Pages of February--Life and death on the wing

I've found a "new" John McPhee.
That might not be fair to Hannah Nordhaus because she stands alone as an accomplished writer and author.
But I'd never heard of her until my former student Lauren Vargas on Facebook extolled the impact of her book, "The Beekeeper's Lament--How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America."
I can't keep up with Vargas'  continuous consumption of books, but this one caught my attention, because she used the term "non-fiction."
I looked the book up on Amazon, and a review mentioned McPhee, who is my favorite living author. He writes about what I would call "everyday science"--geology, oranges, birch bark canoes, wildlife, conservation, long haul truckers in such compelling narratives  I've read almost everything he writes. He writes for the New Yorker and teaches non-fiction writing at Princeton. As a journalist, I'm hooked. Comparing her to him is just pure admiration.
So I bought Nordhaus's book. She's written for the Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, Outside Magazine and more. The book grew out of an article in High  Country News. Her writing reminds me of McPhee's, and is just as captivating.
Unlike Vargas who probably buzzed through the book in a day or two, it took me about a week, enjoying every page.

This is a book about the commercial beekeepers who help feed you as they provide bees to pollinate America's crops...and the dangers to our food supply.
Actually, it's about more than bees--it's about life and dying.
Specifically, it's a story about one beekeeper, John Miller as he travels from California to North Dakota with bees, and his, and his fellow keepers', travails.
It opened new world. How honey is really made? How a hive is constructed? Where the queens come from? The history of beekeeping?  The diseases and dangers to bees? "Colony collapse"? It's all here, with plenty of metaphor to apply to humans too.
First three sentences:
"John Miller isn't fond of death. He takes it personally. A few years ago he even bought a Corvette, as if that could stave it off."
One of my favorite sections is about the declining North Dakota town where Miller sets up shop in June, the chapter titled, "The Human Swarm." Having lived in rural Iowa and Oklahoma, this was personal.
Snippets:
"Rural communities, like inner cities, have ceded membership in the nation's ownership society."
"It was like a sepia, soft-focus campaign ad: morning in an America most Americans have never had the privilege to know."
"We cleave to the way things are, not only to hold back a chaotic future, and not only because that is what we know...There is value in returning to the one who loves you, in keeping the family farm going, in living where you grew up, in keeping bees when no amount of common sense and self preservation can justify it The colony is collapsing in North Dakota, but not everyone is flying off."
There's more:
"He worries that beekeepers have evolved too slowly, 'a room full of old men'--senescent, like worker bees that have outlived their usefulness."
Nordhaus has also written  American Ghost: A Family's Haunted Past in the American Southwest. I'll be buying it.

Traveling toward Christmas

Traveling toward Christmas, 6 x 9 watercolor

The story of Christmas has always been  one of travel, starting with Mary and Joseph far away from home, seeking shelter, and the wise men following a star to find them.
Ever since, the faithful have made pilgrimages in His honor, to churches, to holy places, to remember.
And today, even more people travel to be with their families and loved ones. It is no accident that "I'll be home for Christmas," is such a favorite. My second son is soon on the road back to the Texas panhandle and Oklahoma. My brother-in-law is flying from California, and in a few days I'll visit youngest son and his family in Iowa. It's all about the joy of reunion, of the awareness of passing years and miles. Traveling toward Christmas--no wonder it's the busiest travel time of the year. I pray for safe journeys.
We are all mindful of those who can't come home for Christmas, and we'd better be mindful of those who have no home for Christmas. And on my mind much and missed are those who used to come home for Christmas, or to whose home we traveled -- who won't be there this Christmas. They've made another journey to an eternal home.

"Cowboy" poetry, and pages of a year half gone

"Greasy corrals"

"After awhile the hills wrap

around you, hold life secure:

the rock, hawk and oak tree...."

One of the books I've read these first six months came into my hands in April, written by a California poet and winner of the Wrangler Awards for  best poetry book of the year at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. Wrangler Awards

"Old Men"

"So much needs not to be said.

Old men grin with their eyes,

save breath with a look...."

I'm a judge in the non-fiction category, and the "pay," is getting to see all the new books, and then attend the shindigs at the museum and meet the authors. His book is the seventh I've managed to digest in these last six months, the year half gone today.

 "Old Words"

"There are places to save

things, spots out of the way

of traffic, dusty cubby holes

for lost loves and ...

"One day, we clean house

to find all the old words

are now meaningless...

I'd met John Dofflemyer before, when he won another Wrangler in 2009 for Poems from Dry Creek, so I didn't want to miss out on this book. He's a genuine California cowboy, so he writes about the land and people in a haunting way that captures the West, and my spirit. Since 2005, he and his wife Robbin have a blog, Drycrik Journal. It has her photography and his poetry, and you'll enjoy it.

"Under Oaks"

..."that I wear the dust

of where I've been

upon my flesh

and in my lungs...."

The new book is Proclaiming  Space, Award winner and though I told him the first book really spoke to me, he said he was happier with this one. It is deeper,  with four sections, "Proclaiming Space," "Waiting to be Served," "Out of Doors," "and "Elegies." In it he delves into lives past and present, and even into the insane politics of the time, though it's not a political book. I get the impression all of these poems come from his observations on his ranch, whether he's working, or just contemplating the pasture growing. 

"Snakes in the road"

...A man can endure

only so many squeezes, so many crosshairs

before he begins to step around insects,

and spiders, avoiding the snakes in the road."
And I note influences from other poets, like one of my favorites Robinson Jeffers, and also Ezra Pound, who he does quote from in the book. One echoes Williams Carlos Williams "Red Wheelbarrow, "So much depends on a red wheelbarrow...."

"Physics"
"So much depends
on soil--"
There are too many favorites of mine among the more than 100 poems about hay rakes, cattle, snakes, wars, mortality,  the seasons, Christmas, Cowboys, cattle and poetry and more to do more than give you these few lines. 

"November"

"...we are oaks with acorns at our feet,

long-limbed sycamores dancing naked

in the rain--no time to be discrete."

Hope these excerpts  whet your appetite, and you go to his blog and hook up.

The Dofflemyers

"To Hell in a Handbasket"
"Hear the hatred rattling in the grass?
Old war babies crying in their sleep, still
believing they had a say and glad
to have a black man now to blame....
"The rock doesn't care anymore, rivers
laugh off the mountains, but the deserts
remember every word in our heads..."
"Usura-Contra Natura"
"...beyond the grasp of governments and time,
beyond the baited traps of the same insatiable
perchmates: Mrs. Greed and Mr. Power."
"Visiting the Future"
"Mule packers, horse lovers
wearing outdoor eyes--
who've caught God
drooling at his easel
on every horizon...."