Southern Bookman

Farewell, Tony Horwitz

Author Tony Horwitz's death Monday at age 60 was truly shocking.

Horwitz had just published his latest book, "Spying on the South," and was on a book tour. He died while walking in Chevy Chase, Md., on the same day that he was to appear at the famed Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.

After surviving Mideast battlefields, hazardous factories, Civil War re-enactments, Pacific voyages, Australian hikes and Southern dive bars, Horwitz succumbed to a heart attack while on a routine Memorial Day walk, according to his wife, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks.

Following the example of George Plimpton in the 1960s, Horwitz believed in participatory journalism, as his Washington Post obituary emphasized.

He was one of the lucky few who rise through the newspaper reporting ranks to establish careers as independent authors of books.

With a home on Martha's Vineyard, he could have enjoyed life as a public intellectual appearing on television talk shows and going to writers' conferences. Instead, he was a restless journalist driven to carry out difficult reporting in the field, as his friend, author Michael Lewis, said.

After stints at smaller newspapers, Horwitz won a Pulitzer at the Wall Street Journal for his on-site investigation of hazardous work at Southern chicken plants. He and Brooks also covered the first Gulf War and other Mideast turmoil for the Journal.

Wall Street Journal colleagues recalled that Horwitz possessed special talent for reporting and writing. Newspaper reporters traditionally excelled at one or the other, although that musty division fell away with the advent of college-educated journalists.

After working at the New Yorker, Horwitz broke free from the bonds of newspaper and magazine writing with "Confederates in the Attic," an examination of the culture of Civil War battle re-enactors.

The book was hailed as a modern journalistic classic, assigned in college and high school courses. A new generation of neo-Confederate sympathizers condemned the book, harassing Horwitz at readings.

"Confederates in the Attic" found that political and social divisions that split the country in the 19th century persisted in late 20th century America. The book's themes look even more prescient as conflict deepens.

Continuing a tradition established by de Tocqueville, Horwitz in his latest book toured the South to talk to its disgruntled working-class residents.

While de Tocqueville traveled across the then young United States, Horwitz was the latest Northern or European writer to view the South as an exotic land. Such attempts to interpret the South also have deep roots; Horwitz followed paths traced by Frederick Law Olmsted before the Civil War.

Donald Trump's support among Southern conservatives has made such sociological probes common. Whether they present an accurate picture is debatable.

The South's complexities are difficult to fathom, even for an astute reporter and writer like Horwitz. These  journeys to the Southern heart of darkness make Southerners roll their eyes, and hasten to replay Randy Newman's "Good Ole Boys."

It sounds as if Horwitz in "Spying on the South" made as good an effort at understanding the region as any, but what an alienating title. With the rise of Atlanta, Houston, Dallas and other cities in the 1960s, the South lost its strangeness and appeared like the rest of the nation. Or perhaps not.

Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, North Carolina and Florida remain primitive, while their metro areas hurtle through the 21st century. Texas and Virginia look like vanguards until they don't. There is no Mind of the South, but many.

After an exhaustive journey across the region, Horwitz died young in the city known as the crossroads of the North and South,  where the country's violent divisions roil beneath marble monuments.

 

Brian Kemp fights Hollywood boycott

Now Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is a movie critic?

Mr. Shotgun is a multi-talented wonder, an expert on women's health and now a Hollywood insider.

After signing legislation that criiminalizes abortion, Kemp blasted Hollywood threats to boycott Georgia as coming from "C-list" celebrities.

Although Kemp's campaign commercials showed a gift for comedy, he undoubtedly knows as little about who's big in Hollywood as he does about medicine. Who would he put on the A-list, Mel Gibson?

Since Georgia gives unlimited tax breaks to film-makers, Kemp's probably right that a boycott won't gain much traction. The studios make too much profit from Georgia productions to stop shooting films in the state.

A Democratic woman legislator who fought he harsh abortion bill also opposes the boycott, pointing out that those working in Georgia's burgeoning film industry could lose their jobs, the AJC reported.

Georgia has begun an academy to train workers in different film industry specialties, such as lighting and makeup. Many film workers have moved from California to Georgia, attracted by the Peach State's lower cost of living.

Other Southern states with flourishing film industries have also passed harsh anti-abortion laws. Alabama's law is even more draconian than Georgia's, and Louisiana will probably pass a law similar to Georgia's. Louisiana's Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, an abortion foe, likely will sign the bill.

A Hollywood boycott against all of these states looks implausible. Restricting film-making to California and New York would burden the industry with unsustainable costs.

Instead of a boycott, some big filmmakers want to use profits from Georgia films to support the ACLU's legal challenge of the Georgia law.

Whatever happens, Kemp might have come up with a good marketing appeal for film stars. Imagine the Hollywood buzz if an actor or actress could brag "I was on Brian Kemp's c-list."

 

 

 

Australian "coal hugger" takes unexpected victory

The global battle against climate change suffered another blow with the unexpected re-election of Australian prime minister Scott Morrison, a conservative notorious for his anti-environmental policies.

Goodbye, Great Barrier Reef. Like the Amazon rain forest, threatened by Brazil's hard-right president, you're going down.

Morrison's election had the Wall Street Journal's editorial page chortling Monday. Australian native Rupert Murdoch's newspaper seemed giddy over Morrison's unexpected win over the Labor Party. Polls had consistently predicted a victory for Labor and its anti-climate change policies. A WSJ news story called Morrison a "coal-hugger."

Like Brazil, Australia is a sensitive flashpoint for the world's environment. Its Great Barrier Reef shelters a multitude of oceanic species. The reef's slow death is a barometer of the rapidly intensifying effects of global warming.

Media reports claimed that Australian voters were worried that Labor's green intitiatives would hurt the economy. Voters don't appear to understand the economic devastation of extreme weather, drought, loss of wildlife habitat and other climate change disasters.

The Australian election is another sign that the world is refusing to heed a rising chorus of climate change alarms.

Harper's Kevin Baker finds Green New Deal the best hope for American future

The Green New Deal offers the best chance for surviving climate change, Kevin Baker argues in a persuasive article in the May Harper's magazine.

Rather than the impractical, quixotic, absurd chimera painted by critics on the left and right, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's plan for a non-carbon economy outlines the most realistic course for the country's future, Baker says. While critics believe that half-measures can be taken, the Green New Deal expresses the truth that a total economic makeover is required. 

Baker turns to the Roosevelt New Deal for models of the full-scale action needed. Along with Depression-era Soil Conservation Service programs to restore dust bowl land ravaged by disastrous agricultural practices, Baker gives an extensive history of the Tennessee Valley Authority's transformation of poverty-stricken rural areas of Alabama and Tennessee.

Acknowledging that the TVA's damming of the Tennessee River looks environmentally destructive now, Baker makes a convincing case for a full-scale mobilization to end carbon emissions. Whether the TVA's massive electrification projects give the best model is debatable. Perhaps a proliferation of smaller projects would prove more effective.

While Baker ignores that World War II brought the biggest changes to the U.S. economy, his look back at Roosevelt's new deal illustrates that the United States once had the political will and social commitment to make major changes. While flawed, the Green New Deal offers a workable blueprint for that same level of unified action.

 

 

 

Katha Pollitt revisits 1969 Harvard student strike

Nation columnist Katha Pollitt attended the 50-year reunion of student strikers who shut down Harvard University in 1969.

Pollitt expressed pleasure that the aging radicals are still leftists who have followed socially conscious careers. None have become investment bankers or hedge fund sharks.

Displaying her usual wit and clear writing, Pollitt delves into the ideologies of competing left-wing groups whose dogmatic disputes all too often bogged down the era's campus politics.

Despite the internecine squabbles, the Harvard SDS took control, bringing such gains as an outstanding African-American studies program and the construction of affordable housing.  Pollitt also notes that the strike led to a longtime ban of ROTC from campus.

While I've read extensively about the 1969 student riot at Columbia, another center of Ivy League radicalism, and the free speech movement at Berkeley, I didn't know about the Harvard action until reading Pollitt's piece. The Harvard strike sounded a bit more well-ordered than the actions at Cal and Columbia.

Pollitt notes that the Harvard strike received little faculty support, crediting the eminent philosopher John Rawls for bailing out the students from the Cambridge, Mass., jail.

During the reunion, the old leftists from what was then the new left also met with today's student activists, whose main challenge is climate change, not the Vietnam War.

While Pollitt took a satisfied tone, I felt the same regret that rises whenever I hear on the '60s channel, "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius."

With all of its excesses, the '60s protests brought real gains in civil rights and concern for the environment.

But, capped by Donald Trump's excruciating win over Hilary Clinton, the country now appears in full retreat from those progressive accomplishments. With malevolent Mitch McConnell packing the courts with Trump's regressive judges, the reversals appear intractable.

A new generation of activists raises hope, but so far their efforts lack the momentum of the 1960s. The threat of climate change and mass extinctions is even greater.

 

 

Widespread species extinctions threaten human existence, report warns

The dinosaurs were killed off by a meteor. Now, we are the meteor rapidly destroying life on Earth.

Human activity at its present rate will bring the extinction of a million plant and animal species, according to a U.N. report.

The extinctions are the largest in human history, the report found. Human life depends on the threatened ecosystems, the report warned.

While climate change exacerbates the loss of life, the primary causes come from human activity like deforestation, poaching, and overfishing.

Natural habitat is being lost at accelerating rates. In Thailand, rain forests are being turned into palm-oil plantations, devastating wildlife habitats. The death of coral reefs threatens marine diversity.

The report had a ray of hope. "Through transformative change, nature can still be conserved, restored and used sustainably," concluded Sir Robert Wilson, who led the research for the Intergovernmental Seience-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

Such a transformative change will also be required to reduce carbon emissions and lessen the devastation of global warming.

Those sounding the alarm about climate change and widespread species extinctions keep saying that humanity has time to take action. Instead, the world accelerates faster and faster toward disaster.

 

Louisiana's Advocate swallows larger Times-Picayune

I was astounded that the Baton Rouge Advocate has bought out the New Orleans Times-Picayune and its NOLA web site.

Advocate owners and local entrepreneurs John and Dathel Georges announced Thursday that they are purchasing the Picayune from the much larger Newhouse Corp. The purchase deal came just a few weeks after the Baton Rouge Advocate won a Pulitzer Prize for a series that brought an end to Louisiana allowing guilty verdicts on 10-2 jury votes.

The Advocate moved into New Orleans in 2012 when the Newhouse Corp. decided to cut back the Picayune's print publication and concentrate on its digital edition.

The Georges' New Orleans Advocate moved into the space left by the Picayune, publishing a print newspaper seven days a week and establishing one of the few competitive newspaper markets in the United States. The New Orleans Advocate established a local office at a historic building on stately St. Charles Avenue.

That proved a winning strategy in the long run. Despite its poverty and low literacy rate, New Orleans preferred reading a daily newspaper rather than getting its news via computer or smart phone.

Beginning in June, a new newspaper bearing both the Picayune and Advocate names will publish a print edition seven days a week, a rare win in recent years for print journalism over the digital model.

While retreating from New Orleans, Newhouse will apparently continue its digital-first strategy in markets across the United States, including Birmingham, Ala.

The Advocate company also will take over the NOLA web site, which will combine with the Advocate's. The Advocate recently switched to a paid subscription model for its web site.

As a Louisiana native and alum of the Baton Rouge Advocate, I'll miss the spirited competition between the two media companies. The Georgeses promised to hire Picayune staffers and continue to run T-P features and comics. I hope that includes the excellent Picayune/NOLA team that covers Louisiana's coastal erosion and other environmental problems. Reporting on LSU sports and state government likely will grow less competitive.

The Georgeses are also strong-arming the competition in the Acadiana capital of Lafayette. According to the Advocate article announcing the purchase of the New Orleans newspaper, the Georges power couple recently doubled the staff of the Lafayette Advocate by raiding staffers from the venerable Lafayette Advertiser.

While the Georgeses' commitment to print newspapers is laudable, they apparently want to own the sole newspaper covering South Louisiana. The disappearance of independent local voices like the Picayune and Advertiser won't be healthy for the state.

 

 

Montgomery, city of light and darkness

Martin Luther King's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church stands at the base of the hill that rises to the marble-domed Alabama State Capitol.

On the Saturday before Easter, a lady in a white dress and stylish hat invites visitors to the next day's service at the church from where the young pastor King launched the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. The lady's smile is as bright as the spring sunshine, her voice as lilting as the afternoon breeze.

In the next block toward the Capitol stands a worn concrete monument, placed in 1947, one of the last years of lynchings in the South. The memorial's fading words note that Jefferson Davis' inaugural parade came down Dexter Avenue past that location on Feb. 18, 1861. The plaque also mentions that "Dixie" was first played as a band arrangement during the occasion.

Near the majestic state Capitol, a statue of Davis looks down from the hill to the historic vista below. Past the Lurleen Wallace state office building, a tower built by the Retirement System of Alabama stands behind an impressive fountain that gushes rhythmic jets of white water.

Chris' Hot Dogs, selling dogs covered with chili from a secret family recipe since 1919, sits in a modest quarters across the street. Nearby, the historic Kress department store building has been repurposed into apartments.

At the foot of Dexter Avenue, a pleasant fountain marks the spot where slaves were sold in the antebellum city. There, Market turns from Dexter into Commerce, a street of hotel chains and renovated 19th century buildings. Commerce heads to the Alabama Riverfront, where walking paths and concert sites have replaced the old cotton docks.

Like Charleston, S.C., New Orleans and other  deep South cities, Montgomery now acknowledges its dark past of slavery and suppression of blacks. That makes for wrenching historical juxtapositions.

In counterpoise, Montgomery saunters along with an easy-going Southern gentility. Like other small Southern cities, it supports the arts and restaurants that seek with mixed success to match the foodie meccas of bigger metropolises. A small but well-stocked museum honors the tortured life of country music legend Hank Williams, whose grave lies in a historic cemetery about a mile from downtown.

At the historic Alley in downtown Montgomery, the Legacy Museum explores the city's history of black oppression. Exhibits show the city's origins as a slave market, the Civil War, the South's post-Reconstruction terror campaign against blacks, the Jim Crow and segregation eras, and the Civil Rights movement begun by Rosa Parks and other brave women who refused to give their seats to whites and move to the back of the bus.

With video and text, the museum tells the story of the young newcomer King leading the boycott, and the brilliant organizing of a transportation network and walking campaign that carried the boycott to victory after more than a year.

A shuttle ride away, the Equal Justice Initiative's National Memorial for Peace and Justice honors more than 4,000 African-American men, women and children who were lynched across the South between 1877 and 1950.

The memorial's steel monuments list the victims from each county in the United States where lynchings occurred. Identifying the names and places represent a stunning feat of research. The steel monuments also list those whose names are unknown.

The lynchings seem to have peaked around 1906, corresponding to the era when Confederate memorials were being placed around the South. Disturbingly, lynchings occurred as late as 1950, including several listed in Georgia in 1947.

We might think of lynching as a rural or small-town phenomenon, but two of the longest lists come from Atlanta's Fulton County and New Orleans' Orleans Parish. The presence of city justice systems didn't dissuade vigilante acts of violence.

The memorial lies upon a hill that that looks down upon the city's small commercial district. As with Capitol hill, the memorial's serenity and beauty contrast with the legacy of violence it remembers.

On a lovely spring day, the day before Easter, the lynchings seem far away. Yet the recurring violent events of recent history show that the human heart has not progressed as the 21st century rushes forward. The names bear testimony that the struggle for peace and justice goes on.

 

 

 

France divisions return after Notre Dame Cathedral fire

The Notre Dame Cathedral fire united France and the world in grief for the 850-year-old monument at the heart of Paris.

That didn't last long. Donations by corporations and wealthy families to rebuild the cathedral quickly drew criticism from right and left.

The leader of the yellow vest protests that have shaken Emmanuel Macron's government sniffed that the families behind LVMH and L'Oreal would receive tax breaks, meaning the average French taxpayer would really pay for the rebuilding.

And Disney, which reaped enormous profits from a cartoon version of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," pledged a relatively meager $5 million.

Even Macron's vow to rebuild the cathedral in five years brought discord. Experts said a restoration likely would take as long as 20 years. A debate stirred over whether the restoration should add modern construction materials or aim for an illusory historical authenticity, which the cathedral had already lost.

The fire was the result of a restoration project that was scheduled to take at least 15 years. The old cathedral, extensively refurbished in the 19th century, was falling apart, a project that didn't excite as much passion as the fire's reconstruction campaign, as Slate's Henry Grabar pointed out.

As the fire burned, I imagined Victor Hugo's Quasimodo clambering upon the ancient roof to put out the flames. Absent the noble lover of Esmeralda, the Parisian firefighters performed heroically.

The Wall Street Journal Thursday detailed how a decision to stop the fire from spreading to the cathedral's signature bell towers saved the structure from collapsing. The WSJ also reported how the firefighters used water from the Seine River, at reduced pressure, to limit the fire's damage.

Notre Dame's construction in the Middle Ages came from a society united by religion and shared artistic values. The fire recalled one of the great books on medieval society, and its veneration of the Virgin Mary, Henry Adams' "Mont St. Michel and Chartres."

Since the French Revolution, France has been a steadfastly secular nation. Outside of Notre Dame, Catholic Masses are sparsely attended. My daughter said that during a high school stay in France, she and a couple of elderly women were the only worshipers.

Yet, the country remains intensely Catholic by culture. The French personality, with its talent for abstract thought and literature, love of sensual pleasure, and old-world inefficiency, derives from long centuries of Catholic influence.

Now, Western Europe is riven by social conflict, unable to reach agreement on whether Notre Dame should be rebuilt. Someone pointed out that the "forest" of ancient timber that fueled the fire can't be replaced; France no longer has a sufficient number of mature oak trees. In the past, ancient cathedrals ruined by fire have been rebuilt with modern construction methods, without loss of their authenticity.

While France's social divisions quickly split apart, the Notre Dame fire's aftermath brought a heart-warming show of unity in a leap in donations for three black churches in rural Louisiana burned by an accused arsonist. The Baptist churches in St. Landry Parish, in the heart of French Louisiana, received $1.8 million in donations.

France sees Notre Dame as the symbol of its historic greatness, which Macron wishes to restore. Now France must summon a unified will to rebuild Notre Dame.

 

 

 

Black hole mission a model for effort required to fight climate change

That black hole image was great.

Now, scientists need to get busy to find a solution to global warming.

As the Event Horizon mission revealed the dark orb's photo from 55 million light years away,  the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that Alaska's March temperatures averaged 20 degrees higher than normal.

A high of 42 degees Farenheit, 30 degrees above the usual, was recorded on March 30 in Kotzebue, according to The New York Times.

Alaska's spring heat wave was the result of the Bering Sea losing its ice and the jet stream shifting to the south, the Times said, adding that the Arctic is experiencing more extreme temperature increases than any other region. That will bring more melting, and an escalating chain of climate change reactions.

If urgent action is not taken soon, climate change will reach its own event horizon, or point of no return.

The black hole image from the Messier 87 galaxy in the Virgo constellation emerged from a global network of telescopes, according to media reports. A young graduate student, Katie Bouman,  played a leading role in a team developing an algorithm to link the telescope data.

Such a concentrated global effort will be required to prevent the worst devastation from climate change.

But the Trump administration's climate change denial, support of fossil fuel industries and budget cuts to agencies like NOAA threaten humanity's future.

A sustained political, economic and scientific mobilization against climate change is needed or else our world will turn as desolate as a black hole swirling in space.