A Book Lover's Birthday

Dear Friends and Family,

Thank you for knowing me so well! Every one of my birthday books is just what I wanted. You’ve given me not just many hours of reading pleasure but inspiring words to live with and by throughout the next year. Here’s the complete, delicious list.

The Devil’s Doctor: Paracelus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science, by Philip Ball (2006).

Why Pandas Do Handstands and Other Curious Truths about Animals, by Augustus Brown (2006).


Liquid Jade: The Story of Tea from East to West, by Beatrice Hohenegger (2006).

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingsolver (2007).

Double Lives: American Writers’ Friendships, by Richard Lingeman (2006).

The Flight of the Iguana: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature, by David Quammen (1998).

The Way We Garden Now, by Katherine Whiteside (2007).

And as if that weren’t enough, I bought myself a birthday book, too. It’s Sy Montgomery’s The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood (2007). I picked it because I enjoy all of Sy Montgomery's books, but it's the perfect addition to the above list. Friends and family expressed their love to Chris the hog with frequent deliveries of delectables--day-old bagels, melon rinds, cold oatmeal, and other left-overs, learning over time which were his absolute favorites. His choices may not appeal to everyone, but like my birthday books, each gift was met with gratitude and exuberance. I can't want to devour every one. Yum!

Books by the Bay

For Mom’s Day, my family treated me to a visit to the Chesapeake Bay. We drove about two hours to Solomons Island, a former oystering town on Maryland’s western shore. Besides our picnic of Spanish cheese and Portugese bread, highlights included a climb up into the Drum Point lighthouse and poking around the exhibits of working boats at the Calvert Marine Museum. Maybe it’s my land-locked Midwestern youth, but just the names of Bay watercraft (crabbing skiff, drake-tail fishing launch, oyster buyboat) make me long to get out on the water. It seems to affect my daughter the same way.

I can’t get close even to dry-docked crab harvesting paraphernalia without thinking of the classic book, Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs, and the Chesapeake Bay, by William Warner. As fine a naturalist as a writer, Warner weaves together natural history of blue crabs and cultural history of the harvesters who depend on them. When the book appeared in 1976, a Time Magazine reviewer called it “a piece of popular oceanography worthy of shelf space alongside Rachel Carson’s classic Edge of the Sea and Henry Beston’s Outermost House.” Warner won the 1977 Pulitzer for Beautiful Swimmers, and, also impressive, taught me how to tell a jimmie (male) from a sook (female) blue crab before I’d ever seen the Chesapeake Bay.

Beautiful Swimmers always makes me think of the person who recommended it to me: Dr. Joe Miller, long-time librarian at Yale’s Forestry School library. One of my favorite ways to relax in grad school was chatting with Dr. Miller about his latest acquisitions for the school's already-astonishing collection . When Dr. Miller heard I was moving to Maryland, he immediately thought of a book that would help me feel connected to nature and people in my new place. Following his example, I often try to give place-based literature when friends head to parts unknown. I can usually at least present a guide to nearby hiking trails or a novel set in the region's landscape, but I rarely find as intimate a portrait as Warner’s of the Bay. Years later, my relationship with the Bay is still enriched by Dr. Miller’s exceptional choice, just as my love of the book strengthens my admiration for my kind, late professor.

Bioblitz & Books

I’d much rather be looking off my deck into the dogwood-blooming woods, but here are a few quick BioBlitz-related items. First, I’m happy to announce the first appearance of PinesAboveSnow in the Carnival of the Green, hosted this week at The Evangelical Ecologist. This week’s Carnival features a variety of what the host calls “eco-bloggy goodness” (e.g., wildlife smuggling, National Gardening Week, and ethical retailing ). The most blitz-friendly is a list of “ten not-so-inconsequential things” we can do to save the earth from The Wild Green Yonder, which urges green-wanna-bes to get to know their local ecosystem and native species. What better way than bioblitzing?

In the “ask and ye shall be given” department, no sooner had I finished whining about my lack of an ant guide for non-myrmecologists than a fine review of an excellent new insect guide appeared at
10,000 Birds. Mike puts the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America to the test, checking if it could decipher the identity of a mystery moth. Despite 11,000 possibilities, the Kaufman guide succeeded in leading Mike to the correct id down to the species level. Though I haven’t seen the guide yet, I’m sold from 10,000 Birder’s assessment of it as “ ideal for casual or modestly skilled insect oglers like myself.” I hope it works for those of us even less than casually skilled.


The Insect Guide is one in a series of field guides by the astonishing naturalist Kenn Kaufman. Always innovative, Kaufman solves the paintings-versus-photos dilemma by illustrating each with digitally enhanced photographs. Yet my favorite Kaufman book has no photos at all--Kingbird Highway: The Story of a Natural Obsession that Got a Little Out of Hand. Kaufman’s memoir traces his drive to know birds back to early childhood, fueled by books, supported by parents, and enlivened by countless hours outdoors. At 16, Kaufman dropped out of high school to hitchhike across North America pursuing a dream to count more birds in a year than anyone else. The stories of his adventures not only reveal the origins of his expertise and commitment to birds and conservation but also the 1970s evolution of birding as a national sport and bird protection as a foundation of modern environmentalism.

For a nature book advocate like me, Kingbird Highway has special meaning. Kaufman recognizes the impacts of books from his earliest years, when he checked out library copies of Roger Tory Peterson’s guides over and over. In his teens, Peterson and Fisher’s tale of their North American birding adventure, Wild America became his bible. As Kaufman puts it, “That book became my daily passport to the wilderness.” While I agree that hand-on field experience, including activities such as BioBlitzing, lead many to commitments and even careers in nature protection, books are often equally vital forces. What better testimony to the value of books to shaping environmentalists than Kaufman’s own prolific publishing record? Who knows when a budding myrmecologist will pick up Kaufman’s insect guide and head off on a quest of his own?

Act Locally, Read Frequently

“Think globally. Act locally. Read frequently.” I like the motto so much that I wish I’d thought of it. But instead I found it on the website of Arlington READS Green, a project of Arlington County, Virginia and the Arlington Library system. Participants are invited to read “green” books and join in book discussions, author talks, a used book sale, and other enviro-friendly book-related happenings. It’s the literary branch of a many-limbed effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Arlington County, a program aptly named Fresh AIRE (Arlington Initiative to Reduce Emissions).

So what are Arlington READS Green readers reading? The five selected books include 3 nonfiction titles directly focused on global warming ( An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore, Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert, and The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock). To leaven the mix, two novels are also suggested: Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, and Hoot by Carl Hiassen. Oddly, for this nonfiction fan, I’ve read the novels and not the others but recognize all as fine choices to stimulate discussion and heighten awareness. Anyone who lives in the Arlington area may want to check the schedule to learn if you can take part in the discussions. Tonight, for example, is a gathering for kids & teens to chat about Hoot, both book and movie.

But those of us who can’t get to that library can think about public libraries in our own neighborhoods. Could a program like Arlington READS Green work there? Could you help start one, or at least suggest it to the library staff? Another possibility is to suggest one of the GREEN titles (or another appropriate book) to your current book club. The parents' book club at my daughter’s school read Prodigal Summer with much pleasure and lively conversation. I took along a handy reading guide as a source of discussion questions and background info. The best result of the meeting was new fans for Kingsolver, one of the finest nature writers working today. And I know that while reading one book about the environment doesn’t always change your life, reading lots has to have an impact. So three cheers for Arlington READS Green! Let get out there and read frequently together.