The Casual Blog

Tag: Charles Dickens

May 2, 2025

Birding at the Nuthouse, and some benefits of reading

Last week I drove down to Clemson, SC to do some bird photography.  I spent a day and a half at The Nuthouse, where owner Carl Ackerman has created the ultimate backyard birding destination.  There are three blinds for sitting, watching, and photographing birds in different settings.  Carl provides meal worms and other treats for the birds, and there are a lot of them that clearly appreciate it.  

I’d hoped to see lots of migrating songbirds.  Although a good number had come through earlier in the week, my timing wasn’t in alignment with theirs.  But it was really a joy to spend a good block of time with common resident birds.  Even though I was very familiar with all the species that came by, I saw them in new ways – eating, gathering food for the chicks, bathing, and investigating.  I also saw a lot of chipmunks, squirrels, and a groundhog.  

It was both peaceful and exciting.  Giving nature some respectful observation can be spiritually nourishing.  Especially in these fraught times, I take peace and serenity where I can find it. 

I’ve also been getting a lot of pleasure out of revisiting some great literature of the 19th and 20th centuries.  My ability to read and delight in literature, which I cultivated as a young person, went downhill in my middle years, as work and family responsibilities took so much time.  But I’ve got it back!  All it took was some practice.  

I recently finished re-reading the Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O’Brian about the British Royal Navy in the early 19th century.  I was once again totally captivated.  O’Brian was a master novelist and also a historian who delved deeply into ancient archives and other sources for his material.  His main characters, officers on British warships, were multi-faceted and engaging, and their adventures were epic.  

I’m now about halfway through David Copperfield.  Charles Dickens said that this was his favorite of his books.  My edition has the ultimate cover blurb:  Leo Tolstoy (a pretty good novelist) said it was the greatest novel by the greatest novelist.  The story has significant autobiographical elements, richly rendered.  There’s a huge canvas, but I’ve been especially struck by Dickens’s respect and sympathy for mentally ill and otherwise struggling people.  If you read this book as a young person, you might want to consider reading it again.  I can almost guarantee you’ll get more out of it the second time.  

Along with literature, I’ve been reading a lot of current journalism.  I used to think most everyone must be doing this, trying to keep abreast of so much rapid change.  An essay in the NY Times by Rob Flaherty this week pointed out that this is quite wrong.  

Today’s culture is no longer a creation of executives in New York City and Los Angeles. Thanks to algorithms and an endless set of media choices, what you see, read and hear is a personalized reflection of your own interests. It’s like a city with a lot of different neighborhoods. . . .So if you don’t care about politics — or more precisely, don’t trust our politics — you don’t have to hear about it at all. A voter can turn on, tune in or opt out.

It was these voters — opt-out voters — who decided the 2024 election. It’s the same voters Democrats are struggling to reach today.

At their core, opt-out voters generally don’t trust politicians or the mainstream media. Many assume the system is rigged, the media is biased and neither party is actually fighting for them.

Flaherty contends that most of those who aren’t in the educated elite get their news from social media and friends, which seems to come at them in friendly random snippets.  He sees the right as much more successful in building alternative communication channels and creating appealing narratives, while Democrats are still trying, not very effectively, to reach the public through traditional media.  He recommends revising this strategy to be more social-media savvy.

This might help, but it also might help to help people improve their reading abilities.  According to a recent report, most Americans read at a 6th grade level or less.  Think about that!  Standardized test results show reading levels of school children getting worse.  College professors report that their students can no longer read as much or as well as they used to.  This all begs the question, how many people just aren’t capable of reading a newspaper with a fair level of comprehension?  

What is the Trump administration doing about all this?  It’s dismantling the Education Department and threatening to cut federal funding for public schools. It’s also attacking universities by threatening them with huge funding cuts and loss of tax-exempt status, and threatening foreign students with deportation.  It has pulled the plug on scientific research in health and the environment.  

Just as worrying, Trump is increasing his attacks on traditional media.  He’s forever inciting his followers against fake news, which is any news he doesn’t like, and insufficiently obsequious journalists.  He’s barring certain journalists from access, bringing baseless lawsuits against journalists, and threatening broadcast licenses.  He’s dismantling Voice of America and this week ordered that federal funding be canceled for NPR and PBS.  

The Trump program seems designed to worsen our illiteracy and ignorance.  Perhaps he’s thinking that by lowering our competence in reading and critical thinking, he’ll reduce our resistance to his domination.  If reliable news sources can be weakened or eliminated, his epic dishonesty may go unexposed. 

There are so many Trumpian disasters-in-progress that it’s hard to keep track of them all.  But there was some good news this week:  Trump’s poll numbers are at historic lows and trending down.  There’s a real chance that the next midterm election will diminish his power, and the next presidential election will allow for a new beginning.  

In the meantime, there are increasing signs of courage and resistance.  Although the natural world hasn’t been at the forefront of the battle, it still has its champions.  Per the NY Times, Trump, continuing his war on nature, recently scuttled the National Nature Assessment.  The Assessment was an effort “ to measure how the nation’s lands, water and wildlife are faring, how they are expected to change, and what that means for people.”  Some 150 scientists and other experts had spent thousands over hours on the project.

But some of those experts are working on continuing their work and publishing it outside of government channels.  They view their work as too important to the country to give up on.

Blessings to those experts, and the other scientists, politicians, educators, lawyers, judges, federal workers, journalists, non-profits, unions, businesspeople, and ordinary folks who are showing courage in this dark moment.  They remind the rest of us that Trumpism is not invincible, but it must be actively resisted.

November 22, 2022

Polar creatures and some of their problems

When I got home from Antarctica, I felt like I’d aged about 30 years.  I was very tired and weak for more than a week.  But I’m happy to say, I’m feeling back to normal, and maybe even better.  In fact, I’m starting to think about another trip there to see these beautiful creatures and their unique habitat. Anyhow, I wanted to share a few more pictures I made of penguins, an elephant seal, fur seals, and a leopard seal. I was trying to capture aspects of their personalities, customs, and environments.

As you may know, but many people don’t, Antarctica is in  big trouble from climate change.  Higher temperatures there are changing the habitats of the animals that live on and around the continent, and the collapse of giant ice shelves and melting glaciers are lifting sea levels.  The situation is dire, and has global implications.

But I’ve really been trying to stay positive, and given so many sources of fear and anxiety, would like to avoid making your and my fear and anxiety still worse.  Getting depressed is not going to help.  But it’s tough to keep learning more about what is happening to our planet and not be tempted to throw in the towel.

And so I almost skipped a couple of podcasts on climate change last week that I’m glad I didn’t.  I recommend both as antidotes for hopelessness put out by respected and trustworthy journalists.

David Wallace-Wells wrote what may well be the most detailed and gory account of what’s in store if we don’t change course in burning fossil fuels, The Uninhabitable Earth, in 2017,  But in an interview on Fresh Air last week, he explained that technology and market forces have made the worst-case scenarios he described back then much less likely.  We still stand a chance of putting in place the green energy infrastructures that would greatly mitigate disaster.  He made these same points in a recent NY Times magazine piece. 

Likewise, Bill McKibben has been a path-breaking writer on climate change, authoring among other things The End of Nature.  (Long ago, I worked with McKibben when he was a young reporter and I was a fact checker at the New Yorker.)   In an interview with Ezra Klein, McKibben said the long history of humans surviving by burning things will, one way or another, come to a conclusion, and it may be not be as terrible as we were recently expecting.  

McKibben explained that the lower cost of solar panels and storage technologies is changing the energy equation, as the persistence of climate activists has finally gotten through to more people.  The cost of renewables has fallen hugely, and is now lower than fossil fuels.  Now it doesn’t make economic sense not to switch to green technology.  L

Unfortunately, the fossil fuel companies aren’t admitting this and they’re not giving up, so there’s still a lot of work to be done.  McKibben continues to encourage activism, including in a new initiative called Third Act especially for those over 60.  He thinks we should continue to press for fossil fuel divestment by their biggest bankers, which unfortunately, are all banks I do or have done business with:  Bank of America, Citi, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo.  He also articulated these points in a New Yorker piece

Before my Antarctic journey, I started rereading Bleak House, the epic novel by Charles Dickens.  The hard back edition I had was a brick, at more than a thousand pages.  To save weight while traveling, I tried switching to a free e-book version.  This edition was full of bizarre errors, which I assume arose from relying on non-human editorial bots.  

Anyhow, I resumed making my way through my paper copy when I got home.  This year I’ve discovered, or rediscovered, that rereading can be extremely rewarding.   In many cases, I took on heavy duty literature when I was young that I was ill-equipped to understand.  The ordinary experiences of growing up — learning things, making a living, having friends and family, and everything else were transformative for me (as they are for everyone).  I’m now 67 (almost the age when my father died), and a different person in many ways  than I was at 15, or 25, or 35.  Or 55, for that matter.

Certainly I’m much better equipped for the adventure of reading a masterpiece like Bleak House.  On this, my fourth reading, I got much more from it, even as I better understood some of its shortcomings.  I easily grasped Dickens’s great love for humanity, his humor, and his anger at injustice.

Now, after having had a career in the American legal system and experience with the British, French, Indian, Argentinian, and other legal systems, I can better appreciate Dickens’s bitter critique of the English courts of equity of his time.  I now know a lot more about the history of colonialism and imperialism, and have a better frame of reference for the military and commercial struggles that happen offstage in his story.

Dickens was knowledgeable and critical of the ravages of early capitalism and industrialization, including extreme inequalities of wealth.  He had a wonderful flair for sniffing out and satirizing hypocrisy and moral posing, including poorly thought out philanthropy.  

Yet he was  oblivious to problems with various other hierarchies, like race, gender, and species.  The book has some of his most gorgeous writing, and also passages that feel like they were recycled on a tight deadline.  Some of his characters are memorable and touching (I still adore Esther Summerson) or comic (Old Turveydrop), though others, like John Jarndyce, are more generous than any known human.  

Apropos of climate change, Bleak House is also about what industrialization means for the environment, such as horrific and deadly pollution.  His description of London fog and iron factory emissions are fascinating and disturbing.  He also can be brutally honest in describing the struggles of enslaved animals, such as horses who fall while trying to pull a coach through the snow and mud.  

Apropos of non-human animals and efforts to better understand their lives, I wanted to pass along a link to a thought-provoking story about pigs, which humans generally greatly underestimate and devalue as a species. Research reported by Leo Sands in the Washington Post indicated that pigs’ social lives have surprising dimensions. For example, when two pigs have a serious fight, a third pig will sometimes help resolve the dispute by nuzzling or similar touching. That is, some pigs are concerned about the unhappiness of other pigs, and know how to calm anger and increase happiness. Of course, humans also sometimes try to defuse tensions and resolve disputes, though we could do a lot better. Perhaps the pigs’ nuzzling approach would help.