BOOKPATHS

BOOKPATH: Gray Whale Migration

The only member of the family Eschrichtiidae, the gray whale is a mysticete, or baleen whale. It is a 'coastal' whale that migrates along the North American Pacific Coast between arctic seas and the lagoons of Baja California, Mexico. Frequently visible from shore, gray whales provide a unique opportunity for land and boat observation, and commercial whale watching has become a major industry along its migration route. Visitors to the calving and breeding lagoons sometimes encounter the phenomenon of the 'friendlies'; gray whales that closely approach small boats and allow themselves to be touched by humans. -- from American Cetacean Society Website

Sightings : the Gray Whales' Mysterious Journey, by Brenda Peterson and Linda Hogan (Washington, D.C. : National Geographic, 2002)

"In Sightings, we share with the reader what we have learned about the gray whale, recent natural history discoveries, Native stories, and migration routes. We also tell you what we don't know, but can only fathom with our imaginations, because it is an animal so hard to define in words alone." -- from Sightings, by Brenda Peterson and Linda Hogan

Brenda Peterson and Linda Hogan's voices guide readers along the 5,000-6,000 mile gray whales' migration route. The journey moves from the "shallow, warm lagoons in the Baja, Mexico, peninsula, to summer feeding grounds in the Bering Sea." It is a journey that asks us "to consider the ethics and spirit when we think about a species besides our own."

For those of us whose only glimpse of a gray whale is from a narrow vantage point somewhere along the Pacific coastline, Sightings allows us to imagine the entire migration route, its beauty and hazards. At Baja's San Ignacio Lagoon, Peterson and Hogan share their encounters with "the friendlies," what it is like to "see only her huge eye inches from my own," or "when [a] calf decides to trust us and offer a glossy snout for our touch," to become so enraptured with a baby gray "albino" that they give him the name "White Beak." We feel the beauty of this place, the whales, the surf, and "heavens...alive with a multitude of stars...." As the history of the lagoon is recounted and a beached whale described, we understand Peterson's reminder of the "daily...dangers these grays face."

The second part of Sightings moves readers along the migration route between San Diego, California and Whidbey Island, Washington. Concerns for the gray whales mount as we read descriptions of "the die-off of the grays during the 1998 and 1999 migrations," environmental hazards, and the controversy over "the tribal whaling rights of Native Americans." We're asked to think about the gray whales as "indicator species," showing "us the health of our shared ecosystem."

The Makah Reservation, Neah Bay, Washington, is the focus of part three. Sightings reaches back to 1996 when Peterson and Hogan "answer[ed] a call from Makah tribal elders who wanted to talk openly about their tribe's return to whale hunting." This historic meeting began their seven-year "migration...to follow the grays." Although there is never any question about Hogan and Peterson's stance on whale hunting, they present both sides of the controversy and the pull between "standing up for treaty rights" and standing up for the gray whales. Today, the hunt remains on hold due to an "unexpected ruling by a San Francisco court of appeals." The authors wonder if the "quiet coalitions of Makah and conservationists [will] at last make a bridge strong enough to carry all cultures, human and animal.

We continue north in part four, between Ozette, Washington and Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Examples at Ozette, where an archaeological dig reveals ancient connections between Native People and whales, and along the Olympic Peninsula where the Quileutes are turning to whale watching for a livelihood as opposed to hunting, help readers understand that "the Makah are not the only Northwest tribe to have traditionally hunted and intermingled their ceremonies with the great gray whale."

The last section of Sightings takes us to Alaska, the gray whales' plankton rich summer grounds. There are more warnings in this section, particularly about global warming, but as Brenda Peterson and Linda Hogan recount their summer solstice on Kodiak Island there is also time for reflection on "the immensity" of the gray whales journey and some cause for hope. After following the whales, and authors, it is touching to read Brenda Peterson's description of their gray whale sightings in "far north waters." Not only do we share their excitement of a reunion with "White Beak," we marvel with them as they see "whales...everywhere -- off our starboard rail and our bows, surrounding our bobbing boat in concentric circles of blows and flukes, and ranging as far out on the 360-degree horizon as we could see. There were even whales beneath us, feeding fathoms deep. We could not count them fast enough before more whales surfaced, exhaling in blasts of breath and mist, sucking in the inspiration of air, then diving again, tail flukes streaming."

Sightings encourages readers to look inward, to find a "new way to look at other species." It is a book you'll remember and return to, especially during fall and spring migrations -- as you imagine the gray whales' "immense journey" or stand on the shore waiting for one to pass by.

Websites

American Cetacean Society
http://www.acsonline.org/

The Census Project
http://www.acs-la.org/GWCensus.htm

The Center for Whale Research
http://www.whaleresearch.com/

Clayoquot Wilderness Resort
http://www.wildretreat.com/

Makah Tribe
http://www.makah.com/

Orca Network
http://www.orcanetwork.org/

Quileute Tribe
http://www.quileutetribe.org/7.html

"Sailing through layers of great, generous grays was like going back through time to an ancient ocean alive and teeming with whales. A time before human history had done its harm. A time even before humans had a history. A time and a whole world of ancient whales." -- from Sightings, by Brenda Peterson and Linda Hogan

"We, as humans, are burdened or lightened, hour by hour, act by act." -- from Sightings, by Brenda Peterson and Linda Hogan

BOOKPATH: Berkeley, California

Berkeley's Addision Street Poetry Walk
and
The Addison Street Anthology : Berkeley's Poetry Walk, edited by Robert Hass and Jessica Fisher (Berkeley : Heyday Books, 2004)

"...As I started imagining these poems, this story, marching down both sides of the street, whole poems, so that a person, who actually stopped and read them, would have to take in a particular voice and a particular way of seeing the world, I began to see how it would work." -- Robert Hass

Berkeley's Poetry Walk stretches along both sides of Addison Street between Shattuck and Milvia. It "begins" on the northwest corner of Addison Street and Shattuck with an Ohlone song fragment, "See! I am dancing! / On the rim of the world I am dancing!" As you move along the Poetry Walk, sidewalk art and a meandering banner share the "streetscape" with 120 poetry panels embedded in the sidewalk. The poems, selected by Robert Hass, poet and University of California professor, range wide historically and thematically, but all of them connect, in various ways, with Berkeley's historical and cultural life.

It's a charming walk, full of surprises along with the expected. Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Duncan, Josephine Miles and Robinson Jeffers share the walk with "an anonymous Chinese immigrant," a translation of Li Po, and a "ballad from Mexican California." In front of the highly esteemed Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the poetry speaks of the stage, including selections from Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Seamus Heaney and Bertold Brecht. The list is long, the voices varied. Ishmael Reed amuses: "There might be more / Buddhists in Berkeley than / in Tibet / Some are from Tibet / but many are from / Brooklyn." Denise Levertov recalls the 1960s: "To the Park: / ringed with police. / Bulldozers have moved in, Barely awake, the people -- / those who had made for each other / a green place -- / begin to gather at the corners." And, Allen Ginsberg settles into a Berkeley house: "All afternoon cutting bramble blackberries off a tottering brown fence / under a low branch with its rotten apricots miscellaneous under the / leaves, fixing the grip in the intricate gut machinery of a toilet; / found a good coffeepot in the vines by the porch...."

It's enough to simply walk and read, sampling the poetry as whimsy directs and time allows, but The Addison Street Anthology : Berkeley's Poetry Walk is a satisfying companion if you want to know more about the poets. If you can't visit Berkeley, or want the words nearby, the anthology brings the poetry to you. Berkeley's Poetry Walk is worth celebrating -- it connects readers and poets, it helps bring a community together, and it shows what can happen when a city and its citizenry support the arts.

Websites

The Addison Streetscape Project, including the Berkeley Poetry Walk
(includes an online anthology, The Berkeley poetry Walk and Anthology : a Collection of Essays by the City of Berkeley Staff Team and the Collaborative Community)
http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/civicarts/publicart/addison.htm

Academy of American Poets
(announces and lists 31 National Poetry Landmarks, including the Berkeley Poetry Walk)
http://www.poets.org/academy/news/pr040805.cfm

"The arts, in all their variety have played a central role in the rejuvenation of the commons. And one of the most unusual developments of all is the Addison Street Poetry Walk, Berkeley's unique recognition of its poetic and cultural heritage. It is hard to imagine another place that would honor its poets as a way of stimulating business in its central district...." -- John Roberts, Landscape Architect and Designer of the Addison Streetscape

BOOKPATH: Berkeley, California

Mrs. Dalloway's Literary and Garden Arts (2904 College Avenue; 510-704-8222)

"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." -- Virginia Woolf

Mrs. Dalloway's Literary and Garden Arts is a new addition to Berkeley's wealth of bookstores. Blooming in the cozy Elmwood District, along College Avenue, Mrs. Dalloway's fits comfortably into the street's mix of shops and restaurants. Long-time residents, Marion Abbott Bundy and Ann Leyhe, opened the bookstore in October 2004. Green and cream colored walls, along with red wicker chairs make for an inviting and relaxing space. Fiction, poetry, biography, history, politics, cookbooks, travel guides, and children's books share the shelves and tables with gardening books and blooming plants. It's probably no surprise that Virginia Woolf's books claim a corner all to themselves. Her words and the store's inspiration, "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself," span the arch over the fiction section. Paintings, weavings, botanical prints, and other nature themed art, grace the other walls. Stop by when you're in the neighborhood or visit their website at: www.mrsdalloways.com

WEBPATH: Ventura, California

My father would have been 84-years-old today (he shares this date with Toni Morrison and Wallace Stegner which impresses me). He loved reading Perry Mason mysteries and watching his court scenes on TV. So, in honor of Robert Patrick Alonzo Jackson's birth date, I'm directing you to www.ErleStanleyGardner.com, hosted by John Anthony Miller. Click on "Gardner's thumb" to enter the website (but don't click too soon or you'll miss all the great stories on the first page). You'll find biographical information, recollections, photographs, and in process bibliographical lists and links. Best of all, though, is the Virtual Tour of Downtown Ventura, California. Gardner lived and practiced law in Ventura for a number of years, arriving "when the community still had unpaved streets." "The experience he had in this coastal community would provide ideas, plots, and characters for his hundreds of short stories and novels." You can enjoy the "tour" online, or print it out for a future Ventura walking tour. The website explains: "If Erle Stanley Gardner could somehow return today to the city of Ventura he would find that many things had changed, but many things still remain the same. This guide book is designed to give visitors an idea of what the city was like when Gardner practiced law and wrote his way to the title of 'King of the Pulps'." It's an excellent website that connects author, books, place, and readers.

From "William Nolan on Erle Stanley Gardner" - posted on website:

Consider the statistics: in a career that spanned five decades, Erle Stanley Gardner sold more than seven hundred fictional works, including 127 novels (82 of them featuring his fighting lawyer, the global icon Perry Mason). Adding in four hundred articles and more than a dozen travel tomes, his overall creative total climbs past eleven hundred, embracing 155 published books in thirty-seven languages around the world. Media totals for Perry Mason alone include six motion pictures, 3,221 radio episodes, 271 television episodes, and more than twenty made-for-television movies. No updated figures are available, but it is estimated that some 325 million of Gardner's books have been distributed globally, making him one of history's all-time best-selling mystery writers. At the height of his popularity (in the mid-1960s), his novels were being sold at an average of twenty-six thousand copies per day! No other author came close to this amazing sales record.

Yet writing was only one facet of Gardner's complex life. He spoke fluent Chinese, worked as a professional attorney for twenty-two years, and was an ardent sportsman (boxing, fishing, archery, tennis, and golf), a constant traveler (China, Baja California, and the desert country of the American Southwest), a working rancher (raising horses, dogs, and cattle), founder and activist in the Court of Last Resort (established to aid prisoners who maintained that they had been unjustly convicted), an enthusiastic wildlife photographer (illustrating his own travel books), and an amateur explorer and criminologist-with an in-depth knowledge of geology, archaeology, engineering, astronomy, forensic medicine, natural history, and the breeding habits of the California gray whale.

DETOUR

In his Oxford American (No. 44, March-April 2003) article, "Miss Welty Comes to Town : Remembering a Friend Through Her Letters and Visits to Washington, D.C.," Roger Mudd reflects on his 17 year friendship with Eudora Welty. "She was unlike any friend I'd ever had," he writes, "and was held in such awe, by so many, that I almost hesitated to tell people that I knew her, really knew her." Near the end of the article, Mudd recalls Welty's "last speech at the Folger in 1990. It was the PEN/Faulkner annual black-tie fundraising gala, which attracted an audience of politicians, lobbyists, fans of literature, journalists, and writers. The theme was 'A sense of place.'" Welty and other writers "had all been asked to talk about place for no more than three minutes." Mudd remembers Welty finishing her talk "not more than two minutes" before moving onstage to read the following words:

Place in the practice of writing our stories provides the stage, sets the stage where it allows and prompts the characters to unfold. All of us here are writers and we all do this. And there is a precedent: the Book of Genesis. It tells us that God created the Garden of Eden first. When Adam and Eve were made, it was already formed -- the Garden of Eden, the apple tree, the serpent and the angel waiting in the wings. Place was first. Indeed, for writers of fiction, place gives testimony and endorsement to his fiction's inner truth. Place conspires with the artist. One place, Ireland, awoke the genius of Yeats. It went on murmuring and repeating itself and confiding to Joyce and persecuting him through a lifetime until he got it all written down. Today, Ireland keeps in profound moral dialogue with the poet Seamus Heaney. Places work upon geniuses in different times, in different ways. Always, perhaps. Place may focus the gigantic, voracious eye of genius and bring its gaze to point. The act of focusing itself has beauty and meaning. Focus brings to the work of a writer awareness, discernment, order, clarity, insight. They're like the attributes of love. It is through place that we put out roots wherever birth, chance, fate or our traveling selves set us down. But where these roots reach every time is the deep and running veins -- eternal and consistent and pure -- that feed and are fed by the human understanding.

Websites

PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
http://www.penfaulkner.org/

The Oxford American
http://www.oxfordamericanmag.com/

ARTHUR MILLER

"Writing plays was for him, he once said, like breathing. He wrote in 'Timebends' that when he was young, he 'imagined that with the possible exception of a doctor saving a life, writing a worthy play was the most important thing a human being could do.'" -- from the New York Times Obituary, by Marilyn Berger

Arthur Miller, one of our great playwrights, has died at age 89.

The New York Times obituary and "complete coverage" capture the importance of his life and work.
See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/theater/11cnd-miller.html?hp and
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/theater/newsandfeatures/MILLER-REF.html

Two of the websites that celebrate his life are:

The Arthur Miller Society Official Website
http://www.ibiblio.org/miller/

and

The PBS American Masters Website
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/miller_a.html

"The job is to ask questions -- it always was -- and to ask them as inexorably as I can. And to face the absence of precise answers with a certain humility." -- Arthur Miller

"The theater is so endlessly fascinating because it's so accidental. It's so much like life." -- Arthur Miller

BOOKPATH: Rwanda

Ejo : Poems, Rwanda, 1991-1994, by Derick Burleson (Madison : The University of Wisconsin Press, 2000)

Circles and cycles, all / Newton's heavenly bodies hug the earth / in this country where ejo means / both yesterday and tomorrow and your skin / turns dark as strong tea. -- from "In this Country", in Ejo : Poems, Rwanda, 1991-1994, by Derick Burleson

As a Peace Corps volunteer, Derick Burleson taught English at the National University in Rwanda from 1991 to 1993. His poetry captures life in Rwanda during the two years leading up to the genocide -- landscape, wildlife, and people on the brink of disaster. Ejo : Poems, Rwanda, 1991-1994 is a sad and beautiful miracle of a book.

And by December when I meet them between classes / under the blossoms of the campus poinsettias, I say Muraho and they say How-dee. I say Amakuru and they ask / How're ya'll doin? I say Nimeza and they say Jes fine. -- from "Howdy", in Ejo : Poems, Rwanda, 1991-1994, by Derick Burleson

Some people search always to put an end to the lives of others. / My day-after-tomorrow is incertain and so it is hard to tell you of my future projects. / I live under the love of heaven and that from day to day. / Only this: one day we will see each other again in the world if you are still believers. / May Dieu protect us. Hope you all best things are Peace. -- from "Letter from Remera", in Ejo : Poems, Rwanda, 1991-1994, by Derick Burleson

WEBPATH: United States

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Presents: In Motion : the African-American Migration Experience (http://www.inmotionaame.org/home.cfm)

In Motion : the African-American Migration Experience explores the "thirteen defining migrations that formed and transformed African America," including The Transatlantic Slave Trade; Runaway Journeys; The Domestic Slave Trade; Haitian Immigration; Caribbean Immigration; etc. Images, texts, and maps enlighten and inform.

National Geographic published the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture's stunning companion book in January 2005.

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, under the auspices of The New York Public Library, has much more of interest. Access to their home page is at http://www.nypl.org/research/sc/sc.html

BOOKPATH: Virginia and beyond

The Known World, by Edward P. Jones (New York : Amistad, 2003)

"We owned slaves. It was what was done, and so that is what we did." -- from The Known World, by Edward P. Jones

This powerful, Pulitzer Prize winning, novel should be required reading for all who live in the United States. Although the setting is the fictional "Manchester County," Virginia, the landscape of the book belongs to the institution of slavery and its ramifications. The Known World is a mournful book that is filled with spirit. Each multi-faceted character is necessary, allowing readers a glimpse into what was and what might have been. Whether slave or free, black or white, male or female, each "could have done much more in a better world." The Known World is a necessary book. Its complexity and understanding expands heart and mind.

"The hitter can never be the judge. Only the receiver of the blow can tell you how hard it was, whether it would kill a man or make a baby just yawn." -- from The Known World, by Edward P. Jones

"No, people were viewing an enormous wall hanging, a grand piece of art that is part tapestry, part painting, and part clay structure -- all in one exquisite Creation, hanging silent and yet songful on the Eastern wall. It is, my Dear Caldonia, a kind of map of life of the County of Manchester, Virginia. but a 'map' is such a poor word for such a wondrous thing. It is a map of life made with every kind of art man has ever thought to represent himself. Yes, clay. Yes, paint. Yes, cloth. There are no people on this 'map,' just all the houses and barns and roads and cemeteries and wells in our Manchester. It is what God sees when he looks down on Manchester. At the bottom right-hand corner of this Creation there were but two stitched words. Alice Night." -- from The Known World, by Edward P. Jones

Websites
Reading Group Guide
http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/known_world1.asp

The Pulitzer Prizes
http://www.pulitzer.org/

DETOUR

“While poverty persists, there is no true freedom.” – Nelson Mandela

If you need an antidote for last night’s State of the Union address, read Nelson Mandela’s speech before The Global Campaign for Action Against Poverty. The full text is in today’s London Times. Mandela provides a quiet and welcome contrast to George W. Bush.

See:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1468805,00.html

“Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our times - times in which the world boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accumulation - that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social evils.” – Nelson Mandela

“…overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life.” – Nelson Mandela

Websites:
Global Call to Action Against Poverty
http://www.whiteband.org/

Guardian Unlimited (you can also read the speech in The Guardian and follow related links)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/hearafrica05/story/0,15756,1405182,00.html