I don't normally post events here, but this is an exception.

Celebrate the Winter Solstice with Music, Stories, Poetry and Dance

Sunday: December 21

6 PM to 9 PM

Grace Episcopal Church - 20 Belvoir Avenue

Admission Free: But donations are appreciated

Sponsored by the Joseph Campbell Mythological Roundtable of Chattanooga -Look for us on Facebook

Christmas and the New Year are just days away. Join us to celebrate the dark winter nights and the return of light. From this day on, each succeeding day will have two more minutes of light.  

Solstice Performers and Schedule

Ray Zimmerman will serve as Master of Ceremonies.

Robin Burk will share traditional music which heals and inspires.

Finn Bille presents a traditional Inuit story, “The Eagle’s Gift.”

Marcus Ellsworth performance poems.

Angela Sweet and Derek Williams will present story with interpretive dance.

Break with refreshments 

Ray Zimmerman will perform his poem "Departure"

Andrew Kelsay is a local educator and also the creator/ coordinator of Charles and Myrtles Coffeehouse.He was Poet Laureate of George Peabody College (1978-1979).

Diana Peterson will share a story about a bringer of the light.

Jim Pfitzer will tell a story from a brand new work still in progress and tentatively titled "Moon Shining Over Chestnut Ridge."

The Secret History of Wonder Woman

The Secret History of Wonder Woman

Jill Lapore

Wonder Woman’s unique characteristics include a mythical Amazon origin on Paradise Island, superior physical strength, and feminine beauty. These traits combine to make her an icon for young Americans, even today. With Batman and Superman, she forms a triumvirate of American comic book heroes. These three have had the longest running popularity of any comic characters, and have long standing magazines solely devoted to their own adventures.

Like Batman and Superman, Wonder Woman has a secret identity. Unlike them, she also has a secret history. This is the story Jill Lapore reveals in her book. As a staff writer for The New Yorker and professor of American History at Harvard, Lapore knows what the word research means.

Lapore’s story begins with the birth of William Moulton Marston, first author of Wonder Woman. He was a paradox. Marston was profoundly influenced by suffragists and early feminists such as Emmeline Pankhurst and birth control advocate Margaret Sanger. He was also a secret polygamist. He married his childhood sweetheart Sadie Elisabeth Holloway and later took Olive Byrne as his mistress.

Wonder Woman herself was a paradox, inspired by suffragists, early feminists, and the pinup art of the war time 1940’s.  Later, particularly after Marston’s death due to polio, she was authored by more conservative authors who saw her through the censorship of the 1950’s. In the 1970’s she reappeared as a feminist icon on the cover of the first regular issue of Ms. Magazine.

This nonfiction book is a masterpiece, solidly researched yet written with style that interests and entertains. 

the most they ever had

(The title is rendered in all lower case, as it is on the cover of the book.)

Rick Bragg

“…although he paid these poor mountain people next to nothing, it was the most they ever 

had.”  - Chapter 3

In his stories of the textile mill at Jackson, Alabama, Rick Brag tells of his own brother who survived unscathed by the machines to which workers lost limbs and even lives. The brother lived daily with the threat of brown lung, a respiratory disease which flourished in the cotton dust and the associated bacteria which filled their lungs daily. Despite those threats with which he lived, the brother feared more than anything, the shutdown, the silence of the mill. Near the end of the book, Bragg turns a phrase, saying that the people had lived within the roar and feared the silence.

One could regard this book a collection of linked short stories. A teenage worker became a hero when he jumped down an elevator shaft to escape the wrath of those on whom he played as prank. A man who worked with chemicals in the machine shop retired unscathed, only to learn the chemicals had taken their toll. Young boys gathered up coal dropped by the trains along the railroad tracks to warm their families, or surprised relatives in the outhouse with a firecracker tossed from behind the wall. A man gained local fame as he played on the company baseball team.

A mill supervisor made money even in the great depression and bought up property. He owned the pharmacy, the grocery store, and many of the mill workers homes. He would not hesitate to put them out of their homes if they made trouble, but gave away shoes and hams at Christmas. He regarded himself as a philanthropist

This book about the mill and those who worked in it is a paradox. The stories make sense in a counterintuitive manner. Bragg shows his skill as a master storyteller.

Hemingway on Fishing

From stories of young Nick Adams fishing the rivers of Michigan to a novella about an old fisherman named Santiago fighting off the sharks in an attempt to save his catch, fishing permeates Ernest Hemingway’s writing. In “Big Two Hearted River,” Nick fished near a logged over forest and a burned town, and the narrative established Hemingway’s career as a master of the short story. In The Old Man and the Sea, he revealed the depth of his craft and received a Pulitzer Prize and a Nobel Prize as stamps of approval from the larger society.

The posthumous book Hemingway on Fishing is a collection of some of his best writing on the subject. It includes short stories, journalistic pieces, and excerpts from books. The forward by Jack Hemingway, author of The Misadventures of a Fly Fisherman, reveals a love of fishing shared by father and son. The introduction by Nick Lyons, who edited the volume, gives a more detailed account of fishing as intertwined in Hemingway’s life, his writing, and even his relationship with his family.

The first section of the book is all about fresh water. It begins with four short stories about trout fishing, including the iconic “Big Two Hearted River,” which is, on the surface, just about fishing. The logged woods and burned town suggest deeper issues in the protagonist’s psyche.

Another short work, “Now I Lay Me,” is about a man in a hospital, or possibly a prison, who avoids sleep, and perhaps the accompanying dreams, by consciously remembering every stream he has ever fished. The story hints at Hemingway’s lifelong may have been inspired by knowledge of Jack Hemingway’s own experience as a Prisoner of War, waiting to be liberated by allied forces as they moved through Nazi Germany.

Most notable of the book excerpts is one from The Sun Also Rises, in which the tragic hero gets a respite from the drama of Lady Brit and his other friends by fishing for trout in Spain. The editor also included book excerpts drawn from A Moveable Fest and The Green Hills of Africa.

The center section reveals the lesser known Hemingway, the journalist who wrote feature articles for periodicals ranging from the Toronto Star to Vogue, Esquire, and Look. The articles report on opportunities and reveal the finer points of fishing for trout in Wyoming, Canada, and various European locations. Articles devoted to salt water fishing report on tuna fishing off Spain, and marlin fishing in the Gulf Stream, and off the coast of Peru. The story “On the Blue Water: A Gulf Stream Letter,” includes a report of fishermen who rescued an old man in a skiff far from land with the head and front part of a great marlin lashed to his skiff. The remains of the catch weighed 800 pounds. This gem surely inspired his prize winning novella, The Old Man and the Sea.

Section three includes salt water fishing battles of epic proportion excerpted from The Garden of Eden, Islands in the Stream, and The Old Man and the Sea. The first two are drawn from posthumous works, edited and prepared for publication by members of Hemingway’s family.

The fisherman in Islands in the Stream is a boy on the verge of manhood, obviously modeled after one of Hemingway’s own sons. In fact, the cast of characters is drawn from the family and the fishing friends of Hemingway’s days in Havana.

These stories remind us of heroic struggles fought well and fought hard. Some end in victories while others conclude with great loss. All of us have of course experienced victories and losses. We fight and endure as we celebrate victories and recover from defeats. We hope to rise victorious like the Phoenix, above our circumstances. The nonfiction works are strictly about fishing, but in the end, the fictional works are not so much about fishing as they are about struggle and the triumph of the human spirit. 

Madness Personified

At age 28, Ronnie is going back to school, to finish the degree she never earned and make a new start. As the lead character in Rebecca Cook’s novel Click, she does not undertake this journey alone. A large black crow flutters about the room or leaves to fly around the neighborhood and across the corn fields of Nebraska, a distant geography from Ronnie’s native Chicago. The bird always returns to perch on furniture, or on the shoulder of Ronnie’s husband Boyd (bird?).

The image is perfect and neat, but for one inconvenient fact. Boyd has been dead for three years. Despite their incorporeal nature, both Boyd and the crow are constants in Ronnie’s life. Boyd follows her around, whispers in her ear, briefly leaves on business trips, and appears in the apartment, even the bedroom, of her new boyfriend. When not flying about aimlessly, the bird flutters its wings inside her rib cage, or flies feet first at persons with whom she has unpleasant exchanges. Sometimes it carries her off to other places, and sometimes she flies with the bird. More than a symbol of her affliction, the bird is its personification.

The reader may hope against hope that Ronnie will pull through this crises, but she seems to unravel, even as the plot tightens and wraps itself up. As the story progresses toward an ending which appears to be inevitable, Ronnie is clearly loosing ground. The final scene manages to be both surprising and yet expected, which makes for a rewarding finish.

Some readers may find the strong language and frankly sexual encounters off putting, but these elements give the characters a three dimensional quality which is refreshing in comparison to the flatness of some modern fiction. The book is both compelling and unforgettable.  

The Old Man and the Sea

Just reread this story

The Old Man and the Sea

The line went out and out and out but it was slowing now and he was making the fish earn every inch of it.

The pundits of instruction manuals, workshops, classrooms, and critique circles tell us that repetition is unacceptable in both prose and poetry. Nevertheless, this line stands out as a summary of the battle between a great marlin and the old fisherman, Santiago. Ernest Hemingway received a Pulitzer Prize for his novella, The Old Man and the Sea, repetition and all. Hemingway had other works in progress when he died, but this was the last long work of fiction published during his lifetime.

The story itself holds a form of conflict that barely exists in recent literature, the conflict of man against nature. One can substitute the word person for the word man, in the name of gender equality, but I use the terms as I learned them.

The three forms of conflict in literature, as I learned them, were man against God (or the gods), man against nature, and man against man. The first is exemplified by The Odyssey and the Book of Job. Examples of the second include Moby Dick and the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Examples of the third include such classics as Hamlet and modern classics such as The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Other suggested conflicts such as man against himself (i.e. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), man against society (i.e. Fahrenheit 451), and man against machine (i.e. The Terminator) are all special cases of man against man.

The disappearance of man against nature as a recognized form of conflict came home to me in a recent writing workshop where the facilitator listed man against God, man against man, and man against himself. Nature was left out entirely, perhaps symbolic of a society which no longer considers nature significant or powerful. In a contemporary world we forecast the weather, hold back the sea with levees, channel the course of rivers and generally regard nature as vanquished. This is well described in John McPhee’s nonfiction book, The Control of Nature. Bill McKibben described it in another way in The End of Nature.

Our belief that we have conquered nature has theological roots in the word dominion, but I believe this is magnified beyond all measure in the contemporary world. Despite the evidence of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and volcanic eruptions, our belief in our omnipotence continues. Given this belief, it may not be possible for a living author to write a book such as Moby Dick, a novella such as The Old Man and the Sea, or a short story such as “The Bear.”

Despite our current trend of ignoring nature, it has a strong presence in Hemingway’s story. 

In a frequently quoted line, Santiago is alone in the boat, but speaks aloud. “But man is not made for defeat,” he said. “A man can be destroyed, but not defeated.” Hemingway is speaking through the character, of course, but he makes more of the story than a simple battle. Santiago loves the fish and calls him brother, despite his intent to kill the fish. He is sorry for the fish being spoiled when sharks come. He feels sadness for another fish he had killed, perhaps years ago, and remembers her mate who leaped high for one last look before he dove into the depths, just escaping the fisherman’s harpoon.

Most of all, Santiago regards the sea as a feminine entity. She gives or withholds great favors such as a favorable day’s fishing. She sometimes gives storms and high seas, just as a lover is sometimes tender and at other times moody and impetuous. He makes much of how the sea is subject to the influence of the moon.

Santiago, the Cuban fisherman, exemplifies a much more complex relationship with nature than 21^st century humans can generally envision. This is true as well for Hemmingway: hunter, fisherman, world traveler and author.  The themes of The Old Man and the Sea also appear in his earlier nonfiction work, The Green Hills of Africa.

The greatness of this novella is preserved for all time. Aside from winning the Pulitzer Prize, it was cited prominently in the judges’ remarks when Hemingway received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Abbey’s Road

Edward Abbey

I usually skip the introduction to a book, even a nonfiction book, but as I thumbed through the opening pages of Abbey’s Road, looking for the start of chapter one, I noticed correspondence embedded in the text. Specifically, it was Abbey’s letter to the editors of Ms Magazine (which Abbey spelled Mizz Magazine), followed by an equally witty and cutting response from Gloria Steinem herself. Neither letter saw print in the magazine, but Abbey preserved them for posterity in the pages of his book.

His introduction includes correspondence to and from a number of persons, both famous and unknown. One such correspondent apparently confused him with the notable playwright Edward Albee and chastised him for his recent departure from his usual style.

Further comments in the introduction mark Abbey as a defender and promoter of western literature and nature writing in general. He specifically mentions Joseph Wood Krutch, great granddaddy of western conservationists, and other nature writers, but he reserves the heir to Thoreau honor for Virginia (and Puget Sound) resident Annie Dilliard. He then takes exception to Dillard’s constant invocation of the Deity, stating that use of the simple word mystery (without capitalization) would suffice.

Beyond the introduction, the book is divided into three unequal parts, with part one, a travelogue, being the longest. Here we see Abbey in his element, the untamed wilderness and cattle ranches of the American Southwest, with trips further afield to the Great Barrier Reef, Aboriginal Australia, and an uninhabited island off the coast of Mexico. He also recounts a rafting trip on the Rio Grande River. Aside from the uninhabited island, he encounters a variety of interesting people along the way, including a barmaid whom he is not quite successful in convincing to travel with him across the Outback. That story though, is pure Abbey.

Part two is devoted to polemics, essay style writing which takes a specific view and gives no credence to any opposing argument. Despite his years supporting himself as a park ranger, cowboy, fire tower lookout and teacher, Abbey shows no respect for the Park Service bureaucracy nor its sister agency in the Department of Agriculture, the U.S Forest Service. His comments are equally likely to infuriate cattle ranchers, university administrators, feminists, and gun control advocates. Abbey loved the American West, and was equally at home bird watching or hunting deer. He took the construction of Glen Canyon Dam as a personal affront. In this section Abbey confronts the powers that be in the spirit of his better known fictional work The Monkey Wrench Gang. 

The third and shortest part is devoted to personal history. It lacks the lyric passages of his nonfiction book, Dessert Solitaire, my personal favorite of his works, but perhaps gives more insight into the man, his life’s work, and his motivations. It includes a story of a hiking trip with his young daughter, child of the wife who died of leukemia. This particular story shows a tender side to a man normally regarded as a grizzled old curmudgeon. 

Abbey’s Road provides a retrospective of his life up to that point in time. His best known books were already written, but more were yet to appear. I recommend it highly to anyone who loves the outdoors, and is at least willing to suspend judgment about his anarchist politics.

The Art of Haiku
Stephen Addiss

If you enjoy short poems or delightful visual art, this book is for you. It was my first introduction to haiga, visual art specifically created to accompany haiku. Addiss illustrates his work liberally with exemplary poems and samples of visual works created to accompany them, stressing the point that they were created to be enjoyed together. He traces the history of short form poetry in Japanese society, beginning with tanka, a five line form poem popular early in the previous millennium and continued into the present day, and contrasts it with the Chinese style poetry which was popular in the imperial court. He follows this with biographies of the three acknowledged masters of Haiku and Haiban, Basho (17th century), Buson (18h century)and Issa (19th century). The chapters on these three include illustrations of their artwork, as do the sections on Zen poets and early 20th century haiku poets. He ends the work at World War II, stating that Haiku has since become a world wide phenomenon, and a description of it in recent years would fill another book. I found it a delightful read.

I did experience some difficulty navigating between the text and the illustrations on my Kindle Fire. Apparently the publishers originally placed the illustrations in the center of the book and the clickable links in the Kindle edition were difficult to operate with touch screen. The screen size also made some of the illustrations difficult to view. I will try looking at it with the Kindle App on my laptop, 

I have now acquired a hardbound copy. Although I am happy with the other books in my kindle library, I like the size and accessibility of the illustrations in the bound copy better than the ebook, in this particular case.

Moon Over Taylor’s Ridge

Janie Dempsey Watts

Little Creek Books

When Avie returns home to Taylor’s Ridge, a small community near Ringgold, Georgia, to settle her father’s estate, she finds her childhood home thick with relatives and neighbors she remembers. Some are friends and others are decidedly not. Aunt Ardelia is spying on her and everyone else in the community. Her brother and half-sister have plans of their own for daddy’s estate and particularly the land. Her son, Joseph, seems to be stronger and handling his asthma better as her husband, a continent away in California, is distant and preoccupied with work. The storekeeper Xylia seems to be the only friendly face in the crowd.

Into this scenario steps Will, a new friend of Cherokee heritage, happy to befriend Avie and Joseph. As Xylia assists Joseph in his search for the legendary Cherokee silver mine on Taylor’s Ridge, Will provides insight into the culture of a people brutally removed from their homes and shipped to Oklahoma after gold was discovered at nearby Dahlonega. This culture is still an undercurrent in the Southeast, and Avie discovers just how significant it is to our country, its traditions, and her family. She faces a dilemma, as she confronts an unworkable present, an uncooperative family and a possible new romance. In the end, she finds the strength to face her fears, to fight for what she believes and to take brave steps into a brighter future.

The role of the moon, I leave for the reader to find in the pages of this book. Moon over Taylor’s Ridge is a riveting tale, through which Janie Dempsey Watts weaves the strands of interrelated narratives. Read this book today.  

Small Patches of Light

Small Patches of Light

Bruce Majors

Finishing Line Press

There will be no darkness tonight. – The Message of Snow

There is darkness a plenty in Bruce Majors’ latest collection of poems, but there are also the “small patches of light” which give the book its title. These rays of sunshine, moonbeams, and moments of hope periodically pierce the darkness of depression. To see that light, the author wrestles though bleak depths in a life long battle. In his poem “Responding to Melancholy,” which Majors inscribed as “After Jane Kenyon,” noting the struggles of another poet, he addresses this darkness personified.

…there is a gaping black hole in my chest

where you placed your hook.

Although that darkness is with him always, he struggles without ceasing, perhaps prays without ceasing, buoyed up by a spiritual center and the incredibly beautiful landscape where he resides in rural Tennessee. His poem “Eden” includes a description of that land “where stars storm the night sky.” That land includes outdoor activities which seem to have been a part of his life for all time.

“…after setting jugs for catfish,

it occurred to me,

this could be Eden.”

Always though, like an inhabitant of “The Wasteland” as portrayed by T.S. Elliott, he feels a shadow fall. It obscures the light in a way perhaps best described in Majors’ poem “Wasted Night.”

“My boatload of dreams sinks

like loggerheads, to wallow in the murky bottom

lying indisposed among weeds.”

There are many poets who could tell this tale. Few could tell it as well as Bruce Majors.

Its Day Being Gone

Its Day Being Gone

Rose Mclarney

Penguin Books

I’m still here. I can’t stay away from the hard images. - Facing North

Rose McLarney’s poems speak of the fragility of the land and of its resilience. They tell of the strength and vulnerability of its inhabitants. These are the hard images of which she speaks in the lead poem of her striking new collection.

Her poem “Imminent Domain” begins with the image of South American women who won’t leave their land to make room for a hydroelectric dam, and then compares them to the Appalachian families evicted to make room for Fontana Dam, and the many reservoirs of the Tennessee Valley. She tells of how she “…swam over houses in Carolina,” in a voice worthy to speak for people dispossessed. She ends by saying how she too felt the urge to control flowing water and built dams of her own as a child, This poem is typical because McLarney can’t stop her poems with one insight, she gives us the whole picture in words and images which made this, her second book, a prize winner in the National Poetry Series and earned publication by a major house. Each poem tells a story of life on the land, filled with struggles, yet well lived.

A full list of publications which have featured McLarney’s poems is not possible here, but Kenyon Review, New England Review, Slate, Orion, and the Missouri Review are among her noteworthy publication credits. For her first book, The Always Broken Plates of Mountains, she received the George Garrett New Writing Award given by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. As a result of receiving the award, she read from her book at the Celebration of Southern Literature in Chattanooga. At this reading she startled the audience with her presence, the clarity of her vision, and the lyric beauty of her poems. The new book, Its Day Being Gone, is better yet.

Narrow road to the Interior

Narrow road to the Interior

Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)

Translated by Sam Hamill

Shambhala Press

…every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

This book deserves attention for the sheer beauty of the poetry and loveliness of the images. Some Japanese scholars say that Haiku began and ended with Basho. He is often recognized as the author who perfected this form, but is also noted for his Haiban, a form which includes prose passages with linked Haiku.  The travel journal, Narrow Road to the Interior, is one of these. It may be his best known work, but his other travel journals merit a close look, particularly The Knapsack Notebook. Although this Shambhala edition takes its title from the best known of the works, it includes all four travel journals as well as an extensive selection of Haiku. It is perhaps the most complete collection of Basho’s writings available in translation.

Matsuo Basho served a Samurai household until the master of that house died. Although he studied Zen, poetry was the focus of his life’s work. He traveled widely, sometimes on horseback, but more often on foot. A number of followers studied poetry with him, and some gained students of their own. The translator refers to them as the Basho school of poetry.

Translator Sam Hamill co-founded Copper Canyon Press, which poets might well regard as the Holy Grail of publishing houses. It is the only major publisher devoted entirely to poetry. He is an influential poet in his own right. 

Aldo Leopold: A Standard of Change

Jim Pfitzer

When Jim Pfitzer steps onto the stage in this one man show, he does not so much portray Aldo Leopold as become the noted conservationist who pioneered the land ethic and the academic field of wildlife management. Pfitzer read and reread Leopold’s seminal work A Sand County Almanac before he developed the production. He then reviewed papers and letters only available at the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin and at the archives of the University of Wisconsin where Leopold taught.

Pfitzer had not yet determined the final form the production would take until he spent an extended time visiting “The Shack” where Leopold gathered the experiences that led to his classic book. He saw Sandhill Cranes there at sunset and credits that experience, in that specific location, with the inspiration to finalize the production. In the show he recites parts of Leopold’s essay, “Marshland Elegy,” a farewell to the cranes, which Leopold believed would soon become extinct. In his lifetime, they were a vanishing species.

Just as Leopold’s hard work as a conservationist paid off in restoration of the landscape, and a public commitment to conservation, Pfitzer’s hard work paid off in a presentation which has delighted audiences from Chattanooga to Baraboo and from the Geography of Hope Conference at Point Reyes, California to the Bonaroo music festival at Manchester, Tennessee. Pfitzer will certainly present his show in Chattanooga again. Don’t miss the opportunity to see this inspiring performance.

As Published in the Chattanooga Chat, newsletter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society, Chattanooga Chapter 

North American Wading Birds

Text and Photos by John Netherton

This lovely book is, unfortunately, out of print, but serviceable copies are available from reputable used book dealers. The outstanding feature  is, of course, the photographs by Nashville photographer John Netherton who, during his lifetime, became Tennessee’s premier nature photographer. He also wrote the text which includes a life history of each selected species. Each of the accounts includes a description of physical appearance and life history, including feeding, roosting, and nesting behavior.

A biologist would certainly regard the selection of described species as an artificial grouping. Netherton devoted the largest portion of the book to herons and egrets, and left out their close relatives, the bitterns. He then added descriptions and photographs of the Limpkin, Roseate Spoonbill, Wood Stork, three species of ibis, and the Sandhill and Whooping Crane. The result is an account made whole by the similarities of habitat and life ways. The text is brief, but well worth the time spent reading, and makes a nice compliment to the stunning photography.    

Ghost Bird

Stephen Lyn Bales

This unique book goes back to a time when the fabled Ivory Billed Woodpecker was still seen, though not on a regular basis. The species has since become a symbol of lost wilderness in America, and a symbol of hopes and dreams. One small Arkansas town placed hopes on a tourist boom after a recent alleged sighting. Some birders dream of finding a lost remnant population of this bird, generally believed extinct. In his introduction to the book, Stephen Lyn Bales stated that as he learned more about Jim Tanner and his research efforts to document the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, he became convinced that someone should write a book about Tanner.

He states that he did not want to write the book. He had one book already, and said that writing a book is like putting socks on an octopus, that one does not wish to undertake the task again. Despite those reservations, it became clear to him that he should be the one to write this book. He lived near Tanner’s widow, Nancy, and knew her from participation in a bird club. Through Nancy, he had access to Tanner’s journals and photographs, some of which he published in the magazine, Tennessee Conservationist. This reviewer is glad he undertook the project, and gave us his second book. He obviously put hours of research into the project and cared enough to produce a quality project.

When Jim Tanner set off on his first expedition, he didn’t know he would observe a species which became his doctoral research project, and become famous for its absence. He began the journey with Arthur Allen, director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, when they set out to film birds and record their songs. They had none of the equipment we take for granted today, hand held and compact. Their sound laboratory alone weighed around 1,500 pounds. Their field equipment was heavy, bulky and cranky.

In the end, the researchers filmed and recorded the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, already disappearing from our continent. Turner then spent three years searching for these ghost birds. He completed the research and became a professor at a school which would later become East Tennessee State University. After service with the Navy during World War II, he taught at the University of Tennessee. He died believing the Ivory Billed Woodpecker had become extinct in his lifetime, and verifiable results of recent searches tend to support that conclusion. 

Mr. Bales tells the story in a way that prompts the reader to want to learn more. The one disadvantage of this book is that it has not been released as an ebook.

An article which could serve as a footnote to the book appeared in Tennessee Conservationist magazine earlier this year. Prior to the death of Tanner's wife Nancy in 2014, she was the last living person to have seen the Ivory Billed Woodpecker.

The Forest Unseen

David George Haskell begins the book with a description of Tibetan Monks making a sand painting, a Mandala, to which he compares his own exploration of a one square meter patch of an old growth forest on property owned by the University of the South. 

His description of the small bit of land as a Mandala is more than an interesting metaphor. 

Like the sand painting of the monks, his patch of old growth forest was a place of observation and contemplation, from which his thoughts, and consequently his writings, took wing into historic and contemporary research on the flight of birds, the rate of tree growth, the lives of plants and animals, the shifting weather patterns and the hexagonal ring structure of frozen water. These vignettes reveal both depth and breadth of knowledge. 

Haskell's acknowledgements reveal extensive research at the school’s library and conversations with academic colleagues, both of which enhanced his writing.

His use of a square meter of forest as the launching point for these discussions makes sense as a concept that I can only express as microcosm. Commonly understood as a small portion which represents the whole, it is in fact a small portion which reveals the nature of the whole. It is derived from the same word as cosmos. The book is an excellent read for birdwatchers and anyone else who spends time observing nature.

Ray Zimmerman

P.O. Box 2204

Chattanooga, TN 37409

znaturalist@gmail.com

Ray Zimmerman’s creative endeavors include photography, storytelling, nonfiction writing, and poetry.

Editing

Ray currently edits the Chattanooga Chat, newsletter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society, Chattanooga Chapter. Copies available at http://www.chattanoogatos.org

Book Reviews and Critical Reviews

Ray’s book reviews appear at Amazon.com. Book reviews and some critical reviews of performances appear on his Facebook page. He currently has a backlog in this department. Please do not send copies of your book. View his reviews at: http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A14X3ING7BLY83/ref=cm_cr_rdp_pdp

Photography

Ray is currently converting his extensive collection of 35 mm slides and negatives to digital format. He has photographed natural areas at Chattanooga, Assateague Island National Seashore, Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Everglades National Park. His images have appeared in Tennessee Conservationist magazine and the Photographic Society of America Journal.

Poems have appeared in:

Southern Light: Twelve Contemporary Southern Poets - Ford, Falcon, and McNeil (Executive Editor). This collection is currently available from the editors, Ray Zimmerman and Bruce Majors. It is no longer available as a hard copy from Amazon.com, but may be released as an ebook at a future date.

First Days - Finishing Line Press

Ray wrote these poems while recovering from Coronary Bypass Surgery. The collection begins dark and ends on a hopeful note. It is available from Finishing Line Press online bookstore, from Amazon.com, and from the author.

Ray’s poem “Glen Falls Trail” won second place in the Tennessee Writers Alliance poetry contest (2007) and appears in the forthcoming Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VI: Tennessee.

Nonfiction has appeared in Cappers (Topeka), Legacy: the Journal of Interpretation (Fort Collins), Photo Traveler Newsletter (San Francisco), The Hellbender Press (Knoxville), Envirolink (Chattanooga), The Art of Living (Chattanooga), and 2^nd and Church (Nashville). Samples are available on his website http://rayzimmerman.weebly.com and on his blog at http://rayzimmerman.blogspot.com. 

The Birds of Heaven

Peter Matthiessen, 2001

This book is another triumph for Peter Matthiessen, a founder of the Paris Review and author of numerous books of natural history. Matthiessen describes the life history, geographic distribution, and survival potential of each of the fifteen species (classed in three genera), several of which are endangered.

Many of us have heard less knowledgeable people identify Great Blue Herons as cranes, but Matthiessen points out that this misidentification, so common in modern day America is nothing new. Linnaeus …named the Eurasian, or common crane, “Ardea grus,” or Crane Heron, and in the nineteenth century, Audubon would portray a Heron as the “little blue crane”.

Reading this book we also learn that Siberian natives call the lesser Sandhill Crane the crane from the east, although we in North America regard it as a western species. We also hear of the “Accidental Paradise,” Matthiessen’s term for the Korean Demilitarized Zone, which has become a refuge for the Red-crowned Crane, Hooded Crane, and the White-naped Crane.

In his travels Matthiessen (born 1927) has encountered each of the many species of cranes. I place this book in a class with The Snow Leopard, for which he won the National Book Award. Matthiesen died in New York earlier this year