: Hud, The Last Picture Show. Terms of Endearment, and the Pulitzer Prize winning novel Lonesome Dove. I must admit that I've not read any of his books, but I have seen all of the movies made from his books.

I wanted to read this book because it was written about his passion for books. McMurtry says he developed this passion despite growing up in a largely "bookless" world. He tells stories about starting out as a book scout and collector who eventually opens stores of rare and collectible editions, and I was blown away by the fact that he maintains a personal library of 28,000 volumes. This is probably a book that will appeal only to a specialized audience: booklovers, book collectors, or book fanciers, as it is filled with anecdotes about the eccentric characters that buy and sell, collect, or lust after rare books. But I feel that a few of the points that he makes towards the end of the book are worth pondering by a larger audience.

He says he nowadays has the feeling that not only are most bookmen eccentrics, but even the act they support--reading--is itself an eccentricity now. He believes that interrupted narrative has become a natural thing. Older authors like Dickens who were serially published may have started it, but the silicon chip has accelerated the process of interruption with the advent of iPods, BlackBerrys, laptops, etc. All, he says, break narrative into shorter and shorter sequences. Still, he is hopeful that someday these toys will lose their freshness and old-fashioned things like books will come to hold some interest for the masses again.

But the antiquarian book trade has declined precipitously in just the last 50 years. McMurtry bemoans that fact, and though he says he has no satisfactory answers as to why, he does provide a few clues. Few young people are forming personal libraries today. The books bought new at the chains soon trickle back into the secondhand market. But unfortunately there are fewer and fewer secondhand book shops to absorb these castoffs. The secondhand book business has existed for centuries because people want to read. But seeing the challenges that have occurred in the last few years, it begs the question: we can all survive the loss of the secondhand book trade, but can we survive the loss of reading?

And now I will quote from his book the part that really hit home to me, as a librarian:

"Today the sight that discourages book people most is to walk into a public library and see computers where books used to be. In many cases not even the librarians want books to be there. What consumers want now is information, and information increasingly comes from computers. That is a preference I can't grasp, much less share, though I'm well aware that computers have many valid uses. They save lives, and they make research in most cases a thing that's almost instantaneous. They do many good things. But they don't really do what books do, and why should they usurp the chief function of a public library, which is to provide readers access to books? Books can accommodate the proximity of computers but it doesn't seem to work the other way around. Computers now literally drive out books from the place that should, by definition, be books' own home: the library."

I agree with this statement wholeheartedly. As a librarian I am forced to remind people every day that the library is about so much more than just books. But as a dedicated book lover, they would be enough for me. I don't have to have computers or cafes or anything like that to pull me into a library. The books are what motivate and move me and capture my heart. If you are this kind of book person, you'll probably enjoy McMurtry's book.

Gayl Jones

I just finished reading two books of poetry by Gayl Jones: "Xarque and Other Poems" and "The Hermit-Woman". As a poetry lover, I had always heard her name mentioned with glowing comments about her writing.

I looked up her biography after I read the first book. Her titles include novelist, poet, playwright, professor, and literary critic, and she was born in Lexington, Kentucky. But more disturbing to me was the chronicle of her personal life.

Her career has been marked by periods of silence, and apparently since the 1980's a withdrawal from public life. She has stated that she wanted to be known by her work and not her personal life. And really, that is quite understandable. Unfortunately her personal life became fodder for lurid headlines. Despite her accomplishments and success she seems to be quite a lonely figure and somewhat of a paranoid personality.

When she married, her husband (Bob Higgins) took the name Bob Jones. Higgins had already had several clashes with the police and was said to be a paranoid personality himself. When he was arrested after threatening someone with a shotgun, he and Gayl fled the country. Jones resigned her position (which was in Michigan at the time) with an angry letter that charged the administration with racism and, according to the New York Times, contained the sentences "Do what you want. God is with Bob and I'm with him."

The couple spent time in France and Sweden over the next few years and Gayl continued to write. When she and her husband returned to the states they moved in with Gayl's mother in Lexington. They rarely spoke to or interacted with their neighbors. Gayl's mother developed cancer and the couple became convinced that the hospital was using her secretly in medical experiments and removed her from the hospital against doctors' orders. When her mother died, they harassed hospital administrators and law enforcement officials.

When the police went to their house to serve an outstanding warrant on Bob, they found the door bolted and smelled gas. Gayle (according to the Boston Globe) dialed 911 and screamed "The state of Kentucky is damned. Get these cops out of here! The U.S. is damned. If you go to Iraq, I hope they destroy you. If you try to take my husband you'll have to kill me. You killed my mother, you'll have to kill me as well." Officers entering the house managed to subdue Gayle (who was held in a Kentucky mental hospital for 17 days), but Bob Jones slashed his own throat all the way through to the spinal cord and died instantly. "I'm sure you realize my brother-in-law was insane," Gayl Jones's brother Frank was quoted as saying in the New York Times.

Released from the hospital, Gayl stayed in Lexington and continued her reclusive life. But what a stormy and turbulent life it had been to that point.

Her writing, though criticized for what some see as an indictment against black men (portraying them as abusive husbands and lovers) still manages to show how racism and sexism build on each other. In "Hermit-Woman" the female narrator says: "I am any ordinary woman" when the lovers ask "Are you a hermit?". When asked "Does love transform?" the woman responds that "love's a danger and a promise". There are many passages in this book that prove Ms. Jones is an engaging story-teller who weaves together memorable narratives with intuitive depth and provocative implicitness. In fact, it has been said that perhaps the single strongest element in Jones's work is its evocation of human speech; she has said that she had to hear something before she could write it. Her language brings to mind improvisational jazz or the repetitions of blues music. And she always encouraged her students to write stories after listening to music.

It is a common notion that there is a fine line between creativity and insanity, and a brief perusal of history would probably support that notion. Are genius and madness related? There is something mysterious and unexplainable about the creative process. I'll leave all of that to the psychologists to sort out. I did find the writing of Gayl Jones fascinating.

The Shack by William P. Young

I love to read book jackets. I enjoy seeing what other people have to say about a book; I look for the synopsis so I can see if the book might be something that appeals to me; and I love to read about the author. In the case of The Shack, two quotes by Eugene Peterson caught my attention. The first, on the front cover, says "This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress did for his. It's that good!" The second one on the back of the book said "When the imagination of a writer and the passion of a theologian cross-fertilize, the result is a novel on the order of The Shack. That definitely got my attention.

This book wrestles with the question of evil in our world and why God if he is a loving God and so powerful does not do something about it.

Mackenzie Allen Philips has a young daughter, Missy, who is abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she has probably been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack in the Oregon wilderness. Several years later, in the midst of what Mackenzie Philips calls his "Great Sadness", he receives a note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for the weekend.

What he finds there will change his world forever. This amazing book will challenge you to more closely examine every biblical cliche and spiritual insight you thought you possessed to reveal the true nature of the divine heart of God. If you were a person who always had a lot of questions about organized religion and the struggle between tradition and truth, you may need to read this book. The beautiful way that spiritual insights are woven through the narrative of this book will delight and amaze you.

This is a book of great wisdom and insight, and it has been something of a publishing phenomena, as it has touched people's lives in various ways and continues to do so. People have ordered copies and then ordered more to share with friends. In the first four months of publication, without the book appearing in one bookstore and without any national media campaign, more than 12,000 books were sold from a single website. Their dream is to sell enough copies of the book to open the door for a feature film that the world will want to see and that will present an accurate understanding of God's character and nature to a world that longs in the deepest places of their hearts for such a God.

This book examines pain, loss, grief, anger, longing, secrets, lies, forgiveness, and presents a loving God who's purposes are accomplished every time we reach out and touch a heart or a life with kindness and service. The Shack is a beautiful story of how God can be found even in the midst of our pain and will never forsake us.

You Can Go Anywhere: From the Crossroads of the World by Georgia Green Stamper

There were several things that made me want to read this book:

(1) The comment made by Gwyn Hyman Rubio (author of Icy Sparks) on the back of the book jacket: "Georgia Green Stamper is to Kentucky what Bailey White is to Georgia." I am a huge Bailey White fan.

(2) The quote from Silas House on the back of the jacket where he says "Georgia Green Stamper's essays do that most important thing that only the most accomplished writers are sometimes lucky to do: capture and preserve a place, a time, and its people." I adore the writing of Silas House.

(3) In the Introduction, Leatha Kendrick quotes one of my favorite passages from Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire in evoking the power and precision of Ms. Stamper's writing to capture that time and place and people that Silas House mentions: "This is the most beautiful place on earth. There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary."

Her essays are split into sections titled "A Little Bit of our Soul", "Family is our Unique Slant on History", "You Might as well Laugh, Mother Always Said", and "The Seasons...would always be Changing". These essays are filled with humor and insight and are very thought-provoking. The Appalachian region has a wonderful tradition of oral storytelling. Books like this, where you capture that tradition so lovingly between two covers are essential.

Georgia Green Stamper is a seventh generation Kentuckian who grew up on a tobacco farm in Owen County. She and her husband still own land that has been in the family for over a hundred and fifty years. I am an Alabama girl who's family still lives on land that my grandparents worked and who just happened to marry a Kentucky boy who lives on the land his father worked himself into an early grave over.

But I do know her people. They are my people too. And though she says her people were common folk in the eyes of the world, people of small consequence, her stories show that she appreciates growing up and being immersed in a family's culture and history. That despite the outward poverty of their lives (outhouses, coal burning stoves, drafty houses with linoleum floors, unpaved roads and one room schoolhouses), these people and this way of life had an innate wisdom and rhythm to it that is fast disappearing, and yet is wonderfully preserved in her stories. She is speaking their piece for them to anyone who will listen. And I hope that we will all cast an ear in her direction.

Pizza, Pigs, and Poetry by Jack Prelutsky

Jack Prelutsky is the nation's first Children's Poet Laureate. He has been writing poetry for children for over forty years.

I have talked to many kids that come in and out of my library about poetry. Many of them think they don't like it. But I have never met any kid yet (nor adult for that matter) that didn't like Jack's poetry.

In this book, Jack shares with kids a little background about his life, and how he gets ideas and creates his wonderfully funny and charming poems. He gives kids good tips and techniques concerning the writing process. But the best thing he does in this book is show them how to use their imagination to turn ideas into poems.

The first thing he admits, is that he was not the best-behaved little boy in the world. In fact, I dare say after reading about the escapades of Jack and his brother, he was one of those kids that really try the patience of their parents sorely. I probably would have throttled him if he were mine. But he turns these experiences about family and pets and friends into the most delightful poems.

As an example, here's one he wrote about his father and some of the whacky things he did to him as a boy:

I Wonder Why Dad is So Thoroughly Mad

I wonder why Dad is so thoroughly mad,

I can't understand it at all,

unless it's the bee still afloat in his tea,

or his underwear, pinned to the wall.

Perhaps it's the dye on his favorite tie,

or the mousetrap that snapped in his shoe,

or the pipeful of gum that he found with his thumb,

or the toilet, sealed tightly with glue.

It can't be the bread crumbled up in his bed,

or the slugs someone left in the hall,

I wonder why Dad is so thoroughly mad.

I can't understand it at all.

This is a book that will appeal to all ages. I took it with me to a Literary Society meeting with teenagers and young adults, and they all loved it too. If you are a poet, or want to be a poet, or just want to spend some time laughing and reliving childhood, this book is a good resource.

Whale Song by Cheryl Kaye Tardif

Ever since I read Mind in the Waters by Joan McIntyre (a book that celebrates the consciousness of whales and dolphins) I have loved cetaceans. It breaks my heart that they are still hunted. Commercial whaling has been banned for more than two decades, but Japan, Iceland, and Norway continue firing harpoons into these gentle creatures for products that nobody needs. Orcinus Orca (the Killer Whale) is not hunted commercially, is found in all oceans of the world, and with its striking black and white coloring is one of the best known of all the cetaceans.

Another great interest of mine is Native American culture. I greatly admire the native peoples and respect the inherent wisdom of the natural world that so permeates their culture.

So this book, for me, was a natural read. And I was not disappointed. It is a well written young adult coming of age tragedy thats appeal transcends the teen audience and encompasses anyone that would enjoy a tale well told.

Sarah Richardson moves with her family to Vancouver Island just as she's about to enter the sixth grade. Sarah makes a new best friend, Goldie (a local native girl), and soaks up wisdom from Goldie's grandmother Nana. Her mother is an artist and her father is a marine biologist studying killer whales. While there, Sarah is involved in a family tragedy that will change her life forever. As Sarah is the only witness to this tragedy, and suffers hysterical amnesia, this novel is a haunting tale of choices made and how the repercussions of those choices can tear a family apart. It is an enchanting and uplifting tale that combines the optimistic spirituality of native myth with the hard realities of modern existence. The characters and descriptive setting will enthrall you.

The edition of Whale Song that I read was dedicated to the memory of the author's brother, Jason Anthony Kaye, who was brutally murdered in 2006, a week after his 28th birthday. When the police discovered his body, they set out to track down his next of kin. In the end, the police tracked her down through this book. When they asked Jason's friends about relatives in the area, they said Jason had a sister who lived on the south side of Edmonton--they didn't know her name, but they knew that she had written a book about whales. The marvels of the internet ultimately, but sadly, brought two homocide investigators to her door. What a story. You can read more about Jason at the site she has set up in his honor: http://www.jaysporchmonkeys.com/

I highly recommend this book.

Sins of the Fathers by Nash Black

O.K. I have to be honest and say that I have a connection to the authors of this book. Irene Black is a former Director of the Library where I am presently employed, a fellow book club member (we both belong to the Porch Page Turners), and a friend. I have known her and her charming husband Ford for several years now.

They have written a couple of Brewster County novels under the name Nash Black (the combined name of Irene Black and Ford Nashett)--"Qualifying Laps", and its prequel "Sins of our Fathers", as well as a non-fiction book called "Writing as a Small Business".

Since we are lucky enough to have an author as a book club member, we decided to choose "Sins of the Fathers" as our July selection for Book Club.

When movie star Marci Layne returns home to Brewster County, her high school lover turns up dead and all evidence points to her. A local lawyer and ardent fan sets out to prove she didn't kill him, based on her word alone. There are lots of twists and turns with past secrets colliding with the present till the mystery is solved.

This is a fast pleasant read, what I would call a nice little cozy mystery (with a decidedly non-cozy theme--child abuse). I had a little trouble keeping up with the characters at first, but the authors have kindly provided a list of characters in the front of the book, and it was a big help to be able to flip back to this list to reorient myself. And without giving away too much of the plot, the authors have researched the disintegration of the human personality when subjected to child molestation, and dedicate the book to the Lake Cumberland Children's Advocacy Center (with one dollar from each sale of this book being donated to the Center).

I think Brewster County may be a nice addition to some of the other fictional communities I have learned to love, from Jan Karon's Mitford to Philip Gulley's Harmony. Gotta love those small town folks and their quirky charm.

The Dance by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Oriah Mountain Dreamer's "The Invitation"was very popular on a lot of inspirational web sites and was passed around on a lot of emails. I don't remember how I came across it, but when I did, it made me curious about her writing...so when I saw this book advertized, I wanted to read it.

The best way to give you a taste of what her writing is like is to repeat "The Invitation" here:

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living

I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are

I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love

for your dreams

for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon...

I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow

if you have been opened by life's betrayals

or have become shrivelled and closed

from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain

mine or your own

without moving to hide it

or fade it

or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy

mine or your own

if you can dance with wildness

and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your

fingers and toes

without cautioning us to

be careful

be realistic

to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me

is true.

I want to know if you can

disappoint another

to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal

and not betray your own soul.

If you can be faithless

and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty

even when it is not pretty

every day.

And if you can source your own life

from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure

yours and mine

and still stand on the edge of the lake

and shout to the silver of the full moon,

"Yes."

It doesn't interest me

to know where you live or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up

after a night of grief and despair

weary and bruised to the bone

and do what needs to be done

to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know

or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand

in the center of the fire

with me

and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom

you have studied.

I want to know what sustains you

from the inside

when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone

with yourself

and if you truly like the company you keep

in the empty moments."

I guess what I like most about her writing is that she tries to challenge you to live with passion, energy, and honesty. She believes that sometimes happiness gets buried beneath the clutter of our harried lives. She tells some stories from her own experience and encourages us to slow down and return to the sacred emptiness, where we encounter our true self.

Though some of her writing at times seems to border on New Age spirituality, she herself has been an outspoken critic. She says she doesn't like sloppy thinking, a refusal to ask questions, or an easy acceptance of things we cannot know to be true because we find them comforting or far more entertaining than our everyday lives, and she sees too much of all of this in some New Age philosophies and groups and thinks it is dangerous. And yet she does write under the name Oriah Mountain Dreamer (which she took when she was studying and participating in shamanic ceremonies, it means "one who likes to push the edge) and gets some of her wisdom from a group of elders that appear to her in her dreams that she calls "the grandmothers"...so she is obviously a woman of great contradictions.

Her writing seems to me to be an interesting mix of spirituality, inspiration, love of poetry and nature, sprinkled with self deprecating humor as well as an acceptance of life's absurdities. I am usually turned off by New Age type stuff and yet I find myself charmed by her openness and disarming way of baring her own hurts and blunders in her stories. She doesn't pretend to have all the answers, but instead tries to show us how to live the questions. That I like.

Wolf Brother

This book was recommended to me by a Shelfari friend in the Netherlands and I decided to get a copy inter-library loan and check it out. It's actually a Young Adult book that is a fast paced adventure story that delves into the world of spirits and mysticism.

When I read about the author, Michelle Paver, it said she had dreamed about running with the wild wolves in the prehistoric forest since the age of ten. Writing this book series, The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness (of which Wolf Brother is Book 1), was a way for her to fulfill this dream. To research the book she traveled through the forests of northern Finland and Lapland, slept on reindeer skins, ate lichens, forest berries, and pine resin (Stone Age chewing gum), and peered into the mouth of a very large brown bear. My kind of author.

Obviously this kind of research lends great authenticity to the writing. When young Torak witnesses the death of his father by a giant demon possessed bear, he and a wolf-cub he picks up along the way and uses for a guide set out to defeat this bear. They journey through deep forests and across giant glaciers to find their way to the mountain of the World Spirit. His journey is part of a preordained prophecy that tells about the "Listener" who will rid the forest of the bear by delivering three lost artifacts to the mountain. The author's knowledge of the animals, trees, rocks, and plants of the forest interwoven in this adventure tale really brings the story to life. I liked this book enough that it makes me want to continue on in the series, and that's the whole point isn't it?

Patiently Observing Animals

"If thy heart be right, then will every creature be to thee a mirror of life, and a book of holy doctrine."...Thomas a Kempis, 1427

After traversing North America in 1840, John C. Fremont wrote that "It was all wild and unexplored, and the uninvaded silence roused curiosity and invited research." George Schaller's spirit resides in such places.

He was fortunate enough to have been a part of the golden age of wildlife studies, from the 1950's to the end of the twentieth century, when many large mammals for the first time became the focus of intensive research. Patiently observing animals may seem an antiquated pleasure in the age of computer modeling and remote sensing, but Schaller was a pioneer and such knowledge became the coernerstone of conservation. Nature is now viewed all too often in economic terms and treated as a commodity to be bought, sold, or discarded. Appreciation of beauty, a sense of wonder, and the ethics of taking responsibility for other species and the land seldom enter official conservation discourse now. But true conservation must reach the heart. Intimate portraits help inspire concern for their future, create a feeling of kinship, and convey that they too have a right to exist. Conservation without moral values cannot sustain itself. The book is divided into four sections: The Americas; Africa; South Asia, China, and Mongolia; and The Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau.

The travels and studies in this book have been the basis for his scientific and popular writings. This book brings together in book form for the first time nineteen short pieces, for a unique overview of his remarkable career. His own photographs of animals and their behavior, of fieldwork, and of the author and his family, appear throughout. He has studied mountain gorillas in Central Africa and predator-prey relations in the Serengeti, as well as tigers in India and jaguars in Brazil's swamps. And then there was Schaller's groundbreaking work with giant pandas in China. This book is full of Schaller's fascinating observations.

"What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset..."Crowfoot, a Blackfoot Indian, 1890

Mountaintop Removal Movie from iLoveMountains.org

This short video on Mountaintop Removal is a must see as an adjunct to reading Missing Mountains.

Missing Mountains

I love this book. It starts out with a quote from Isaiah (one of my favorite books of the Bible) that says "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain..."

It has an Introduction by Silas House and an Afterword by Wendell Berry. It is a collection of essays, poems, stories, and personal testimonials by Kentuckians who oppose mountaintop removal--a coal-mining technique that destroys and devastates Kentucky's mountains and the creatures who live there.

None of these writers have a vendetta against the coal industry. They realize that coal mining is an important part of the economy, and it has allowed a hard working and determined people to rise out of poverty. But coal has been mined for decades without completely devastating the entire region. They make an eloquent plea for the proper respect to be returned to the spirit of the land and its people.

It is an emotional book that mourns the loss of woods and rolling pastures as well as the mountains themselves. The authors hope that this book will make the general public aware of the problem, and they want to use it to build hope for all the people who suffer in the shadow of mountaintop removal. It is their stories that matter. Stories of water that ran red as blood with sulfur, or one where a man had to drill five wells in a year's time because the mining blasts caused every one of them to go dry. As Silas House says in the Introduction, "It is mind-boggling that the whole nation is talking about Alaska being drilled for oil, yet no one cares that Appalachia has been systematically scalped for the last 28 years." As one woman at a town meeting said, "I don't care what anybody says, the Arctic Circle isn't a bit more worthy of respect than my mountains."

Thanks to the internet, one can view satellite photographs of the region described. Google Maps http://www.maps.google.com/ has a feature which overlays maps of highways over satellite photographs. These photographs from space clearly show the devastation. Simply search for "Ary, KY", click on satellite view, zoom in and out a bit and observe the region east of Hazard along Highway 80 between Hazard and Hindman.

As John Muir said "Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountain is going home: that wildness is necessity: that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life."