Bailey’s beads diamond ring and solar prominence lower right | viewed from south Akron, Ohio, USA | April 8, 2024 | 3:17pm EDT
A rare celestial gem, the total solar eclipse
Category Archives: Original post
sharing my writing or other original work
Reservoirs in the Wilderness
It’s been almost six months since I posted anything here, for several reasons. I was at a crossroads of writing and livelihood. I wearied of the post-by-post investment of time and effort with little tangible reward. I chafed at the new rules of online writing. I considered starting over with a different website. I started freelance writing. I wasn’t sure where things were headed. Not much of this has changed since last fall.
Having worked from home for years before COVID-19, I’ve missed people for a while now. What was voluntary has become mandatory, and my instinct is to rebel, to break out, but then, there’s real danger around the corner if I do. So I reach out, though I’m still not sure what might be best to say or do at a time like this. One writer I follow suggested applying three criteria: Is it a needed distraction? Does it help someone learn a new skill? Does it help make life easier? Sounds great!
But honestly, I can’t claim to be so practical as to fulfill any of those criteria. Neither what I’ve written nor what I feel compelled to write tends to or will do any of that. Trying to be practical for my audience often feels too materialistic. Trying to educate, too pedantic and off topic or too specialized compared to what people care to learn. Trying to simplify or streamline life is not my forte or inclination. I prefer to complicate the hell out of all things. I like to challenge, motivate, inform, and persuade my readers. I fear that audiences receptive to such effects will always be sparse and minuscule–at any rate, difficult to find and reach.
Given these limitations, I don’t care about SEO right now, or earning money for my writing. Well, that’s not really true, but I care less than I might. Sure, I’ll proofread this piece before I post it; I just won’t do it twice. I’ve long asked myself, “What should I write about?” A global crisis like this one, a pandemic that reaches your back door, has a way of focusing your priorities as little else can.
But when crises converge, you have to pack it in, steel yourself, tend to your mental health, and forgive your shortcomings. I for one have to counterbalance excess analysis, caution, and hesitation with a dose of instinct, courage, and generosity. I have to take a chance or two, and pursue my goal to shine some kind of light in my own way. In that spirit, I return to this space, despite lingering uncertainty.
During National Novel Writing Month 2019, I began writing a story about illegal wildlife trafficking. Back then, I had no notion of how relevant my topic would become to current events, and so quickly. I started my research in October, continued through November’s noveling event, and followed up periodically through December and the first part of 2020.
I learned about zoonotic disease, infections passing from animals to humans, over the course of November, even inserting a plot thread involving a worker in the wildlife trade who gets sick from contact with trafficked primates. I chose mandrills, which are like baboons, but I discovered later that the list of animals from which humans can get sick is much longer than I had imagined.
Fast forward just a few months, and here we are, in the throes of a coronavirus pandemic with unprecedented effects reaching all the way to our immediate neighborhoods, even inside our homes, if we’re lucky enough to have one. The shuttering of restaurant dining rooms, businesses instituting work-from-home policies, school closings, and drive-through testing for the disease at the Cleveland Clinic are sound preventative measures that may help to slow the spread.
This viral tsunami started in a wildlife market, or wet market, in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. Bats are the likely origin, as they often are, but an intermediary carrier mammal or other species may also have been involved. A pig, a civet, a pangolin—it makes little difference. All those and more are captured wild and sold dead and alive, the living ones slaughtered just feet from customers demanding fresh products and proof that the meat comes from what the vendor claims it does. In fact, the problem is not wildlife but our encroachment on wild habitats and our insatiable desire to eat, wear, or own wildlife.
Live butchery at these markets aerosolizes fluids from the wild animal that can carry pathogens that directly infect observing or knife-wielding humans with new viruses, bacteria, parasites, and other disease-causing agents, or “bugs.” Those zoonotic infections can then lead to human-to-human transmission, resulting in local or regional outbreaks, epidemics, and broader pandemics, as with this new virus, SARS-CoV-2, and the disease it causes, COVID-19.
So far the worst pandemic in recent memory, the Spanish influenza began its infamous sprawl in 1917, during World War I. It infected 500 million people and killed upwards of 100 million. Some say between 50 and 100 million. If the higher number is accurate, that’s a 20% death rate. More Akronites died from Spanish flu than did from fighting in the war, and many of those war deaths were due to the flu.
Before and since, there have been other epidemics and pandemics. Some have reached Ohioans, others persisted within other spheres. SARS, MERS, H5N1, diphtheria, cholera, Ebola, black tongue fever (aka malaria), among others. The SARS death rate was 10%, MERS even higher. Currently, the word is that the COVID-19 death rate is between 2 and 3 percent, but that could be off in either direction, and the situation is constantly evolving. The virus will likely continue to mutate, weaken in some geographical areas, strengthen in others—mixed conditions leading to currently unknowable outcomes.
Then, there’s the contagion of fear, which spreads just as quickly as SARS-CoV-2 does, if not quicker. News outlet feature articles have talked of nothing but this phenomenon for weeks. Now that the disease has arrived in our northeast Ohio county, the Akron Beacon Journal’s A section swells with coronavirus-related stories, routinely spilling over to the B and C sections. Spillover is a good word for all this.
Between March 13 and March 17, I had not ventured out by car, and walked only around our neighborhood. It was St. Patrick’s Day, and I’m Irish but I wasn’t counting on that to protect me from contracting the virus. So I stayed home, immune compromised by my arthritis medication. Since the governor had not yet issued a stay-at-home order for the state, I let my husband go out for groceries, for disinfectant supplies, to observe the community.
Stores had introduced toilet paper aisles. Nothing but toilet paper. An odd choice, we thought. Lysol was scarce, hand sanitizer out of stock for days. Though not ourselves without some of each at the time, I still watched a video about how to make our own sanitizer. These days, we seem to do everything “just in case.”
I filled a spray bottle with 70% isopropyl alcohol, found the aloe vera gel in case we need to make hand sanitizer, and have even sprayed our mail with the little Lysol we had on during that week. I sprayed the bottom of my husband’s shoes after he returned from the stores that same day. Since then, I’ve been less thorough. At first, I was thinking, if the virus can survive on the surfaces of objects, let’s err on the side of caution and disinfect them.
Now, after a little research and weighing the risks, I’ve decided to behave more as if the main concern, which it is anyway, is direct human contact. But we wiped down the groceries we picked up last week, anyway. I don’t know if it was in the back of his mind while he cleaned up the room last month, but now we have a usable spare bedroom with an extra bed that used to be covered in detritus, container clutter, old drapes, and luggage materials. It can be used if one of us gets sick with this disease.
Our dog is bored. In us humans, too, the strain of self-isolation emerged quite early in the process. We’d already been stressed out and tied to home from a string of family emergencies. Our nerves have been frayed for months now, since December 28th when the first one happened. Now, there’s even more for all of us to worry about, as the new virus, discovered about that same time in China, has reached our back door. Good thing this dog is not a hyper kind of bored. Mainly, he groans, moans, pouts, and looks forlorn. So do we, though we try to keep the noise down.
For too long, my life has been centered on the issue of health. Of strength. Of energy. Of the will to be. Of mental, emotional, social health as much as physical. Usually, my own. It’s far too easy for me to slip into depression without extraordinary circumstances, but now? Huh. “Extraordinary” doesn’t begin to capture it. If for nothing else, I may need to exit my property and for counseling sooner rather than later.
On the bright side, so important right now, signs of spring have sprung, though a colder snap is now upon us. One set of parents was headed for Florida back in December when their health emergency caused an abrupt about-face. If they had gone down, they’d most likely be stuck there now and through the summer, in the midst of a concentration of vulnerable senior citizens–their retirement community. Instead, they’re home and close to family, though keeping social distance nonetheless.
He’s not thrilled about the captivity, but I see more of my husband now as he works from home. Life for me isn’t all that different from usual, a saving grace. At least the local parks are still open; we just haven’t ventured out to any yet. A little nature therapy might stave off psychological crisis. I already know it helps me. None of our close relatives are sick today. Well, not with this thing, anyway.
The atmosphere is especially stressful for the ailing and caregivers. The last thing they want to do is stay home, away from workplaces they cannot make virtual, with time to think. I’ve long had too much of such time myself, but it must be so much harder for those who are natural doers and extroverts. I’m far too used to isolation and being a homebody, but the global crisis, as well as the family trauma, is motivating me to put my status to better use than I had been.
The question is whether what I find useful matches up to a receptive audience, whether my family or farther afield.
With close relatives, I teeter between offering supportive resources and applying tough-love scare tactics. In some cases, denial, counterproductive media consumption, and higher risk tolerance seem to merit the latter. It’s human nature, really. Just to live life rather than live in some enforced state of constant, heightened caution. Especially being older with likely less time on Earth than one’s children and grandchildren have. The social climate tyrannizes with information overload and seems to mock the will to live.
I do understand, but as with so many other people at the moment, my fear takes the wheel. Fear of loss, fear of more stress from family crisis, fear of preventable catastrophe. Fear of this invisible demon sweeping the world. FDR got it wrong, or perhaps I misinterpret or take him out of context. At any rate, if we fear fear, it only makes matters worse.
Sometimes fear is useful, even life saving. Fear can even motivate us to embrace what we love with greater passion, to do right by it. But anger is there, too. Indignation. Outrage. Again, useful in moderation. Or is it only the extreme emotion that truly motivates?
How about love? Compassion? Empathy? Giving, not just getting, comfort and solace? It may be harder to find right now, or even to give. But really, we need only look for it expressly, and we’ll find it in abundance. We need only decide to help, and good will be done. Laughter is infectious. Why not love? In truth, we sorely need both. And we need them more often than they are present during what we might call peace time.
My goodness reservoir felt low before 2020 hit my family so hard. I used to think my constitution preferred a crisis, that I was strongest when challenged to rise to the occasion–as long as it was someone else’s emergency.
Once, several weeks ago, I thought my parents were dying from carbon monoxide poisoning. That’s what they thought when they called me, after calling 911, of course. “We’re on the floor,” they said, startling me out of sleep into full panic mode. I blasted through stop signs and red lights, hitting 90 miles an hour in a 35-mph zone, and then cursed myself and started whimpering when I realized, upon reaching the neighborhood, I’d forgotten my copy of the house key.
By the time I arrived, emergency services had the situation well in hand. No CO. Just concussion symptoms and a spousal panic attack, followed by another hospital visit. My husband was returning from a business trip and arrived that evening. I may not have become entirely useless in a crisis, but I, too, almost passed out in the ER.
At least that event didn’t happen during a pandemic lock down or martial law curfew. If I’ve learned anything from all the adrenaline rushes, it’s that things can always get worse, and it’s easy to feel as if that’s what’s happening. It’s much harder to find the silver lining and work up a good list of blessings you genuinely believe in, after you choose to start counting them. It’s a choice I must keep making to prevent my little puddle of a reservoir from evaporating with the next blow.
What do you love? Name it. Claim it. Embrace it. Uphold it. Defend it. Honor it. Cherish and share it. That’s a virus I can welcome. Yes, I arrive here–at this place of strained positive attitude, like forcing your eyes open wide so the sun can wake you up–only after all the terror and stress and frustration. But “after” may hold no less worthy a start. I must remember that. When there is no other brightness evident, there is hope in possibility.
Famous Poets’ Nature Poetry (7): Black Legacies
Shared from WordPress
Five-Phrase Friday (18): Perfect Reads? – http://wp.me/p4e8kV-Oq
Choice and Fate in Outlander STARZ
Risk assessment in the drama of Outlander STARZ: Do the Frasers need a decision tree?
Spoilers ahead if you’re not caught up with both the books and the TV series. Also, some key details assumed without being mentioned.
Oh so many things went wrong, or seemed to, in this latest episode of Outlander STARZ, ep410, “The Deep Heart’s Core.” My husband said what might seem obvious during the revelations scene, i.e., the climax of the episode where tempers flared and horror ascended in the hearts of the guilty. (So glad he’s on board with watching my fave show, by the way!) He laughed and said, “These people need to talk to each other. Everyone’s leaving something out. They’re like children.” Too true. Too human.
But the Frasers (and Murrays and Fitzgibbonses) do the best they know how; their primary motive is love. Actually, although it may seem counter-intuitive, that motivation may be the main barrier to ensuring loved ones’ well-being and good, long-term outcomes. Emotions steer their course more often than sound judgment, thoughtful consideration, or consultation with each other of any length, or so the limited time frame of episodic television suggests. The books are more intricate, intellectual, nuanced, and intelligent, with longer conversations as a matter of course, discussions that go into much greater depth on the weighty issues.
In some ways, though, who can blame these characters? Their problems are inordinately complex. A family composed in part of time travelers who never know if their interventions will have a positive or negative impact on the long run, whether the target for improvement is their family situation or society at large. Still, the depth of their love for each other, the greatness of their need for each other, these things are the primary drivers of their actions always, which, although problematic, is also one huge reason we love them as readers and viewers.
For instance, as she tells us in ep408, “Wilmington,” Brianna would never have forgiven herself if she hadn’t gone back in time to warn her parents of the fire resulting in their deaths some time in the 1770s (stupid printer’s stupid smudge!). So almost on impulse, though she carefully plans and prepares, she goes back through the stones to her parents’ time in 1769.
Although, once he follows and finally catches up with her, Roger does try to explain why he kept his knowledge of the fire from Brianna, as usual, it should get more play than it does on the show: “We cannot be the arbiters of who lives and dies,” he argues. This in the midst of heated, emotional conversation where the fiery Fraser lass is deeply offended by being treated with such protection, like a child, which Roger then says matches her behavior of the moment.
She insists in her passion that it was her choice to make, and that she wouldn’t make such an important decision for Roger, so why did he try to make hers? This she says after he has already tried to explain that she really can’t make a difference, they are incapable of changing history in any significant way, which seems to be borne out by the Frasers’ experiences leading up to Culloden.
Still, she had to try, she says. It’s love, and foolishness, putting herself at compounded high risk for harm and death by going through the stones at all and by traveling in the 1700s as a young, thin, beautiful, 1960s-era woman–by herself. Both students of history, with this unprecedented phenomenon of time travel to consider, it is natural that Roger and Brianna should have such diverging views on the potential for influencing history.
A critical scene and discussion omitted from the first book during Season 1, to Diana Gabaldon’s frustration, may have been perhaps the first major point of divergence between book and show about the crux of the entire series—the effects of time travel.
During Claire’s discussion with Father Anselm at the abbey where Claire tends to a deeply traumatized and suicidal Jamie in the wake of his victimization by Black Jack Randall, two critical questions from the book do not make it to the screen. In Gabaldon’s Outlander, Claire confesses her sins, which admittedly are more mortal in the books than in the show up to that point. She asks the priest, first, “What have I done?”
She blames herself for the misery she has brought to both her husbands, Frank in the 1940s and Jamie in the 1740s. It’s as if she believes she were so powerful to overcome either her greater love for Jamie than for Frank when faced with the free choice, provided by Jamie, of whether to return to Frank or stay in Jamie’s time, or to overcome Captain Black Jack Randall’s will to save Jamie from the gallows temporarily only so he could have his way with and break him.
But she didn’t cause Jamie to be caught by the redcoats, to be set on the run from them, though she and Murtagh searched far and wide for him, or to be captured again, tried, and sentenced to hang. To save his family, Jamie chose to help the Watch attempt to rob a neighboring clan, which set these events in motion.
Then again, it was fate that made Horrocks reappear at Lallybroch after learning of Jamie’s outlaw status when the Mackenzies brought Jamie to meet him to see if there was a way to prove his innocence. The same Horrocks then extorted Jamie to keep silent, leading to his murder and McQuarrie’s need for another rider to join him on the raid once Horrocks became unavailable. Oh, how they try.
However, Claire also confesses to two murders she commits in the books that she does not commit in the show. No doubt, this difference led the showrunner, producers, and writers to believe that the Father Anselm conversation was less critical than it really is. The second question contradicts the basis I’m supposing for that decision to omit both questions.
“What should I do?” Claire next asks Father Anselm in the novel Outlander. He goes off to ponder her dilemma and restarts the conversation later.
With both questions, the answer is the same. In effect, be true to yourself, your goodness and good intentions. Why? Because you did what you had to do to survive (what have I done?), and there is no way to know what impact you will have (what should I do?). In other words, there is no reason to believe that you are as powerful to effect great change or alter personal events in history as you may suspect or hope you are. In fact, as Season 2 illustrates, even your best efforts tend to make little difference on the grand scale of historic battles won and lost.
In traveling through time, Claire, like her daughter Brianna, has only the power to exist in the presence of her fellow human beings and to influence the lives of those with whom she comes into direct contact, attempts to heal, saves from death, cares for, looks after, and loves with all her soul. Beyond these (not small things), fate, accident, serendipity, synchronicity, coincidence, God, and/or other mysterious, external forces have the ultimate say in how things eventually end up.
Since this is fiction, and suspenseful drama is a required component to hold reader and viewer interest, the magic of fateful convergences and divergences among key characters and the failures of major protagonists are simply par for the course. The audience suspends disbelief for the sake of the ride.
So, although it’s easy to blame Jamie and his accomplice, Young Ian, for the horrible turn Roger’s fate has taken, or to blame Lizzie for acting foolishly in her fear and telling Jamie that Roger was the man who violated Brianna, or to blame Brianna for not telling her maid, Lizzie, what really happened and who was involved, or to blame Brianna for coming back through the stones in the first place, leading to all this damage–whose fault is it really?
Claire’s, of course.
She’s the one who came back in Season 1 to collect the forget-me-nots at Craigh na Dun, which led to her accidental trip back in time, which led to the rest. But again, it was accidental, right? Weel . . . mebbe. . . . It is what she tells Geillis during their witch trial in one of the best episodes of the series, ep111, “The Devil’s Mark.”
But in a later example, how can Brianna’s encounter with Laoghaire on her way to the Colonies be seen as accidental? As nasty as Laoghaire can be, I’m hard pressed to blame her for thinking that the Frasers sent Brianna to mock her, or even that Brianna is a witch like her mother Claire. The lass does boneheadedly declare to Laoghaire of all people that she knows there will be a fire at Fraser’s Ridge.
By notable contrast, Claire’s return to Jamie after 20 years in the 20th century was intentional, greatly inspired by Brianna’s selfless encouragement of her mother’s return to the love of her life, and deftly enabled by Roger’s research and sharing his findings about Jamie. Did Claire’s return make Brianna’s trip intentional? Or, did Brianna do that? Or, was it all inevitable? Like everything else?
Will Jamie and Claire die in the fire on Fraser’s Ridge no matter what anyone’s powers of time travel, brute strength, historical/future knowledge, keen insight, doctor’s skill, historian’s judgment, fire fighting, or deep love may be? Who really controls fate? In fiction’s case, the author of it, of course!
I’m reminded of the film Charlie Wilson’s War, in which Philip Seymour Hoffman’s CIA character tries early and then succeeds later in telling Charlie the story of the Zen master and the little boy. The lesson is, What may seem like tragedy when a misfortune occurs may be a good thing, and what may seem like victory may be a bad thing—in the long run.
If Claire had never accidentally gone back through time, we would not have the benefit of witnessing the extraordinary love and adventures of her and her eighteenth-century husband Jamie. Less intuitively, if Jamie had not been raped by Black Jack Randall, he would not have had the unique, rather comforting insight to share with his nephew, Young Ian, also victimized sexually, or with his daughter, Brianna, also raped not long after arriving in the past.
On the cusp of major actions, in the wake of fresh tragedy, misfortune, misunderstanding, brutality, and Brianna’s singular wrath and stubbornness, coupled with Jamie and Young Ian’s guilt–what should the Frasers’ goals now be?
With all they know, or think they know, all they feel, and all the don’t know or feel, it’s really hard to say. What will happen to them and their children and their children’s children in the end? While we progress through the middle of the series in its adaptation from book to screen, and while fully versed readers await Diana Gabaldon’s completion of the book series (she’s finishing up book nine and says there will be a tenth), we just have to wait and see.
NaNoWriMo Prep Resources 2018
After several years of writing novels during November, I’m finally starting to get more organized about the online guides I rely on to keep trying to make it work. Note that this post doesn’t explicitly include print books or other print materials, of which there are many excellent examples. And one caveat for you: Start with a good story idea. Brainstorm if you need a well-developed idea or premise to start with. It will help to visualize your idea in the context of the following developmental helpers for story writing.
Featured Resource: The Write Practice
The website Thewritepractice.com is quickly becoming my go-to NaNo prep resource this year. I’ll spare you the effort to recall exactly how I happened upon it. The point is I’ve found it really helpful, full of a-ha moments. Here are some of the particular a-ha moment articles I recommend so far, whether you’re a planner, a pantser, or aren’t sure what kind of approach you take yet but just might want to try writing a novel.
- How a Scene List Can Change Your Novel Writing Life
- How to Leverage Point of View to Power Your Story (part 1 of 2)
- Point of View Magic: How to Cast a Spell on Your Readers (part 2 of 2)
- The Strongest Form of Characterization
I find each article engaging and digestible, and each ends with a writing prompt exercise. I’m using them to recall and dive deeper into the principles of story writing as I figure out what my novel will be about this November. I hope you find something insightful in them.
A handful of other great materials I’ve found useful since 2011, my first year of NaNoWriMo:
National Novel Writing Month Young Writers Program Workbook (download the high school pdf) – Worksheets on everything from finding a premise to determining setting and conflict to writing good dialogue to choosing types of antagonists and more.
A Compendium of Novel Structure Resources – Just during drafting of this post, I found from Storm Writing School what might be the mother lode. It captures and links to 7 of the story structure systems and resources I’ve consulted or used in the past (Syd Field, Dan Wells, Christopher Vogler, Larry Brooks, Blake Snyder, K.M. Weiland, and Dramatica!), plus many I’ve never heard of! The article addresses the nature of acts (Act I, Act II, Act III) and organizes the resources into three aspects or types of structural frameworks–named stages, plot point outlines, and process guides. Check it out!
Brainstorming, Outlining, Drafting, Progress Tracking, Moral Support, and Organizational Tools including Mindly; AirTable; Nanowrimo.org library, word sprint tool, stats and goal trackers, pep talks, forums, and their blog; Writeometer and other word sprint/progress tracking tools; Scrivener; and PlumeCreator (open source).
Happy noveling or whatever writing you do!
National Novel Writing Month‘s official logo
If you enjoyed this post or want to know more about my personal novel writing journey and what NaNoWriMo–and Camp NaNoWriMo–can be like, I recommend:
- Noveling in November
- Five-Phrase Friday (16): Alphas and Omegas
- This Hunted Story
- Novel Excerpt: Song meets Alice
- NaNoWriMo blog “Now What?” post-noveling resources
- Literary April: National Poetry Month and Camp NaNoWriMo
- Camp NaNoWriMo: Song of Spring
- Packing for Camp
- Last Week of Camp: Ready to Start
- Won–and That Much Closer to Done: NaNoWriMo 2017
Great American Reads: The Results
First, I was amazed it made the top 5, which Meredith Vieira revealed early in the program on tonight’s Grand Finale of The Great American Read. Then, I was shocked it wasn’t number 4 and then flabbergasted that it passed up the number 3 position, beating out the wildly popular Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and Pride and Prejudice.
At that point, my incredulity so distorted my judgment that I wasn’t certain any more it couldn’t beat To Kill a Mockingbird. But it didn’t. It only beat 98 other well-loved novels to become the number 1 contemporary novel in America’s esteem, number 1 out of all 21st-century novels in English, at least through the lens of the PBS Great American Read campaign.
I knew the Outlander fan base was devoted and highly motivated on social media, but I had no idea how much traction the book series must have gained thanks to the Outlander STARZ TV series’ starting and doing so well since August of 2014. Published in 1991, Outlander is more popular today than ever. Perhaps what throws me most is how close my opinion is to some sort of mainstream, especially concerning taste in books.
Now I can say with the weight of a country’s most avid readers behind me: Read Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. America recommends it.
For my take on choosing and voting for a favorite novel, visit the post Great American Reads.
This Tree Had Many Mourners
I just discovered earlier this month the devastation of the famous Pioneer Cabin Tree, or Tunnel Tree, a sequoia in the North Grove of Calaveras Big Trees State Park in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of central California. My husband and I were visiting my brother and his family for the first time in several years and visited the park on October 6. The last time I was there was in 2015 with my mother, when we both walked under the tunnel of the now-fallen icon.
I thought I had pictures of it still standing, certainly, but I am unable to find them as of this post. The photos below of its erect status are borrowed as indicated. I took the other pictures.
Photo courtesy of howstuffworks.com
Photo courtesy of Calaveras Big Trees Association FB page.
There is a handful of other iconic sequoias in California and elsewhere, but this one was pretty famous. In the 1920s, cars used to drive under it after lightning strikes hollowed out the base, which was then squared off. About a year ago, heavy rains followed by a storm washed out the base, and the tree’s descent downed a nearby cedar tree.
These trees are incredibly tall and impossibly old, and they grow only in certain areas, including the west slope of the Sierra Nevada and in a portion of Yosemite National Park.
Unidentifiable from a distance, the pile of wood attracted us by the signs before it. It wasn’t until I read them that I realized what I was looking at. Aided by the shock, I was so sad to learn of this special tree’s falling, I almost teared up at the sight of it, especially since my husband had not seen it in person while it was still intact.
While all things end, and the tree’s condition made its position more precarious, it is no less poignant to see it flattened. As with a recognizable mountain, the traveler expects such a tree to be standing as it first existed, long after the visitor has sunk through the earth. It marks the land in a unique way, suggests a whiff of permanence in the world, enlarges our experience with its largeness, its resilience, and connects our lives in shared familiarity.
A New Yorker and World War I soldier, poet and journalist Joyce Kilmer likely never met the Pioneer Cabin Tree. The simple celebration of his famous if sentimental poem “Trees” effectively thanks God for making them. If the poem described any particular tree, there could hardly be a worthier candidate than the Pioneer Cabin Tree at Calaveras Big Trees State Park. Sentiment, if genuine, has its place where the tree once stood.
Farewell, old timer.
To learn more about the Pioneer Cabin Tree, or Tunnel Tree, at Calaveras, and other sequoias, the California parks department posted a brief, informative official release at the time of its falling.
Great American Reads
In reference to the Great American Read event presented by PBS and Meredith Vieira.
See also: my post about the results, America’s top choices for the Great American Read.
Like most things in our culture, in everyday life, reading is a highly personal affair. I won’t tell you which book to vote for, which book is the best novel for American readers, but I can shed some light on how and why to choose any work of fiction.
As much as individually we tend to choose to operate by the assumption that quality is subjective, there’s a difference between objective quality in any product and its capacity to meet our personal standards and preferences. Online product reviews use the rating system rather liberally, and people take liberties with the option to select only one or two stars out of five. Most products are never as bad as we perceive and make them out to be, and probably, most are rarely as good. A coffeemaker can usually perform more than adequately, even if it’s not a top competitor.
As consumers in a capitalist economy, we have the luxury of choosing the best possible model on the market for our budget. We take our coffee very seriously, after all. On the flip side, that special pillow you bought may have improved your life, but it’s not likely to be a literal lifesaver. Then again, it’s your sleep, not mine, so who am I to judge?
Entertainment products, such as books and movies, are different. It’s true there are standards according to which reviewers and awards committees hold most works of fiction, for instance, but novels in particular can be difficult to quantify, to categorize, and to size up. Experienced readers and reviewers have a greater claim to knowing the formula, if there is such a thing, that makes a great book. But with entertainment, the subjectivity factor carries more weight in the judgment of a book within society and against all other books; they’re not widgets, coffeemakers or pillows.
Sure, traditionally, their form has been mass produced—they’re made of paper and ink or bits of data—but the product itself moves beyond the assembly line. A work of literature is an experience over time, a thing of variable content in its use of ideas and language, and a journey through a story of imaginary people, places, and things. Its nexus of abstraction sets it well apart from the concrete world of electronic devices and motorized vehicles.
But reading is more than just a mental exercise. Stories take us on emotional and sometimes visceral roller coasters of reaction. Authors of books and makers of film can make people cry, laugh, gasp, shudder, scream, swoon, wretch, and more, simply by their artful, vivid use of words and pictures.
For me, reading is about making connections—between me and the author, me and the characters, my life and the setting and plot, between ideas in one story and ideas in another, between different art forms. I tend to read interactively if I’m not reading on a deadline. It’s about savoring as well as digesting, rather than simply ingesting, the art. I like to taste my food as it’s going down, getting to know its different effects on my palate, its aroma, texture, and consistency, rather than devour words like individual grains or layers of sauce—en masse with the rest of the meal.
I like to read about the author’s life, wondering about connections between the story and the life. I like to talk to the author, or myself, through margin notes, Post-It notes, and by writing about the book elsewhere (like here). I like to think about the book’s relationship to culture, to other books, to film, and even to itself. I read deliberately.
In part, that’s about remembering what I’ve read. Processing the content in multiple forms and ways ensures that I’ll retain more details, assuming those matter. On the other hand, a great book doesn’t require as much hard work. To me, a great book combines high objective quality with readability and complexity. It also takes the reader through the gamut of emotion and ideas, a panoply of interesting characters, in a captivating setting, through an unpredictable plot, with grace and style and wit. A great book provokes thought, touches the soul, and stays with the reader long after the final page is read.
By these standards, I hereby make my top choices for America’s best book, which is a different thing than America’s favorite book. The Great American Read started with a list of the 100 most popular novels in America. Although using it as a springboard for this post, I won’t remain beholden to that list’s rather narrow confines. My choices are based on reading the book, so I make no selections where I have not read. This makes my picks even more personal, as they omit what I’m otherwise sure are some gems of literature. At the same time, I’ll select my least favorite books from the GAR list and try to pinpoint the reasons why.
Drawing from both the Great American Read top 100 and my own Goodreads read books list, my top novels read are the following. They appear in alphabetical order, and some link to this blog’s reviews of each. Later, I’ll narrow it down further, but I don’t really believe in single, all-time favorites of any kind of thing. There’s simply too much out there for me, for all of us, to love.
- Absalom, Absalom! By William Faulkner
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; and, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
- Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- Chronicles of Narnia, #1: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
- The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
- Howards End by E. M. Forster
- In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
- The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
- One True Thing by Anna Quindlen
- Outlander (first book only; have yet to read books 5-8) by Diana Gabaldon
- The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
- Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
- Watership Down by Richard Adams
Which books did I find most amazing?
- War and Peace
- Outlander
- In Cold Blood
- Gulliver’s Travels
- Brave New World
For whom do the pages turn? They turn for me. Length is no deterrent when the words flow like melted butter. The ideas, the stories, the people, the places—all contribute to the full immersion of experience.
If I have to choose a set to honor, to recommend, to champion, each book in this collection of five can never be a mistake. And they are not the only ones for which it is so. It is not simply about enjoyment or like-mindedness. As I stated earlier, it is a marriage of objective quality in writing ability, storytelling, and transportation to other worlds, as well as interesting ideas, beautiful truths, deep connections between people, and the complexities of life and death.
This is not to say that each book is perfect. Perfection is not the aim. After all this time, I can say that with complete and utter confidence. Love is the aim. Insight. And growth. These books have all opened multiple dimensions to me, helped me grow, made me love, and urged me to shout about it.
So for now, these are my top picks for the Great American Read. Is it taking the easy way out not to choose a final top book? I would say the books that move me most are Outlander and War and Peace. In Cold Blood being a close second. Is it predictable to choose Outlander as my favorite book when it’s so clear from my blog that it’s at least well beloved by me? I love Gulliver’s Travels and Brave New World for similar reasons between them; they’re both science fiction, satire, mirrors up to their readers, and deliciously humorous, disturbing, deep, broad, and complex in proportions. They are classic epics.
All but Outlander delve deeply into social commentary on a broad scale (all but War and Peace done fully indirectly, through the story itself), though Outlander is not without indirect social commentary of a more specific nature. None but Outlander indulges in the pleasure of the human sex act. The novel is the most intimate, most personal, and in some ways, most vivid of these five. Certainly the most relatable.
War and Peace is likewise detailed and relevant to our struggles. In Cold Blood focuses on a crime, a pathology of human nature, on social dynamics and psychological dimensions. They’re all amazingly written, some in distinct writing styles. Outlander has the only female protagonist and first-person narrator, authored by a woman. These things elevate it further in my esteem. They say it’s quite difficult to write first person well, for example.
The humor and beauty, the terror and horror, the allure and fascination, the sheer intelligence and wit, as well as the greatly physical and emotional parameters, plus supernatural, science fiction, historical, mystery, romance, and action adventure aspects combine with all those elements previously mentioned to hoist Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander upon the shoulders of all the others. Its contemporary feel increases its relatability while its rich, exquisitely researched exploration of 18th-century Scotland helps anchor it further as a modern classic.
So, yes, I’m choosing one book, Outlander, for my favorite book, at least so far. I recommend this novel to most adults who have not become so totally ensnared in the cycles of pop fiction as to avoid all greater journeys.
As for the Great American Read, voting ends at midnight on October 19; results will be revealed by PBS on October 23. It’s really almost a moot exercise to pick a single book out of all 100 finalists, though. In a future post, I’ll caution against time wasted on some of what I felt were lesser choices among the 100, but again, I’m not a true expert, having not read all 100 books listed.
Meanwhile, if you don’t quite get to read Outlander before November 4th, the date of the Season 4 premiere for the STARZ TV series based on Gabaldon’s works, you’ll still have plenty in the books to explore. For this and so many other reasons, I recommend Outlander, the first in a soon-to-be-nine book series, by author Diana Gabaldon.
If you liked this post or want to learn more about why Outlander‘s the one, see my more comprehensive review at Book Review: Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. This blog also provides 3 Quick Book Reviews of the first three books in the series.
If you’ve read it and love it, I can only hope you’ll #VOTEOutlander on Twitter and Facebook, and select it today–only two more chances left!–online and by phone via the official Great American Read voting page.
See my post about the results, America’s top choices for the Great American Read.
Book Review: In Cold Blood
Happy Birthday, Truman Capote.
I gotta give a shout-out to my book club–I probably never would have picked up this book otherwise. Thanks very much, S.
In Cold Blood
by Truman Capote
Gush, gush, gush! No blood but my praise for this amazing book spills freely forth.
Murder mysteries, thrillers, and dark novels I have read in sufficient number to have a base of experience for this book’s fair assessment. Fitting into, indeed creating, a genre that has come to be known as true crime, this story of the 1959 mass murder of the Clutter family in a small, quiet Kansas town is a definite, though perhaps surprising, page-turner. It may aid reader enjoyment (is that the word?) not to be a seasoned reader of true crime or crime fiction, as I am not. I am confident the book will satisfy the hungers of realists and the detail oriented, which I am.
The content…
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Philosofishal by Carrie Tangenberg 