Reflections on Nine Drafts of an Essay

7 March 2024

This evening I had a productive discussion about the process of developing an essay. I was allowed to look through a series of drafts the led to a just-published essay, and discuss the author’s process with the author. Although different people obviously have different processes, it was a great exercise.

EP#14: 2023 Best Science & Nature Writing–Overview

* The Best American Science and Nature Writing of 2023 (ed. Carl Zimmer)

February – March 2024

CT and I selected this book to continue our essay project. However, after reading the first three pieces, we have reconsidered. Although the articles are interesting, they are not what either of would call essays. It’s really journalism, with the focus on ideas. The prose is generally clear and workman like, but as yet we have not encountered any writing that makes us pause to savor the phrase. We intend to look through the book, and — by paying attention to where the piece was originally published – see if we can come up with more essay-like pieces. However, we both suspect, that the book will not past muster vis a vis our project, and that we will move on to something else following our next meeting.

Learning by Answering Questions (Reddit)

TEMP Reddit Journal Entry

Over the last couple of years I’ve become aware of a new way in which I learn things. It is a sort of consolidative learning.

Since I’ve retired, one of my activities has been to learn about geology. That mostly involved taking classes or reading books; occasionally it happens via going on field trips, but those are pretty few and far between. But, over the last few years, I’ve become of a new way I learn things – or perhaps it is better to say consolidate what I already know, or connect the dots…

Geology Subs

It involves reddit, which I visit nearly every morning, in response to the daily email that alerts me to new activities in the subs I follow. These are primarily geology-oriented subs like “whatsthisrock” “askgeology,” and “rockhounds.” Initially I visited because I wanted to get better at identifying field specimens of minerals, and identification requests, and the ensuing discussion, make up a significant portion of the content. After a while, I began weighing in on the debates, and came to recognize areas – such as mafic igeneous rocks – where I had something to contribute.

LS: Land Above the Trees: A Guide to American Alpine Tundra, Ann Zwinger & Beatrice E. Willard

February 2024…

This book was recommended in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The High Sierra: A Love Story, as a good guide to the ecology and botany of the Sierra Nevada (and the upper portions of other North American ranges). And, indeed, it is beautifully written with a narrative style in which the reader moves through landscapes with the authors, looking at this and that, in contrast to what I had expected would be more of a catalog or encyclopedic approach. The book is divided into two principle parts: part 1 examines elements of ‘above the trees’ ecosystems, like fellfields or krumholtz; part 2 looks at particular North American tundra ecosystems, with one chapter being on the Sierra Nevada.

BG: Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteenth Century Florence, Tim Parks

February 2024

Book Group: Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteenth Century Florence, Tim Parks, 2005.

My initial impression, after one chapter, is that it will be a pretty straightforward read – it is not clear to me if it will be anything other than a slightly-dramatized history of the Medici’s. Parks is not a historian, cites no references, and has a 4-page “Bibliographic Note” which makes it clear that he doesn’t think much of academics. All this does not make me optimistic.

Final impression: My initial impression was accurate, but I did learn some very general things.

Most interesting was to understand how chaotic the Italian City States were at the time.
- There were continual wars conducted by mercenary armies; citizens were taxed to support the wars, and some smaller towns were sometimes looted or ravished, but mostly the wars didn’t involve civilians
- Many governments were nominally ‘elite republics’ that were governed by councils of members of powerful families, but in practice it appears that one family would typically be in power, and would uses a combination of nepotism and favoritism to stay in power.
- Italy consisted of five power centers that were continually shifting alliances: Naples in the south, Rome farther north, and then Milan, Florence and Venice. When one would become dominant, a couple others would enter an alliance against ti.
Also of interest was the way banks worked
- While banks loaned money and effectively collected interest, that counted as usury and so they used various facades to avoid the appearance of usury
- Banks also needed to participate in trading to create means of getting repayment for their investments
- Bankers also, apparently because they were really concerned about their souls, cultivated close relationships with the catholic church to achieve absolution.
As time went on
- the Church became more and more corrupt, and became of less use as a way of allowing bankers to ‘purify’ themselves by association
  - bankers, in an effort to cultivate a high social status, made more and more loans to princes and others who could not be counted on to repay them in anything but social capital.
  - the generations of Medici morphed from
    (1) just bankers who kept a low social profile (e.g., Giovani),
    (2) bankers and behind-the-scenes political operators (e.g.,Cosimo);
    (3) primarily politicians and elite patrons with little compentence in banking (e.g., Lorenzo)

w/CS: Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, Mary Roach

January-February 2024

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, Mary Roach, 2022. I am reading the with CS. Mary Roach is a popular science writer who has developed a ‘brand’ of doing popular science books with toungue-in-cheek titles like Gulp, Stiff, Bonk, and so forth.

My impression after the first two chapters is that it will be a fun, fairly light read. She is very good at tossing in the amusing descriptive phrase.

EP #`13: Awakenings, Oliver Sacks

January 2024

Entry 13 in the Essays Project with CT; this is the seventh book we’ve read by Oliver Sacks. This is the book that, with the help of a documentary and then movie, transformed him into something of a celebrity. It is an account of the experience of ‘awakening’ patients with Parkinson’s induced by Encephalitis Lethargia by administering L-Dopa, their experiences of returning to a sort of normal life, and then their declines due to the follow-on negative effects of L-Dopa.

LS* – Finding the Forest, Peter Bundy

December 2023

* This is part of a small project of reading essays that focus on landscape and natural history, the idea being to familiarize myself with this genre, and to develop a better sense of what I like and do not like.

This is a short book about the author’s journey into forestry. I’m ambivalent about it. The first part of the book focuses on his own story, which I don’t find particularly interesting or inspiring. I also have to say that the writing is a bit precious – he is fond of invoking Mother Nature, and personifying the forest; he also tries to be lyrical in what seems to me a clumsy and prosaic way. However, once he becomes established in his career as a forester, I find the book more worthwhile: it is a good survey of the today’s thinking in forestry, about both its past shortcomings and its current approaches. But the combination of preachiness, romanticism and clumsy attempts at lyricism will keep me from recommending it to others.

LS*–The High Sierra: A Love Story, Kim Stanley Robinson

November 2023

The High Sierra: A Love Story, by Kim Stanely Robinson. 2022.

* I was reading this for other reasons, but nevertheless it fits well into my project to read essays that focus on landscape and natural history.

TL;DR: I love this book. But it is not for everyone. On the other hand, it is organized in such a way that readers interested in particular topics — geology, history, etc. – could skip through the book attending to one or a few themes that interest them. It has great pictures, too.

I’m a big fan of KSR, and think it likely that I’ve read everything he’s written, although it is possible that that omits a few early science fiction novels that were retroactively published after he became better known. I like the complex characters he develops, the intensely developed worlds he portrays, and especially his attention to geology, climate, economics, politics, and the role of large institutions – themes that are uncommon in much science fiction. Also unusual is that he sometimes ventures beyond the borders of SF, as with his novel Years of Rice and Salt, and especially with this book, which is multi-threaded work the interweaves memoir, geology, natural history and history.

LS* – A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson

November 2023

* This is part of a small project of reading essays that focus on landscape and natural history, the idea being to familiarize myself with this genre, and develop a better sense of what I like and do not like.

While, overall, it was an enjoyable read that managed to keep my interest, I was not that keen on it. It is an example of what I am expecting is a subgenre of writing where the author sets out on an ‘adventure’ with little or no preparation (and often with an even less prepared companion), and then recounts his misadventures. Amusing, but to someone who believes research and preparation, a bit difficult to engage with.

Bryson is, in fact, a good writer, and when he actually turned his eye on the environment around him managed to craft some nice phrases. The phrases I tended to like often fell into a few rhetorical categories.

LS* – Writing Landscape, Linda Cracknell

December 2023

Writing Landscape: Taking Note, Making Notes, Linda Cracknell, 2023

This is a small book of essays, both in form (easy to tuck into a pocket), and length. The essays follow a pattern: the author sets out on a journey — either to camp out for a few days, or to attend some kind of writers’ retreat or workshop – and reflects on the place where she finds herself. Her focus is on nature, and occasionally on the history or people associated with the place; she occasionally discusses brief encounters with people, but we learn nothing of her friends or companions.

w/CS: Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind*, Brian Fagan

November 2023…

*Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind, Brian Fagan. Reading with CJS.

Comment after finishing seven chapters:
There is interesting material here, and I am happy to be reading it. However, the writing is not grea: it is difficult to follow if you are really trying to get a deep sense of what is going on.

The same date is sometimes referred to as 4,000 BCE, 6,000 years ago, or a millennia after another event. I can do the math, but pausing to do so drops me out of the flow of the text.
The maps helpfully included in the chapters lack many of the places referred to in the text: Where are the Taurus mountains? Are they the same as the mountains near Cudi Dag (not shown on the map either). Clearly, neither writer nor editors ever tried referring to the associated map…
Places are also referred to with different names: The Lands of Enlil; Southern Mesopotamia; the lands to the south of modern-day Bagdad; the Fertile Crescent refer, I think, to the same area. But it is difficult to be sure.
Often it is unclear what the relationship between sequential examples are — are they supposed to reinforce one another, or complement one another, or are they being presented for some other reason? Sign-posting would be really helpful.

Preface

The three themes of this book are (1) gravity and its fundamental impact on the flow of water; (2) the relationship between ritual and water management; and (3) sustainability. One point the book will take up is the way in which the invention of the mechanical pump transformed the mining and movement of water.

The book takes an anthropological perspective, closely examining the relationships between water technologies and human usage and management practices, and looking at the role rituals play. It looks at both historical examples — even reaching into the deep past where the primary source of information is archeological work — and present day examples. And of course the book addresses the ongoing crisis in water sourcing and distribution, and the question of sustainability.

EP#12: The Mind’s Eye, Oliver Sacks

November-December 2023

Entry 12 in the Essays Project with CT; and this is the sixth book we’ve read by Oliver Sacks. Here we take up the neurological case account essays for which he is best known, after reading his two autobiographies, and other writings ranging from general essays to an account of his travels in Oaxaca. This book, published in 2010, explores cases in which people have lost visual abilities that we all take for granted – not so much blindness (although maybe there will be some essays on that), but rather the consequences of some of the many ways in which the complex and intertwined elements of the visual processing system may be disrupted.

Writing Notes: Essay Status as of October 2023

23 December 2023. (was: 19 October 2023)

Notes on where I think the various essays I’ve produced are. This is unlikely to be of interest to others.

Status of Essays

1. Napkin Thief. Unsure. It is a fun story, but not much substance. Not sure what to do.
2+6 A Straight Transect. Nearly done.
3. Mind in the Hand. Final.
4. Body and Mind. Mostly done. Replace lime tree section with exercise at home — retitle as PT. –> I am partway through replacing the lime tree section, but the new section seems a bit boring.
5. Aloha. Unsure. It is a fun story, but not much substance. Not sure what to do.
7. Why I like Hiking. Mostly done. Alter ‘crystal rain’ section. Bring in more Muir
8. Alone Together.

Amsterdam, October 2023

An informal diary of our trip to Amsterdam, with pictures.

EP #11: Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood*, Oliver Sacks, 2001

Entry 11 in the Essays Project with CT; the ‘summer of Sacks’ has turned into the fall of Sacks. It is interesting to be getting such a comprehensive view of a single person’s life and writing. Uncle Tungsten was apparently written in response to the spontaneous surfacing of childhood memories as Sacks approached his 60th year. We’ve read some other essays from that time, mostly from Everything in its Place (essays on South Kensington and Humphry Davies), and found those very good though we hope considerable new ground will be covered. [Later: New ground is being covered — there is not a lot of repetition…]

* Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, Oliver Sacks, 2001.

w/KC: Four Essays by E. B. White* [The Planet]

September 2023

From “The Planet” section of the book “Essays of E. B. White.” Reading with KC, Fall 2023.

Part III: The Planet

Letter from the East (1975)

Reads, in fact, like a long letter to a friend or family member. Moves across a variety of topics: seeds and seed catalogs; a local wedding; mining; local aquaculture; the energy crisis and nuclear and tidal energy. It has a lot of nice turns of phrase:

EP #10*: The River of Consciousness, Oliver Sacks

*The River of Consciousness, Oliver Sacks, 2015.

This is part of the course of essay reading I am doing with CT; in particular, this is part of what we have dubbed ‘The Summer of Sacks.’ According to the introduction, this book was posthumously assembled at Sack’s direction a couple of weeks before his death. One of the catalysts was a televised panel with other notable scientists and scholars — Gould, Dyson, Dennet, etc. — that was later captured in a book called “A Glorious Accident.” This book contains a wide range of essays on scientific topics, with, I suspect, particular attention to history.

w/CS: Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-human Landscape, by Cal Flyn

September 2023

Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-human Landscape, by Cal Flynn, 2021.* This book looks at how nature — fungi, plants, animals – are re-colonize landscapes that have been destroyed and abandoned by humans. Examples include massive slag piles, nuclear test grounds, etc. It examines both how primary succession occurs in unpromising circumstances, and how the absence of human presence facilitates re-wilding. In the introduction, the author notes that we are now in the midst of a vast self-directed experiment in re-wilding, driven in part by the concentration of people in cities (and a soon-to-be-decreasing population), and in part by the depletion of non-sustainable natural resources that leave ‘waste lands’ behind.

Post-reading comment: There are three or four chapters in the book that are great, and really align with the aims laid out above. Unfortunately, more of the chapters, particularly as one progresses in the book, are more in the line of what I would call disaster tourism: lyrical descriptions of degraded environments and terrible situations, with little or no mention of how the ecosystem has adapted or not.

* Reading with CJS, fall of 2023