EVERYBODY PANIC !!!

Swine flu … we don’t know where this thing is going, and it could end up being very serious, or it could be something we’ve forgotten about by June. So far in the U.S., we have one reported death, and none in Canada. But, as my online friend Karen points out, 36,000 people die from the flu in North America every year. That’s the commonplace flu we take for granted, because it always happens. More people than that die from falling in the shower, yet we continue to take showers. One person died from swine flu in 1976, too — and 30 more died from a disease associated with the vaccine. I remember this very well, because I was fresh out of college, and getting that vaccination was one of my first significant adult decisions. I remember wondering about the complications.

For the record, I believe that most vaccines do far more good than harm and that they save many more lives than the number lost to complications. It just wasn’t the case with the swine flu vaccine in 1976.

So, as I often do when posting about something other than a book, let’s move from the serious to the comic, the comic having more to do with misinformation than anything else. Adrienne, like Karen a friend from House of Fur (a site for cat lovers, since I feel the need to qualify everything today), offered this informative link on the swine flu and rumors. And in that article is a link to another article, about how rumors cost lives.

Of course, looking back 33 years, the 1976 public service announcements seem quaint and dated. Are you scared yet?

If not, this take-off on how Twitter spreads misinformation should scare you — not about swine flu, but about modern communications, with credit again to Adrienne, who found it at someone else’s blog:

A Celebration of Weird Garbage Day 2009

Dave thinks I have a dangerous obsession with Weird Garbage Day, more formally known in my community as Spring Clean-up. This is the day on which we can put old furniture, brush, and other outsized items on the curb for pick-up by the city trash trucks. The night before, what we call “the scavengers” drive around in big trucks and pick up whatever they think can be rehabbed and reused. The city trucks then sort the reusable items from the true trash, and take it all away.

I like to see what people put out on the curb. This fascinates me, it’s like a small window into a side of their lives they’d normally not reveal. And I like to see what’s taken away. For example … if you enlarge this page to full screen, you will see a picture of Priscilla, my cat who died last year at the age of 19 1/2. Now, that is very, very old for a cat. And she spent her last year not using the litter box. She used a couple of spots in the basement, and one of those spots was the bottom of a two-tiered coffee table I planned to dump anyway. So on Thursday evening, Dave and I moved the cat-pee-soaked coffee table onto the curb. And yesterday evening, one of the scavengers loaded it into a truck and took it away! I am stunned that this cat-pee-encrusted piece of garbage was lifted onto a truck with the hope that it would prove to be of some use.

Aren’t people amazing? I love the ingenuity and optimism that represents.

Anyway, that’s the big recycling news in my life. Staying with the environmentalism theme, Slate magazine addressed the environmental aspects of microwave oven use. If all you’re doing is heating something, as opposed to really cooking, it’s the environmentally correct thing to do. Happy Belated Earth Day.

Finally, mother love can be recycled. Mother’s Day is coming up in a couple of weeks; I hope Jasmine has a good one.

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Charlie All Night, by Jennifer Crusie

Still in the brain candy phase, though I’m starting something more substantial soon.

And speaking of brain candy, who does it better than Jennifer Crusie? Charlie All Night is one of her earlier books, published in 1996. With a plot that sounds like a sibling to the old sitcom, Kramer, Crusie presents her usual mix of workplace intrigue and irresistable passion. That, by the way, is what differentiates chick lit from romance — in chick lit, the job and the man are either equally important, or the job is more important. And here you thought nothing had changed since women entered the workforce en masse! ::snicker::

Anyway, Allie, our heroine, gets moved out of her job as prime time radio producer due to some nasty office politics on the part of her former boyfriend. She gets stuck with Charlie, who’s in town for some weird reason that becomes part of the plot and I can’t reveal. She decides to make Charlie a star against his will. And they have great sex and fall for each other, and there’s the usual mostly if not completely positive ending. The end. Recommended if you like this kind of thing, not recommended if you don’t. I just added a new category: beach book. This is the quintessential beach book.

Are there animals? Are they hurt or does something else happen that would disturb a reader who hates that kind of thing? Well, there’s an adorable puppy who comes to no harm. Charlie helps out the local animal shelter on his show. There’s a dog named King whose life improves once Charlie and Allie take an interest in him. And that’s it, meaning this book is SAFE for animal lovers.

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Two Books by Charlaine Harris

I said I was going to read more of this brain candy, and I did. I read Books Two and Three of Charlaine Harris’s Vampire Chronicles, those books being Living Dead in Dallas and Club Dead, respectively. Still brain candy, still entertaining.

In Living Dead in Dallas, protagonist Sookie Stackhouse comes under control of Eric, the “sheriff” of the Shreveport, Louisiana region. We learn that not all vampires are as easy to deal with as Boring Bill, that vampires have a ridiculous hierarchy, and that religious extremists are always on the lookout for a new cause to be ridiculous about. In Club Dead, we learn more about shapeshifters and werewolves, Boring Bill’s past, Eric’s sense of mischief, and the fact that vampires can be awfully mean to each other.

Look, you either like this stuff or you don’t. I sort of enjoy it. Yes, Boring Bill is boring, there’s a bit more description than I like given over to who’s wearing what, etc., etc. This is sort of like reading a good magazine that you end up recycling without having torn out any interesting recipes or articles, you know?

So, is Charlaine Harris good to the animals in these books? You mean there are really animals that aren’t actually shapeshifters? Occasionally, yes. But not many, now that the feline-icide of the first book is over. There’s a reference to deer hunting in Living Dead, and that’s about it. So these books are SAFE for animal lovers.

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Breaking Trail, by Arlene Blum

Like Gertrude Bell, whose biography I reviewed recently, Arlene Blum is a super-accomplished woman. And they have a couple of things in common — neither ever married, and they were both ardent mountaineers, breaking stereotypes as they ticked off first ascents. But that is about where the resemblance ends. For example, Bell came from a warm, supportive family, whereas Blum … not so much. In fact, her family was wildly, insanely, doggedly, and even militantly unsupportive of just about everything she tried to do. Yes, as with all people who behave strangely there are explanations. But still, I’m surprised they ever let her cross the street. And she was so bright and ambitious. She really had to have a strong sense of self to get past all the negativity that surrounded her as a child.

Anyway, this autobiography is engrossing, extremely well-written, and presents a great picture of what women in the “breakthrough generation” went through in the 1960s and 1970s. For example, when Blum found the biochemistryPhD program at MIT to be inhospitable to women, she transferred to UC Berkeley, where she also met some of her future climbing partners.

And, at its heart, this is a book about mountain climbing. Blum was a leader on ascents of Annapurna I, Everest, and Denali. Some of her 30+ expeditions were all-female teams. The hostility of many male climbers has been written about before, but Blum even names names. Of course, she was also held to a higher standard than the men applied to themselves. If anything at all went wrong on one of her expeditions, it was held up as proof that women couldn’t handle mountaineering, while at the same time such incidents went unremarked upon when the teams were all male.

Blum definitely has a prickly side, though. With that childhood, I would expect nothing less. I’m just noting that it’s there, and that most people have never tossed a plateful of food into a man’s face. That was the only incident of its nature, but it was illustrative. Blum also seemed to have many 6-month to 4-year relationships with men, describing most of these as fizzling out. That’s too bad, because she seems like a nice person. But she’s clearly headstrong, and those aren’t the easiest people to live with.

Anyway, she’s an unusual woman who’s led an interesting life and wrote an excellent book about it. This comes with my recommendation.

As for animals, there’s not much. She adopted some kittens in grad school, observed animals in her travels, and tells a very brief, sad story about a chicken. So this book is SAFE for animal lovers. Enjoy!

The Dreamer vs the Cynics

I am slammed with work and I am normally on a Wednesday and Saturday posting schedule for this blog, but I had to put this up ASAP.

This is the most amazing thing I’ve seen in a long time, and everyone says it brings tears to their eyes. This 47-year-old woman who didn’t look like anything special went on Britain’s Got Talent and was possibly the most amazing undiscovered singer ever. And the reaction to her is  fantastic. This is a must-see. Enjoy.

P.S. Embedding is apparently not allowed. So here is the URL for you to follow.

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of The Book of Animal Ignorance, by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson

I have decidedly mixed feelings about this book. For a couple of weeks, maybe a bit longer, it was my “bed book” — a book I keep on my nightstand and read 5-10 pages at a time before going to sleep at night. And with it’s 2-3 page essays with facts about 100 or so different animals, it was perfect for that purpose.

Now, apparently the two Johns who wrote the book are involved with a British TV show called QI  for “Quite Interesting.” I don’t know if it operates like Jeopardy or what, but it is, essentially, a trivia show. The essays in this book are drawn from animal facts Lloyd and Mitchinson have come across in the course of producing and writing the show.

Most of the essays are enlightening and interesting, the prominent exception being the one on cats, in which the authors snark on American cat owners and get at least a couple of their facts wrong.

So why was I less than thrilled with this book? I don’t know. I do know that I would have been happier with longer essays about fewer species, because I didn’t feel I gained knowledge about the species covered, only a few random facts. If you’re going to write about goats, for example, five or six pages might be better than three, with less space devoted to seemingly redundant small rodents and jellyfish. Then again, that might just be my preference.

Anyway, I can’t recommend the book to those who are put off by unpleasant images of animals and that sort of thing — which is the purpose of this blog. It is MOSTLY UNSAFE. I think the two Johns had no choice but to go there, however.

Mmmm, Bacon!

God made bacon because he loves us and wants us to be happy.

Yes, I’m still an agnostic. Don’t be such a literalist — the point of that statement is obvious: bacon is wonderful.

I made spaghetti carbonara for dinner last night, and it reminded me of how much I do love bacon. In a normal week, I stop at having three strips of it at breakfast on Saturday, but that’s just because I also love my arteries and don’t wish to clog them any more than I already do.

The wonderfulness of bacon has made the news in a number of ways recently. For example, a 115-year-old woman enjoys bacon regularly. If it’s good enough for the oldest person in the United States, it’s good enough for me! Of course, she has forsworn alcohol, cigarettes, and sex. Hmm. I’m not a smoker ….

Speaking of alcohol, the Brits have shown that bacon sandwiches cure hangovers. Thanks, British scientists! That is most welcome information.

Closer to home, an undisclosed location near San Francisco was the site of the recent Bacon Camp. I love this article because it mentions bacon-flavored dental floss, links to a recipe for bacon ice cream, has pictures of bacon sculpture, and shows buttons with amusing bacon-related slogans. Missing, however, was “bacon is a vegetable,” which appeared on a t-shirt in the most recent season of Top Chef.

Finally, would Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes have won a challenge on Top Chef? Maybe, maybe not. But if you want to try them at home, here is the recipe. I’ve had a peanut butter cupcake with bacon bits in the frosting, and it was awesome. I wonder if chocolate would be as good. Maybe I should make these and find out.

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations, by Georgina Howell

I finished this book over a week ago and have delayed reviewing it for one reason: Gertrude Bell was such a complex and accomplished person that it’s hard to know what to say in a short review. In fact, my only complaint about Howell’s well-written and exciting biography of this astonishing woman is that she sped through some parts of Bell’s life that, for most people, would warrant a book in and of itself. Then again, would I have read a 700-page biography? Probably not. Howell did an admirable job of keeping the text down to 419 pages.

Let’s get one of the unpleasant aspects out of the way right now: Bell opposed women’s suffrage. With her stepmother, she had been active in lobbying for the rights of the working poor and saw firsthand the burdens many working class women suffered. Her clearly flawed rationale for opposing suffrage stemmed from two related issues. First, she thought there were more pressing problems related to women’s rights, and second, only a quarter of British men were eligible to vote and universal suffrage would swamp the system. As history has shown us, we can’t set priorities like that, and fortunately, Bell’s beliefs did not carry the day.

On to her extraordinary life! Bell was extremely close to her father, who encouraged her in everything she aspired to do. And Bell wanted to do a lot. For example, instead of following the usual course for a wealthy young woman and becoming a debutante, Bell read history at Oxford. However, with career options for educated women being close to non-existent back in the late 1800s, she returned home after acquiring her degree. As Howell makes clear, Bell had to chart her own course.

For a while, she helped her stepmother in working with the poor. She also traveled, as the rich did in those days, to visit family friends. It was during one of these trips that she took up mountain climbing in the Alps – more uncommon among her generation’s women than attending Oxford. During another trip, she discovered her first love, the Middle East. (Note that she also did fall in love with two men during her life, one unavailable to her due to class, the other due to the fact that he was already married.)

Bell had a facility for languages and became fluent in Arabic and several other languages with relatively little effort. She took up archaeology, learned the etiquette of dealing with tribal chiefs, and made some amazing journeys into territory that was unexplored by Europeans. As a result, when post-WWI international treaties led to the need to set political boundaries, Bell was included. She had to be — no one else knew as much, not even T. E. Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia, who also participated in the discussions.

This doesn’t even touch the surface. If you like history at all, or if you enjoy a good biography, you must read this book. It is exceptional.

As for animal lovers, I don’t think there is anything in this book that would put off someone who can’t stand to read incidents of animal abuse and neglect. Lawrence shoves a camel to make it behave, and that was about it. Bell loved dogs and seemed to calm her camels — in fact, in two photos of the 1921 Cairo Conference participants, her camel was the only one that wasn’t waving its head and blurring the picture. So this book is SAFE for animal lovers.

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan

This well-told, engrossing history of the Dust Bowl years won the National Book Award, and rightly so. Author Timothy Egan gives us vivid characters, fast pacing, and intriguing plots and subplots — not easy to do when history is so often full of dull minutiae that must be conveyed for the story to make sense. But Egan even makes the struggles within the Federal bureaucracy sound exciting.

He starts by describing what the southern Great Plains were like before settlement. These vast grasslands sustained buffalo and the native peoples who hunted them for purpose, not sport. Then the bison were killed off by the white settlers, who moved in cattle and, eventually, wheat farms. What we had here was a fragile environment disrupted in the worst possible way, leading to Egan’s “worst hard time” with the dust storms. The needs of cattle differ from those of bison, and wheat doesn’t grow in the same way as prairie grass. Just as the Great Depression hit and wheat cultivation became a financial liability, a sustained drought began. The winds stirred up dust so bad that it engulfed entire towns for days, seeping into even the most meticulously sealed windows and doors. People died of “dust pneumonia” and suffered other ailments caused by the fine dirt particles that surrounded them. Meanwhile, tons of top soil disappeared every day. Despite new agricultural practices introduced to hold down the soil and conserve the land, the region is still less populated than it was almost 80 years ago.

All of this is seen through the eyes of those who lived it. White-gloved schoolteacher Hazel Lucas Shaw tried to make the best of it despite the dust creating tragedy in her life, former ranch-hand Bam White struggled to keep his head up while self-medicating with grain alchohol, bloviating hypocrite John McCarty used his media outlet to deny that government help was even needed (there’s one like him in every crisis, I guess), and innovative soil conservationist Hugh Bennett timed a Senate hearing to the arrival of an enormous dust cloud in Washington DC, hundreds of miles from its origin. These and other individuals make Egan’s history come alive.

Unfortunately, as the people suffered, so did the animals. Therefore, I have to declare this book UNSAFE for animal lovers who don’t want to read about animal suffering. There was a lot of it, from chickens to rabbits to cattle. No species was safe from the dust that permeated every aspect of life in the Dust Bowl on an almost daily basis for years on end.

Nonetheless, if you can handle that, I strongly recommend this book.