Lovely review of three of my books that came out this year: BABY ORCA, RATTLER, and ALIENS FROM EARTH. Thank you, Bill Ruehlmann, Norfolk Virginian Pilot Online.

Add a Comment

I'm pleased, happy, elated to have three new books this year: BABY ORCA , RATTLER and ALIENS FROM EARTH, about invasive species. Killer whales, rattlesnakes, invasive species. Nature is fascinating, beautiful, wondrous.

Add a Comment

Is it too much to ask that each of us appoint ourselves a committee of one and do one kind thing each day? Start with your children, your spouse, your partner, your co-workers. Few of us will have an impact on life at the global level, but all of us can affect our families, our friends, and our communities. We all have the gift of life on this one planetary ship. Our lifetimes are short and none of us will get off this ship alive. Can we not respect each other as fellow members of the one human species that inhabits Earth? You do not have to love a person to respect him or her. We all share the human condition. We are all fellow travelers on the journeys of our lives. What a wondrous gift this is, but some people live as if they hate the fact they were born and try to make life as miserable as possible for others. Years ago my mentor, well known attorney Morris Ernst, the person who helped me get my first book published, said there are no big things in life. There is only trivia. But if we tend to the trivia in positive ways, the effects are cumulative and can make profound differences. Being kind is easy: smile at a child, call a friend, touch the hand of a person in pain, speak out against injustice, have real face-to-face conversations, not just text messages. Our country is reeling from pain. We need to connect, to listen to each other, to stop playing the blame game and try to understand each other and find solutions together.

Add a Comment

My e-book, HOW TO HAVE SEX IF YOU'RE NOT HUMAN, is on sale at half price through July.
Check out the fascinating facts of of animal--and plant--reproductive strategies. Some Caribbean fishes change sex. Snails are hermaphrodites, having their erotic cake and eating it, too! Orchids seduce their pollinators with perfumes, nectar, colors, and shapes. In nature, anything goes!

Add a Comment

Little Donnie is a strumpet
A blowhard of his own trumpet
Chorusing hate, bigotry, and fear
Spreading lies far and near
With ideas from a racist dumpster
Bottom of the barrel is all he can muster
Endorsed by the KKK
He Insults women, Mexicans and gays
Violates separation of church and state
Trashes people of a certain faith
Bans members of the press
Who question his preparedness
A rich spoiled bully boy
He treats America like a broken toy
That only he knows how to fix
But offers no policies, only tricks.
Refuses to release his tax returns
Is he afraid of what we might learn?
Cares nothing for the needy
Money is his god, little Donnie's greedy.

If being president were not such a serious matter
We could dismiss him as a mad hatter
But he's made his way to the top of the Republican pack
Too late they realize they can't send their monster back
To his TV reality show
Where he can strut and deal his firing blow
He's made his way wooing right-wingers
Kissing ass of NRA gunslingers
How I wish he were a cartoon
I wish we could send him to the moon
Rocket him into space
To orbit eternally with the other debris cluttering up the place.
But we have to confront him on election day
Tell him he's fired without any pay.
This would-be emperor, as any child knows,
Is naked; he has no clothes.

Add a Comment

Trump’s sexism has always been blatant but yesterday he outdid himself in expressing his contempt for women. It was Trump, not Hillary, who introduced “the woman card” into the campaign. He did it in the way male sexists have always expressed their attitude of male superiority--women are deficient simply because they are not men. Like the flat-Earthers who believed Earth was the center of the universe and all celestial bodies revolved around it, Trump and other such males, believe they are the center of the social universe, entitled by birthright to measure females against the lie that devalues women. Sexist men are incapable of relating to women as full human beings. Their masculinity is so fragile that it depends on putting down women with insulting jokes and laws that restrict women's mobility and attempt to seize legislative control of women's bodies. Gender equality is not part of such men's world view. Trump has exposed his pitiful, deficient masculinity before, in comments meant to reassure his supporters about the size of his genitals. Thankfully, there are many more enlightened men out there who do not base their masculinity on the size of their penis or on bullying women. Trump's latest anti-woman statement takes even his campaign to a lower level: He said: “If Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’s get 5 percent of the vote.” Well, Donald, Hillary is not a man, and she's doing just fine on her own terms. The question you've raised, Donald, is what kind of man are you?

Add a Comment

I'm so happy with BABY ORCA, published February 23, 2016. Chris Rallis created beautiful illustrations, and the production team at Grosset & Dunlap/Penguin did a superb job designing the book. I'm grateful to them all, as well as the scientists who share their work on orcas with me. The book is perfect to show and read to a young child. First or second graders may be able to read it by themselves. They'll love the pictures.

On March 1, 2016, an updated edition of ALIENS FROM EARTH, my book about invasive species, was released by Peachtree Publishers. Beverly J. Doyle did her usual beautiful job with the illustrations. Thanks to the great production team at Peachtree. I added two new species to this edition: Asian carp and the brown tree snake. I also have an author's note in this edition. Older kids will enjoy learning about some of the major invasive species.

Add a Comment

BABY ORCA, My new children's book about a baby killer whale, comes out February 23, 2015. Learn about these magnificent mammals, how mothers and grandmothers care for the young and teach them to hunt.

Add a Comment

My late husband composer Ed Bland was a prolific composer. He composed music in a variety of genres: Jazz, Blues, Soul, Gospel, Hip Hop, Ragtime, and contemporary classical. He wrote for the recording industry, TV, film, dance, bands, and orchestras. This new album URBAN FUNK contains 25 tracks of the last music he composed. The first 12 tracks he conceived of as a dance suite that might be used by modern dancers; the remaining 13 tracks are funky, top-tapping, and highly original. Ed's music synthesizes three musical canons: European, West African drumming, and African-American.

Writing about his artistic journey on his website, Ed said: "Throughout my professional life, my creative efforts have been haunted by aspects of a cultural warfare that has been simmering under the world’s cultures for several centuries. It is a warfare between a pagan prolongation of the eternal moment found in the traditional religious rites and music of Black West Africans living below the Sahara and conventional Western civilization’s pursuit of postponed rewards. As a consequence, in Western civilization there is never a Now, only a vague future.

Ironically, the African slave trade, with all its horrors and social disruption, also presented an opportunity for transformation. It was the slaves’ ability to rise to the occasion and create a new culture and persona that enabled them to survive and coexist in America. Traumatized by slave-ship voyages, deprived of languages, Gods, families, communities, and rituals, it became necessary that the slaves modify what remained from their past and invent new cultural forms. In a range of work encompassing “Urban Funk,” Atari Video Games,“Skunk Juice,” THE CRY OF JAZZ, Urban Classical, the Detroit Symphony, Dizzy Gillespie, Hip Hop, “Urban Counterpoint.” I have composed music that celebrates the pagan prolongation of the eternal Now.

You can read this entire essay on Ed's website: EdBlandMusic.com

Add a Comment

-->

Add a Comment

People write for all kinds of reasons: to create an imaginary world; make a statement; escape. Some people even write for their health. Writing in The New York Times Science section (January 19, 2015), wellness blogger Tara Parker-Pope says: "Studies have shown that writing about oneself and personal experiences can improve mood disorders, help reduce symptoms among cancer patients, improve a person's health after a heart attack, reduce doctor visits and even boost memory.

"Now researchers are studying whether the power of writing--and then rewriting--your personal story can lead to behavioral changes and improve happiness."

She quotes Timothy D. Wilson, a University of Virginia psychology professor and lead author of a Duke study of the effects of personal story on struggling college freshmen. “These writing interventions can really nudge people from a self-defeating way of thinking into a more optimistic cycle that reinforces itself,”  he said

Dr. Wilson, whose book “Redirect: Changing the Stories We Live By,” was released in paperback in January 2015, believes that while writing doesn’t solve every problem, it can definitely help people cope. “Writing forces people to reconstrue whatever is troubling them and find new meaning in it,” he said.

Add a Comment

No, this is not about the greater sage grouse, the mountain yellow-legged frog, or any other endangered nonhuman species. It’s about members of our own species. Black men -- particularly young black men -- are endangered in America. They are criminalized, incarcerated disproportionately and, in far too many incidents, killed by police – the very people charged with protecting us. All of us.

In city after city, young black men are routinely stopped by police for “walking while black,” sometimes on the street where they’ve lived for years. Some black men have even been stopped or arrested by police while trying to enter their own homes, most notably prominent Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2009.

Some years ago in Los Angeles, a friend was stopped on a street outside his apartment and held at gunpoint in a squad car for two hours. The police were looking for a suspect in his 30s; my friend was in his 70s, but he “fit the description!” Black men, from teenagers to adults, have heard this accusation all too often.

America’s wretched racist legacy has conditioned many whites to fear non-white skin color – the “we” and “them” attitude gone pathological – and some in positions of authority respond by unpacking the national weapon and unloading on black men.

Young black men are 21 times more likely to be shot by police than their white counterparts, says a new report from ProPublica, released October 10, 2014. In an analysis of 1,217 deadly police shootings from 2010 to 2012, ProPublica found that “blacks, age 15 to 19, were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while just 1.47 per million white males in that age range died at the hands of police.” Imagine the national outrage if a proportional number of young white men had been shot by police during that same time period. We need a surge of national outrage over the murders of young black male Americans.

August 2014 was a particularly deadly month: Michael Brown, age 18, killed August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri; Ezell Ford, 25, shot in Los Angeles, California, August 11, 2014; Dante Parker, 36, tased in Victorville, California, August 12, 2014. When he developed trouble breathing, Parker was taken to a hospital where he died.

Criminalization of black men has a long ugly history in America, as Khalil Muhammad, head of the New York Public Library’s Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture and author of Condemnation of Blackness, explained in an interview with Bill Moyers on June 29, 2012. “If we think about the moment immediately following the Civil War, there was the invention of something called ‘the Black Codes’ in every Southern state. And those codes were intended to use the criminal justice system to restrict the freedom and mobility of black people. And if you crossed any line that they prescribed, you could be sold back to your former slave owner, not as a slave, but as a prisoner to work off your fine after an auction where you were resold to the highest bidder. It tells you something about the invention of the criminal justice system as a repressive tool to keep black people in their place,” Muhammad told Moyers. “And it’s still with us. It’s still with us, because ultimately, as a social problem, crime has become like it was in the Jim Crow South, a mechanism to control black people’s movement in cities.”

Slavery ended long ago but the psychological dregs remain with us. President Obama has not been immune to the racism that still infests and sickens our society. Since he campaigned for the presidency, he has been the target of racist epithets and cartoons, vilification, unprecedented disrespect, and attempts to paint him as non-American. Although his election is one of the most triumphant moments in American history, it has not triggered a post-racial era. On the contrary, it unleashed a virulent Obama hatred and blatant resurgence of political racism. One entire political party – the Republican Party – has spent the past six years trying every tactic in its book of dirty tricks to destroy the Obama presidency. Any day, I expect to hear some Republican or Fox News wag blame Obama for bringing the Ebola virus into the U.S. Think it’s far-fetched? It’s not impossible from a party that rejects the findings of science, spurns evidence, celebrates ignorance and has done everything it could to block, obstruct or kill every social policy President Obama has tried to get through Congress. It’s as if Republicans are trying to exact revenge on the American people for electing Barack Obama president.

In campaigns throughout the country, Republican candidates have only one issue: anti-Obama. At the Congressional level, Republicans have supported only two issues: more tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires; and overturning the Affordable Care Act, which is, in fact, providing health insurance to millions of previously uninsured Americans, reducing medical costs and working much better than even its proponents expected. They have put nothing positive on the table. Because of their inaction and right-wing ideology, I have come to a conclusion I don’t like, namely, that the Republican Party, which once had real statespersons like Eisenhower, is now a party of rich, racist old white men who care nothing about the poor, the middle class or minorities. Indeed, a right-leaning Supreme Court majority gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Republican-governed states have gerrymandered districts to isolate minority voters most likely to vote Democratic and have set up obstacles to discourage minorities, the young and the old from voting. Racism run amuck at the highest levels of government.

You see, Barack Obama was never supposed to be president. He was never supposed to make it through the racist maze. He was never supposed to get out of the “place” that racism designed to confine all African-Americans but particularly African-American men. The fact that he did – that a majority of American voters elected him twice – sent a shockwave through the racists among us. And they are trying to ensure that it never happens again. Of course, they won’t win. America is too diverse, and that diverse population is only increasing. But in the meantime, we have to waste time and precious human resources putting up with those racists who occupy some powerful positions. More importantly, we have to recognize the ugly racist undercurrent of some local and national politics and exercise our votes to get racists out of office. There are more intelligent, more compassionate, more tolerant Americans out there. We know this because they turned out to elect the first African-American president in our nation’s history, and every day they make significant positive contributions at every level of community life, from operating free clinics to raising funds to provide fuel assistance to needy people. There is much unheralded goodness and generosity in this country, and we need to tap into it.

In 2008, President Obama said, "Yes, we can." And we did. Twice. Now we have to do everything we can to rid our culture of racism. Ultimately, our democracy and the social health of our nation depend on it.

Add a Comment

People ask me why I write nonfiction – nature/science books in particular. I didn’t plan it that way but after some 30 years making my living as a science writer of books, magazine articles and television shows, I figure I must not be too bad at it. I knew I wanted to be a writer from around age 8. I loved reading more than anything in the world – fairy tales, Nancy Drew mysteries, Hardy Boy mysteries, and Book-of-the-Month-Club novels that an adult cousin passed on to me after she finished reading them. I thought I would write fiction, but life takes many unexpected twists and turns. The adventure of life is to follow them and see where they lead.

The first twist for me was an opportunity to write a book about scientific discoveries that were made by chance or error. I had to work really hard to write that book because I had no background in science. I was an literature major with a minor in creative writing. The year I worked on that book was grueling. I had a full-time job but spent weekends in the New York Public Library doing research for the book. I did get a book, Discovery By Chance, written, and after it was published, other science writing jobs on television documentaries came my way. To write one of those films, which was about tropical rainforests, I traveled to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s field station on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, to do research. Being in the rainforest and meeting a bunch of field biologists hooked me on science, especially evolutionary biology, the science that deals with life on Earth, who we are, and how we evolved.

I don’t know anything more fascinating than the fact that life evolved on this fortunate planet, and that of all the directions life could have taken, creatures like us evolved. Chance figured in our evolution as well. We wouldn’t be here had it not been for a cataclysmic accident that wiped out the dinosaurs. Some 65 million years ago, an enormous asteroid (6 miles across) hit the Earth, sending up dense dust clouds that blocked the sun’s rays and darkened the skies. Without sunlight, plants couldn’t carry out photosynthesis and manufacture food that is the base of all food chains. Without their plant food, the vegetarian dinosaurs and many other species died of starvation along with the carnivorous beasts like T. Rex that fed on them. Without the sun’s warmth, the Earth also experienced cold winter conditions. Scientists think the fallout from this asteroid killed up to 70 percent of all plants and animals on Earth at that time – a mass extinction.

It was a fortunate extinction for us, because living in the shadow of the gigantic beasts was a small shrew-like insect-eating mammal that may be the ancestor of modern placental mammals. A specimen 160 million years old has been found. Over time, following the extinction of the dinosaurs, numerous mammals evolved, including primates and the great apes that are our ancestors.

I find it exciting to learn what we share in common with our closest primate relatives – the chimpanzees – and how we differ. Our modern human species, Homo sapiens, first appeared in Africa about 200,000 years ago -- only a flicker of evolutionary time. DNA analysis shows that all of us who are alive today are descended from those early humans who lived in Africa. At the deepest level of our cells, our genetic blueprint, we are all African. What is more profound or exciting than that?

I write about nature and science because they form our knowledge base, provide evidence for what we know, and point toward solutions if our leaders are wise enough to embrace evidence. Sadly, today too many people in positions of power deny science and embrace superstition. I write science because I cherish life and hope in some small way to contribute to the education needed so desperately to protect our planet and save humanity from its self-destructive ways. Think of this: Dinosaurs ruled the Earth some 135 million years; our species hasn’t been around even a quarter of a million years. We are babies, and some of our grown-ups act like toddlers having tantrums. At the current rate of willful destruction of the planet’s resources, we won’t need an asteroid to wipe us out. We’re doing it to ourselves.

Is there hope? I like to think so. We’re a resilient, hardy species with huge brainpower. If we use our intelligence, creativity, compassion and ability to cooperate with each other and solve problems, we could protect our home planet and improve the quality of life for everyone. But it's a big IF.

Add a Comment

Today, May 17th, is the 60th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. I was a junior in an all-white Virginia high school (there were no racially integrated schools in the South at this time) when the decision was announced. In my naivete, I thought there should be a celebration.

But there was no celebration. Instead Virginia politicians turned to fear-mongering against “mongrelization” and mounted a policy known as “massive resistance” to implementing the court’s decision. Using every political tactic at their disposal, including closing schools to prevent desegregation, Virginia’s politicians succeeded in delaying school integration until the late 1960s. One entire county, Prince Edward County, closed its public schools for five years rather than integrate. Here and in other areas of the state, private academies for white children sprang up but black children sometimes had no education at all. It was an ugly time in our history. Looking back now, I wonder how grown people could have acted so hatefully against children and against people they had known all their lives.

Even when I was a child, segregation never made sense to me. It went against everything my parents, my school, and my church taught me: love your neighbor as yourself, all men are created equal, respect everyone, liberty and justice for all. An old Sunday school song depicted a world quite different from the one in which I was living: “Jesus loves the little children, all the children in the world. Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in his sight.” I felt I was getting mixed signals from these institutions and my community. When I asked why, nobody seemed to be able to give me an answer that made any sense. I felt I was getting simultaneous stop and go signals about how life should be lived.

Growing up on a farm, my brother and I played with the children of our black neighbors. We were friends. It was okay to play together in our yard, but we couldn’t express that friendship in public. We couldn’t go to school together; we couldn’t go to church together; we couldn’t go to the movies together.

The cultural mantra was “separate but equal,” but there was no equality in separation. I remember the “White Only” and “Colored Only” signs next to water fountains and on waiting room doors; the “White Only” and “Colored Only” sections of the local movie theater. Blacks weren’t allowed to sit at tables in the local drugstore/soda shop. Even the cemeteries were segregated. Did this mean heaven and hell were segregated? I felt that segregation made victims of both blacks and whites, that it limited freedom for all of us, though I knew I wasn’t humiliated and discriminated against as black people were. By the luck of the genetic draw, I was born white, but I would be no less me if I were black. Skin color was just another feature like eye or hair color. But segregation exploited skin color as an inborn badge of superiority or inferiority. Segregation said being black diminished a person's humanity, relegated a person to second-class status. But whites had done nothing to deserve their superior status. It didn't make any sense.

I didn’t understand how anybody calling themselves Christian could embrace segregation. Throughout my teenage years, I argued with my father, who was a devout Christian, on this point. Neither he nor my mother were racists. Like many other decent, well-meaning white southerners, they were born into the system of racial segregation, but they harbored no hatred of blacks. Indeed, there were some genuinely loving friendships between blacks and whites, especially between black and white women. But they were emotionally shackled by a system that required holding back feelings and avoiding openly embracing each other’s humanity. So there was intimacy and denial of intimacy – a system of wounded love. Always you had to be aware of how far you could go. The social taboo – the line that must never be crossed, on fear of death for black men – was interracial mixing – the great sexual bugaboo. Until 1967 when the Supreme Court struck down Virginia’s law against interracial marriage as unconstitutional, mixed marriage was a felony in the state of Virginia and other southern states.

We’ve come a long way since 1954. Interracial marriage is no longer taboo, we have an interracial president who was raised by a single white mother and his white grandparents, and schools throughout the country are racially integrated though still segregated in many areas because of housing patterns. But we’re not in a post-racial society yet. Blacks still experience discrimination in job opportunities, housing, educational opportunity, access to medical treatment, and administration of justice. Black male children are especially at risk of racial hatred, such as the wanton murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, whose murderer was acquitted. Black male students in grades K-12 are nearly two-and-a-half times more likely to be suspended from school than white students. Young black men are stigmatized as criminals or potential criminals. According to the Center for American Progress, people of color are “ disproportionately incarcerated, policed, and sentenced to death at significantly higher rates than their white counterparts.”

So segregation is no longer legal but America still suffers from racism. Indeed, since President Obama’s election, racism seems to have surged particularly in the Republican Party. Legislation to hinder and limit the voting rights of African-Americans and other non-white minorities has been passed in various Republican-led states. Jim Crow has resurfaced under the guise of preventing so-called voter fraud. The journey to get beyond racial segregation that began 60 years ago with the Brown v. Board of Education decision hasn’t been completed yet. But I choose to believe we can overcome racism if enough people of good will speak out and remain vigilant. In some small pockets of the country, including many in the South, it has already happened quietly and peacefully.

Add a Comment

If Freud had known more about the birds and bees, he might never have fantasized his theory of penis envy. In fact, a lot of theories about what sex is or ought to be might be vastly different if they were more firmly grounded in biology than in romance. The truth is: What passes for the story of the birds and the bees is a bedtime tale for innocents that leaves out more than it tells. In the reality of the wild, birds, bees, butterflies, snails—even orchids and avocados—“do it” in ways that would make the erotic Hindu sculptures at Konarak blush all the way down to their stone toenails. A tableau of nonhuman sexual strategies includes cannibals, transvestites, hermaphrodites, homosexual rapists, males with two penises, and plants that deceive, seduce, and kill. When it comes to mixing genes—and biologically, that’s what sex is all about—anything and everything goes.

There are almost as many ways and positions for “doing it” as they are creatures on the face of the Earth. Our human repertoire of seduction techniques seems unimaginative by comparison. Some animals and plants change sex as blithely as humans slip into evening clothes. Others resort to trickery—the biological equivalent of our sexual con games. A few animals even give up their lives for sex, but unlike us humans, they don’t have any choice in the matter. In the nonhuman world, sexual behavior is genetically programmed. Here, sex is straight and unadulterated. Nobody worries about who’s on top or who comes first or whether orgasms are clitoral or vaginal. There are no value judgments attached—no “crimes against nature,” sexual deviates, “unnatural” sex acts. Evolution favors whatever strategy best enables an animal or plant to pass along its genes and leave successful offspring.

It’s fun to be a voyeur in the world of nonhuman sex, but there’s a more serious reason for paying close attention to the birds and the bees. Training binoculars on nonhuman erotic windows can provide new biological perspectives on human sexual behavior—particularly taboos and discrimination, rape, wife-beating, and possibly other forms of sexual aggression. First, however, it’s necessary to give up some of our human chauvinist ideas. Excerpted from my book "How To Have Sex If You're Not Human"

Add a Comment

Scientific illiteracy will kill us all. It's not a nuclear blast we have to fear but the blast of ignorance that characterizes the Republican Tea Party and the religious right. Scientific ignorance is the greatest threat to national security, global security and personal security. Yet, we have members of Congress celebrating such ignorance and trying to pass it off as public policy. Some of the statements coming out of politicians' mouths are so stupid, a fiction writer could hardly make them up. In recent months, Congresspersons, ex-Congresspersons and political candidates have made statements that are downright scary. Here's a sampling:

On Rape and Women's Bodies"From what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down," proclaimed Rep. Todd Akin (R-Missouri), the 2012 Republican Senate nominee from Missouri. Thankfully, the voters in Missouri shut down Akin's bid and reelected Senator Claire McCaskill.

On Wind Energy and Climate Change"Wind is God's way of balancing heat. Wind is the way you shift heat from areas where it's hotter to areas where it's cooler. That's what wind is. Wouldn't it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the temperature to go up? Now, I'm not saying that's going to happen, Mr. Chairman, but that is definitely something on the massive scale. I mean, it does make some sense. You stop something, you can't transfer that heat, and the heat goes up. It's just something to think about." This came out of the mouth of Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas)

This same Congressman told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee: "I would point out that people like me who support hydrocarbon development don't deny that climate is changing. "I think you can have an honest difference of opinion of what's causing that change without automatically being either all in that's all because of mankind or it's all just natural. I think there's a divergence of evidence. . . I would point out that if you're a believer in the Bible, one would have to say the Great Flood is an example of climate change and that certainly wasn't because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy."

Jim Sensenbrenner (R=WI) called research on climate change "an international conspiracy." Sensenbrenner is on House Science Committee.

On Science

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) said: “All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.” In the same speech, Broun claimed “I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.” This shining light of knowledge is also on the House Science Committee.

Just so I don't leave you in this muddle of negativity, here's a smart comment from astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Director of Hayden Planetarium, Museum of Natural History, New York City.

“Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.”

Add a Comment

This is the season when people give lip service in talk and song to “peace on Earth,” yet we live in a society that promotes violence. From video games to the NRA, the gunslinger as hero is promoted in thousands of ways, some subtle, some blatant. On December 13, 2013, the day before the first anniversary of the massacre of 20 first-graders and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Bill Moyers interviewed Richard Slotkin, former professor at Wesleyan University and author of “The Fatal Environment,” “Regeneration Through Violence,” “Gunslinger Nation,” and his most recent book, “The Long Road to Antietam.” Discussing the Newtown shooter, Adam Lanza, Professor Slotkin pointed out that Lanza was obsessed with violent video games and used them, in effect, to train himself for his deadly attack on children and teachers. He also shot his mother and himself. Violent video games like “Grand Theft Auto,” -- of which there are now five versions -- can act as “training films” for criminality similar to the way the military uses video games to train soldiers. Moyers showed an excerpt from a video game that has even been developed about the Newtown massacre. The game allows the viewer to follow and actively shoot students in a classroom. Greed and exploitation know neither good taste nor compassion.

Since the Newtown massacre there have been 26 more school shootings with 200 children killed. It’s possible to look at violence as a disease epidemic in the U.S. Indeed, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in 2010 alone (the latest year for which the CDC has records), a total of 31,672 Americans were killed by guns; 2694 were children or teens. “We produce the lone killer . . . [who’s] trying to validate himself or herself in terms of our society,” Slotkin said. But the school shooters are all men, Moyers pointed out, asking why that is. Slotkin replied that white men “feel their position is imperiled” and turn to the “mystique of weapons.” Guns are symbols of “productive violence,” Slotkin said. Yet the only thing produced is dead bodies, heartbreak and grief.

Incredibly, following the Newtown shootings, the NRA campaigned for more guns, arming teachers, rather than accepting even the weakest, most basic, of gun control measures such as background checks. I have no quarrel with hunting. I grew up on a farm. My father and all the other farmers in our neighborhood had guns for hunting. Daddy shot rabbits and squirrels, and Mother cooked them, and we ate them. I learned to shoot but unlike my brother, was never interested in hunting. In rural environments where populations of some animals, such as deer, have exploded because they have no predators, a hunting season makes sense. But the hunting argument can’t be used to support military assault weapons in city streets. You don’t hunt deer with AK-47s. People are the only prey in urban environments.

Peace on Earth is just another dream unless we begin teaching peace as fervently as we teach war. The reality of school shootings is the nightmare we currently inhabit.

Add a Comment

Blasting off to outer space in my rocket ship
I'm not on drugs but I'm high from the trip.
My mission is to find another place,
a planet or a moon where the human race
can start a new world when ours is destroyed
by leaders who treat lethal weapons like toys.

As I orbit the Earth, tears come to my eyes
'Cause it's the only living planet in these pitch black skies.
The only one that shines with a deep blue sea,
The only one that breathes life's chemistry,
The only one to harbor life's amazing evolution
But to keep it going, we need a revolution,
not the kind that's fought with weapons of terror
but with intelligence to admit human error.

From the windows of my ship in the vacuum of space
Earth looks as small as one human face,
And I think of all the people as one and the same,
The same human species with one human name.
Underneath the different languages and different colored skins,
We're all the same -- just women and men.
All living together on this one cosmic ball
where survival will depend on the efforts of us all.

The view is very different when you go out far.
You can see the total folly of any kind of war.
You can see our leaders acting out with their primitive brains
Ancient battles that took place on Africa's plains.
But the weapons are no longer sticks and stones.
It's high technology with nuclear bombs.

And if that's not enough hanging over our heads,
Radioactive wastes may kill us all dead.
Or destruction of the ozone can let in deadly rays
of that blazing solar furnace that lights all our days.

The dolphins are dying, and they say it's from pollution,
But the leaders of the world haven't found a solution.
Maybe they're dumb or just too lazy
Or maybe they're just downright crazy.

From my vantage point in my rocket ship,
It seems like a shame to let things slip
right out of our hands when we have the power
to protect the Earth and make it flower.

I am coming home because my mission is over.
There is nowhere to go for this interplanetary rover.
No other place in the whole Milky Way
Where human beings could possibly stay,
No other planet, no asteroid or rock
Where human beings could set up shop.
If we start anew, it will have to be down there
On our planet with water and breathable air.

I make my last orbit and tears come to my eyes
'Cause Earth's the only planet in these pitch black skies.
The only one that shines with a deep blue sea,
The only one that breathes life's chemistry.
The only one that harbors life's amazing evolution,
But to keep it going, we need a global revolution,
Not the kind fought with weapons of terror,
But with intelligence to admit human error,
A change that comes within the heart and mind,
Achieving peace for humankind.

This was written several years before 9/11.

Add a Comment

This past weekend (Feb. 22-23, 2013) I attended Christopher Newport University’s annual Writers Conference--the 32nd, in fact. This one honored my dear friend and wonderful writer Doris Gwaltney, author of HOMEFRONT. See Doris’ Facebook page. Doris Gwaltney became coordinator of the conference in its fifth year and served in that capacity for eight years. She teaches a Lifelong Learning class in creative writing, and has been a mentor and inspiration to many local writers. She also serves on the Advisory Council for the CNU Writers Conference.

I always find this writers conference nourishing, and this year’s was no exception. Humans rights was the theme of the conference and the opening day’s panel discussed human rights issues, including rape, violence against women and children, and human trafficking in sexual and other forms of slavery.

Novelist and attorney Corban Addison gave an outstanding presentation about his novel, A WALK ACROSS THE SUN, and his involvement with international justice movements to combat human trafficking, which he called “the fastest growing criminal industry in the world.” Trafficking for sexual and other forms of slavery is not just something that happens in other countries. Addison pointed out that in the United States some 100,000 American children are trafficked every year. “It’s as easy to order a girl on the Internet as it is to order a pizza.,” he said, adding that “We spend more on military marching bands than on liberating slaves.” Globally about 2 million children are trafficked every year. The average American sex buyer is male, as are sex tourists that go to Thailand, which is known for an active sex trade in young girls. Until the grassroots rises and demands an end to this kind of slavery, “dollars will continue to fuel the trade,” Addison said. He advocated an educational campaign on human trafficking similar to drug trafficking education.

Rosemary Trible, wife of CNU President Paul Trible, talked about her book, FEAR TO FREEDOM, about her rape experience when she was in her twenties. Since then she has become an advocate for rape victims and founded the nonprofit organization, Fear 2 Freedom, which provides aid to victims of sexual abuse. “I don’t believe anybody eight-years-old says, ‘I’d like to be a prostitute when I grow up,’” Trible said.

Tina Kempin Reuter, CNU assistant professor of international politics and law, presented the policy angle on human rights, pointing out that the concept of human rights is only about 70 years old, and because of communications technology, more people than ever before are aware of human trafficking. With increased awareness, there is a greater chance that more laws against this practice will be passed and implemented.

In a panel on “The Facts about Fiction,” novelist Michael Farmer said a writer needs to know three things: the truth, the subject and the trade. A writer of Western novels, Farmer described the rigorous research that goes into each of his books and the need for authentic details to bring a story alive. Farmer is a member of the Isle of Wight, Virginia, writers group. His novel, HOMBRECITO’S WAR, was a 2006 Spur Finalist and a 2007 New Mexico Finalist for Best Historical Fiction. Other members of this panel were mystery writer Maria Hudgins and poet Nathan Richardson.

Saturday’s keynote speaker Lucinda Roy, Alumni Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech University, talked about her memoir, NO RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT, about the 2007 shooting that killed 32 people and wounded 17 others at Tech. Roy had taught the student, Seung-Hui Cho, who opened fire on students and faculty and then killed himself. She said she had recognized he was a troubled kid and tried to obtain some help for him but none was forthcoming. The experience, which affected her deeply, is the subject of her memoir.

Steve Watkins, author of the novels DOWN SAND MOUNTAIN (winner of the 2009 Golden Kite Award for Fiction) and WHAT COMES AFTER, presented a lively, humorous discussion on “Why Write YA.” Books for this age group -- 14 up -- find a ready market that continually renews itself as children from the middle grade readership grow up the literary ladder. Watkins pointed out that girls are the primary readers of fiction in the YA category and that they like to read books in which the protagonist is at least one year older than they are. YA novels these days deal with adult topics, including rape, pregnancy, drugs, crime, homelessness, etc., and many are read by adults.

There were many other fine panels and presenters but impossible to attend them all. It’s always refreshing to mingle with other writers, listen to accomplished authors talk about how they work and reenergize the creative batteries for the projects at hand and those on the drawing board.

Congratulations to Cindy Halliday, Conference Coordinator, poet Ann Falcone Shalaski, President of the Advisory Council for the CNU Writers Conference, Joanne Dingus, and all the other council members and those from the Lifelong Learning Society who were involved in organizing this wonderful conference.

Display Comments Add a Comment

I am honored to be featured on Morgen Bailey's wonderful Writing Blog. A great blog for writers to follow.

Add a Comment

I made it into the Authors Show 2012 edition of 50 GREAT WRITERS YOU SHOULD BE READING. Thanks to everyone who voted for me.

Add a Comment

Today's EXPLORING NATURE podcast was devoted to climate change. Hurricane Sandy brought this issue to the fore. There is no more urgent issue than climate change. Worry about whether Iran develops a nuclear weapon pales next to climate change, which will have devastating consequences for the entire planet if governments don't address it. The two governments that most urgently need to address climate change are the United States and China. Yet we have some politicians and the fossil fuel industries that refuse to recognize the seriousness of climate change. They are stuck in denial and in an anti-science attitude that endangers all life on Earth.

The science and signs of climate change are out there. The scientific community has been in agreement about climate change for some 40 years. The changes are accumulating rapidly, more rapidly than originally predicted. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2000 to 2009 was the warmest decade ever recorded. If people keep on adding greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at the current rate, the average temperature around the world could increase by 4 to 12 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100.

Increased temperature affects the oceans, weather patterns, snow, ice, plants and animals, including people. As the top layer of the ocean gets warmer, hurricanes and other tropical storms grow stronger with faster winds and heavier rain. That's what we saw with Sandy.

Since the 1980s, the U.S. has experienced more intense single-day storms that are dumping a lot more rain or snow than usual.

In the past century, there has been about a foot of sea level rise in the New York City area, and this figured in hurricane Sandy with the storm surge added to the normal tidal surge, producing devastating flooding for New York and New Jersey.

Melting sea ice is also a factor and will continue to be a factor in the world's coastal areas where so many large cities are located. Arctic sea ice reached its lowest seasonal minimum since satellite data began to be kept in 1979.

Summer 2012 was the third hottest on record.

The trends of wilder weather and greater temperature extremes are expected to continue. Exactly what climate scientists have been predicting for more than 20 years is happening. Everyone needs to pay attention and pressure their governments to do something about it while we still can.

Add a Comment

Rape is the topic of my latest podcast, EXPLORING NATURE. Rape is not a pretty topic. It's downright ugly and the politics of rape are uglier than I've ever seen them in my lifetime. Rape victims are under attack again. I say again because for centuries there was a blame-the-woman attitude toward rape, as if rape was not something to take seriously--just some "boys-will-be-boys" fun. Women somehow brought on rape by dressing seductively or by inviting intercourse and then lying about it to trap some poor unfortunate man. The man was the victim. When rape began to be taken seriously as a crime, it was seen as a property crime against the husband or the father. It was his property, not the woman victim, that suffered the attack. The raped woman was "damaged goods."

It took many decades for rape to be defined as a violent crime against the victim. The World Health Organization defines rape as "physically forced or otherwise coerced penetration--even if slight--of the vulva or anus, using a penis, other body parts or an object." The FBI's definition, as of 2012, is "The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim."

Rape is a crime of violence but this fact seems to have been lost on a group of Republican male legislators whose goal is to deny women victims access to abortion for any cause. Displaying ignorance of women's anatomy and science, and a stunning callousness toward rape victims, these legislators are more concerned about the rapist's sperm investment than the woman's violation. They downgrade the seriousness of rape by parsing "forcible rape," "legitimate rape," and pregnancy from rape as a gift of God. But rape is rape. There is no acceptable rape and no holy rape.

Most recently, Richard Mourdock, Indiana Republican running for the Senate, made the astounding statement that pregnancy resulting from rape is, "something God intended to happen . . . a gift from God." This statement is one of the most offensive remarks about rape I have ever heard. It implies a theory of divine rape. Mr. Murdock's view would open the door for a rapist to defend himself by arguing that he was just carrying out God's will.

Then there was Todd Akin, Republican congressman from Missouri, coining the term "legitimate rape," and displaying his ignorance of science by proclaiming that a woman's body could "shut down" pregnancy resulting from rape.

Murdock and Akin are extremists but they aren't alone. Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan is on the record saying rape is just another method of conception and not a reason to allow abortion. About a dozen Republican Senate candidates oppose abortion for rape, incest or to protect the health of the mother. Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has said he would like to see Roe v. Wade overturned.

There are several things to note about these efforts to turn back the clock on rape victims. First, these men constitute an anti-abortion Mafia. Their extreme view on pregnancy from rape are part and parcel of a general war on women being waged primarily by Republican men. Secondly, they don't talk about rape as a violent crime. By their statements and the bills they sponsor, they are more interested in protecting a fertilized egg than in protecting women from rape. What they end up protecting is the rapist.

Every year in the United States, between 25,000 and 32,000 pregnancies result from rape. Mr. Akin needs some medical instruction about women's bodies. There is no mechanism for "shutting down" pregnancy from rape. Perhaps Mr. Akin is more familiar with the bodies of some female insects than with women's bodies. Female tenebrionid beetles of the species Pterostichus Lucublandus produce a kind of chemical mace that they use not only against predators but also against unwanted males. This spray is so disabling that even after the male cleans himself, he falls into a kind of coma for several hours, giving her time to get away. Of course, the female pays a price for this defense. Until she can resynthesize her supply of defensive spray, she is vulnerable to predators.

Women are vulnerable to predatory men. The worst predators currently are the male legislators who are passing laws and sponsoring bills that have the intent of controlling women's bodies and denying women autonomy over their reproductive biology. The remarks of Mourdock, Akin and Ryan display contempt for women and should be unacceptable to any sane person.

Hear more by listening to the podcast. Also see my book, Sexual Strategies: How Females Choose Their Mates, which has an entire chapter on how males across the animal kingdom try to subvert female choice.

Add a Comment

Today's podcast, EXPLORING NATURE, presents Part II of the discussion about war as the culture of death for the human species, the environment and the planet. Unlike the Stone Age, when people hurled stones at each other and had no weapons of mass destruction nor any concept of a global ecosystem, violent conflict was a local head-bashing between neighboring tribes. Today's techno-warfare with remotely controlled drones, missiles and bombs threatens all life on Earth. Yet humans use these weapons as if they were living in the Stone Age, and that is the most dangerous aspect of warfare today. The humans who promote war as the only way to resolve conflicts, who substitute bombs for brains, are using Stone Age behavior with Space Age weapons. This disconnect between behavior and technology imperils the planet and the survival of the human species. Given the awesome destructive power of modern weapons, war should be declared obsolete by all nations on Earth.

Add a Comment

Today on my podcast, EXPLORING NATURE, I'll be talking about war in the context of environmental degradation.

Imagine the puzzlement of intelligent beings from another planet as they approach Earth. Descending through Earth’s dense atmosphere, the ship’s sophisticated sensors whirr with incoming data. The readings are bizarre: millions of acres of land littered with explosive devices; landscapes pockmarked by bomb craters; radioactive materials polluting bodies of water both large and small; toxic chemicals poisoning soils; carbon dioxide clogging the air, building up heat around the planet. Incredibly, the planet appears to be a toxic waste dump. These intelligent aliens might well wonder what kind of crazed animal wreaks such damage on an otherwise beautiful planet, one that seems so suitable for life. They might be even more surprised to learn that the damage was and continues to be done by the species considered the most intelligent on Earth – Homo sapiens.

Why does a species with such a short lifespan spend so many of its precious years making life as miserable as possible, even hastening death for so many of its own kind? One might conclude that they are possessed by such a deep hatred for life that they are willing to attack and poison the only known planet that sustains and nourishes them.

Whatever the pathology in the wiring of some human brains – inexplicably those in the heads of men likely to be leaders of countries – it has invented a monstrous self-deception that war and national security are inseparably linked. In pursuit of this illusion, governments spend most of their economic and human resources manufacturing, selling and buying weapons of destruction that not only increase insecurity but threaten all life on the planet.. Back on October 28, 2002, the first observance of the International Day for Preventing Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said: “War not only causes human suffering. It can also be devastating to the environment. Long after peace has been restored, the negative environmental impacts of conflict often remain.”

War is hell on Earth. Environmental destruction is a strategy of war. There is hardly any environment on the planet that has not been scarred, scorched, poisoned, mined, radiated or otherwise brutalized by war. The world’s armed forces are the single biggest polluters of the planet. According to the Science for Peace Institute at the University of Toronto, Canada, 10 to 30 percent of all global environmental degradation is a direct result of military actions (Ref. 1). Eleven nuclear reactors and at least 50 nuclear warheads sit on the ocean floor. Mines and unexploded ordnance lie in wait in some 90 countries. According to the International Commission of the Red Cross, 100 million land mines are scattered around the world where they kill or maim between 1,000 and 2,000 people, mostly children, every month. After more than 23 years of war, Afghanistan is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, its once dense forests and much of its farmland have been destroyed, and rare species of birds and mammals, such as snow leopards, gazelles, bears, and wolves, are endangered.

In Iraq, 12 years of U.S. invasion and occupation have left that country crippled, tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians dead, homes, schools, hospitals, electrical and sanitation systems destroyed, some some 2 to 4 million refugees, depending on whose figures you use. Iraquis’ air, soil, water, blood and gene pool have been contaminated with depleted uranium, resulting in birth defects and cancers. And the environment is littered with unexploded cluster bombs.

The Vietnam war has been called “an unprecedented assault on the environment.” Ten percent of southern Vietnam’s tropical forests, including one-third of its coastal mangroves were destroyed by herbicides. Mangroves play a vital role in coastal ecology and provide a rich source of food that sustains fish populations. Over the course of 13 years, from 1961 to 1974, Vietnam was repeatedly hit by cluster bomb units (CBUs), affectionately called “bomblets,” large bombs, napam, land mines, and toxic chemicals. The country’s soils, water systems, biological diversity, and even its climate were affected. During the course of the war, the United States admitted it dropped 72 million liters of chemicals on Vietnam, most of it Agent Orange. This highly toxic agent contained the most dangerous type of dioxin called TCDD, which stands for 2, 3, 7, 8 tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin. Known to cause almost every kind of cancer, TCDD spread throughout Vietnam’s drinking water and soils and entered the food chain. From there, the toxic chemical got into the blood of animals, including humans, where it entered the germ cells, subverted DNA, the basic molecule of life, and caused mutations – babies born with two heads, fingers and toes that drop off, strange limbs, and retarded growth. Both human and environmental effects will continue long into the future.

The most devastating assault on humanity, one that launched the horror of nuclear war, occurred in August 6, 1945, when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy,” on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Watching the mushroom cloud boiling up from what had been a city filled with life, Colonel Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the B-29 airplane that dropped the bomb, wrote in his journal: “My God, what have we done?” The heat, air pressure, and radiation from the explosion made it seem as if a sun had exploded. Within seconds, people, buildings, plants, and all animal life within a 1.5-mile radius was vaporized. For months and years to come, people exposed to the radiation died – more than 140,000 by the end of 1945. An estimated total of 200,000 people are believed to have died as a result of the bomb.

Three days later, on August 9, 1945, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb, this one on the city of Nagasaki. Approximately 70,000 people died by the end of 1945 as a result of this bomb, nicknamed “Fat Man.”

One might have thought that the horror, suffering, death, and devastation caused by these two bombs would have been enough for governments to take immediate action to outlaw such weapons. Instead, it triggered a nuclear arms build-up, known as the Cold War, between the United States and the former Soviet Union that continues to threaten the entire planet even though the Cold War has ended. The activities of producing these deadly weapons and the disposal of the waste by-products have created entire areas of the planet that are now radioactive.

Learn more on the podcast.

Add a Comment