Not All Republicans are Villains

Do you know the man in the blue tie? 

 

Contrary to popular belief, I’m not a Democrat; I’m a registered Independent. I usually vote for Democrats, especially in and around my adopted hometown of Northampton (MA). If you can find anyone more honorable than our local state senator Jo Comerford, state rep Lindsay Sabadosa, or Congressman Jim McGovern please me know who they are. But, like younger voters, I’m unafraid to say that, like Bernie Sanders, AOC, and NY Mayor Mamdani, I’m a democratic socialist and it’s high time Americans learn that socialists are not the same as communists.

 

Nonetheless, I cheered the results of last week’s elections. It felt as if we were truly upon the verge of sacrificing democracy in the belief that robber barons would suddenly remember the masses. The unbridled greed, self-aggrandizement, toxicity, spite, and ethnocentrism of the Trump administration made me fear the United States was slipping into fascist slime for the rest of my life.

 

We are still in for a few more years of Trump, but I dare believe we have weathered the worst. Donald J. (for Jackass) Trump is now viewed as a clown in much of the world and approximately two-thirds of the United States. I’m not ecstatic, though, as Democrats make me nervous; they’re better at talking than doing.

 

But my message today is that we shouldn’t demonize all Republicans. The GOP of the past had a wide range of ideologies. Sen. Mark Hatfield of Oregon was one of the earliest opponents of the Vietnam War, I voted several times for Jim Jeffords when I lived in Vermont, and Silvio Conte when I moved to Massachusetts. (Conte was an environmentalist in the days when the Dems were trying to transform into technocrats.)

 

Speaking of Vermont, in my professor days of 2016, I gave a May Day lecture in Barre, Vermont’s Socialist Labor Hall. I had done research on two Green Mountain socialist mayors –Robert Gordon and Fred Suitor–decades before Bernie Sanders banged the mayoral gavel in Burlington. Despite occasional inflated rhetoric, they were not wild-eyed revolutionaries. Each was more interested in civic improvement and fairness to all rather than pie-in-the-sky dreams. All three left city government in much better shape when they left. (Alas, their successors from both major parties failed to build upon their scaffolding.)

 

Now a little quiz. Now that the loathsome Greg Abbott has been given a big Texas boot, who is the longest-serving GOP governor? The answer is another Vermonter: Phil Scott, who has held his office since 2017. I left Vermont before Scott was elected, but if I could, I would have voted for him in 2016. Democrat Peter Shumlin mismanaged so badly that he chose not to run in 2016, but that didn’t help Democratic candidate Sue Minter.

 

I didn’t know Mr. Scott when I met him in 2016. Guess where we met. Pat yourself on the back if you guessed the Socialist Labor Hall in Barre! He introduced himself after my talk and told me how informative it was. I was quite surprised to see a Republican setting foot in a place where Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, and Bernie Sanders had spoken before, or at an event in which “Solidarity Forever” was sung in multiple languages. Our time was too brief for an extended political conversation, but I was mightily impressed by how comfortable he was outside of his comfort zone. I was also surprised when he told me that though his own viewpoint was different from mine on several issues, that I made him think about how a politician should help others. I viewed him as a man of integrity. That, after all, ought to be our measure of any human being.

 

Trite though it sounds, I have several close friends who are Republicans, and others with whom I serve in volunteer roles that are thoughtful, pleasant, and grounded. We should remember that political parties are made up of individuals. Like the proverbial kettle of fish, some are good and the ones at the bottom stink to high heaven. Right now, there are more smelly fish in the GOP kettle, but don’t for a second believe that the Democrats couldn’t benefit from cleaning out the bottom of their own.

 

Rob Weir

Peter Robinson Rescued from the Transfer Station: Careless Love

 

 

 

CARELESS LOVE (2019)

By Peter Robinson

★★★★

 

I’m always on the lookout for mystery writers who are new to me. Every time I go to the transfer station, I check the shelves of free books left behind by folks who donate them rather than throw them away and grab titles that intrigue me. I had heard of Peter Robinson but had never read him, but after sampling Careless Love, I grabbed another one last week.

I think I may have seen an episode or two of DCI Banks on ITV when visiting Scotland, though it hasn’t been aired since 2016. DCI stands for Detective Chief Inspector, the top investigation officer among British police units who is outranked only by a Detective Superintendent. (They are mostly administrators.) When we meet the debonair Alan Banks in Yorkshire, he is driving a police car and bemoaning the fact that his beloved Porsche is in the garage to investigate a report of an abandoned car in Belderfell Pass with a young woman’s body in it. She is dressed to the nines as if she were on the way to a party. That’s odd because the same car had a crash at the same location the previous week and its owners had called for help. Banks interviews them, but they haven’t the slightest idea who she is or how she ended up behind the wheel of their undrivable Ford Focus covered with POLICE AWARE yellow tape. Banks takes an instant dislike to owner Trevor Vernon, who makes a racist remark about a black investigator with Banks, but it’s pretty clear that neither Vernon nor his wife are likely suspects. They do discover after putting her picture on the news that the dead woman is Adrienne Munro, a 19-year-old student at Eastvale College.

Nothing adds up for Banks. Everyone he interviews–family, friends, professors– says the same thing: Adrienne was a serious and stellar student who worked hard, seldom went out, and though quite beautiful, had no serious boyfriend and kept a low social profile. One female friend tells Banks that she had been stressed the previous year over money, but that she had just won a big award that had alleviated that woe. No one considered her a suicide risk. So how did she end up inside a crashed car in a remote area that’s not walkable to anywhere?

To add to the confusion, DI Annie Cabbot from an adjacent jurisdiction has a conundrum of her own. She’s trying to identify a mysterious corpse of a man found in a vale in the moors. He is in his 60s, well-dressed, and wearing expensive shoes that would be unsuitable for hiking in the moors. His injuries are consistent with having fallen off the path and down an embankment. Yet, there are no tire marks or explanation of how he would have gotten to such an off-the-road location. When he is identified as Laurence Hadfield, an answer seems even more elusive. He was a rich, widower businessman with a foul-mouthed, wild-but-privileged daughter named Poppy. Banks suspects that Hadfield might have been having an affair with Adrienne, but Poppy has never heard of Adrienne and a student named Colin, who admitted being in (unrequited) love with Adrienne, has never heard of Hadfield. It’s only after a third victim, Sally, is found that Banks and Cabbott even know which direction to turn!

When things seem too good or bad to be true in Careless Love, they usually aren’t. Poppy is a slutty mess whom Banks ends up babysitting as a potential witness, but to what? The only clue is a single name, Mia, who might have known the victims, but who is she? Things will get murkier and darker before they get better. This is my favorite kind of mystery, one that doesn’t scream its resolution from the top of the hill. The victims aren’t quite the angels they appeared to be, nor is Banks an omniscient Holmes-like investigator. Follow the money is usually good advice, but even that isn’t what you might suspect. In other words, Robinson blends the mystery and thriller genres and tosses in misdirection. It may seem odd to call a novel with murder and unseemly circumstances at its core satisfying, but Careless Love keeps secrets even after the murderer has been fingered.

Rob Weir

Sherie Dowsett: Wildlife Illustrations

 

 

 

 

The Natural World and Art

 

Some things just evolve without much planning. Emily and I tend to go to Ogunquit, Maine, after the tourists have cleared out and before things close down for the season. For the last three years we’ve joined two good friends who stay up the road in Wells around the same time, which adds to the pleasure. We do the things we might have done in high season at a third of the price: alternating walks on the Marginal Way and the beach, going out for seafood, and gabbing ourselves silly. If we time it right, we get to grab scones at the Backyard Café before it shutters for the season.

 

This year our friends were staying in a rental that backed up to the marshes in Wells, where we took in the dying light of late summer shimmering on the open water of the marsh. But whatever else we do, it has become a habit of making a short drive to the Wells Estuarine Research Reserve, where we walk paths through old farmland and woodlands. It’s strictly a non-taxing walk that takes us past several marsh ponds, though a mossy stone arch that leads to a few oceanfront summer homes, and onto a rocky beach–is there any other kind in Maine–and places where one could actually wade. By late September/early October, the water is as warm as it will be all year. Of course, it being Maine, that only means it takes slightly longer for feet and ankles to turn blue.

 

The Reserve is on the grounds of what used to be the Laudholm Farm. We tend to take a planked path through a wetland and wend our way back to a complex of buttermilk yellow buildings now used for environmental education, summer camps, workshops, and such ilk. In the fall, though, it’s quiet and a great place to have a picnic. There is also the Coastal Ecology Center Gallery that displays art inspired by nature. It’s small and shares space with a tank of (what else?) lobsters. A dozen or so paintings adorn a few walls and the vibe is utterly non-pretentious.

 

This year’s find was the work of Sherie Dowsett, a once-celebrated nature photography who turned to watercolor painting. She was born in England, but is an intentional New Englander who (I believe) now lives in nearby New Hampshire, as her paintings are available at the Kennedy Gallery in Portsmouth, NH. She paints a moose and a bear here and there, but mostly she shows her affinity for smaller animals, particularly birds, cats, and rabbits, all one-of-a-kind originals. The water colors below are on heavy pebbled paper (rag?), not the easiest of medium to control. In keeping with the laid-back feel of the weekend, I was totally charmed by the ones in these iPhone shots. I cropped them and took out spots on the paper left by the gallery lights, but nothing else was done. Next trip to Portsmouth I hope to see more of Dowsett’s work.

 

  

I’m not saying which of these is my favorite, but I’d love to hear which one grabs you the most.

 

Rob Weir 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                 

Peter May (R.I.P.) Novel: A Winter Grave

 

 

 

 

 

A WINTER GRAVE (2023)

By Peter May

Riverrun, 358 pages.

★★★★

 

Thomas Friedman argued that global trade, technology, and advances in communications were making the world “flat.” Yet, communication today is often slower than when news from abroad arrived via teletype machines. It was just this morning that I learned that Scottish author Peter May died at the end of September.

 

May is/was one of my favorite thriller/mystery writers, in part because of his ability to capture places and spin them into characters in their own right. I adored his Lewis Trilogy and have read several of his Enzo Files and his stand-alone works. I thought of  Enzo MacLeod (half-Scottish half-Italian) as May’s alter-ego in that he, like May, left Scotland for the sunny south of France. You can get May’s novels in North America, but few bookstores or libraries have his full run of 30+ books. Whenever I’m in Britain, I buy one or two. A Winter Grave was this year’s discovery.

 

May thought a lot about what climate change could bring. The narrative is set in 2051, and climate change is well underway. Much of the east coast of Britain is underwater, as is half of London and a lot of Scotland. Despite misconceptions of so-called “global warming,” it could lead to another Ice Age with colder temperatures and bigger snowfalls in some places as moisture pulled from the earth cycles back as precipitation. In 2051, many Glasgow “streets” are underwater and the Clyde River is more akin to a giant loch. Few individuals own cars, as the age of driverless public transport (trains, small boats, taxis) had arrived.

 

Cameron Brodie is a police inspector in Glasgow, but he’s not so keen on following rules and always seems one incident away from being dismissed. “Cam” doesn’t care, as he has learned that he is dying. He is divorced/widowed and we learn how he once answered a domestic abuse call, fell for the victim Melanie (“Mel”), stole her away when her abuser Lee Jardine was in jail, and beat the haggis out of Jardine when he got out. Mel, however, had a fatal attraction to Jardine and left Cam to raise their daughter Adele (“Addie”) on his own. Nonetheless, he never bad-mouthed Mel, and Addie blamed Cam for her mother’s death. She left Glasgow, and cut ties with her father.  

 

Cam also burnt out, and angry when he nails a murderer only to see him released when his lawyer uses a deep fake AI video to “prove” police abuse and false arrest. Only Cam’s good friends, “Tiny” Sinclair and his wife keep Cam on the level. Cam’s love for mountaineering and technical climbing in the Mamores Ridge in the Western Highlands also cool his rage and guilt. He’s not afraid of death, but he does fret over whether he has been a decent person or a jerk.

 

As fate would have it, Cam is ordered investigate the death of a missing journalist, Charles Younger, whose body was found frozen in the Mamores. Much to his chagrin, he is picked up by an eVToL (Electric Vertical Take-off and Land) craft, a pilotless helicopter whose flight path coordinates and landing area are commanded by “Eve,” a computer voice capable of answering questions. All Cam needs to do is plug it in to recharge it when he lands. Along the way Cam picks up Sita Roy, a pathologist. Neither the computer nor the tight-lipped Dr. Roy are much solace in a horrendous snowstorm, battering winds, and the warning that their aircraft is losing power. Luckily, they survive a hair-raising landing outside a Kinlockleven hotel. Unluckily, Kinlochleven is also the wee village in which Addie lives and she’s the one who found Younger. Her husband, Robbie Sinclair, is friendly, but Addie wants nothing to do with Cam; he literally has to order her to cooperate.

 

Nothing much goes right in Kinlochleven. The hotel is empty; owner Mike Brannan advises the weather has led to mass cancellations. Scrounging up food and drink isn’t easy in a village of just 700 people, most of whom are local workers at a tunnel project near the Blackwater dam and reservoir. Someone has cut Eve’s cable, Addie’s eyes fire daggers at Cam, another murder occurs, and the body disappears from the hotel’s freezer! As Cam gets closer to the truth, he discovers that very powerful forces wish to add him to the now-vacant freezer.

 

There is much more to discover in this heart-thumper thriller, not to mention relationships to break and repair. My only quibble is the illogic of Cam continuing to entrust Brannan with tasks when he’s clearly either incompetent or involved. Loved the book; R.I.P Peter May.

 

Rob Weir

October 2026 Music Sarah Jarosz, Carla Gover and Friends, Brad Wolfe, Grey DeLisle , Surrender Hill

 

 

 

The holiday season is sneaking up on us again. As usual, I recommend the gift of music, but not of the fa-la-la variety.

 

First a public service announcement: I have reviewed Holly Lerski on this blog. Holly is British, but like so many artists she was drawn to American-style country music and has been splitting her time between England and Nashville. While she was attending the Americana Awards in Las Vegas, a massive tree fell and destroyed her cabin in Norfolk, England. A GoFundMe page is helping Holly rebuild. 

 

 

If you’re looking for a dynamite gift, you can’t do much better than a Sarah Jarosz release. My personal favorite is her 2011 album Follow Me Down, which I will discuss, but anything you pick from her Sugar Hill or Rounder Records catalogs will delight lucky recipients. Maybe Grammy Awards are handed out cavalierly to well-known pop, rock, and rap stars, but that’s not the case for acoustic artists. Counting her latest (with Aoife O’Donovan and Sara Watkins) Jarosz mow has seven Grammys. Given that she’s just 35, it’s a near certainty that many more will come her deserving way. Follow Me Down was just her second album but it already gave notice that hers was not your grandmother’s bluegrass. Her cover of Dylan’s “Ring Them Bells” dazzles, and she picks up an electric guitar to give a dark folk-rock treatment to “Run Away.” If memory serves, “Annabelle Lee” was the single from this album and Jarosz showed off her banjo skills on that one. If it has strings–guitars, banjo, mandolins, and even the innards of a toy piano– Jarosz plays it and sings like an angel from the hills.

 

 

Speaking of the hills, Williams Branch is Hard to Find is easily my favorite new release. I had the great pleasure of chatting with Kentucky singer/dancer/musician/activist Carla Gover, who produced and performs on the album. It features 17 songs written by Si Kahn, plus interviews snippets. Si is, simply, a decent man. Years ago, he taught me about the Jewish concept of tikkun olam (repairing the world) and has devoted his life, community organizing efforts, and music to that lofty goal. A generation ago, Si was well-known for songs such as “Aragon Mill” and “Gone, Gonna Rise Again.” He’s 82 now and semi-retired, but in good folk fashion passed the baton to one of his acolytes. Gover notes, “Si has long been my hero for his song-crafting and devotion to social justice.” Much of Kahn’s work has taken place in Kentucky’s coal mining regions. This album, which contains lots of songs Kahn has never released, is a tribute to the women of Kentucky and an antidote to stereotypes of Appalachia. It would be safe to say that J.D. Vance is viewed as a carpetbagger in Eastern Kentucky where eight generations of Govers have been raised. Carla reminds us that Vance is from Ohio and has never lived in Appalachia, and that his Hillbilly Elegy has damaged progress in the region by perpetuating stereotypes. As she puts it, Vance denies that “an extractive economy” is to blame for the region’s historical woes, “but, of course, it is.” She likens it “colonialism,” and she’s not wrong. She grew up just 30 minutes from Harlan, site of some of the bloodiest labor battles in American history. Her own father worked in a mine that broke the union and hired scabs. “The bottom line is that when society as a whole views people as ignorant and backward, it’s easy to exploit them.” She’s even irritated by how even liberals “play into the stereotypes.” 

 

Carla Gover

As you might infer, Kahn’s songs are poignant, powerful, and sometimes defiant. Gover sings “Moonshiner’s Daughter,” but it was an abandoned wife making the hootch and an embarrassed runaway daughter who returns to make good: What goes around will come around/And the moonshiner’s daughter/Is the mayor of this town. She also sings the album’s namesake song. Sue Massek has been singing and playing banjo and guitar for over 50 years, so she earns the right to sing, “As I Grow Old with You,” and dulcimer artist Sarah Kate Morgan offers the poignant “Drifting.” “Queen of the Kitchen” is an older Si Kahn composition, but rising star Ella Webster nails her cover. She also assumes a beyond-the-grave strike victim role in “Harlan 1934.” In another incident of folk music’s pass-it-on tradition, 13-year-old Rosie Gardner sings “We Say No” like a polished vet. Maizie Barett, Charity Gilbert, Jeri Katherine Howell, Dawn Milner, and Maddie Rae Wells also add their talents. Overall, the project reminded me of a Works Progress Administration agit-prop play from the 1930s. Not in an old-fashioned way, rather one that speaks to everyday life, work pride, enduring hardship, making music, keeping the faith, women finding their place in the world, hard lives, and hard living. The songs were written by a man, but Si Kahn adds his voice to the distaff call for freedom.

 

 

 

Brad Wolfe is another with an admirable project. Under the moniker Brad Wolfe & The Moon, he has launched a three-part look at what he calls “loss, love, mortality, resilience, and what it means to live fully.” Part one is titled Loss and began when his childhood friend died of cancer at the age of 21. He sang for her at the hospital and when she passed, formed the Sunbeam Foundation to both play music for kids with cancer (and their families) and to raise money for research. But this is not a depressing do-good album. Wolfe investigates loss in numerous forms, including heartache and time’s passage. Mickey Hart is on board, as is Ben Lee, Sara Bareilles, and others– a movable & The Moon, as it were. Wolfe’s voice alone is a comfort for sad times, but the depth of the album is another reward. Try “Why Wait,” a tribute to his grandmother Sally, an Auschwitz survivor who died at 102. You must watch the video to see how Wolfe navigates between hope and sorrow. Its theme is embedded in the rousing porch-party chorus, I woke up today … and remembered I am alive. “Why Wait” is a litany of how to live before the final day. If you are fully alive, it will move you to tears. “Cover You with Flowers” is another mix of sadness and joy” that might make you think Wolfe is the best-adjusted person on the planet! “Champagne Dreams” shifts the focus to relationships, but it too evokes what Kahlil Gibran called, “a tear and a smile.” Okay, more smile on this one, but my overall take on Loss is that it’s a remarkable EP and that Wolfe is what my grandmother called “good people.” Don’t we all need more of them these days?

 

One of the most surprising recent releases comes from Grey DeLisle. I have heard and reviewed material of hers before, but Don’t Turn Around ups the ante for verve and polish. You might know her work as a comedian and/or as a voice on cartoon and animation projects (Scooby Doo for one), but on her latest album the California-born DeLisle emerges as a devotee of a branch of country music known as the Bakersfield sound. It thrived in the 195os and its devotees included Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Connie Owens (who married and divorced both Buck and Merle), and Dwight Yoakum. It drew upon honky-tonk, early rock n’ roll, and Dust Bowl tunes as a reaction against overly processed Nashville country, though some of those Bakersfield concert costumes made Dolly Parton look like she was dressing for church. The Bakersfield sound was sometimes lampooned as cornball country or defended as a hundred percent more honest! DeLisle’s sound is slicker than 50s Bakersfield but the songs employ straightforward storytelling. “The Lights Off but Somebody's Home” opens with that line followed by: Your pickup’s in the driveway, but you won’t pick up your phone. Two lines we know it won’t end well. Watch her vamp her way through the honky-tonk on “There’s the Door.” You won’t need AI to get its message of if you don’t love me, darling, there’s the door. When we see her with an autoharp in hand (“Driving Round”) or sing an homage/parody “Open Mic at the Stumble Inn,” it’s clear that DeLisle is having a good time. But she’s an actress and we’re never quite sure if she’s paying tribute or assuming an alter ego. Either way, she’s loads of fun.

 

 Surrender Hill has appeared on this music blog before. By way of reminder, this country music duo is the unlikely duo of South African-born Robin Dean Salmon and Alaska native Aften Seekins Salmon. They attack their music with gusto on their newest album Wild Country and its 15 tracks give you your money’s worth. The downside, though, of a long album is a danger of wearing out listeners. “Dancing with the Woman I Love” is a sweet song that, if taken down a notch, could be a folk song. By contrast, the title track sounds cluttered and overdone. “The Other Side” is likewise a nice piece; “Witness” is even better because it’s controlled and contained. “They All Stood Up for Love” is an earnest testament to faith, albeit needlessly loud and theatrical. In my view, Surrender Hill is best when they stay within themselves and stray from convention. It also wouldn’t hurt to let Aften take more leads! Mind, this is still a good country music release. 

 Rob Weir

Standard Time: An Antiquated Idea?

 

 

DST Forever: We Are Not Farmers

 

This weekend we have to set the clocks back an hour for Standard Time. I loathe Standard Time! It’s not just that it’s freaking depressing to live in New England and watch the sun set before it’s 4:15 in the afternoon. Worse, it’s the season of Stupid arguments. It’s not as if we don’t already live in a nation with an excess of Stupid.

 

We Seasonal Affect Disorder sufferers get grumpy from too much darkness. Perhaps few noticed back when I was working on my angry young man act, but it wasn’t pretty. Too Much Stupid makes people grumpier. We live in the Age of Too Much Stupid and it’s not just uber-Stupid politicians I have in mind.

 

Politicians in really Stupid places will insist that farm kids are needed for morning chores. Say what? Just 1.3 percent of Americans make their living from farming of any sort, including ranching. We’re not talking about Ma and Pa Kettle; it’s more like Ma Cargill and Pa Archer Daniels-Midland. In my childhood, there was some validity to the farm-chores debate. My grandparents engaged in “mixed farming,” meaning they sold grains, hay, eggs from their many chicken roosts, fruit from their orchards, and meat from butchering hogs and bulls. Milke was the biggest revenue source. Each morning, they awoke in the dark to hand milk lactating cows. My mother and her sisters helped, and I too have pulled a few teats. I wasn’t good at it, but free labor was valued and I liked milking more than haying in the hot summer sun.

 

Even then, the business clock was ticking. Dairy conglomerates like Agway and Hershey Foods bought and closed local creameries. You sold milk to the Big Guys for whatever they offered, or you poured it down the drain. Milk checks shrunk and my grandfather took a part-time job slaughtering chickens to keep the farm afloat. It was but a thin veneer of farming as it is mythologized. Farms were auctioned off, mainly to real estate developers. Under corporate culture, only “craft farmers” do much by hand. Dairy farmers get more sleep in because cows are self-milking. In good behavioral modification fashion, cows walk into stalls where food is dispensed, lasers detect their teats and attach automatically, and milk runs into a tank. The process repeats in the evening. Egg production is often automated and once-arduous field work is done from the comfort of air-conditioned tractors decked out with sound systems and ergonomic seats. Those suckers cost a fortune, hence roughly one of three “farmers” is actually an employee.  Federal child labor law exempts farm kids, but most of them are well-educated; their toil is not needed like it was a hundred years ago. Let’s call “family farms” what they are, hollow inventions of vote-seeking politicians.

 

Town and city dwellers have their own kind of Stupid in defending Standard Time. Many say they look forward to Standard Time because they “get an extra hour of sleep.” Solution: Go to bed earlier! Clocks are turned back on Saturday night; very few of us have to be at work, church, in back alleys making Sunday mornings drug deals. Science tells us that an “extra hour” of sleep doesn’t help much. It takes two-three weeks to reset Circadian rhythms.   

 

Parents protest they don’t want kids walking to school in the dark. Look out your window Sunday at 8 am. That will be Monday’s 7 am sky; Mr. Sol is already out of bed. One might ask, do you know any kids who actually walk to school? In my Western Massachusetts town elementary students start at 8 am and get out at 2:10 pm, times in which muggers seldom lurk in the shadows. Kids in my neighborhood could walk to and from school faster than the bus deposits them, but today’s helicopter parents forget that their kids have already been walking more than half of their lives. One local woman drives her kid a half block to the bus stop and they sit in the car until the bus arrives. Never mind that mom is actually obstructing traffic and could drive Muffy to school in 5 minutes! Solution: Start school an hour later as high-schoolers do.

 

Standard Time is bad for the latter; their school day runs from 9 am to 3:15 pm. If they have sports practice, theater rehearsal, or detention, it will be in the dark when they leave. Of course, no self-respecting (or disreputable) high schooler takes a school bus unless they are being punished. Student parking lot are filled, because teens will cajole, beg, or bargain with Satan to drive to school rather than walk 5 blocks. Just what we need; inexperienced teen drivers on the road after dark. I suppose we could see it as Masshole Driver Education!

 

Standard Time is a really bad idea. Maybe the worst since shift work. But that’s a barrel of Stupid for another day.

 

PS: Yes, I do know about solar time. I also know a year isn't 365 days. It's 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 45 seconds. That's why every fourth year is a "leap" year. Give us one every year and it nearly corrects the solar year issue.  

 

PSS: Railroads pushed for Standard Time in the 19th century, Daylight Savings Time came in 1908, and we didn't change clocks in the U.S. until 1966!  

 

 

 

 

Standard Time: A Red States Plot? 

 

 

Remarkably Bright Creatures: Nice Novel, but Remember it's Magical Realism

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remarkably Bright Creatures

By Shelby, Van Pelt.

Harper, 384 pages.

★★★

 

 Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt was a runaway best-selling novel about a very intelligent giant octopus. It takes place in both California and Washington State and centers on the forementioned octopus, Marcellus McSquiggles. He has a friend at his aquarium, Tova Sullivan, widowed septuagenarian a cleaning lady. She is Swedish, though her parents immigrated to the United States when she was quite young.

 

Readers of National Geographic and viewers of shows such as Nature have learned that octopi demonstrate intelligence that one would not expect in such an unlikely marine body. They can solve all manner of startling tasks, such as opening locked boxes, untying knots, and demonstrating awareness that indicates high intelligence. They also share with crows (another remarkably bright creature) an attraction to bright objects and a love of hoarding. Marcellus likes school rings, keys, and drivers’ licenses. Van Pelt’s debut novel builds upon such findings. Of course, observations alone are not scientific evidence of human-level understanding. You can train a dog to do incredible tricks, but you can’t teach it to hold a philosophical discussion. We infer, but simply don’t know what constitutes intelligence in the animal world because we can’t speak dog, whale, crow, octopus….

 

Remarkably Bright Creatures has been made into a Netflix film. The consensus opinion is that the book is far more engaging than the movie. I’ve not seen the movie, but novels are usually better crafted than a flick told in under two hours. Van Pelt’s book is satisfying and uplifting, but it is magical realism, not science. I enjoyed Van Pelt’s novel, but I also found that it telegraphed what is going to happen in both improbable and obvious ways.

 

As noted, it also takes place in California, which is where we meet Cameron. He has had a lot of trouble getting started in life. He has been a mainstay in a punk band, called Moth Sausage, but the lead singer and his best friend have gotten married, are starting a family, and have taken “responsible” jobs. Cameron hasn’t had an easy life either; his mother Daphne split and gave him to her sister Jeanne when he was a child. She has been generous and patient with Cameron, but he knows that he owes her big-time. Cameron’s serious abandonment issues and horrible work history have given him wanderlust. Cameron sets off in a down-market camper van hoping to trace what happened to his mother and identify his father. He lands in Sowell Bay Washington, where he meets Ethan Mack, a friendly Scottish grocer/rock fan, who allows him to park his van in his yard. We soon learn Ethan has a crush on Tova, who has other plans.

 

Circumstances, including Cameron’s desire to pay back his aunt who sacrificed her vacation funds for the van, leads him to take a job in the aquarium owned by a friend of Ethan’s. He’d also like to have some pocket change to charm the lovely Avery, the owner of a surf shop who is two years his elder, the owner of a surf shop, and definitely Cameron’s senior in life lessons. Tova has long been the nighttime cleaner in the aquarium and has struck up and unlikely friendship with Marcellus the octopus. She speaks to him all the time and he shows signs of understanding her. Marcellus also intuits that Tova is deeply grieving for her dead husband their son Erik, who is presumed to have drowned. In other words, we have a lot of human creatures during what alas they do unremarkably: endure emotional pain, but get stuck.

 

I remind again, the tale involves magical realism. Marcellus is indeed intelligent, but I doubt he keeps a mental diary involving the more than 1300 days of his “captivity.” Nor do we have evidence that sea creatures have an exacting sense of their lifespan. Marcellus has made escape efforts because he “knows” that his species only lives for 4 to 5 years. You also will need loads of tolerance for, dare, I say, remarkable coincidences. Perhaps because I read so many mysteries, I don’t like it when I can see what’s coming and how. Mind, I’ve nothing against happy endings. I admire this book for not dragging me through mud and murder; I just wish it had taken turns I hadn’t anticipated.

 

Rob Weir