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The View from Above
At about 12:40 the brakeman on the elevated line was standing near the window of a passenger train, which had left South Station about five minutes earlier.  As the train neared the molasses tank, the brakeman heard a loud noise, like metal ripping apart.  He looked down to see the molasses tank split wide open and a wave of molasses heading toward the tracks. 
     As the train came around a curve, there was another surprise.  The molasses hurled a great chunk of the tank against two columns supporting the elevated tracks.  A moment later one of the El supports bent as if it was just a skinny twig.  Park of the El's tracks, which the train had passed over just seconds before, sagged toward the road below.

A sea of molasses quickly surrounded them.  Antonio ran for his life, but he was no match for the tide.  It dragged him along, shoving him into a curb. Ouch! 

Mrs. O'Brien Loses More Than Her Wash

My oh my! What happened yesterday looked like the scene out of Hildago when the huge dirt storm was rolling in! That is exactly what happened here! There I was, sitting on my bed, writing and it went from sunny to pitch black, then orange! I heard the wind hit the house and looked out the window. The top of the carport was lifting up on it's steel frames. I had no idea if it was a tornado or what. I happened to be home alone, (with the dogs) and no phone.

the swing before the top blew off

the alley as the storm was beginning

the wall of dirt blowing into town. Benny said, "run BoBo! It's going to get us!" he's 5.

Life - My how things can change overnight! Last night Maine got hit with a pretty gnarly winter storm, though quite unlike the storms most of the rest of the East coast has been getting. Instead of snow, we got inches of rain and winds. Oh the winds! Sometimes exceeding 90 miles an hour, the trees behind the Northeastern Motel, (The crummiest little motel in the east) were whipping back and

Life -  Life carried on when we returned to Poky. I wouldn't say it got back to normal, but things weren't too bad. The main thing was my arm. I started getting extremely claustrophobic at times, I'd get shaky and nervous, sick to my stomach. I also noticed the cold a lot more, getting hot and cold flashes seemingly at random, with the cold always starting in my right arm. I suppose that it

t Take a look at that picture up there. Sheesh.  My second Honda Element, totalled. My second accident I walked away from with only minor injuries (though granted, my injuries are less minor this time) Both times, things could have been much worse. Much, much. Instead, I woke up and got to deal with what comes after a wreck like this, trying to sort crap out and deal with the inevitable

The next morning was a nice one, slightly overcast but calm, everyone staggered to life and began showering and prepping for the wedding, which was planned for around one that afternoon. Rob and I had a shopping list of things we needed to get in town, so we decided to all go in and eat breakfast at Sandy's Waffle haus and get it done bright and early. Rob had come over the night before

The next morning, we decided to loiter in Ellensburg for a while. We hit up a most excellent Old-tyme soda fountain, went on a goose chase for a giant pig that ended up being a sad coyote, then headed up the mountains to Leavenworth. In the daylight, not surrounded by tourists, the town is a wonder. Cute, goofy, quaint and stylish, the entire town proper is stylized and designed with a bavarian

No one can escape the hundreds of articles and reports into global climate change: it is one of the most important issues on the political landscape in countries across the world. For this month’s Very Short Introduction column, I put a few questions to Bill McGuire, author of Global Catastrophe: A Very Short Introduction. McGuire is Director of the Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre and has authored or edited over 400 books, papers and articles focusing on volcano instability and monitoring, volcanic hazards, natural hazards and environmental change, climate change and global geophysical events. He has worked on or visited volcanoes all over the world, including Mount Etna, Pinatubo and Ta’al in the Philippines, and Soufriere Hills in Montserrat.

OUP: Over the last few years we have seen an alarming increase in natural disasters, such as the Asian tsunami and subsequent earthquakes in the region. Can this rise be put down simply to climate change, or are there other possible explanations?

BILL McGUIRE: We have indeed been seeing a rise in the numbers of natural disasters, especially since 1990. This does not necessarily mean, however, that there have been more natural hazards. Climate change is already driving up the numbers of extreme weather events, such as storms and floods, and this is clearly having an impact. So far, however, we are not seeing any increase in the number and scale of geological hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. The main reason for more natural disasters in recent years is that there are ever more people living in vulnerable regions, particularly in the coastal zone.

OUP: At the same time as being faced with more and more reports about global warming, and the melting polar ice caps, we also hear about a possible new ice age. How can we have an ice age when the earth is getting warmer?

McGUIRE: Current global warming is happening and is unequivocally due to human activities. There is no new ice age on the horizon, and in fact the next one - which would normally be expected within 10,000 years or so - may be postponed by our warming activities for up to half a million years.

If the gulf stream and associated Atlantic currents shut down in the next few decades, we could see a temporary cooling of the UK, Europe and the eastern US, but this would be far from an ice age, and warming would soon take over once more.

OUP: You say in your book that the human race “came within a hair’s breath of extinction” after a massive volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago. How do we know this, and what saved us then? Could the same thing happen now?

McGUIRE: Studies of mitochondrial DNA reveal evidence of a human population crash around about the time of the Toba super-eruption. This is known because we are so genetically similar that everyone alive today must be descended from a limited gene pool at about this time. It may be that just a few thousand humans survived the effects of the blast on the climate, possibly in tropical regions where the succeeding volcanic winter may have been less intense. This remains, however, highly speculative.

OUP: You suggest that the human race can try to preserve itself by moving into space, therefore potentially outliving Earth. Is the move into space really a realistic proposition?

McGUIRE: The only things hindering the colonisation of space are political will and money. Given time, I expect both obstacles to be overcome, leading to our race eventually reaching the stars. The big question is whether this would be good thing - bearing in mind how we have treated our own planet and those species we share it with? It may also be that the economic and social collapse that dangerous climate change looks increasingly likely to bring will set us back for generations.

OUP: Once people have read Global Catastrophes: A Very Short Introduction, which five books would you point them to next?

McGUIRE: Surviving Armageddon: Solutions for a Threatened Planet (also by me) suggests possible solutions to some of the potential catastrophes addressed in ‘global catastrophes’.

To find out how close we are to the oil running out, with consequent economic mayhem, I recommend The Last Oil Shock: A Survival Guide to the Imminent Extinction of Petroleum Man by David Strahan

The greatest threat to our race and our planet currently lies in contemporary climate change, so I would direct the reader to: Six Degrees by Mark Lynas and The Rough Guide to Climate Change.

Finally, I would (naturally) recommend my new climate change book Seven Years to Save the Planet due to be published in July (in the UK) by Weidenfeld & Nicholson.

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My hometown bookstore Powells, has launched a program called Out of the Book, a series of short films on authors and their books. The first one was a 23-minute DVD on Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach . The book landed on the bestseller list – but it might even had not the events taken place at 54 independent bookstores.

Booksellers tried to do something even more than just show the film. For example, at Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass., more than 100 people paid $10 apiece to see the film and hear John Papernick, Pamela Painter and Elizabeth Benedict read original short stories written expressly for the event. Moderator Christopher Castellani also read a story by Tufts lecturer Ted Weesner, whose 600-word piece won first prize in the store's "First Time" writing contest sponsored in conjunction with the film.

Read more here.






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John Freeman asked me to write up my impressions of the Friday night Out of the Book event; you can see an abbreviated version on the NBCC blog Critical Mass.

Friday night, June 15, McNally Robinson hosted one of many incarnations of Out of the Book. You can check out the project website for details about the other events that took place all around the country, and the project's mission and future; this is just one event coordinator's take on how our evening came together.

Ever since I realized that being a bookseller was my calling, my passion has been the various ways of creating space – for readers to discover books, for authors to present their work, and for literary conversations to take place. When Dave Weich of Powell's first sketched out for me the idea of the Out of the Book project when we were both in Portland for the ABA Winter Institute, I was on board even before I entirely understood what he was talking about. It seemed obvious to me that this project – a film about (not adapted from) a book and an author, with the potential for a larger event surrounding it, was going to be a new way of creating the space for discovery and conversation, and I wanted in on it.

When the details did fall into place, I realized that this was going to be a lot more work than the events I normally run in the store. We needed a unique venue to show the film. We needed interesting voices to talk about the book. We needed extra publicity. We needed some elements of drama to make the event special. As I've said before, the genius of the Out of the Book project is that it allows bookstores all over the country (not just in New York, L.A. or other major cities) to create an exciting and wonderful event. But seeing as how we are in New York City, it seemed our event ought to be extra special. Luckily, the elements needed were all around me, and I had a tremendous amount of help in bringing it all together.

We found two actors – one of whom works in the receiving room at the bookstore, and another who is the sibling of an employee – who were willing to create a dramatic reading or scene from the book. I first suggested to them that they use the last chapter, which consists largely of dialogue between the just-married, sexually stymied main characters. But they read the book and found a better way in: they would use the first chapter of the book, a description of the characters' state of mind as they begin their honeymoon, and speak the lines from the book as they acted out the scene. Though I was skeptical at first of whether this tack would work, it soon became clear that it was a perfect way to highlight McEwan's triumph in this novel: the limning of the disconnect between the dialogue and what is happening beneath the surface. His deft characterizations make clear to the reader, though not to the couple, exactly why their efforts at connection and communication fail, and that dramatic irony was exactly what the actors were working to capture.

After a couple of unsuccessful attempts to pin down a theater – it was April by the time I started looking, and since our events calendar in the bookstore was booked through July I could hardly expect an independent theater to have room in its schedule – Dave Weich hooked me up with a theater promoter who connected me with Two Boots Pioneer Theater in the East Village. This had been my first choice, and I was delighted that we could find a way to work with them. Graciously fitting us between their regular lineup, they tolerated and accommodated this unusual film event with only a mild degree of bewilderment about our insistence that people were going to pay money for tickets to a book event. (There were definitely moments when I shared their uncertainty, though the final count from Friday was a welcome vindication.)

Finally, the element we were most uniquely suited to host: a panel discussion. Authors, critics, experts, and other literary types are easy to find in New York; we just had to find those who were most suited to talk about this book, and who were available on relatively short notice. We were especially lucky that John Freeman agreed to moderate the panel right off the bat; as someone who has interviewed McEwan, who appeared in the film, and who knows scores of writers and publishing types, John was central to making the event a success. After some disappointments – Peter Carey was unavailable, Claire Messud and Patrick McGrath were traveling on the event date – we were able to secure the participation of a wonderfully appropriate, balanced, and richly literary set of speakers. Colum McCann, author of Zoli, is a friend of McEwan and appears in the film (as does Freeman); Kathryn Harrison, a past master of the literature of sexual intensity and anguish, added a necessary female voice to the discussion; and Doug Biro, the film's director, came on at the last minute to add his perspective as a creator of the film and a long time reader of McEwan's work.

What pleased me most about the event was how well one part of the evening flowed into another. After the audience filed in (many of them having purchased discounted copies of the book and merchandise provided by Powell's in the lobby), we began with the actors, Darrell and Jessica. Their intense small scene provided an emotional "in" to the novel, and if the "wow" I heard afterward was any indication, many in the audience shared my shaken-up response to their almost painfully intimate rendition of McEwan. Then the film opened, taking the audience through a wide-angle view of the novel, both emotional and intellectual, with many of the places named in the book beautifully filmed, and McEwan himself commenting on everything from development of the story to his thoughts on human nature and climate change. The humorous filmic epilogue, about the kerfuffle over McEwan's "theft" of pebbles from Chesil Beach and the film crew's heroic efforts to return them, lightened the mood to a more conversational one. Then the panel discussion – right there at the front of the theater – allowed another step back, to an analysis of book, film, author and project that were like witnessing a great bar conversation between extremely literate friends. John Freeman (for whom this was, I think, the third panel discussion in a week) expertly drew out the panelists' insights and kept the conversation compelling for a solid hour. (The sound recording of the discussion should be available on the Powell's website within the next couple of weeks.)

Then, just as we couldn't sit still anymore, the event was over, and we retired to a nearby bar for the afterparty. There, just as I had hoped, the conversation continued. All over the room book people were processing the experience they'd just had and the ideas it sparked on any number of topics. We had successfully created a new space that didn't exist before that night. My hope is that as the Out of the Book project continues, we will be able to do so again and again, and grow that space to the benefit of America's literary culture.