Conversing for Fun and Progress

Gosh, what is the world coming to when even David Godine has a blog? Although I notice he has not yet contributed many bon mots himself. Perhaps he is the man behind the curtain? Perhaps he is waiting for Godot? Be that as it may, most of us seem eager to dive into any new means of communication. Blogs are just one more glowing ember in the sticky magma of human communication. It seems we can’t help it.

Remember life before cell phones? We walked off airplanes to where our friends patiently waited, each of us waving happily as soon as we spotted one another. Now we call immediately upon touchdown, “I’m here. The plane’s just landed. I’ll call again when I’m on the jetway.” And we do, often with a follow-up of “I’m just passing the Starbucks. I’m wearing my red sweatshirt. See you soon!”

With this GPS mode of communication we alert everyone to our current position. “I’m waiting in line at the movies.” “I’m just leaving the grocery store.” In essence, it’s a message with no real expectation of or need for feedback. Even if it’s not broadcast in the technical sense (as Twitter is), its intention is one-way.

Many so-called conversations are really just a series of proclamations that go out into the air in this kind of parallel fashion, never touching one another.

In database engineering language, this type of uniflow communication from one source file to multiple recipient files is called a “one-to-many relationship,” and is very useful for the sorts of things that databases do. But in the human environment, although highly seductive for the “one,” it bores the “many” and ultimately it’s not useful for solving big problems.

Far better is a “many-to-many relationship,” where talk eddies back and forth among many people. The caveat, of course, is the inherent confusion and frustration whenever differing points of view rub together. That’s why a patient and alert mind is required in many-to-many conversations.

One of the most brilliant and sustained examples of this sort of conversation occurred repeatedly in a real-time, face-to-face Concord MA neighborhood in the middle of the 19th century. Several families lived and worked together, sharing babysitting and canned fruit, carpentry and farming, ideas and love. Their potluck dinners brought together incredible intellectual firepower. Ralph Waldo Emerson, his wife Lidian, Bronson Alcott and his wife Abba, their friend Henry Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife Sophia Peabody knew the value of growing ideas communally, of agreeing and disagreeing, but rarely walking away.

Their talk was rooted in the issues of their day — abolition, democracy, education, poverty, justice — and they also tackled blue-sky questions like “what are the responsibilities of being human?” and “what is my relationship to nature?”

These neighbors knew that a many-to-many conversation which encouraged good will and keen vision in the face of disagreement is one of the best ways to bring in a useful harvest. A crop of good ideas will never sprout if we pretend the weedy ones don’t exist.

[Kit Bakke is the author of Miss Alcott's Email]

Desert in the New York Times

J.M.G. Le Clézio's newly published novel Desert is reviewed in this week's New York Times, by Elizabeth Hawes. She writes, 'The American publication of Desert is therefore an event, bringing into closer range one of the leading writers in France. Desert is a rich, sprawling, searching, poetic, provocative, broadly historic and demanding novel, which in all those ways displays the essence of Le Clézio. As a reflection on colonization and its legacy, it is painfully relevant after 30 years. [. . .] There is an element of the missionary in Le Clézio, just as there is still something of the rebel in him, in search of the new novel, trying to break loose from the traditional bonds of fiction and language to mirror a wider world — as the Nobel citation described, to explore “a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.” Beneath his pantheism and ethnology, there is also a serious critic of contemporary Western civilization and its rationalism, pointing out the conflict between nature and cities, the disconnect between man and mythology.'

Perec Special Offer

Life A User's Manual & Thoughts of Sorts
Get them together at 30% off the cover price!

Over twenty years ago, Godine published the first English translation of Georges Perec's masterpiece, Life A User's Manual, hailed by the Times Literary Supplement, Boston Globe, and others as "one of the great novels of the century." We are now proud to announce a newly revised twentieth anniversary edition of Life. Carefully prepared, with many corrections, this edition of Life A User's Manual will be the preferred reference edition for the future.

Structured around a single moment in time – 8:00 P.M. on June 23, 1975 – Perec's spellbinding puzzle begins in an apartment block in the XVIIth arrondissement of Paris where, chapter by chapter, room by room, an extraordinarily rich cast of characters is revealed in a series of tales that are bizarre, unlikely, moving, funny, or (sometimes) quite ordinary.

Thoughts of Sorts, one of Georges Perec's final works, was published posthumously in France in 1985. With this translation, David Bellos, Perec's preeminent translator, has completed the Godine list of Perec's great works translated into English and has provided an introduction to this master of "systematic versatility." Thoughts of Sorts is a compilation of musings and essays attempting to circumscribe, in Perec's words, "my experience of the world not in terms of the reflections it casts in distant places, but at its actual point of breaking surface." Perec investigates the ways by which we define our place in the world, reveling in listmaking, orientating, classifying. This book employs all of the modes of questioning explored by his previous books, and at the same time breaks new ground of its own, ending with a question mark in typical/atypical Perec fashion.

Le Clézio on BBC's The Strand TODAY

Nobel Laureate and author of Desert and The Prospector, J.M.G. Le Clézio will be interviewed on BBC's international arts radio show The Strand today at 10:30 am. Check your local listings; we'll put up a link to the show asap.

NOTE

Here is the interview, courtesy of the BBC!

Book vs Kindle: Round 7, Story Time

Bookslut Review of Dubus

Over at the great literary blog & review site Bookslut, Nina McGlaughlin reviews a classic Godine title: Voices from the Moon, by Andre Dubus. She writes, "Both novels illuminate great and complicated passion, jealousy, rage, and huge hurt, as well as the inexpressible in romantic love, and, as John Updike put it in his review of Voices from the Moon in The New Yorker in 1985, 'our homely, awkward movements of familial adjustment and forgiveness'."

If you're a New Yorker subscriber, I encourage you to head over there and read the full text of Updike's review from their February 4, 1985 issue.

The Death of Amazon

In The Huffington Post today, Alex Green, the owner of Back Pages Books, makes a — dare I say — wildly bold prediction regarding the future of Amazon. He writes, "With a margin of profit lower than the national sales tax average and countless Amazon Prime customers locked in at obscenely low shipping rates, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos saw the writing on the wall. He rapidly began seeking a way to avoid the third meltdown of his business in the last decade. He got out his Kindle, grabbed a list of vague numbers, jumped on a giant soapbox and tried to stave off the perception that his Kindle-fever was anything but panic. Then in June, Rhode Island passed a law following New York's lead. On Thursday, North Carolina jumped on board as well, passing a sweeping e-fairness law. Facing the greatest drop in tax revenue since the Great Depression, states across the country have decided that Amazon no longer needs its tax breaks.

"Amazon has responded by dropping its affiliates in North Carolina and rattling a saber engraved with the motto, 'We don't pay taxes.' The problem for them is that other states waiting in the wings are more destitute and powerful than North Carolina. California charges sales taxes that are almost double the national average. With a titanic economy on the brink of near-anarchistic failure, broadly despised Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is almost all that stands between Amazon and the tax man.

"The consequences of enforcing a sales tax after such a lengthy period of legislative inaction, however, are devastating. Amazon simply cannot survive if it has to pay sales taxes. If nationally enacted today, enforced tax legislation would put at least $1 billion of Amazon's yearly operational costs and profits into state coffers. Under such pressure, Amazon would briefly comply and then collapse. Three weeks later you would find them on the nightly news, appearing before Congress for a bailout, "selling," as the poet Franz Wright says, 'the emptiness of their own hands.' Like the auto companies before them, Internet retailers used your roads, your government, and your tax subsidized infrastructure to support non-viable companies that killed your local businesses. Nothing in life, as the saying goes, is free."

Can it be true? Can we imagine a world of books not dominated by Amazon? After only, say, a decade or less of dominance in this market, I have difficulty conceiving of it.

Catie & Jim, of Catie Copley

Common Milkweed ~ Asclepias syriaca

Please check out a review of Oh Garden of Fresh Possibilities! on Isabelle Lafleche’s wonderfully fun blog Pink Lemonade. Isabelle is an author residing in Montreal. She first wrote about my book after seeing it at the New York book expo last spring and we have been corresponding ever since. The winner of a free copy of Oh Garden will be selected at random from comments left on her blog and anyone can leave a comment.

Much to share — following the success of my Monarch butterfly exhibit several years ago, I have been invited to create an all new exhibit at the Sawyer Free Library. If you don’t hear from me over the next few weeks, it is because I am deeply involved in preparations. The photo/journal exhibit, with video footage, will be at the Matz Gallery at the Sawyer Free for the month of September. The lecture date is Thursday, September 10th at 7:00 pm. The exhibit is made possible through partial funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Serendipitously, an article that I wrote (with photos) about the Monarchs will be appearing in the upcoming fall issue of Cape Ann Magazine, which will be available in mid-August at bookstores (Toad Hall and The Bookstore), Richdales, and other local markets.

I was bemoaning that one part of the story that was missing from the exhibit was a photograph of a female Monarch ovipositing (depositing an egg). I believe that because of the many months of cold and rain brought about by air currents dipping further south than usual, the Monarch population in our region is way down from previous years. Fantastically, especially because there are so few on the wing this year, a female Monarch was in our garden several days ago, laying eggs in our little milkweed patch, which reminded me to remind you of the importance of growing milkweeds. The photo attached is the female Monarch (you can tell she is a female by her dark, smokier colored wing patterning) nectaring at marsh milkweed (Asclepias incarnata). She was laying eggs on both the common and marsh milkweeds, which we grow side-by-side, and yes, after many hours of patiently standing in the milkweed patch, I did get a snapshot of her ovipositing.

On another note, I received over a hundred email responses after writing the article In the Wake of Godzilla. All but two concurred. Steve Reynolds, a member of the zoning board, was one of the two, and wrote an interesting response. I have sent him a response in turn. All those who wrote to me regarding Gloucester Crossing will automatically receive a copy of Mr. Reynold’s letter and of my response. If you did not write, but would also like to receive a copy, please feel free to email me at kimsmithdesigns {at} hotmail.com.

P.S. Since i wrote this note yesterday, many Monarch caterpillars have emerged. The siblings are voraciously munching on the milkweed.

Pete Sipes Reads Ferdinandus Taurus

Pete Sipes, of Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, reading from the classic Godine titles Ferdinandus Taurus:

[Thanks to one-time Godiner Genevieve Brennan]

Sailing with DRG

When you’re a summer intern at Godine, you get some added perks. No, not just eating a lunch on the very busy and sunny Common. But rather, a trip to Maine! An island in Maine, no less.

This weekend I traveled north to David’s summer house on an island off the coast of Maine. A day with David in the office promised many surprises. . . so I was certain a weekend involving boats, tennis and lobster would hold even more exciting experiences. I was certainly not disappointed. Even though I’ve lived in Massachusetts my whole life and even used to summer on the Cape, I had never actually been sailing. And so, David set out to rectify that terrible problem.

After a light breakfast, a group of us looked at the water and decided that although there wasn’t much wind, we’d probably be able to make it to a nearby island for a picnic lunch. We set off (which involved much rigging and ropes and nautical terminology that went right over my head), and were barely crawling along, in an ocean that was near glass-like, when all of the sudden someone looked behind us and spotted low hanging dark clouds. Not only were the clouds incredibly ominous, they were also moving at light-speed. Within two minutes of having spotted them, the sea started to turn choppy. The entire sailboat tipped on its side. (Thank goodness I had thought to grab my book, which had just been lying on the deck seconds before!) The less experienced "sailors" were hurried downstairs and the true seaman took over the sails, wrestling to get the mainsail down as quickly as possible, lest the gale-force winds drag us over to the nearby island and dash us upon the rocks!

David remained at the rudder, calling out orders while I huddled below deck. After many minutes of clanking and banging from above, the sail was safely down and we were able to motor back to the home island. The ride still consisted of wild winds and pelting rain, mind you. When we arrived back, the rain had stopped and the sun was peaking from behind the clouds. All in all, the strange and sudden squall had lasted a mere half an hour.

I could not have fathomed a more "interesting" first sail, though I should have expected something monumental when I set out to sea with David at the helm.

[Kit Harris is an intern at Godine and will be a Junior at Johns Hopkins University this Fall, studying for the year in Paris and then Florence. "Oh, she exaggerates," says David.]

Genius Reviews

Two reviews of Genius of Common Sense are making the rounds today online, it seems. The first has a front-and-center spot on Arts & Letters Daily: Howard Husock writes, at City Journal, "Not only did Jacobs draw important inferences about how cities, the quintessential human ecosystems, grew and prospered organically; she was able, despite her lack of advanced degrees or even a college diploma, to attract the support of elites through the power of her original ideas. Her position as a staff writer at Architectural Forum lent her views credibility and helped convert the likes of Lewis Mumford, then the architectural critic for The New Yorker, making it respectable for elected officials to oppose Moses. Bronx residents, in their struggle to stop construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway, had tried demonstrating against Moses, but to no avail. He had always been able to rely on planning elites, newspaper editorial pages, and his own social background and connections to make 'slum-dwellers' look self-interested and benighted. In Jacobs, Moses faced a foe who employed hardball political tactics and sarcasm as well. She dared to condescend to him."

And over at Seth's Blog he writes, "Genius of Common Sense is plainly a labor of love, with a great selection of photographs and a belief in Jacobs’s importance that you might say “shines through the book like a watermark” (Nabokov). The subtitle is 'Jane Jacobs and the story of The Death and Life of Great American Cities' but that isn’t right: It’s mostly about how Jacobs and her neighbors fended off Robert Moses to preserve Greenwich Village. Which is a lot more visual. As I read it I kept wondering what I would have thought of it had I picked it up as, say, a third grader. I read a lot of biographies for children back then. I might have been attracted by the weird title and helped along by the high ratio (1 to 1) of picture space to word space. I would have liked the underdog aspect." Me too!

Harry Patch: 'The Last Fighting Tommy'

Last week thousands in Britain attended a funeral for Harry Patch, the last British survivor and veteran of World War I, who died on July 25th at the age of 111. For many, Mr. Patch’s death marked the end of an era, the passing of the last man living who could tell what it was to be a soldier in the Great War. Harry Patch was memorialized in a poem by Sir Andrew Motion in 2007, when Motion was the British poet laureate. His five-part poem, "Harry Patch: 'The Last Fighting Tommy'" is included in The Mower: New and Selected Poems, just out from Godine.

Watch the video: courtesy of The Guardian.


Also: listen to the Radiohead tribute, 'Harry Patch (in Memory of)'

Jim reads from Catie Copley!

In the Wake of Godzilla

[Photos from Along the Highway Adjacent to Gloucester Crossing]

For readers who are unfamiliar with the landscape and day to-day affairs of Gloucester, Gloucester Crossing is a newly built shopping mall located on the grounds of a formerly fully functioning neighborhood elementary school. The shops are scheduled to open later this year. When I write formerly fully functioning elementary school, I mean to say that the Fuller School was shuttered at the onset of the development, staff laid-off, and students relocated. Subsequently the grounds surrounding the school, including the ballpark and vernal pond, were clear-cut. Despite repeated assurances from the developer Sam Park that the vernal pond would be protected (see videos), it was not. Despite the full knowledge that the developer was not in compliance with, and his complete disregard of, the agreed-upon terms of development, Sam Parks and DeMoulas (Market Basket chain of supermarkets) were given two million dollars in tax-increment-financing, or TIF, further unfairly crippling local businesses.

Perhaps you have a “Gloucester Crossing” in your neighborhood. I think I speak for the majority when saying we all basically desire the same thing for towns and cities — that our local businesses and industry be allowed to grow and thrive — creating a mutually beneficial relationship between citizen and business. Local industries, such as fishing and tourism are the lifeblood of Gloucester. Destroying the natural beauty of Gloucester in the name of creating low-paying jobs (part of the TIF agreement) destroys the very thing that draws people to our city — an extremely shortsighted form of development.

I am sickened by feelings of powerlessness against rapacious developers who defile our community. Not only was it heartbreaking to witness the annihilation of the vernal pond, surrounding tree cover, and ballpark, but also the wholesale demolition of the granite outcropping that formerly ran adjacent to the last leg of Route 128. Created over millennia — rife with native plants and wildlife — now only a pile of rubble.



There are many in our community who bravely fought the developer. They won the first round against Park’s bullying self-serving insistence that a traffic light on Route 128 be installed to serve his customers (with the potential to create the worst traffic jams imaginable). As the developers are circling round the harbor front, it is very clear that there needs to be in place a system of checks and balances that offers incentives to those who consider the environmental impact as well as the aesthetics of future developments, and adhere to the agreed upon terms. Gloucester is a perpetually cash-strapped small city, which places us in a very vulnerable position. I don’t see the good folks of Manchester, Essex, and Rockport tolerating this kind of in-your-face-destruction. Is it because Gloucester is that much poorer, or is it because we citizens, through our elected officials, lack the political will to legislate against and to prevent this kind of abuse?

Boycotting works. Did we need a fourth supermarket within a one-mile radius? Did we need another Marshall’s and Staples, particularly since both businesses already have branches that are within a half hour drive? A friend said, “what does it matter, what’s done is done, and nothing can change that fact.” Yes, that is true, but this is a teaching moment for all of us who care about the natural beauty and community development of Cape Ann. Fishermen and artist, restaurateur and patron, Varian engineer and organ builder, innkeeper and guest, elected official and voter, rich and poor, year round and summer resident, entrepreneur and blue collar worker, white collar and green collar, we all have to join forces and work together to preserve our natural resources and shape future development. The alarm has sounded and we now have a visual, daily reminder of the face of unbridled, pernicious development.

The photos taken only a few days ago show the granite outcropping before and after it was demolished. The flora is native spiraea (Spiraea latifolia), a caterpillar host plant for the female Summer Azure butterfly, found dead at the blasting site.

[Kim Smith is the author of Oh Garden of Fresh Possibilities! Available now from David R. Godine, Publisher.]

Perec & Kramer: Separated at Birth

We have the folded and gathered (unbound) pages for Thoughts of Sorts here, and reading it over — Perec's mostly humorous essays are quirky, whimsical, and engaging — this likeness struck me; it struck me like a bolt of lightning:

Georges Perec, Godine


Cosmo Kramer, Seinfeld


I'm not 'sayin', I'm just — you know — saying. They're both kooky.

Looking, and Looking, and Looking at the Newberry Library

Last month, while attending the ALA in Chicago (for those of you who think this is the American Law Association, think again; it's the American Library Association — for librarians — and it is, as shows go, pretty dull stuff), I allowed myself the luxury of visiting the Newberry Library on West Walton Street. The Newberry is one the great, free-standing, independently funded research libraries in this country, and it is well known in typographic and calligraphic circles for its outstanding collections in these areas. I was welcomed by Paul Gehl, whose official title is Custodian of the John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing, which contains probably the greatest collection of writing books and calligraphic manuscripts (along with those at the Houghton amassed by Philip Hofer and the British Museum) in the English speaking world.

In the old days, when I was a student at Dartmouth, you could go to almost any library, sign in, sit down in the reading room and have books brought to you. You didn't have to wear white gloves or provide evidence of some formal scholarly affiliation, or show your drivers license to prove your identity. As a senior at Dartmouth, I spent an entire term my senior year at the Bodleain Library at Oxford sitting in the reading room and looking through fifteenth and sixteenth century books. No one asked me any questions; the books were brought, left at my reading station, and picked up when I was finished. All in total silence.

The same procedure, I am glad to report, still obtains at the Newberry, and Paul Gehl is the personification of civility and helpfulness; he simply gives the interested scholar the two wooden racks of typewritten cards describing the Wing holdings with a few slips of paper on which to write the call numbers. It's simple; it's efficient; and it's a pleasure. No wonder that every serious scholar from Stanley Morison to Beatrice Warde to Nicolas Barker has made it their home, and a special vote of thanks is due to Jim Wells, who presided over the collection for years and who befriended and was a friend to so many in this rarefied field that still holds a fascination for a certain lunatic fringe.

The history of scholarship in the fields of typography and calligraphy is riddled with individuals who never received a formal college diploma and never attended formal courses of study but whose education was nurtured and furthered by curators like Jim Wells and Paul Gehl. Daniel Berkeley Updike, whose "Printing Types" remains the standard in the field to this day, never graduated college; not did Stanley Morison, probably the foremost typographic scholar of the last century. Richard Benson, whose recent book will find its place on the shelves of the classics, never graduated, not did his brother John Benson, the foremost stone-cutter of our age. Matthew Carter, who is surely the foremost type designer of our time, was offered a place at Oxford, but declined to study punch cutting in the Netherlands instead. The list goes on. Scholarship, and most especially connoisseurship, have little to do with a college degree; they have everything to do with looking, and looking, and looking some more. And reading. To this end, we have institutions like the Newberry to thank, and to their curators for their help and encouragement.

Godine's Biggest Fan

Some impostor (we're sure it is an impostor, although the reasons why are another matter) has sent David several very genial letters in the name of pop icon Britney Spears. We thought you fine readers might enjoy a bit of tom-foolery. To wit:

A National Best Seller

A little bit of cheery news for a small independent press such as ourselves: The Poetry Foundation released their list of national best-selling titles for July 12, and Linda Bamber's debut collection Metropolitan Tang came in at a sturdy, whimsical, desirous #23 on the list! Sandwiched between Frederick Seidel and Matthew Dickman — not too shabby.

Brood Parasitism

What is going on? Look closely at the photograph and you will see the smaller bird is feeding the much larger bird. The plumage of juvenile birds often differs strikingly from that of their parents, but that is not the case here. The bird in the foreground is an adult Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia) and the bird it is feeding is an entirely separate species, a Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater). The obviously well fed fledgling cowbird parked itself in our yard for over a week. From sun up till sun down, squawking loudly with its mouth held wide open, three Song Sparrows ran themselves ragged feeding it safflower seeds.



Lovely russet-streaked plumage, brown-cap, streaked-eye, and clear bird songs give clues to identifying the Song Sparrow. Its song is sweet and performed at all hours of the day, from early spring through our Indian summer. They are one of the most common and geographically variable birds found in North America, breeding as far north as Canada and Alaska and wintering in Mexico. Not all Song Sparrows are migratory. For the past few winters we have had several residing in our garden all the winter long. Their diet usually consists of seeds, grains, berries, and less frequently, insects. We find them feeding in a solitary fashion on the ground below both the safflower and Nyjer seed feeders.

The Brown-headed Cowbird is a brood parasite, meaning it lays its eggs in the nests of other passerines (perching birds), neither building its own nest nor raising its young. Females lay as many as three dozen eggs in a season and over 140 different species of birds have been known to raise their nestlings.

Brown-headed Cowbirds were originally nomadic, foraging on the insects and prairie seeds churned up by the vast herds of bison during their annual northward and southward migration across the Great Plains. Nearly extirpated, the bison were replaced by goats, sheep, and cattle, with which the cowbirds became associated, hence the name cowbird. As the North American landscape has become increasingly fragmented through deforestation, the Brown-headed Cowbird has experienced a massive range expansion.

Cowbird young tend to hatch earlier, grow faster, crowd-out, and reduce the food intake of their hosts. Some species have learned to recognize and reject cowbird eggs — robins, blue jays, catbirds, and brown thrashers, for example. Species that accept the cowbird eggs include many warblers, vireos, Eastern Phoebes, and Song Sparrows. The spotting pattern of the Song Sparrow egg is similar to that of the cowbird. Brood parasitism is a dramatic example of avian co-evolution. Brown-headed Cowbirds have their most damaging impact on species such as the Kirtland’s Warblers, which have only recently been subjected to cowbird parasitism and have not yet evolved defense mechanisms.

Since World War II, the decline of forest songbird populations over much of North America has increased rapidly and the reasons are many. Brood parasitism by Brown-headed Cowbirds was considered by many to be the chief cause. The primary determinant is not brood parasitism, as was demonstrated by an extensive study conducted by Audubon scientists (cowbirds are also declining in numbers), but habitat fragmentation. Perhaps the loss of songbirds could be halted if their survival depended entirely on conservation efforts in the United States and Canada. However, it is the inexorable destruction of tropical rain forests (the songbirds winter habitat) that, if continued unabated, in only a few years will drive many of our beloved songbirds to extinction. The most enduring action we can take to ensure a future for all living creatures is to properly manage the scale of human activities on our planet.



{Kim Smith is the author of Oh Garden of Fresh Possibilities, of which Viveka Neveln at The American Gardener recently wrote, "Anyone who gardens along the Eastern Seaboard from Maine to South Carolina will appreciate Oh Garden of Fresh Possibilities!"}