Southern Bookman

Birds and bees not doing well

Our grandchildren will not see bees, butterflies, beetles and spiders.

Frogs, lizards and salamanders will be gone too.

The alarming decline in insects is even worse than previously reported, according to a new study.

Scientists doing research in a pristine rain forest in Puerto Rico found severe reductions in the number of insects, along with the lizards and birds that feed upon them, according to a Washington Post article.

The falloff was linked to climate change, the newspaper said.

Following a UN report last week that humanity has 12 years to forestall the worst effects of climate change, the loss of insect life is further evidence that the world needs a major effort like the Manhattan Project or World War II mobilization to reduce carbon emissions.

The Wall Street Journal's masters of specious reasoning sought to undermine the UN report in an editorial Tuesday.

Even ExxonMobil's support of a carbon tax drew rhetorical darts from the newspaper's furrow-browed munchkins.

Why fight climate change? In the long run, we'll all be dead was the newspaper's message.

Disputing the UN's call for concentrated government action, the newspaper editorial and a related op-ed piece put faith in the market to solve the problem, not that there really is one.

Perhaps the newspaper can now oppose research to cure cancer.

 

 

Farewell, Jim Taylor, LSU and Green Bay Packers legend

My dismal experience at YMCA camp gave me one of my strongest childhood memories: meeting the Green Bay Packers' Jim Taylor.

Nearly 60 years later I remember the crew-cut Jimmy standing in the dim light of a rustic cabin before a gaggle of preadolescent boys wearing Camp Arrowhead T-shirts, blue jeans and high-top Keds.

As I sat on a roughhewn bench, my misery drifted away with the thrill that I was in the presence of someone big and famous.

I can't recall what the square-jawed and muscular Green Bay Packers fullback said, probably something about the importance of hard work, perseverance and teamwork. Nor did I have the foresight to get his autograph. His talk must have given me some of the grit to overcome my acute homesickness and stay until the blessed last day of camp. Throughout my life, I have kept the memory of Taylor that night as a model of grace.

Taylor, like me a Baton Rouge native, died Saturday morning at age 83 after a long and successful NFL afterlife. An All-American two-way player at LSU before the Tigers' football glory days, Taylor was a stalwart of Vince Lombardi's rugged Green Bay Packers championship teams of the 1960s. He won the NFL Most Valuable Player award in 1963, and scored the first Super Bowl touchdown.

His summertime appearance at my camp fuses with indelible television memories of watching him take the ball from Green Bay quarterback Bart Starr and "run for daylight" behind the Packers' indomitable pulling guards in Lombardi's famous sweep. After partnering with Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon for one year at LSU, Taylor played with Notre Dame Heisman recipient Paul Hornung at Green Bay. Taylor gave the muscle and Hornung the glamour of the first NFL team to receive a national following. 

While I was an immediate fan of the upstart AFL, shown in living color on NBC, the Packers were my favorite old-time NFL powerhouse. As late Sunday afternoon shadows rolled across our backyard, we watched the Packers crush another opponent on Green Bay's "frozen tundra," narrated by Ray Scott's thrilling voice. The Packers on TV were one of the few CBS shows my father, an NBC television station executive, allowed us to watch.

Taylor finished his LSU career in 1957, the year before Coach Paul Dietzel and his Chinese Bandits won the national championship. Cannon joined him as a sophomore, also playing on offense and defense. Before Cannon and his teammates secured permanent LSU fan loyalty with the national championship and his 1959 Heisman Trophy punt return against Ole Miss, a follower could go to a ticket window just before kickoff and buy a ticket to the game.

Like Cannon, the less athletic Taylor was a follower of Baton Rouge weightlifting guru Alvin Roy, whose strength program carried Hank Stram's Kansas City Chiefs to the 1970 Super Bowl championship. Former Packers center and Georgia Tech, Alabama and Kentucky coach Bill Curry remembered after Taylor's death how Taylor insisted on the rookie Curry joining him for bench pressing sessions during Lombardi's grueling two-a-day preseason practices.

Still active two years ago, Taylor joined LSU fans in Green Bay for the Tigers' ill-fated game against Wisconsin at legendary Lambeau Field. The Green Bay Packers museum at Lambeau honored Taylor with his own exhibit, fitting for the first Lombardi Packer inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame. 

The Taylor exhibit included an amusing evaluation in which Lombardi lauds Taylor for not thinking too much. Lombardi prized those who would follow orders without question, although he had a fondness for the rebellious Hornung and Max McGee.

A typed letter from Taylor soliciting a place on the Packers belies Lombardi's comment. Taylor's letter had no typos or grammatical errors, and displays an admirable ability to express his thoughts. I was excited to see Taylor's return address from a street in Baton Rouge's Southdowns neighborhood a block or two away from where I spent my early childhood.

Taylor was overshadowed by the Cleveland Browns' more athletically gifted Jim Brown, who unlike Taylor probably never touched a weight. In contrast to Brown's breathtaking breakaway runs, Taylor chewed up yards, crushing into linebackers and defensive backs like Sam Huff, Chuck Bendarik and Dick "Night Train" Lane.

While I admire Taylor's gridiron glory, I cherish more my warm memories of the modest man who made a long drive at night through the rural Louisiana darkness to inspire young boys at camp.

Lionel Trilling's letters a beacon for today

Can the thought of Lionel Trilling matter now?

The critic and Columbia English professor who wrote "The Liberal Imagination" died in 1975, after seeing his beloved university beset by 1960s radicalism and his traditional literary culture buffeted by change.

As the nation's political discourse sinks into chaos, Trilling's rigorous analysis of politics and culture has a muted return with a volume of selected letters, surely a vanishing literary genre.

Edited by critic and poet Adam Kirsch, a late member of  Trilling's long-waning tradtion, the collection brings back a world in which writers consciously wrote letters with a view toward posterity. 

In excerpts from the letters published on the Paris Review's web site, Trilling blasts "Howl" and other poems by his former student, Allen Ginsberg, with the deadliest condemnation that they are dull. He also skewers the work of Eugene O'Neill, while extolling Dostoyevsky, Dickens, Proust and D.H. Lawrence.

The letters collection follows a biography of Trilling's wife, Diana, who emerged from her famous husband's shadow to achieve a brilliant career as a critic and journalist. Their New York intellectual world centered around the Partisan Review appears distant now, although the Paris Review and other publications strive vainly to restore it.

Trilling, as the Paris Review introduction to the letters passages notes, said he wrote at the "bloody crossroads" of literature and politics. 

Now, it's a bloody tide. Trilling's letters, and his other work, might help stop the bleeding.

Stephen W. Sears' "Lincoln's Lieutenants" shows Washington intrigue nothing new

I thought I'd had enough of reading about the Civil War.

Then I saw Stephen W. Sears' massive tome, "Lincoln's Lieutenants: The High Command of the Army of the Potomac" in the Charleston Preservation Society's bookstore.

Years before, I'd been absorbed by Sears' histories of the battles of Antietam, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. Sears generated narrative excitement by weaving dramatic vignettes of individual soldiers with compelling discussions of broader strategic aims and battlefield developments. 

Sears in "Lincoln's Lieutenants" again blends a novelist's flair with a historian's precision. His accounts of the political intrigues and personality clashes of Lincoln's presidency demonstrate that the political chaos of the Trump years is nothing new.

Lincoln's adroit dealings with his cabinet and generals and his understanding of war strategy glaringly contrast with the ignorance and recklessness of the bombastic Republican who now resides in the White House. Today's GOP is a horror-house mirror image of Lincoln's party.

While the cable channels froth over the latest Trump outrages, it's comforting to read Sears' story of how the nation survived an even more discordant era.

Sears' book gives a broader history of the Civil War through the lens of Lincoln and his generals' leadership of the Army of the Potomac. 

The luminous epic stands along two earlier classics on Civil War leadership, T. Harry Williams' 1952 book "Lincoln and His Generals" and Douglas Southall Freeman's multivolume "Lee and His Lieutenants."

Dedicated to the late Civil War historian Bruce Catton,"Lincoln and His Lieutenants" possesses the narrative sweep and mastery of details that defined earlier landmark works.

 

 

Teddy Wayne's interviews with writers on Literary Hub show vibrancy of American literature

I've been disappointed by the Literary Hub web site. Its articles often wallow in author self-indulgence and book fetishism.

An exception is Teddy Wayne's monthly interview column, "5 Writers, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers."

In the feature, Wayne asks five young or established fiction writers the same recurring questions about their inspiration, outside of books, and critical terms they find irritating. The writers also share what was going on in their lives when they were writing their novels or short story collections.

The writers are asked to not respond in complete sentences, resulting in more imaginative, reflective and poetic answers. 

A question about each writer's strengths and weaknesses brings informative reflections on writing techniques, and encouragement for younger writers. 

Wayne's column affirms that American literature remains alive and well.

 

World has 12 years to avoid complete climate change devastation, UN panel finds

The world still has time to escape the worst devastation from climate change.

A UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released this week found that the world has 12 years to head off the most extreme disaster from climate change.

The report found that enormous economic changes are needed to keep the world at a 1.5 degree celsius increase in temperatures over the pre-industrial era, rather than 2 degrees, according to a thorough article in the Guardian.

That .5 degree margin will make a big difference, according to the report, saving hundreds of millions of people from poverty and death. Sea levels won't rise as dramatically, and ocean ecosystems will have better chances of survival.

But urgent political commitment is required, as the Trump administration rejects climate change science and seeks to remove the United States from the Paris climate change treaty. Brazil's new right wing president reportedly wishes to remove his country from the treaty, and open up the Amazon Basin to commercial development. 

Other countries are also backing off their commitment to reduce carbon emissions, as agreed to in Paris several years ago.

Biillonaire progressive Tom Steyer in an appearance on Chris Hayes' MSNBC show Monday night expressed optimism that a new generation of young voters will demand action. He also said the transformation from a carbon-based economy will increase prosperity, rather than causing the economic disruption claimed by conservatives.

While Steyer's views seem too rosy, the world must take action. Alas, the UN and other groups are new age Cassandras singing to an oblivious world.

Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith's "American Journal"

As the political and cultural cacophony assails us, Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith's "American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time" offers more reflective witness to the country's experience.

The small, beautifully realized anthology, published by Graywolf Press and the Library of Congress, gives a vibrant sampling of the American poetry world.

Like other poet laureates, Smith hopes to broaden poetry's audience. Along with the anthology, whose title is taken from a poem by Robert Hayden, the first black poet laureate, Smith is conducting readings in small towns that have had little access to poetry.

Smith's selections include many of the country's long-established poets. While younger readers might wish for a wider selection from their generation, the anthology showcases work from emerging women, black, Latino, Asian-American and Native-American poets. 

The poems' shared American vernacular offers the possibility of engaging a wide audience, from those familiar with poetry to students and older readers who generally avoid poems.

"American Journal" would be a welcome addition to high school curriculums, giving students inspiration for their own writing.

At its best, "American Journal" demonstrates that a shared experience remains possible despite the country's political, social, gender and cultural divisions. The book shines a sunbeam of hope in times of growing darkness.

 

 

Farewell, Dave Anderson

Dave Anderson's columns graced The New York Times sports pages.

Like his former Times colleague Red Smith, Anderson wrote about sports with elegance and care for the English language. The last sportswriter to leave the Ebbets Field press box when the Dodgers fled Brooklyn for Los Angeles, Anderson wrote with a deep sense of history and tradition.

Anderson's death Thursday at age 89 brought home the decline of the Times' sportswriting in recent years. Along with Anderson, the newspaper once published insightful and eloquent columnists like George Vescey and William Rhoden. Vescey came out of retirement Friday to warmly remember Anderson, whose newspaper career included stints at the old Brooklyn Eagle and the New York Journal-American.

Following Smith, Anderson won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980, recognized for unmasking the callousness of late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. The Times Friday reprinted Anderson's column detailing how Steinbrenner disparaged Jackson, known as Mr. October, for falling short in the Yankees' American League Championship Series against the Kansas City Royals. A striking fact in the column: Steinbrenner was reluctant to give Jackson a $1 million annual contract rather than the $650,000 he was currently making. These days, Jackson likely would draw $30 million a year.

Anderson was one of the last links to a golden age of American sportswriting that included star columnists like Smith, the Los Angeles Times' Jim Murray, the Washington Post's Shirley Povich and The Atlanta Journal's Furman Bisher. As Vescey pointed out in his eulogy for Anderson, these writers wrote nearly everyday, their wit and eloquence rarely flagging. Roger Kahn, chronicler of the Brooklyn Dodgers in "The Boys of Summer," and Dan Jenkins remain.

They chronicled a different sports landscape, when boxing and horse racing were bigger than the NBA. Baseball rather than pro football was the undisputed top sport. The newspaper scribes also covered golf, making the Masters a major event when they stopped off in Augusta on their way back north from spring training in Florida. Their work reflected the rise of the NFL, although they remained lukewarm to pro basketball.

These gentlemen kings of the keyboard showed up at major events, pounding out their columns on typewriters and sending them to their newsrooms through Western Union. The World Series, the Super Bowl, the British Open, the U.S. Open, the Kentucky Derby - they witnessed it all. Victory and defeat. Heartbreaking injuries and thrilling plays. Young stars growing old. The shifts in American culture reflected through sports.

Their medium was newspapers. They gave their rough first drafts of history permanent appeal.

Goodbye to all that...

 

I remember autumn. Hope it comes again.

Halloween decorations look forlorn in 90 degree heat.

I remember when October meant changing seasons, not climate change.

I remember when the United States Senate called itself the "World's Greatest Deliberative Body." Now, the institution once known for great orators and legislators rushes to put a sniveling, beer-guzzling, misogynistic liar on the Supreme Court.

I remember when men valued holding their liquor. Now, the standard is drinking until puking?

The Senate once valued truth and honesty. Now, the lies have it.

Mississippi men in the past honored women. Now, they snigger as a Northern grifter insults a woman's honor.

These days, it's the home of the brazen, the land of the fraud.

 

 

Searching for the Charleston roots of "Porgy and Bess"

The "Porgy and Bess" movie soundtrack was one of my favorite albums during my childhood, frequently played on my father's 1960s-vintage cabinet hi-fi.

George Gershwin's "Summertime," "It Ain't Necessarily So," "Bess, You Is My Woman Now" and "There's a Train That's Leavin' Soon for New York" have remained bright in my mind along with songs from another classic musical that brought joy to those long summer afternoons: "My Fair Lady."

While criticized through the years for racial condescension and stereotypes, Gershwin's opera remains a landmark musical achievement, mainly because of its classic songs. After an initial 124 performances on Broadway, the opera has risen in popularity, although a Broadway revival several years ago sputtered. 

The 1959 film version, starring Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge and directed by Otto Preminger, of all people, was a critical disappointment and quickly pulled from theaters because of the racial controversy and refusal of Southern theaters to book it.

"Porgy and Bess" takes place in Charleston's black community of "Catfish Row" during the 1920s, and I wanted to delve more into the opera's background during a recent trip to the old South Carolina port city.

My wishes were fulfilled by an excellent walking tour of downtown Charleston led by professor, historian and author Damon L. Fordham. With his encyclopedic knowledge of Charleston, Fordham detailed the rich history of virtually every inch of sidewalk covered. Titled a tour of black Charleston,  the experience uncovered the intimate intertwining of black and white culture.

After beginning the tour with a soul-stirring harmonica rendition of "Summertime," Fordham eventually led us to the site of "Catfish Row," where a crippled street vendor named Samuel Smalls peddled his wares from a goat-pulled cart. The white novelist Dubose Heyward used Smalls as a model for the main character in his 1925 novel "Porgy," the basis for the opera. Along with others who've read the book, Fordham praised the novel as a literary work.

Heyward is given co-credit for the opera's libretto with Gershwin. Although he is often credited with writing the lyrics for "Summertime"  and other songs, Gershwin's brother and regular partner Ira Gershwin also receives credit from ASCAP. Stephen Sondheim believes Heyward wrote "Summertime," and praises him for its haunting quality.

Close to Heyward's home, Catfish Row is now an upscale gated residence. Porgy's cries of "devil crab, devil crab" would cause today's wealthy residents to shudder. Fordham pointed out that the area, including nearby East Bay Street, was once the site of rough bars and prostitution until massive gentrification following Hurricane Hugo. Now, the area's tapestry of voices and personalities remains only in the opera and book.

While Gershwin and Heyward now would be accused of cultural appropriation, the opera's songs stand apart as testaments to the human spirit.