More auspiciously, however, her debut novel “STAY” is being released this week by Dutton.

I got my review copy last week but before I could get into it, Dr. O’C snatched it up and devoured it over the weekend. She declared it an ideal beach book, so good timing for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere.

Once I got my turn, I read a bit more slowly, I like to savour my books. And while Dr. O’C is right in a sense – I think there’s a lot more to it than, say, the latest Sophie Kinsella effort. (Not that I know too much about the genre. What?)

Allie writes with a precision and a dedication to detail that sucks the reader into her world. She’s got a gift for dialogue and bringing her characters to life. The musical references that pepper the book really add to it for me, almost like a soundtrack for the story. And if you’re a dog lover, or like me a dog lover temporarily without a dog, it’s an absolutely heart warming story. Makes me think it’s time to get another dog.

Most of all, however, it’s a ripping good yarn.

In short, if you’re looking for a great summer read then STAY would be a great place to start. It’s out Thursday, but you can pre-order by clicking the little ad over there on the right.

Allie was also kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions for me, largely about the craft of writing:

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AFM: I would be willing to bet that a majority of my readers – including myself if I’m being honest – would love to be sitting where you are. First novel finished, picked up by a major publisher. So, how do you do it? How do you decide to write a book and then carry it out?

AL: The characters and the story really kept me going. STAY started as a short story, and I hadn’t originally intended to write it as a novel, but I kept wanting to know more about the characters. Not finishing the book would have been like watching half of a movie you’re completely enjoying. I needed that sense of completion to the story.

AFM: I was talking to another author friend of mine the other day about the ritual (or lack thereof) of writing. Do you have a special place where you write? Pen or computer? Music or silence?

AL: I go through phases and rotate through work stations (my desk, couch, reading chair, kitchen table, lawn chair, bed) depending on my mood. I write on a computer for the majority of what I do, although, if I’m doing writing exercises, I like to write in pencil on paper.

I set up playlists for my main characters when I write. The playlists are a combination of music my character would like, and music that somehow makes me think of the story. It’s a great way to snap into writing mode and put myself in the right mindset for my character. When I first heard the song On Your Side by Pete Yorn, it made me think of Van’s relationship with Peter, so it went on the playlist. When I worked on some of the Van/Peter scenes I would listen to the song to put things in context for me. But in the last few rounds of revisions, I couldn’t listen to anything (and neighbourhood noises drove me nuts). Even the smallest change that I made had to be carried out through the entire storyline, so it’s like doing a 300+ page word puzzle. Anything that pulled my mind away from the process was hard to manage. I wish I had a sound proof room for that stage of the game.

AFM: For you, is blogging helpful for ‘proper’ writing or a distraction?

AL: Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, etc., are so helpful. I don’t have coworkers in the traditional sense. There’s no one to chat with in the break room. Being able to have a sense of community and a way to reach out to people on a daily basis while I’m working by myself is amazing. Of course it’s easy to procrastinate and get sucked in to spending too much time in the wrong direction, so I have to be disciplined about how I spend my time. But I think the chance to connect with people like you and the other Greenists and bloggers I’ve been following for years, adds so much to my life, and I really appreciate that connection.

AFM: One piece of advice for a fledgling author with a book in his or her head?

AL: Get your butt in the chair and start writing. Little deadlines are best. I work with a writing group. The first few drafts of STAY were written at a rate of eight pages a week that were due for my group meetings. That writing rate was a very good pace for me at that stage in the game. It was doable, even with work and other responsibilities that took up a lot of time. And I think that’s a stumbling block for a lot of writers. The blank page is scary and the idea of writing a whole entire book gets overwhelming very quickly. Don’t sit down and expect to write your book in a week. Allow yourself to outline, or write badly, or storyboard, or whatever you need to do to sketch out a first draft. Then go back and edit. Know that you will need to go through many drafts. Know that it will take you time. And make sure you like your characters enough to spend that much time with them.

BIRD BY BIRD by Anne Lamott is an amazing book about the writing process, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to write. I read it several times while I was writing STAY, and found helpful advice at every stage of the process.

After you have a solid, polished draft, start doing research on how to submit work and how the publishing industry works. I found AgentQuery.com particularly helpful. But don’t get ahead of yourself. You can’t submit until you have finished work anyway, so finish something before you clog your head with all that other stuff.

AFM: Who is your favourite living author? Who most inspired your writing style?

AL: Oh wow! Hard question! I have many favoured authors. And one of the coolest things for me about this whole process is the authors who have come through with advice, support, and kind words about my book. They are people I’ve admired for a long time as a reader, and I am in awe of their kindness.

I’ve always loved women’s fiction. From Willa Cather to Claire Cook, I love stories about strong women who are trying to figure out who they are and what choices they need to make in their lives. And I’ve always read those stories voraciously. I also grew up reading any Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, and Pat Conroy book I could get my hands on, and I know that sense of story and a love of complex characters influences my work as well.

AFM: And finally, the obvious one: what’s next? Have you started working on your second book? Any hints as to what we can expect?

AL: I am working on something new with completely new characters. It’s still in the early stages, so I don’t want to say too much. I’d also love to revisit the characters from STAY some day. Van is one of my favourite imaginary people.

Allie Larkin’s debut novel STAY is out Thursday and available at a bookstore near you, or from Amazon.

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Belly was Throwing Muse Tanya Donelly’s brief solo project in the early 90’s. I had almost completely forgotten about Belly until stumbling on “Star” while browsing through eMusic a wee while back. Listening to”Star” after more than a decade was good fun. It’s not the best album of that period of time, not even the best dreamy girl rock band album of that period of time, but there are a few good tracks on “Star”. This is why I like eMusic, you can find albums that you may not want to pay iTunes or CD prices for, but would be willing to shell out a few bucks for on a whim.

I’ve always been most comfortable in libraries. In Junior High school, my best friend and I used to head to our small town public ‘library’ after school for a couple of hours until our parents finished at work. The Columbia County Public Library wasn’t a great one, wasn’t even a good one – but it was cool in the Florida heat and a respite of words in a part of the country that had little respect for them. In the pre-internet age, the library was the only source for the kind of information that we have at our fingertips today. I think I learned more about the world in those after school library sessions than I ever did in the classroom. One of the best things about the Columbia County Library was that it was just around the corner from a drug store that still had an old fashioned soda counter. Best vanilla Cokes ever.

I discovered the joy of the library scavenger hunt at the University of Georgia’s Science Library. Once I started doing upper level science courses, I began to have to search for journal articles and then references within. The internet was just starting to replace the card catalog and most of my research involved working my way back through decades of academic literature. Finding one article often began a search for another, older one. Sometimes I had to work through the stacks, sometimes through rolls of microfilm. But I loved the search, the hunt, and whiled away many an autumn afternoon in the science library, surrounded by smells of books and acetate and the sound of quiet.

By the time I started my doctorate, most scientific journals were online and I rarely had to leave my computer to do literature searches. But every now and again, I’d need some 1930’s agricultural pamphlet and would have to head over to Ellis Library and hit the stacks. And that’s where I discovered the graduate student cages. Little closet sized cells, separated from one another by chain link. Most of them were empty, but every now and again you’d find a bleary eyed history graduate student huddled inside, looking up nervously as you passed by. I couldn’t figure out what these odd fellows were doing; why lock yourself up in a windowless cell in the library away from friends and colleagues? One of my favorite things about graduate school was the social aspects of it – the friendships. Even when I was writing up my thesis, I did it in my shared office with fellow students bustling around me. When I finished it, I celebrated with the same people. But these library hermits seemed to be eschewing the best part of the graduate experience.

But I began to understand the need for a hermitage during my post-doctoral research. Oxford University’s Bodleian Library is one of the iconic landmarks of that city. But during my time there in the City of Dreaming Spires, I spent little time there. The Bodleian was more like a museum than a working library. I felt as if I should be wearing an academic gown. The librarians there probably would have preferred that I had. It was a gorgeous place to sit, but not a comfortable one.

I spent more time in our cozy little departmental library and it was there that I discovered the advantages of library as hideaway. Toward the end of my time at Oxford, I was a fairly disgruntled academic. I needed to keep turning up to work in order to fulfill the terms of my contract, but while I was there I was too busy being grumpy and miserable to spend much time doing work. One day I had a legitimate excuse to wander over to the library and as I was wandering through the stacks, thumbing through 17th century botanical texts, I discovered the reading room – ample natural light, deliciously comfortable chairs and empty. I spent the rest of that day hiding out in that room. From that point on, it became my sanctuary. When I wanted to get away from my boss or my co-workers or even myself, I’d head up to the library, grab something to read and claim one of those reading chairs until I was ready to deal with people again. The beauty of a library is that quiet is a mandate. Even if someone stumbled upon my hidey hole, universal library manners meant that a subtle nod was the extent of the required conversation.

Today, after a second or two of olfactory reverie, I wandered into the university library. Just for kicks. Ours’ is not a great library. My only experience with it to date was a brief and unsuccessful quest for an evolution text last year. As is the case with most libraries these days, there are nearly as many computers as there are books. There are no comfortable reading chairs, no graduate student cages, no airy reading rooms. But it is still a library. And wandering through the stacks today, I found the same sense of comfort that I’ve always found in libraries. These days, I have a private office and a job that I love. I get most books that I need free from textbook companies. When I need a journal article I find it online.

I’ve got no real need for the library these days, but I’m damn glad it’s there. I’m glad it’s there because someday I may need that sanctuary again. I’m glad that its there for my kids, I hope they get the joy, comfort and thirst for knowledge out of the library that I used to get.

And I’m glad it’s there for that smell – musty books. Comfort. Solace.

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Image credits:

Columbia County Library

Ellis Library at the University of Missouri

The Bodleian Library

City East Library

My Morning Jacket’s “Evil Urges” is available from .

I know book banners and I know what they look like and sound like. I grew up in a small town on the steaming pine flats of north Florida. This particular town was famous for two things. One, Ted Bundy killed his last victim there. Two, they banned Chaucer from the schools. When I was a Freshman in High School, my county school board banned a humanities text book that contained excerpts from Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” and Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”. That’s right, 5^th century B.C. Greek drama and 13^th century English frame tales were too dirty for our developing minds. A local preacher’s wife was helping her daughter with her homework one day and came across the mere mention of the existence of sex in Lysistrata and the “The Miller’s Tale” – a farcical story in verse that includes medieval fart jokes – and went all histrionic. She got her husband on to the case, who used his own little bully pulpit to get a rise out of his Southern Baptist congregation. As these things do in small towns, in a matter of weeks there was fury from the community about their precious innocents being forced to read such smut. Smut that 99% of them hadn’t bothered to read. Smut that the vast majority of them couldn’t pronounce, never mind spell.

The irony, of course, is that in the late 80’s most of these delicate flowers were having more sex than Aristophanes could ever conceive of and the jokes I heard in the halls of my school would have caused Chaucer to blush. But logic and reality tend to be irrelevant when a community is stricken with a righteous fury and the school board, with a cowardly unanimous vote, caved under the pressure and banned both the humanities book and the original text.

At the time, I didn’t know Greek comedy from situation comedy and  I didn’t know that Chaucer was the father of English literature and laid the path for seven centuries of words to come. I was 15 and had bigger issues to deal with and I just didn’t really care about the ban.  I was young and still labored under the illusion that elected officials knew best and had my interests at heart. I’ve always been a little bit ashamed that I wasn’t angry at the time, that I didn’t get angry until I went away to college and read “Lysistrata” and “The Canterbury Tales”. It was at that point that I realized what had been done to me by the preachers and the school board.

I have no problem with anyone’s religious beliefs, none whatsoever. Largely because what anyone else believes is absolutely none of my business. If you don’t want to watch a movie or read a book or listen to a song because it flies in the face of your religious beliefs, that’s fine. If you don’t want your child to read a book or listen to a song because it flies in the face of your religious beliefs, that’s fine, though you probably ultimately do your child a disservice. Nonetheless, none of my business. But the Christianists that banned Chaucer and Aristophanes went a step too far, they didn’t want anyone to read, watch or listen to something that offended their faith. This is where I have a problem. This is where your religion offends me. This is where your beliefs tread on not only my beliefs, but my freedom to practice them. This is where it becomes my business.

I learned that in my first year of a private Christian college in South Carolina. I learned that I should be angry about what had been done in my hometown. I learned about book banning. It didn’t just happen in that small town in north Florida. It had happened throughout history when zealots with a modicum of power and more than their fair share of influence convinced an ill informed population that a book threatened their morality. And I got angry. And I wrote an essay for a literature class about book banning and book banners. My professor encouraged me to send that essay to my local newspaper and they published it as a guest editorial.

My small salvo in the war against book banning got me my first job as a writer. The surprisingly progressive publisher of our local paper gave me a summer job as an intern reporter. I spent two summers reporting on the local politicians. It was during those two summers that I became a liberal, that I began to question authority, that I learned the dirty truth about small town politics. During those two summers I got to know small town, small minded politicians who are so convinced that their personal morality is right that they are willing to force it on everyone else by any means necessary. I learned that if people wouldn’t listen and change, these people of will litigate their world view. There are lots of book banners on school boards and county commissions in small towns around the country, particularly in the South. I know them, I’ve worked for them and I’ve worked against them and I have had enough of them.

Now most of the time, these people don’t get far in politics. But every now and again one of them is clever enough, glib enough or charismatic enough to climb the political ladder. Sometimes they get elected to the State legislature, sometimes they might be elected to the House of Representatives. Occasionally one of them becomes governor or even a Senator. Increasingly, these small-minded proto fascists are making a dent on the national stage. Recently they’ve made their way on to the U.S. Supreme Court and into the White House itself. Things look a bit better after the latest American elections, but these folks are like bad pennies.

And I’ve learned that it isn’t just an American problem. Australia has a dubious history of censorship as well. As author Frank Moorhouse put it in an ABC Radio National program from 2006:

But the truthful joke about that period, and I’m talking up until the early 70s, was that if the Martians had landed in Australia and read our literature they would not have a clue how the species reproduced. There was not a clue in any Australian writing about how reproduction occurred. And of course as young people we were bereft of information about how to reproduce or how…most of us were trying not to reproduce.

But book banning is still alive and well in Australia today. In 2006, the Australian government refused classification to two books, “Defence of the Muslim Lands” and “Join the Caravan” by Abdullah Azzam. The Australian government is concerned that these two books may incite people to acts of terrorism. I guess my small town school board in the 80’s was worried about us thinking about sex and flatulence. Presumably advocates of banning the Harry Potter books were concerned about their children becoming witches and wizards. Today it is terrorism, the pornography of the 21st century. It is always something, but there is never a justification for censorship.

The American Library Association has a list of suggestions of what you can do to fight censorship, keep books available in your libraries, and promote the freedom to read as well as a disturbing map of book bannings and challenges in the last couple of years in the U.S. Whether you’re aware of it or not, censorship is alive and well in the United States and around the world. Anyone who loves the written word has an obligation to do something about it.

Personally, I’m going to hit the grass roots. I’m going to try to instill a love for the written words in my son the same way that my parents instilled it in me. By reading to them every day*.

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Talking Heads’ “77″ is available from .

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*Yes, I know that’s Dr. O’C and not me reading. But I do lots of reading too. I also do most of the picture taking. And the cooking. And the bulk of the work around the house…

What is fixing to get banned, however, is that dummy (pacifier) stuck in Boy Z’s mouth.

Still and all, we managed to salvage some fun.

We slayed another redback in the letterbox – using appropriate tools and safety gear, of course.

We walked the dog in the dry spells. Yes, that is my front lawn but I mowed it, I promise.

And baked cookies in the rainy spells.

I think Boy Z is yearning for summer too as he insisted on wearing his board shorts today. Compromises were made.

I’m not going to comment on who’s responsible for this ensemble, but I will point out – that’s not me he’s walking up the stairs with. Speaking of whom – 37 weeks and counting…

…which means there is a 3.6% chance that we’ll end up down the road in the labour ward by day’s end.

And that’s a weekend.

Today was good.
Today was fun.
Tomorrow is another one.
From there to here.
From here to there.
Funny things are everywhere.

Ah, the simple genius of Dr. Seuss…

In the mind of kids books, we saw the preview for “Where the Wild Things Are” a couple of weeks ago before the latest Harry Potter. I have no idea how they’re going to make Maurice Sendak’s wonderful little story book into a feature film, but I was totally sucked in by the Arcade Fire musical accompaniment. I managed to dig up the “Where The Wild Things Are” version of Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up”. Just in case I’m not the only Arcade Fire/Maurice Sendak fan around.

I’m pretty sure I am the aging hipster Dad demographic to which this film is being targeted.

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And finally, speaking of music, I’ve got an extra copy of Scottish popsters Cancel the Astronauts’ debut EP “I Am the President of Your Fanclub (and Last Night I Followed You Home)” to give away. Free. It’s a great disc, one that’s been getting a lot of play around these parts of late (have a listen to one of the tracks here if you’re picky about the music you win). If you want a chance to win, just leave a comment on this post. I’ll pick a random commentator sometime in the week.

UPDATE:

The winner of the Cancel the Astronauts EP as selected by random.org is….

Cat of My Name is Cat! Congratulations

Let’s head back to mid 90’s northeast Georgia again. Your protagonist is working two jobs to pay tuition at the finest university in the South. At this point living in a one bedroom apartment carved out of the top floor of a genteel old four-square just outside of downtown. Restless, irritable and discontent due – in large part – to a lack of companionship from the fairer sex.

To assuage my frustration I was doing a lot of reading and during a particularly steaming Georgia summer, I went on an F. Scott Fitzgerald binge. I fell in love with his heroines – racy, beautiful, irreverent, unstable and utterly captivating. I learned that most of his female characters was based on his wife Zelda. So, in essence I fell in love with Zelda Fitzgerald and I wanted, more than just about anything, one of my own.

If I can deliver the predictable cliche – be careful what you wish for…

My personal Zelda quite literally walked through my door one July morning. That kind of Southern morning that wakes up hot and crushes your soul before noon. Living in another apartment lacking air-conditioning, I had all the doors and windows open to maximize a largely imaginary breeze. I was laying limp on my unmade bed praying for a cold front when I heard a gentle tap on my door frame. Weakly, I raised my head and was instantly smitten by a tall, busty brunette with the crisp Anglo-Saxon facial features that I associated, from my high school years, with the cruelty of indifference.

Dripping honey and gravel – that accent endemic to a swath of Georgia from Brunswick to Albany, “Pardon me, sugar, do you have a screwdriver by any chance?”

What else could one say? “Phillips or flathead?” (Actually, if one were a bit more suave, one could say ‘Phillips, flathead or Smirfnoff?” But I’m only that suave in hindsight.

And it started there. She was moving in across the hall from me. One of the, many, idiosyncracies of this place was that the two top floor apartments shared a bathroom. With my previous housemate, a sweaty musician, this had been a burden. But I began to see the advantages of a shared powder room as I helped Zelda put her old iron framed bed together. In fact, I was completely in her thrall from the outset. She had that quality of a particular type of Southern woman – Blanche DuBois, Annie Savoy, Scarlett O’Hara – you know the type. I don’t know if it’s pheromones, or what, but I had been living among these women for a year or so at the time and could never get the time of day from one of them and now I’d be sharing the most intimate of spaces with one. Well not the most intimate, but you know.

I needn’t have worried; we were sharing that space fairly soon as well.

Zelda had dropped out of Tech under dubious circumstances and was trying to get on track at a local tech school so she could get into Georgia. She didn’t seem to work or to go to school much for that matter. I kept odd hours and no matter the time of day, she was there. The smell of White Diamonds and cigarette smoke wafted up under the door along with muffled dance music that she listened to incessantly. Everytime I came up the stairs, she would slink out from behind her door and invite me in for a ‘toddy’, regardless of time of day. I never declined. She told me stories, but never of herself. She told me stories of nights out in gay bars in Atlanta. She would tell me of shopping extravaganzas and vacations on Hilton Head and Pawley’s Island. And we would drink. Bourbon. When she was out she drank Manhattans, but at home she drank bourbon. Bourbon on the rocks. Any of you who have spent an evening with a person you’re attracted to talking and drinking bourbon on the rocks will know the inevitable outcome.

Now, I know that you know how this is likely to end. But in my defense, even as a randy 24 year old I wasn’t a complete idiot. We had some fun. We ‘went out’ for the rest of that summer. By going out, we spent most of our time in the top floor of that four square. But when I got paid, we’d hit the bars. Long drunken nights of drinking, dancing and necking. And fighting. God did we fight. Zelda was a flirt, one of the things that attracted me to her. I was plagued with the vicious jealousy of an insecure man. Virtually every night we went out we ended up roaring at each other outside of a bar over some perceived indiscretion on her part. Usually this was followed by a walk home on separate sides of the street hurling epithets at one another and a pair of slammed doors. But inevitably, one of us would creep through that shared bathroom with a bottle of Jim Beam and all would quickly be forgotten.

That’s the way that summer went. I was irrevocably enchanted and, to my credit, she seemed to be as well. She never paid for a drink, but then a gentleman wouldn’t let a lady pay for a drink. The petty jealousy was always assuaged by the fact that she was always there and always waiting when she heard me creaking up the stairs.

One day, shortly after the fall term started, I had classes all morning and then had to pull a double shift at the coffee shop. I went out for a drink with a couple of friends that I hadn’t seen since I met Zelda and didn’t get home until well after three in the morning. And her door didn’t open and her bathroom door was locked. I didn’t think much of it, but the next day I was home early from school. I made as much noise coming up the stairs as humanly possible, but still her door didn’t open. No smell of White Diamonds, no house music. Late that afternoon, I took to the roof, clambering over to her side of the house. It nearly  ended badly for me as I saw within an empty apartment. She, and every trapping of her, was gone. Even the cigarette smoke and perfume fumes seemed to have faded overnight.

I didn’t have a clue how to find her. The landlord was as clueless as me. This was before cell phones were ubiquitous. I’d never met any of her friends. I knew she was from Albany, Georgia but that town seemed to be populated entirely by people with the same surname. I asked around. I haunted the bars in which I knew she felt at home. I wandered around northeast Georgia discovering not even a hint of her existence outside my own mind and a couple of snapshots.

Then one night in late November – as insolently as she vanished – I found her smoking on my front porch with a half empty fifth of Maker’s Mark and a battered vanity case.

“Do you want a drink sugar?”

What else could one say?

Now, I hate to be all “The Bold and the Beautiful” on you, but this post seems to have grown legs of its own. Nothing’s worse than reading a 10,000 word blog post. Instead, I’m going to employ that coldest of writerly tricks – ‘to be continued’. UPDATE: Continued here.

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Image credits:

Zelda Fitzgerald’s ‘A Mad Tea Party’

My photo of the infamous four square.

Big Star’s “Third/Sister Lovers” is available from Amazon.

All of you stay at home parents have my respect. One day a week of it leaves me feeling like I’ve been lobotomized with a butter knife. Don’t get me wrong, I love it and am grateful that I have the time to spend with the boy. Call me a masochist.

Thanks for the finger painting idea, Jennifer. Although, the dog is blaming you for his new blue coat.

Back with you all when my brain regains the capacity for cogent thought.

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I’m not a huge Herbie Hancock fan, but this track is as close a musical approximation of a day with Boy Z that I can imagine. Get more music by Hancock (for free) from eMusic.

For some reason, Pi’s carnivorous island was the first thing that popped into my head when I heard a news story on the NewsHours with Jim Lehrer podcast recently about what was described as our rapidly growing eight continent. There are no meerkats and it is not strictly carnivorous and it’s not really an island, but the Great Pacific Garbage Dump is as disturbing and potentially dangerous as Martell’s fantasy island.

My initial reaction to the NewsHour report is that it was a typical case of what tends to be a melodramatic and lacking in understanding response of the mainstream news media to a juicy science story. Surely there isn’t a continent of garbage out in the Pacific Ocean. The good news is that the media has overreacted, “continent” is not the right word. The Great Pacific Garbage Dump is not visible from the air (because most of it lies slightly below the surface of the water) nor does it have a particular nautical position (due to the shifting wind directions and currents). The bad news is that there are two massive accumulations of plastic waste swirling around in the doldrums of the northern Pacific Ocean. Charles Moore, the founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation and the man who had the misfortune of discovering the dump, estimates that the plastic garbage in the Pacific covers approximately five million square miles (about 1.5 times the land mass of the United States) and contains over 3.5 million tons of largely consumer waste.

By most accounts the trash finds its way to its home in the North Pacific through a long and circuitous route. Trash is dumped into rivers, in both North and South America and Asia, that empty into the Pacific. Ocean currents carry the trash, picking up more debris as it travels, around the Pacific before depositing it in the doldrums of the North Pacific Gyre. 80% of the trash in the ocean originates on land and a majority of that is from consumer products. Thus, it is a hard truth that we – you and I – are the problem. Here is how it works: say that you inadvertantly drop some innocuous bit of plastic – a clear plastic wrapper from a box of candy. The next time it rains, that wrapper gets washed into a storm drain which will flow into your nearest watershed and ultimately into the ocean. That little wrapper floats its way around the Pacific currents until it comes to rest in the Gyre where it will join the rest of the trash. This plastic waste will be around longer than you and I, longer than our children, longer than our grandchildren, longer than our great-grandchildren. Nobody really knows how long it takes for plastic to biodegrade because it basically doesn’t. Conservative estimates are around 450 – 500 years. We are creating a problem that will outlive us by centuries.

It isn’t just an aesthetic problem. In short, it’s devastating to marine ecosystems. Forty percent of albatross chicks are killed each year by consuming plastic accidentally fed to them by their parents. More than a million birds and marine animals die each year from consuming or becoming caught in plastic and other debris. But there is a less obvious and more frightening consequence to our trashing of the oceans. Moore’s group does a lot of research into the ecological effects of plastic debris on marine ecosystems. Recently they have been looking at plastic particulate levels in and around the Garbage Patch. The small bits of plastic that are a byproduct of the slow degradation of the plastic debris have been found to accumulate a lot of nasty chemicals – polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, chlorinated and legacy pesticides and hormonally active additives. This latter class are particularly nasty beasties, some of which have been implicated in an increased risk of breast cancer. Moore and his colleagues found that the ratio of plastic particles to plankton in the Gyre was between 1.4:1 and 6.9:1. In other words, there is more plastic particulate matter in this part of the ocean than there is plankton. You don’t have to be a biologist or have an in depth knowledge of food chains to recognize what this means: small fish eat plankton (or plastic particles), big fish eat small fish, humans eat big fish. We are eating our own toxic garbage.

I don’t wish to sound melodramatic or preachy but this is a problem that is getting worse on a daily basis and one that we cannot repair. We can, however, do something to slow the accumulation of rubbish in the oceans. 80% of the trash out there comes from us directly, so it is up to us to do something to make it better.

Here are ten things we can do about it:

1. Don’t use so much plastic. Make a concerted effort to reduce the amount of plastic that you purchase. It’s not easy. I’ve been making a concerted effort since I heard this story and it’s absolutely stunning how much excess plastic you get when you purchase anything. Note how much plastic crap you come home with on your next trip to the supermarket. Preferentially purchase items packaged in glass or paper. Virtually any material is better than plastic.
2. I’m a beach bum. Roughly 10% of the crap out in the Pacific comes from trash left on beaches. So, don’t leave trash on beaches and maybe pick some of it up when you’re out there. Boy Z, Timmins and I are headed out to the beach shortly and I’m bringing a bag with me to pick up.
3. Recycle. Plastic recycling is very low efficiency – only about 3.5% of plastic is recycled in any way. This is due in part to contamination of plastics with non-plastics, food waste and non-recyclable plastics. Clean up your plastic before recycling and make sure that you only include recyclable plastics. If your community does not recycle plastic then demand that they do.
4. Along the same lines, buy recycled products or products containing recycled materials.
5. This is kind of a no-brainer. But do not litter. Most of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is thought to be a result of litter working its way into the river system.
6. Consider volunteering or donating to the Algalita Marine Research Foundation or other environmental organizations.
7. Think about the watershed when cleaning up around your hose. Sweep your sidewalks rather than hosing them. Wash your car on the grass so that the water sinks into the ground rather than storm drains.
8. When you go shopping do not take a plastic bag. Use a cloth or other reusable bag.
9. Buy in bulk. Most of the plastic that you bring home with you from the shop is packaging, the higher the product to packaging ratio, the less trash generated.
10. For god’s sake, don’t use so much plastic.

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Image credits:

Plastic trash

North Pacific Gyre Map

Food chain

I was leaning towards Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” for this post, as it seemed appropriately gloomy. But, The Kinks have been in my head lately, possibly because they are apparently reuniting.

Jarvis Cocker is one of my rock gods. I selected my last pair of glasses almost entirely because I wanted specs like Jarvis. Really. Like the Barenaked Ladies, Pulp brings me right back to the early days of my relationship with (stalking of) Dr. O’C. She turned me on to the Brit Pop pioneers, among other great bands I hadn’t heard. “Common People” has got to be one of their best and one of the best of the genre.

Almost as cool as Jarvis is Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner. If Star Trek isn’t enough for you, how about his bizarre foray into pop music with another four-eyed rock god, Ben Folds. Agnes, here’s another cover for you – Big Giant Head does Pulp.

Ben Folds is apparently collaborating on a new album with author Nick Hornby who wrote “About A Boy”. The film adaptation of his book starred Hugh Grant in the role of man-child Will.

Hugh Grant also starred as the rakish Daniel Cleaver in “Bridget Jones’ Diary”, a secret guilty pleasure. (”Bizarre what some men find attractive.”). His co-star in that film was Colin Firth.

Colin Firth played Harry Bright, a British banker, in “Mamma Mia”. And speaking of bankers…

From the ALA, here is a list of the ten most challenged books of last year and the reason for the objection:

1. “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell 

Reasons: Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group

2. “The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier

Reasons:  Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Violence

3. “Olive’s Ocean,” by Kevin Henkes

Reasons:  Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language

4. “The Golden Compass,” by Philip Pullman

Reasons:  Religious Viewpoint

5. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain

Reasons:  Racism

6. “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker

Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language,

7. “TTYL,” by Lauren Myracle

Reasons:  Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

8. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou

Reasons:  Sexually Explicit

9. “It’s Perfectly Normal,” by Robie Harris

Reasons:  Sex Education, Sexually Explicit

10. “The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky

Reasons:  Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

Here are some suggestions on how to support banned books week. I’m going to make sure and take some of these on board this week. I’m going to read one of these banned books, “The Golden Compass”, which I’ve just never gotten around to tackling. I’m going to read out to my son, so he’ll learn a love for the written word. And I’m going to speak out by posting about Banned Book Week and reposting a book banning post that I wrote a couple of weeks ago:

Just a warning in advance, I am in a bad mood today. Not in any kind of mood to mince words…

Strange Scottish Girl, who has a snazzy new site by the way, asked me the other day for a political post. I’ve not written one in a while, largely because the whole Sarah Palin nomination/ Republican circus has just depressed me. I’m depressed at the cynicism of the McCain campaign thinking that disaffected Clinton voters will flock to Palin just because of the number of X chromosomes that she bears. I’m depressed that the Republicans are falling back on extreme social conservativism to engorge their base. Again. I’m depressed that the oldest presidential candidate in history has selected a viciously pro-life, creationist, anti-science, book banning neo-fascist to be a malignant melanoma away from the reins of my homeland.

Mostly I’m depressed that it seems to be working. The most recent Real Clear Politics aggregate polls have McCain up three points on Obama, the first time he’s led since he became the presumptive Republican nominee back in the Spring. This isn’t because of McCain’s slightly histrionic and more than slightly disingenuous speech last week, it’s because of Palin.

I don’t even want to post about Palin, I just can’t drum up the words. She represents everything that I think is wrong with the Republican Party and American politics as it stands today. I was really pretty optimistic about things because it looked like things were changing – even the G.O.P. had weeded out the wing nuts and nominated a socially moderate candidate, but then Palin.

But this isn’t about Sarah Palin, it’s about book banning….

Read the rest of this post.

Strange Scottish Girl, who has a snazzy new site by the way, asked me the other day for a political post. I’ve not written one in a while, largely because the whole Sarah Palin nomination/ Republican circus has just depressed me. I’m depressed at the cynicism of the McCain campaign thinking that disaffected Clinton voters will flock to Palin just because of the number of X chromosomes that she bears. I’m depressed that the Republicans are falling back on extreme social conservativism to engorge their base. Again. I’m depressed that the oldest presidential candidate in history has selected a viciously pro-life, creationist, anti-science, book banning neo-fascist to be a malignant melanoma away from the reins of my homeland.

Mostly I’m depressed that it seems to be working. The most recent Real Clear Politics aggregate polls have McCain up three points on Obama, the first time he’s led since he became the presumptive Republican nominee back in the Spring. This isn’t because of McCain’s slightly histrionic and more than slightly disingenuous speech last week, it’s because of Palin.

I don’t even want to post about Palin, I just can’t drum up the words. She represents everything that I think is wrong with the Republican Party and American politics as it stands today. I was really pretty optimistic about things because it looked like things were changing – even the G.O.P. had weeded out the wing nuts and nominated a socially moderate candidate, but then Palin.

But this isn’t about Sarah Palin, it’s about book banning. Sarah Palin likes the idea of banning books by most accounts. Sarah Palin asked the librarian in the town she ran how she would feel if Palin asked her to remove some books from the local library. The librarian said she would never do anything of the sort. The librarian was “asked to resign” a few days later. The McCain campaign has tried to quiet this story by saying that Palin’s request was speculative and that the librarian wasn’t fired because she said no to Palin, but for other reasons. Whatever.

I know book banners and I know what they look like and sound like. I grew up in a small town on the steaming pine flats of north Florida. This particular town was famous for two things. One, Ted Bundy killed his last victim there. Two, they banned Chaucer from the schools. When I was a Freshman in High School, my county school board banned a humanities text book that contained excerpts from Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” and Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”. That’s right, 5^th century B.C. Greek drama and 13^th century English frame tales were too dirty for our developing minds. A local preacher’s wife was helping her daughter with her homework one day and came across the mere mention of the existence of sex in Lysistrata and the “The Miller’s Tale” – a farcical story in verse that includes medieval fart jokes – and went all histrionic. She got her husband on to the case, who used his own little bully pulpit to get a rise out of his Southern Baptist congregation. As these things do in small towns, in a matter of weeks there was fury from the community about their precious innocents being forced to read such smut. Smut that 99% of them hadn’t bothered to read. Smut that the vast majority of them couldn’t pronounce, never mind spell.

The irony, of course, is that in the late 80’s most of these delicate flowers were having more sex than Aristophanes could ever conceive of and the jokes I heard in the halls of my school would have caused Chaucer to blush. But logic and reality tend to be irrelevant when a community is stricken with a righteous fury and the school board, with a cowardly unanimous vote, caved under the pressure and banned both the humanities book and the original text.

At the time, I didn’t know Greek comedy from situation comedy and  I didn’t know that Chaucer was the father of English literature and laid the path for seven centuries of words to come. I was 15 and had bigger issues to deal with and I just didn’t really care about the ban.  I was young and still labored under the illusion that elected officials knew best and had my best interests at heart. I’ve always been a little bit ashamed that I wasn’t angry at the time, that I didn’t get angry until I went away to college and read “Lysistrata” and “The Canterbury Tales”. It was at that point that I realized what had been done to me by the preachers and the school board.

I have no problem with anyone’s religious beliefs, none whatsoever. Largely because what  anyone else believes is absolutely none of my business. If you don’t want to watch a movie or read a book or listen to a song because it flies in the face of your religious beliefs, that’s fine. If you don’t want your child to read a book or listen to a song because it flies in the face of your religious beliefs, that’s fine, though you probably ultimately do your child a disservice. Nonetheless, none of my business. But the Christianists that banned Chaucer and Aristophanes went a step too far, they didn’t want anyone to read, watch or listen to something that offended their faith. This is where I have a problem. This is where your religion offends me. This is where your beliefs tread on not only my beliefs, but my freedom to practice them. This is where it becomes my business.

I learned that in my first year of a private Christian college in South Carolina. I learned that I should be angry about what had been done in my hometown. I learned about book banning. It didn’t just happen in that small town in north Florida. It had happened throughout history when zealots with a modicum of power and more than their fair share of influence convinced an ill informed population that a book threatened their morality. And I got angry. And I wrote an essay for a literature class about book banning and book banners. My professor encouraged me to send that essay to my local newspaper and they published it as a guest editorial.

My small salvo in the war against book banning got me my first job as a writer. The surprisingly progressive publisher of our local paper gave me a summer job as an intern reporter. I spent two summers reporting on the local politicians . It was during those two summers that I became a liberal, that I began to question authority, that I learned the dirty truth about small town politics. During those two summers I got to know Sarah Palin. I got to know small minded people that are so convinced that their personal morality is right that they are willing to force it on everyone else by any means necessary. I learned that if people wouldn’t listen and change, the Sarah Palins of the world will litigate their world view. There are lots of Sarah Palins on school boards and county commissions and, yes, in mayors offices in small towns around the country, particularly in the South. I know her, I’ve worked for her and I’ve worked against her and I have had enough of her.

Now most of the time, these people don’t get far in politics. But every now and again one of them is clever enough, glib enough or charismatic enough to climn the political ladder. Sometimes they get elected to the State legislature, sometimes they might be elected to the House of Representatives. Occasionally one of them becomes governor or even a Senator. Increasingly, these small-minded proto fascists are making a dent on the national stage. Recently they’ve made their way on to the U.S. Supreme Court and into the White House itself.

I had high hopes that this year was going to be different. But then came Sarah Palin, with her snide, sarcastic speech and her fundamentalist agenda and I realized that it was just the same old shit from the G.O.P. So, I don’t want to hear from Sarah Palin. I don’t want to be polite about this election anymore. I don’t want to try and balance the two parties and try to be fair. I’m angry and I’m tired of these people and I want them to go away. I want their mandate taken away.   I want them beaten and beaten soundly. Am I a member of the “Angry Left”? You’re damn right I am.

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Image credits:

Chains

Freadom

Columbia County Courthouse

Eye chart

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Belle and Sebastian’s “Dear Catastrophe Waitress” is available from eMusic.