Cranes Return - As published in the December, 2014 Issue of the Chattanooga Chat 

The 2015 Sandhill Crane festival will take place January 17 and 18 at Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge. Early reports of Sandhill Cranes in Meigs County appear elsewhere in this issue of The Chat.

On December 21 of last year I joined the Tennessee Wild Meetup for Sandhill Crane viewing at the refuge. Fog shrouded the landscape and enfolded us. It cut visibility of distant parts of the refuge, but we saw cranes on both the near and far side of a small bay. Sounds enveloped us as they can on foggy days. The rattling call of cranes greeted our ears as flock upon flock flew across our field of vision. Many circled and landed as we watched.  An immature Bald Eagle flew over as well.

We saw one Whooping Crane, cloud white against the gray Sandhill Cranes, and representing a species back from the edge of that abyss called extinction.

The rare Whooping Cranes called to mind a rarer species I once viewed on Cape Cod. I boarded a whale watch boat in hopes of viewing the antics of Humpback Whales. That hope was not realized, but I was lucky to see three Northern Right Whales. A pair of adults swam side by side, as a calf acrobatically rose out of the water and energetically waved its tail flukes and flippers.

With only three hundred Northern Right Whales remaining, the three I saw comprised one percent of the world wide population. They became rare because they were easily hunted and easily retrieved. Whalers called them “the right whale to kill.”

Overhunting may have contributed to the demise of the Whooping Crane as well. Despite their rarity and protected status, Whooping Cranes were shot in Georgia and Texas the previous year.

The Sandhill Cranes we witnessed this day were once considered a rarity as well. Sandhill Cranes were rare enough in Aldo Leopold’s day that he was certain they would soon be extinct. His essay, “Marshland Elegy,” was his farewell to the cranes. Only careful management brought them back to the large and growing population that graces our wetlands and skies today. I hope we can see such success with the Whooping Crane and the Northern Right Whale.

Little Owl Music and Arts Festival

Contact: Chattanooga Audubon Society, (423) 899-1499 littleowlfestival@chattaudubon.org

            The Chattanooga Audubon Society invites you to enjoy the fourth annual Little Owl Music and Arts Festival, Saturday, April 18, 2015 at their Audubon Acres sanctuary. Hear music, storytelling and local authors. Join us as we announce the winners of a student poster contest. View all entries in that contest at our clothesline art show. See craft exhibits and shop for unique items created by our arts and crafts vendors. Vendors from area restaurants will have food available for purchase.

Audubon Acres is Chattanooga’s oldest nature sanctuary. This 130 acre Wildlife Sanctuary is maintained so that visitors can enjoy and experience wildlife in its natural setting. There are over five miles of walking and hiking trails running on both sides of South Chickamauga Creek. 

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.