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A Writer's Wit: Aldo Leopold

1/11/2023

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We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.
​Aldo Leopold
Author of A Sand County Almanac
​Born January 11, 1887
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A. Leopold
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Jack London
FRI: My Book World | Bloom and Atkinson's Evidence of Love
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A Writer's Wit: Dan Flores

10/19/2022

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We stood by and allowed what happened to the Great Plains a century ago, the destruction of one of the ecological wonders of the world. In modern America, we need to see this with clear eyes, and soberly, so that we understand well that the flyover country of our own time derives much of its forgettability from being a slate wiped almost clean of its original figures.
​Dan Flores
Author of 
Horizontal Yellow: Nature and History in the Near Southwest
​Born October 19, 1948
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D. Flores
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | John Dewey
FRI: My Book World | J. R. Ackerley's ​Hindoo Holiday
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Ecology Never Gets Old

10/4/2019

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A WRITER'S WIT
Parody is homage gone sour.
​Brendan Gill
Born October 4, 1914
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B. Gill

My Book World

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​Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. With illustrations by Charles W. Schwartz. London: Oxford, 1949.

I came across this tome while letting a house in the hill country of Texas, a place where the landowners raise native grass and wildflower seeds for wide distribution and sales, also a place where owners protect the environment and earnestly promote its care.
 
The author, born in the late 1880s, is around sixty when he writes this book about ecology. At that time he already sees the Earth’s demise headed our way, now seventy years ago. And people wonder why we should be on fire about the current state of world environment? Since the age of early industrialization, humankind has been killing off the world, one species of botany and zoology at a time. And we’re still at it: cars and jets, fracking, coal. Land, sea, and air ruined daily one molecule at a time, even if the sun is shining, even if, in the middle of an ocean, you see nothing but blue (you haven’t yet spotted the great vortex of plastic bottles). The decay, the earth’s demise is there, rolling in slow motion. And Leopold sees this. Seventy years ago!
 
Leopold expresses his deep love for Nature with a lengthy history of a good oak taking seed in 1865. Metaphorically, he cuts it down, and, by surveying its eighty rings, can tell the reader what traumas the local ecology has experienced:

“Now we cut 1910, when a great university president published a book on conservation, a great sawfly epidemic killed millions of tamaracks, a great drouth burned the pineries, and a great dredge drained Horicon Marsh.
         We cut 1909, when smelt were first planted in the Great Lakes, and when a wet summer induced the Legislature to cut the forest-fire appropriations.
         We cut 1908, a dry year when the forests burned fiercely, and Wisconsin parted with its last cougar” (11).
I cannot go on, but the author continues, year by year, until the fallen oak has revealed all that the land has enjoyed or endured, usually at the hand of human beings, politicians who have little understanding nor care for the environment:
“The congressmen who voted money to clear the ranges of bears were the sons of pioneers. They acclaimed the superior virtues of the frontiersman, but they strove with might and main to make an end of the frontier” (137).
Leopold reveals bitter irony after irony, desecration after desecration of our native earth, and, again I say, seventy years ago! And still, we (as a species) do not listen.

NEXT TIME: My Journey of States-50  Oregon
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Back in the Saddle

7/8/2019

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A WRITER'S WIT
In brief, I spend half my time trying to learn the secrets of other writers—to apply them to the expression of my own thoughts.
​​Shirley Ann Grau
​Born July 8, 1929
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This and That

THIS: I haven't posted for over five months for the reasons I stated at the end of January. First, my longtime partner of forty-three years, Ken Dixon, was diagnosed with a BIG spur on his C5 vertebra which was crowding his spinal cord in a BIG way. In order to knock it off in the least invasive way, the surgeon came in from the front, and removed C6 to get at the spur and screwed in a spacer between 5 and 7, filling it with bone debris that has and will continue to make new bone material. The surgery and recovery went well, but being in charge of everything made me a very busy boy. The procedure, a corpectomy reduced his pain and stabilized his blood pressure, yet he continues to work with other professionals solving the riddle of vertigo. He's back in the studio for limited sessions.
THAT: I spent the entire month of June at a dandy place in the Texas Hill Country known as Hacienda Maria, what I refer to as a mini-villa that one can lease from the Native American Seed company of Junction, Texas. Just rural enough to enjoy the pastoral nature of the country roads, it was also a short six miles into town to buy groceries or mail a letter. ¶ I was able to read ALOUD my 550-page manuscript twice, literally finding my voice for the book. I made and entered in the computer numerous corrections, attempting to smooth out clunky language, as well as other problems which I shall not go into here. Anyway, I probably accomplished four months of work in one, putting me closer to finishing the monster.
MORE THIS: I plan to post regularly again, continuing my Tuesday/Thursday posts of A Writer's Wit, advice other writers have offered either about their work or the writing process in general. On Wednesdays, I shall continue my series, My Journey of States, until I have finished with all fifty! And finally, on Fridays, I offer profiles of new (or vintage) titles in My Book World series.
THE LAST OF THAT: A year ago I deleted my Facebook page primarily because I was disgusted with their cavalier approach to running a business. During that time, their corporate leaders have done even more to make me glad I dropped out. Personally, I believe the organization will have to shut down and do a FB 2.0 to build a more secure Web site from the ground up. Until it's improved at least, I remain a departed client. HOWEVER, I do miss seeing what's happening with family and friends. Drop a line, plee hee heez. ¶ I also deleted my Twitter account. I never was able to garner more than two hundred fifty followers, and, because I'd made the mistake of following some political operatives instead of sticking to purely literary interests, I was having to read a lot of negative stuff. It wasn't my followers' words but those of people "commenting." Negative. Negative. Negative. My only social media presence is now on LinkedIn, and if anyone can tell me how to make the most of THAT, I'd appreciate it. WHEW! I've said more than I wished to. I look forward to seeing and hearing from you as I regain my Internet presence. 
NEXT TIME: My Journey of States-39  Rhode Island
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March Not-Madness

4/9/2018

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A WRITER'S WIT
New York has become the single most unequal state in the country. The top 1 percent of New Yorkers earn 45 times more than the bottom 99 percent combined. Black and Latino families in New York still earn much less than white families. Women still earn much less than men. This crushing inequality isn’t something that just happens. It’s not an accident. IT WAS A CHOICE.
Cynthia Nixon
Born April 9, 1966

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C. Nixon

I'm Back!

I spent much of the month of March continuing to work on a book that has already occupied two years of my time, and I only feel two-thirds of the way through it (maybe less). I spent half the month in the hill country of Texas at a dwelling known as Hacienda María. Sitting high atop a hill overlooking a beautiful valley where the landlords, Native American Seed Company, harvest grass and flower seeds indigenous to Texas, this dwelling is a bit of heaven in which I could work quietly each day as long as I wished, then prepare meals in a huge, sunny kitchen, and then walk my daily 10,000 steps or more on the beautiful country roads of the hacienda property. I've returned to Lubbock refreshed and ready to continue my book as well as my blog work. I hope you'll take a look at my photos below.
NEXT TIME: My Journey of States-9 Pennsylvania
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My Journey of States-2 Oklahoma

1/17/2018

 
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A WRITER'S WIT
By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself, but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is, after all, a form of communication.
Ralph Ellison
Born March 1, 1914
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

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R. Ellison
MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting important personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the second post of fifty.

2 Oklahoma

Oklahoma is the state I traveled through first when I was but a toddler, on the way to Louisiana, where my father was stationed in the Air National Guard for over two years. In time I passed through Oklahoma—north to south, west to east, southwest to northeast, across the panhandle—scores of times, but I never visited anyone, rarely had any business there except to buy gas or stay in a motel, so I wouldn’t have such a long trip to . . . wherever I was headed: Kansas, Texas, Arkansas. ¶ My maternal grandfather, James Brown Richards, did his basic training as a soldier for World War I at Fort Sill in Lawton. The 1918 photographs in the photo gallery below depict a fairly barren place, but now the town has many beautiful tree-lined boulevards, even where the fort remains. After back surgery, I often stayed there as a halfway point between Lubbock, Texas, and Wichita. I would eat at a Chinese restaurant whose name I cannot now recall. ¶ My second trip to Oklahoma came when I was twelve and our church youth drove to visit St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in OKC. I was probably dazzled by the sanctuary at the time, but can recall little of it now. I remember more the dinner afterwards when I ordered fried shrimp. My parents had given me enough money to eat what I wanted . . . I thought. The next day the education director (PG) at the church, who’d been one of the trip sponsors, castigated me for ordering such an extravagant meal when everyone else ate hamburgers and fries. Had I ordered more than I could pay for and the adults had covered for me? Or had the director taken it upon herself to judge me as if she were God? ¶ Oklahoma is a beautiful state, deserves more than a drive-through, particularly the eastern third. Angling northeastward on I-44 in early June, you can see grand rolling hills, even larger ones, the Ouachita Mountains. Unlike the 1930s, when this part of the country suffered great drought, Oklahoma has recently enjoyed anywhere between thirty and fifty inches of rain a year. Verdant stretches of green fields and hedgerows of trees, not to mention veritable forests in the eastern third of the state, as you approach the Ozarks, are eye-popping and inviting. ¶ In 2007, Ken and I, on a trip to Wichita, made a reservation to stay in the Price Tower boutique hotel in Bartlesville. The tower, a Frank Lloyd Wright design, was erected in 1956. The designer had combined what looked like two offices to make one largish hotel room. ¶ The most recent news about Oklahoma is the number of “earthquakes” it has experienced largely, residents assert, because of the practice of fracking by oil companies in the area. The state is also known for one of the last botched executions of a prisoner, when the injection concocted by prison officials did not work properly. ¶ Oklahoma became the forty-sixth state in 1907. Proud Oklahomans celebrated their centennial not that long ago.
​Photos 1&2: James Richards on right. Photo 3: James Richards

NEXT TIME: My Book World

Celebrate Earth Day: Pack Out the Trash

4/22/2017

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A WRITER'S WIT
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
John Muir, Sierra Club Founder
Born April 21, 1838
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J. Muir

Packing It Out is Good

I get aggravated enough when I’m in urban areas and see trash strewn all over the place. With the winds we have in West Texas, a piece of trash always seems to be lodged in our bushes. You don’t know whether to leave it there and let the wind blow . . . I’m kidding. I usually can’t stand it and do a trash run to the dumpster. I’ve picked up Sonic cups, KFC boxes, some kid’s schoolwork, plastic grocery sacks (one hung up high in our cherry laurel tree until it finally disappeared), even an individual’s county HIV test results (negative, thankfully). But when I’m out hiking in nature, I especially loathe seeing someone else’s trash.

In perusing the March/April issue of Sierra Magazine, I see that I’m not alone. I’ve attached the short feature so you can read it for yourselves, but the gist of it is that hiker Seth Orme has formed an organization called Packing It Out, in which he and his friends might hike for miles, and on their way they pick up trash and haul it out of the park or whatever wilderness they happen to be in. The story should inspire all of us to pack it out: not just our own debris, but a piece or twenty that someone else has left behind. Maybe the action would inspire others. We can only hope. According to Sierra, “Each U.S. resident generates an average of 4.4 pounds of trash a day; all together that’s 728,000 tons, or enough to fill 63,000 garbage trucks” (25). To state the obvious: that’s too much!
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NEXT TIME: New Yorker Fiction 2017
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    AUTHOR
    Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA.

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