Kit Stolz

Cheryl Strayed: To turn our suffering into beauty

From an unusually rich interview in The Millions, the friendliest of literary sites, with Cheryl Strayed, the author of the great and influential Wild:

Cheryl Strayed: I’ve always thought that the important thing is
to turn our suffering into beauty. And the image of the phoenix rising
from the ashes has always been super-cool to me, that idea of our
greatest beauty and strength rising out of the things that have been
destroyed and have been lost. In Wild I talk about this book that I carried all the way with me, this collection of poems by Adrienne Rich called The Dream of A Common Language. And on the trail in Wild, I read that first poem, it’s called “Power.”

The poem is about Marie Curie, who discovered
radiation. And she ended up dying of basically radiation exposure, this
disease that had been essentially her greatest achievement. Marie Curie
could never admit that’s what was killing her. And Adrienne Rich writes,
she died a famous woman denying that the greatest source of her power
was her wound. I’m paraphrasing it, but essentially it’s that. The thing
about Adrienne Rich and what I was trying to do also in my writing
career is to do the opposite, to not deny that our power comes from our
wounds, that those deep wounds are the place of our power, and to really
write from that place in my own life. That goes back to this earlier
question about authority. That’s what authority is. When you’re actually
writing from that deepest place within you, if you tell the truth,
you’re using your greatest power and your greatest authority. That’s a
key piece, not just doing that as a writer but when we talk about
healing. Whatever the loss may be, not avoiding that wound, not trying
to have it covered up and pretend it’s not there but rather to look into
it.

Edward Abbey: A place to make a grown man weep

Even a curmudgeon on the subject of Internet video must admit it’s a good thing that a filmmaker had Edward Abbey show him around the Arches National Park, where Abbey was a park ranger…back in l956.

Essay by Edward Abbey “I Loved it…I Loved it All” from Ned Judge on Vimeo.

“Nothing is more permanent than the temporary”

A really good essay can be read and re-read just like a really good novel. Example: Austerity Measures: A Letter from Greece, by translator A.E. Stallings, in a recent issue of Poetry. Have read it several times.

So good it's difficult to figure out what to quote in this poetry-rich piece. Every time I find a line or two, it turns out to be part of a longer passage, which turns out to be just as delectable. Hard to choose!

So: here's a Greek proverb suitable for Stallings' situation (a translator who moved with her family to Greece for a couple of years, and has been there a decade). For Greece's situation — a perpetual crisis. And even for poetry, which as Stallings notes, is "the opposite of austerity."

Nothing is more permanent than the temporary

Heraclitus would understand.

What is going on with the alleged El Nino of 2012?

Six months ago, temperatures in the equatorial Pacific suggested that, after two years under the influence of La Niña, which tends to mean cold dry winters here in Southern California, that our ocean was turning towards an El Niño condition. Under that condition, warm temperatures and westerlies in the equatorial Pacific predispose those of us in California for wetter winters. This is what usually happens, after a long stay in one condition, that we transition to its counterpart.

But now it appears that, unusually, the predicted El Nino is "petering out," in the words of Kevin Trenberth, a leading climatologist. Even more curiously, the statistical and dynamicla models are in disagreement, as discussed by Robert Henson of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Henson highlights a curious fact about this year's discussion of the controversial boy El Nino:

In March, the dynamical and statistical models tracked by IRI agreed that neutral conditions were most likely to prevail by late 2012.
By May, about half of the models called for a weak El Niño, while half still called for neutral conditions.
And by July, more than 70% of the models were calling for an El Niño. However, a clear split was now evident. Most of the dynamical models were calling for El Niño to appear, perhaps even a moderate to strong one, while the statistical models leaned toward neutral conditions or a very weak El Niño.

The statistical method, used to establish a probabilistic baseline, is about as skilled as the dynamical model as a forecaster. But the IRC [International Research Institute for Climate and Society] points out that the statistical method, which looks at the past record, might not pick up changes — perhaps including those brought on by global warming? — that the dynamical model can. The dynamical model plugs ocean temps and other values into a climate/ocean model and runs a projection.

Here's an image of the rise and fall of ocean temps in the mid-Pacific this year, from Henson's excellent discussion:

As you can see, the fall-off in temps has been rapid. What is going on? Could this be part of a broader trend towards drought, as discussed in this paper in Nature by Aiguo Dai? (h/t: Dot Earth)

Have an assignment: Will try to find out, report back.

Campaigns avoid climate change: McClatchey

One (slightly) encouraging sign: The most emailed story on the McClatchey newspapers site recently was a story about how the campaigns are talking (or not talking) about climate change.

Although climate change typically ranks below such issues as the
economy, polling done in March 2012 by Yale University and George Mason
University found that 72 percent of Americans think that global warming
should be a priority for the president and Congress. Among registered
voters, 84 percent of Democrats, 68 percent of independents and 52
percent of Republicans think global warming should be a priority.

Regardless
of the candidates’ relative silence about global warming on the
campaign trail, the next president will face tough choices on
controversial energy and environmental issues such as whether to approve
the Keystone XL pipeline and how to handle natural gas development and
the environmentally fraught “fracking” that goes with it.

The
silence on the campaign trail belies the reality – and the gravity – for
many coastal communities. Planners in south Florida and New York City
already are looking at the multibillion-dollar expense of upgrading
infrastructure to address rising sea levels.

Until
recently, though, climate change has been so low a priority in the
year’s political discourse that some major political contributors with a
strong interest in environmental issues have been reserved in their
giving.

That's interesting: To get liberal money, talk climate change.Have legislation to point to. Have seen that in politicians down here in SoCal.

On the other hand, the melting of the Arctic hasn't softened the hearts of Congress, as Toles points out on Monday in the Washington Post:

Playing the ice of Lake Baikal

Steve Reich, your lake is calling….

Isn't that pretty? A little earth music for the end of the working week.

(For more on Lake Baikal, the world's oldest, and most voluminous lake, among other superlatives, here's a translation of a Russian site suggested by the video.)

The Grim Reaper, 21st century edition: the Drone Master

To Business Insider, this logo for the Navy's drone warfare program is "awesomely bad."

Ted Rall files it under "you can't make this shit up."

Well, okay, but somebody obviously did make this up. It's all too real — the 21st century edition of the Grim Reaper.

Gives executive decision making an ominous ring, doesn't it?

Faction: Why Truman Capote lied about himself

Biographer and psychologist William Todd Schultz argues on an Oxford University Press blog that Truman Capote lied about his past because he needed to be telling a story about himself.

(If I understand correctly.)

Schultz comments:

Aren’t psychobiographers supposed to care about the facts? Yes, facts
are crucial. Facts are the instruments of revelation. I love facts. But
the reality is, remembered life is itself fiction, a constantly evolving
construction. That being so, the raw material one works with is best
approached as a “faction” — a composite of artful narrative and
quantifiable life-history. And given the unreliability of memory,
especially in someone like Capote, who saw his past as perfectible, all
one can do is dive into the messy blurriness.

"All one can do" is throw up one's hands?

With Capote, probably the answer is yes. Heck, his last novel is half-real…and half-finished. And Schultz wrote a whole book — from the reviews, a good one — about the writing of Answered Prayers.

Butch Cassidy’s last chance goes for 175k

The auction covered here last Sunday really was fascinating, for all sorts of reasons.

Who knew that Butch Cassidy thought he had a chance at a peaceful, law-abiding life, even after becoming infamous for robbery?

Different time, different place.

(Here's the basics, plus some of the backstory, for the curious.)

And here's a pic from Karen Quincy Lobell, showing Brett Baker getting a $10,000 bid for Crazy Horse's beaded jacket.