A "from the Boonies update":

I spent a day at the UAF library researching all sorts of interesting things from tramp literature to myths of the west to Hemingway of all people. (I really had not intended to go down the Hemingway road and really only dipped my toes in it for a moment but it was a very interesting article that provided several other avenues to explore.) I've often wondered if one of the reasons why more writers do not have blogs is because it is so tempting to write about what you are writing about. Right now I'd love to divulge a thing or two I have discovered but I can't help but think that one 1) they might appear frightfully dull and 2) they might give other folks ideas about things to write. So I'll keep it all mostly to myself, but the temptation is awfully great.

One thing Alaska is really good for though is an immense amount of writing on Jack London. It never ceases to amaze me how someone can spend such a small portion of their life somewhere (basically a year) and yet still be claimed by the place as their own. (We do share him with California but only because we have to.) Of course London would have been largely ignored if he hadn't written so much that colored people's opinions of Alaska but still, you would think he was a lifetime resident based on everything I found on the shelves about him. (This was fabulous though as there was one out of print book in particular that I was hoping to get a look at and, of course, UAF had it.)

There has not been a lot of reading going on unfortunately as business meetings (of the day job sort) have taken up time as well as assorted family obligations. (We've made six dump runs thus far - everyone in AK hangs on to everything forever.) Three books read and reviewed for Booklist so far (one on AK, one on learning Mandarin and one on climate policy) and also JANE by April Lindner. That one is a modern retelling of JANE EYRE and as Lindner writes in the afterword it wasn't easy to do - the class distinctions no longer really exist nor do the reasons for the Rochester character to have a wife hidden away in the attic. She pulls it off to a certain degree (Rochester is now a rock star so it's about celebrity) but I'm still not sold on the reasons for the first wife to be hidden away. If you are a rich and famous singer couldn't you just send her to one of the best places in the world for care? Several times comments come up in the text about how dreadful asylums are but for a schizophrenic dependent on medication to be stuck in an attic with a single caregiver is a bit hard for me to believe. I think teens will like the romance (and the rock star aspect) but I never felt there was a reason for him to fall for Jane nor did I understand why she fled - or why on earth someone who already had a wife (sick as she may be) would set out to marry another woman. Still not sure how I'll be reviewing this one; it's clearly uneven (to me) but not unsuccessful.

Currently reading a pollution title for Booklist (on so-called "sacrifice zones") and FRAGILE EDGE by Maria Coffey. I don't plan to write much about mountaineering in the book but there will be a bit about Johnny Waterman which will call for some mention of other mountaineers and thus George Mallory (because I find him incredibly compelling) and then, hopefully, a shout out to Coffey and how effectively she has pulled back the veil on what this sport/lifestyle demands of those who are left behind. Regardless of all the research though, it's a great book and really makes one think.

Also working on another Florida short story - but more on that as it develops. (There was a dead girl, she was buried in her parents' front yard and it might have all been an urban myth, but we went looking for her one night nonetheless.)

I'm in Alaska on a research/family business type trip so things will be quiet around here for another week or so. Expect the radio silence to end by the August 1st (if not sooner). I hit the UAF library on Saturday to hunt down clues on men and myth and the Last Frontier (to include Jack London, the Gold Rush and an assortment of lost mountain climbers and dead pilots).

More to follow............

While reading THE POLLUTERS for Booklist recently I came across this quote from Henry Du Pont at the 1952 Second National Air Pollution Symposium:

It seems clear to me that our greatest promise in abating pollution lies in giving full reign to advancing technology. As Americans have found in every field, it is invention and development, not legislation or regulation that has proved our most reliable instrument of progress. The farm reaper was not invented because of legislation or land reform, yet it had a more profound effect upon agriculture than any law, before or since. Long before the Emancipation Proclamation, the work of inventors like Whitney and Howe had doomed human slavery. Child labor was not abolished just by statute, but by productive machinery that made such work unnecessary. I think it can be well demonstrated that all of our social gains have had a similar history; modern technology is the greatest reformer of modern times.

Just for the record, the cotton gin (credited to Eli Whitney) was patented in 1794 - more than 60 years before the Civil War which, as any elementary school kid knows, was fought TO END SLAVERY. (That state's rights argument always drives me nuts - the states were fighting for the right to CONTINUE SLAVERY.) As for child labor statutes, one has to wonder why it was ever acceptable for children to work in factories or mines or fields rather than go to school. How lucky we are that technology advanced enough so we did not suffer similar fates. I guess the bit where business owners hired children in the first place should just be ignored - they only did it because poor technology made them, after all.

Ugh.

I also think it's interesting how much Du Pont's words still echo today even in the wake of the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion and the BP disaster. Regulation is a bad bad thing, says Du Pont - as long as we trust men like him, they will make everything all right.

My review will be up in a month or so - I'll be sure to post it and more on the book then.