High Tide in Tuscon -- a book review

High Tide in Tuscon
Essays from Now or Never

 

Barbara Kinsolver is, in my opinion, the best writer of fiction working today. And I'm glad to report that she excels at nonfiction as well. 

This collection of essays, some previously published in magazines is wonderful. And I'm glad to promote just such collections. 

Perhaps you're old enough to remember Reader's Digest. I don't know if their even still in publicastion. But many years ago, my Grandma kept the last issue of it in the bathroom. It was filled with condensed versions of articles and essays that you could read some of in just a few minutes. I did love the fillers -- short bits of humor contributed by anybody and used to fill out a page. 

Anyway, I used to read the newspaper like that, just individual articles or letters to the editor or what have you, but with the news the way it is nowadays, the newspaper is just too upsetting. Unless you focus on the sports sections, but I'm not particularly into sports sooo, I've started reading just such collections as High Tide. You don't have to read the book all the way through, front to back. You can read just individual essays in any order.

Most collections do have some order to them, and this one does, but you don't have to stick to the order.

And it doesn't hurt that Kingsolver writes with the eye of an artist and the ear of a poet. And in reading her, I feel like I know her. She and I have so much in common.

The title of this book is from her coming home to Tuscon, Arizona, in America's Desert Southwest, from the Bahamas. While in that Caribbean paradise, she had wished her ",,, daughter could see those sparkling blue bays and sandy coves, I did exactly what she would have done: I collected shells." Arriving home in the middle of the night, she couldn't wait to show her daughter the collecion.

Her daughter's "...face glowed, in the way of antique stories about children and treasure. With perfect delicacy she laid the shells out on the table, counting, sorting, designating scientific categories like yellow-sriped pinky, Barnacle Bill's pocketbook...Yeek! She let loose a sudden yelp, dropped her booty, and ran to the far end of the room. The largest, knottiest whelk had begun to move around. First it extended one long red talon of a leg, tap-tap-tapping like a blind man's cane. Then came half a dozen more red legs, plus a pair of eyes on stalks, and a purple claw that snapped open and shut in a way that could not mean We Come in Friendship."

When my brother and I were in elementary school in land-locked Oklahoma, our family took a vacation to Galveston, Texas, an Island in the Gulf of Mexico. We didn't know anything about the ocean and sea shells. We found an abundance of tiny, pastel colored sea shells, more like very smooth stones, than anything we would have identified even as sea shells. We gather up a bag full of them and took them back to the motel, intending to take them home with us. During the night there began such a clatter of clicking and movement in that bag. We had no idea that they were alive! Needless to say, we took them back to the beach and carefully chose obviously empty sea shells to take home as souvenirs.

Kingsolver's attitude toward the hermit-crab stowaway was "...when something extraordinary shows up in your life in the middle of the night, you give it a name and make it the best home you can."

Or in the middle of the day. Isn't that how we acquire new friends and pets?

Her interests and knowledge reflect her educational background. According to Wikipedia, after growing up in rural Kentucky, she attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, on a music scholarship, studying classical piano. She says she changed her major to biology after realizing that "classical pianists compete for six job openings a year, and the rest get to play 'Blue Moon' in a hotel lobby." She went on to get a master's degree in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Arizona."

Sometimes, with the way things are it's good to read somebody like her.

She writes things like this, beautiful things:

"Every one of us is called upon, probably many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, loss of a job or a limb or a loved one, a graduation, bringing a new baby home: it's impossible to thin at first how this all will be possible. Eventually, what moves it all forward is the subterranean ebb and flow of being alive among the living."

And

"To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another -- that is surely the basic instinct. Baser even than hate, the thing with teeth, which can be stilled with a tone of voice or stunned by beauty, If the whole world of the living has to turn on the single point of remaining alive, that pointed endurance is the poetry of hope. The thing with feathers."

This is a fairly little book, just 288 pages in the print edition, but it's full of the kinds of observations that remind me how good life can be. And, sometimes, it's good to be able to pick up a book and turn to almost any page and get just such a reminder.

After the Fall

 

The View from my chair

This is my world.

Yep, since Wednesday, January 15, I've been on crutches. I spend a lot of time sitting in a recliner in the great room. 

That big painting on the west wall is an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico (acrylic on canvas). It is one of my brother Matt's last paintings after he retired from captaining a crew boat. Following his death last summer, I brought it to my home from his home near the Texas gulf coast. 

He also painted the one on the north wall (to the right). In the late 1960s while he was studying at Central State College (now the University of Central Oklahoma) a classroom assignment was to paint something in the style of a famous artist. Here it is, oil on canvas, titled "Van Gogh Oil, Well." (said with a pause after "oil." He had a great sense of humor.) 

Above the TV you can see my husband's decorative metal work of an Eagle soaring above the Rocky Mountains.

                             

And a bookshelf with some of my treasures and books -- teapots I've been gifted over the years, a salt and pepper set by my son John Hill the potter, Mardi Gras memorabilia, and grandbabies' toys. There behind me on the east wall is Matt's "Logan County Unicorn" (acrylic on canvas).

Add to these, my daughter's craft work and her husband's photography and I have a very pleasant environment in which to think and read. I especially appreciate it during this extended period of time when not much else is available to me -- no walking and going to coffee, no driving, no exercise classes, not even much in the way of household chores.

That Wednesday evening, a week and a day ago, I fell coming out of my office. Tripped on the cat's scratching box. Yep, Kočka, that bad cat I've posted about before.

Scared me. At my age, falling is a serious no-no. I've had both knees repaced, and I was really afraid I had messed up the left one. Being able to go up and down the stairs, left right left right, to the laundry room in the basement is a big deal. A very big deal. Just sayin'.

My husband Scott helped me up and I got to the couch just fine, but within an hour, there was a lot of  swelling and pain and I knew I needed to go to the ER. Scott called 911 and the fire department sent an ambulance and firetruck to my house. Complete with paramedics. (If they roll the ambulance, they roll a firetruck, too. Standard protocol.) So there were five men filling up the great room. They were all big and fit and, of course, good lookin'.

They strapped me onto a "stair chair," told me to cross my arms across my chest, and carried me out the front door, down the front steps, and to our van for the ride to the hospital. It's been a very long time since I was "carried" anywhere. Actually that was the scarriest part of the whole ordeal. But they didn't drop me. They didn't even stumble or groan under my weight. 

At the hospital, they prepared to x-ray my right leg, but I pointed out it was my left leg that was hurt. It took a little while to get the corrected written order. They found no obvious damage to the implant or the bones in my left knee. That was good. But they also did a CT scan of my head. I hit it during the fall, not badly enough to even raise a bump. Still, better to check. I do, however, take exception to the result of the scan of my head -- "unremarkable."

Being house-bound hasn't been much of a hardship. Plenty of time to read because it's been cold and snowy this whole time. And Scott has been feeding me like royalty -- not to mention fetching and carrying. One does not carry a cup of coffee while on crutches. 

Been reading Barbara Kingsolver's High Tide in Tuscon: Essays from Now or Never. I think she is the best writer working in the United States today. Her use of the English language and content is first rate. I've added several books she mentions to my To Read list. 

AND I learned a new word -- allelopathy. It means "the chemical inhibition of one plant (or other organism) by another, due to the release into the environment of substances acting as germination or growth inhibitors." I don't remember ever seeing or hearing that word. Kingsolver has a master's degree in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Arizona, so, of course, she would use it.

Yesterday was yet one more day that the walking group had no walk planned because of the weather --  temp below freezing and windy, snow covered ground. But we did have coffee planned at The Great Harvest Bread Company. Scott dropped me off. They always have good music there. Today, it was Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Wonder, Heart, etc.  I had a snickerdoodle cookie and coffee.  And Sue and Marchelle were, as always, great company.

Me, Sue, and Marchelle at Great Harvest Bread Store

(and the crutches!)

Maneuvering in snow with the crutches, I was very careful and intentional. And slow. It was great!

And tomorrow is the January meeting of our Books and More Salon. Scott's going to drive me there. 

My life is definitely getting back on the road!

The Disappearing Spoon -- a book review

The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean is a history of the development of the Periodic Table of Elements, the basic map chemists use to understand the makeup of all things in our univers.

I know. I know. Some people find history and science boring. The complete title of this book is The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Element. It's anything but "boring."

Take the German chemist Robert Bunsen. You remember the Bunsen burner in your high school chemistry class. This book clarifies that although Herr Bunsen didn’t invent the Bunsen Burner. He did improve it by adding a valve that controlled oxygen flow which made a more efficient flame. That allowed him to heat elements causing them to emit unique bands of colored light. Take a disused cigar box and two telescope eye pieces and, voilà! He had a spectroscope. He was also into experimenting with cyanide and building working models of geysers in the middle of his lab.

Speaking of Bunsen Burners, when I was a high school sophomore in chemistry class, I discovered that you could use a Bunsen Burner to heat a test tube topped with a cork and shoot that cork with great accuracy at anyone within about eight feet.

Chemistry class! Ah, yes, I remember Mr. Rice’s high school chemistry class. It was the fall of 1963 and I was new to the town, to the school, and definitely to Mr. Rice. He was a very big man, over six feet tall and over 300 pounds, no hair. That first day, he set out the following facts about himself and his class. He declared the United States may be a democracy but his class was not. His rules were the rules and students had no say. He could swear in six languages. He was qualified to teach every class available at our high school except Home Economics and Girls P.E.

He announced that he was required by the State of Oklahoma to issue the approved text book, which he promptly did. Then he said we would not be using said book and he recommended that we turn them back in before that day’s class ended rather than keeping them in our lockers and risking damage or loss for which we would be responsible for the replacement cost.

If he mentioned the very large Periodic Table hanging on the wall, I don’t remember it.

He passed out a list of the 103 elements on the table at that time complete with its one- or two-letter chemical symbol, atomic number, and valence which we would then be tested on. In order to pass the class, we must pass the test. We would have as many chances to pass the test as we needed. We could miss three elements the first time we took the test and pass. The second time, we could miss two. The third and any succeeding attempts would require perfection. Yes, you guessed it. I passed on the third attempt.

This whole process was to help us do equations quickly using the information we’d memorized. Until I read The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean, I didn’t understand that all this information was readily available on the Periodic Table of Elements which was there on the wall of that classroom. Not that that would have helped. As big as it was, I sat too far from it to easily read it. And you had to know where to look on it to find any particular element. Not to mention that the one- and two-letter chemical symbols were printed large while the name of the element was a smaller font and the rest of the information was even smaller.

Many of those symbols had seemingly nothing to do with the element they stood for. I mean, okay. “H” for hydrogen. “Li” for Lithium. But “Na” for Sodium? “K” for Potassium? “Au” for Gold for heaven’s sake! And they were not organized alphabetically by symbol or name.

I don’t remember if Mr. Rice explained how to use the Periodic Table of Elements. Perhaps he did, but I was too overwhelmed to hear him, much less, process and use that information. So it was memorization for me!

I should have read this book before I had that chemistry class!

Reading Kean’s descriptions of some of the elements and how they could effect a human’s physical self was, if not frightening, certainly sobering.

During that year in chemistry class, we had a unit on “unknowns.” Mr. Rice would give us a sample to be identified – a powder, a liquid, a solid. He handed out instructions for a series of tests we were use to identify the element. Rather like recipes. I quickly discovered that I could just taste whatever it was and identify it. Of course I first tested the sample for arsenic, arsenous, cyanide, and acetate. The first three sounded dangerous to me. And one taste of acetate taught me not to taste it again. (If you taste acetate, you won’t be able to spit for a week. Think biting into a green persimmon.)

Apparently I wasn't the first to think I could identify an element by taste. Kean specifically says: “A live body is so complicated … that if you inject a random element into your bloodstream or liver or pancreas, there’s almost no telling what will happen. 
...when it comes to the periodic table, it’s best to keep our mouths shut. ”

When Mr. Rice discovered some of us were using this unsafe method of testing, he took steps to dissuade us from continuing to use it. He said he put urine in some of the samples of unknowns. Now we didn’t know if he actually did, but I for one discontinued that particular method of testing.

My favorite story in The Disappearing Spoon is a cautionary tale about a Detroit high school student who, in the 1990s, for an Eagle Scout project, built a nuclear reactor in the potting shed in his mother’s backyard.

No spoilers here.

There are so many good stories about scientists and, shall we say, science enthusiasts in this book. It’s definitely worth a read.