The Wall ~ a book by Marlen Haushofer

Juliet at Crafty Green Poet yesterday published a review of The Wall by Marlen Haushofer:

"It is a beautifully written book and makes the reader ask lots of questions about our ability to be self sufficient, our relationship with the environment and with animals and the meaning of life."

Here's the publisher's synopsis:

"First published to acclaim in Germany, The Wall chronicles the life of the last surviving human on earth, an ordinary middle-aged woman who awakens one morning to find that everyone else has vanished. Assuming her isolation to be the result of a military experiment gone awry, she begins the terrifying work of survival and self-renewal."

I remember a "Twilight Zone" episode on television about the last man on earth. He loved to read and had found the huge public library in New York City. So he was overjoyed. Then he went outside and stumbled (?? or something) ... anyway, he managed to step on (and break) his glasses! Oh, the irony!

Anyway, The Wall sounds like something I should read, so I continued looking for references ... and found a review from Bookends. According to Wikipedia, The Wall is her only novel translated into English. I want to read this book.

The Secret Life of Lobsters

: How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean

by Trevor Corson, copyright 2004

Prologue: Setting Out, 2001
Lobsters are fewer than in previous years. Bruce Fernald's boat in 2001 is the Double Trouble, and Jacob Pickering is his sternman. Jack Merrill has the Bottom Dollar. Bob steneck, a scientist, is on the R/V Connecticut, with the ROV Phantom.

Part One: Trapping

1. A Haul of Heritage
In 1973, after 4 years in the Navy, Bruce goes out with his father Warren in the Mother Ann. Bruce's great-great-great-grandfather Henry Fernald settled on Great Cranberry when lobster traps were "newfangled technology." Jack's family lived in suburban Massachusetts, and he spent his summers on Little Cranberry Island because his father's ancestors had come from Maine. Jack learned lobstering from Warren Fernald.

2. Honey Holes
Bruce's boat was Pa's Pride, which he bought from his brother Mark, who had bought it from Warren. Their brother Dan bought a fiberglass boat in 1974. Lee Hamm "has a knack for planting his traps in the depressions in the seafloor, where lobsters liked to hide and hunt. He called these spots his honey holes" (p. 33).

Part Two: Mating

3. Scent of a Woman
Jelle Atema, who came to America from the Netherlands, studied lobsters at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, starting in 1970. He first hypothesized that a sex pheromone from female lobsters attracted the males.

4. The Man Show
Jelle Atema had huge new lobster tanks and was surprised to find the females going to the dominant male in the tank, who "simply waited at home" (p. 62). When the first female left, another female came calling at the home of the dominant male. Meanwhile, the human males of Little Cranberry Island were also looking for mates.

5. Sex, Size, and Videotape

Diane Cowan began watching lobsters in the tank. She discovered the non-dominant male (of two in a tank with five females) did NOT get to mate because females waited their turn with the dominant male. Later, Diane snipped antennules, so the lobsters couldn't smell, and one experiment got ugly. "Cutting the antennules off males had left them pugnacious and inept, but the females had still managed to cajole the noseless males into a standard courtship routine. Cutting the antennules off females, by contrast, had nullified the routine and caused chaos" (p. 81). The females' ability to smell was key to successful mating.

Part Three: Fighting
6. Eviction Notice
When Bob Steneck, marine ecologist at the University of Maine, tried to sneak up to observe lobsters, they were alerted by pressure waves emitted by the bubbles in his scuba regulator and turned to face him with claws raised (p. 88). So he set up lobster "neighborhoods" of PVC-pipe homes and watched them from a boat using a miniature ROV that didn't bother the lobsters (p. 91). I loved the lobster eviction process, with the larger lobster knocking on a claw (like on a door), the smaller one coming out and stepping aside, and the big guy moving in (p. 97). I wanted to see a big lobster "at home" in his cubbyhole. Enlarge the photo by clicking on it, and you'll see this one up close and personal.

7. Battle Lines
One of the lobstermen told Bob that if he wanted to do research in their territory, all he had to do was ask. Because he was keen to observe ever better neighborhoods, it wasn't long before Bob had talked Arnie and his colleagues into removing their traps from a section of their best fishing ground so he could census the local population of lobsters. It was a feat unequaled in the history of lobster science, and it signaled a new era of collaborative research. (p. 112)

8. The War of the Eggs
The government argued that the minimum size of lobsters needed to be raised to increase egg production (p. 122). Jack Merrill used the same report to argue that: "The V-notching program holds substantial promise as a means of protecting the brood stock. If we assume for the sake of comparison that one out of every four un-notched egged females that is caught gets V-notched every year, then total egg production will be more than doubled for only a slight decline in catch" (p. 123).

9. Claw Lock

Lobsters have an interesting fight method, with one giving up before his shell shatters. The real battle reported in this chapter, though, is between Maine's lobstermen and the government scientists. The government calls into question the scientific expertise of Bob Steneck, who is on the side of the lobstermen. Bob had shown the large lobsters easily fight off the small ones, but when presented with a whole crowd on contenders, the big ones would rather walk away than fight constantly. But the government ruled that "Dr. Steneck's work ... does not provide sufficient scientific evidence to advise terminating the gauge increases" (p. 135).

Part Four: Surviving

10. The Superlobsters

11. Attack of the Killer Fish

12. Kindergarten Cops

Part Five: Sensing

13. See No Evil

14. Against the Wind

Part Six: Brooding

15. Gathering the Flock

16. Victory Dance

17. Fickle Seas

Epilogue: Hauling In, 2001

An Inconvenient Truth

: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It

by Al Gore, copyright 2006

"Almost all of the mountain glaciers in the world are now melting, many of them quite rapidly. There is a message in this" (pp. 48-49).

I could fill this post with nothing but quotes from the book.

"The science textbooks had to be rewritten in 2004. They used to say, 'It's impossible to have hurricanes in the South Atlantic.' But that year, for the first time ever, a hurricane hit Brazil" (pp. 84-85).

Here's more about the polar bears that I mentioned in an earlier post:

"The melting of the [Arctic] ice represents bad news for creatures like polar bears. A new scientific study shows that, for the first time, polar bears have been drowning in significant numbers. Such deaths have been rare in the past. But now, these bears find they have to swim much longer distances from floe to floe. In some places, the edge of the ice is 30 to 40 miles from the shore" (pp. 146-147).

Global warming is disrupting delicately balanced ecological relationships among species, like this example:

"A study from the Netherlands ... shows that 25 years ago, the peak arrival date for the migratory birds was April 25. Their chicks hatched almost six weeks later, peaking on June 3, just in time for the height of the caterpillar season. Now, two decades of warming later, the birds still arrive in late April, but the caterpillars are peaking two weeks earlier, leaving the mother birds without their traditional source of food for the chicks. The peak hatching date has moved slightly forward, but cannot move by much. As a result, the chicks are in trouble" (pp. 152-153).

Trees are also affected by climate change:

"This picture shows a portion of 14 million acres of spruce trees in Alaska and British Columbia that have been killed by bark beetles, whose rapid spread was once slowed by colder and longer winters" (pp. 156-157).

Greenland's ice is also melting. In 2004 Sir David King, U.K. Science Advisor said, "The maps of the world will have to be redrawn."

"If Greenland melted or broke up and slipped into the sea -- or if half of Greenland and half of Antarctica melted or broke up and slipped into the sea, sea levels worldwide would increase by between 18 and 20 feet" (pp. 196-197).

The next page shows us what would happen to Florida. The coastal areas would be covered by the rising ocean and Okefenokee Swamp would be connected to open ocean. Much of the Netherlands would also be covered by the rising water, and they have already launched a competition among architects to design floating homes, some pictured on page 203. The double-page photos are National Geographic quality showing these disasters and more.

"This image shows the largest ice shelf in the Arctic -- the Ward Hunt shelf. Three years ago [in 2002] it cracked in half, to the astonishment of scientists. This had never happened before" (pp.128-129).

If more people would read this book or watch Gore's Oscar Award-winning film "An Inconvenient Truth," maybe there would be a chance to save the world from the dire effects of global warming. Yes, I know that sounds extreme, but we are already in an "emergency" (as the subtitle says) and, at least in this country, refuse to make needed changes if doing so would in any way disrupt profits for major corporations. I don't understand why those who believe in God are unwilling to use their God-given minds to see the disaster rushing toward us.

The Creation

: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth
by E. O. Wilson, copyright 2006

The Creation ... is the greatest heritage, other than the reasoning mind itself, ever provided to humanity (page 61).

Sections of the book:

I. The Creation
A call for help and an invitation to visit the embattled natural world in the company of a biologist.

II. Decline and Redemption
Blinded by ignorance and self-absorption, humanity is destroying the creation. There is still time to assume the stewardship of the natural world that we owe to future human generations.

III. What Science Has Learned
Arguments for saving the rest of life are drawn from both religion and science. The relevant principles of biology, the key science in this discourse, are explained here.

IV. Teaching the Creation
The only way to save the diversity of life and come to peace with nature is through a widely shared knowledge of biology and what the findings of that science imply for the human condition.

V. Reaching Across
Science and religion are the two most powerful forces of society. Together they can save the creation.

Last Child in the Woods

: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

by Richard Louv, copyright 2005

"A sense of wonder and joy in nature should be at the very center of ecological literacy." -- page 221

The first part of this book asks, Why? Then Louv wants us to decide, How?

1. Why?

Why do we need nature?

.....for health, creativity, stress-relief, spirituality, finding future stewards of nature

Why are children not outside more?

.....time constraints, fear, changes in education, criminalization of nature

2. How?

How do we reunite children with nature?

.....nature as teacher, camp revival, decriminalizing natural play

How do we build a movement?

.....think green, believe in seeds, help good works take root, create a zoopolis

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Questions:

1. What direct experiences with nature did you have as a child?

2. Have the places for these experiences disappeared?

3. Are our children and grandchildren spending less time outdoors? Why?

4. Why is direct experience with the natural world so important for children?

5. What would be a good way to get children back to nature?

6. Do you have any ideas for fostering awareness of the human need for nature?

7. What hopeful things do you see happening in your own town or neighborhood?

8. How does direct experience with nature provide spirituality and promote sustainability?

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Blue Planet = http://pods.zaadz.com/blue_planet = used my idea,too