Bruce Barcott

Twilight of the Ice Bear, plus podcast

Book reviewing is a strange practice. As a fellow writer, you hope that every book sent your way is a masterpiece. As a critic, honesty is your stock in trade. So it's always a treat when you get a chance to review a book by an author whose work you enjoy--and the new book turns out to be great. Such was the case with Richard Ellis's new book, On Thin Ice, all about polar bears and their current imperilment. My review of Ellis's book appeared in the December 13, 2009 issue of the New York Times Book Review, and I've recorded an audio version of the review here: Download WS_30314. (This is my first stab at a podcast, and I hope to put more of my articles and reviews into audio form in the near future.) Although I hadn't met Ellis prior to writing the review--the Times Book Review's conflict of interest rules are pretty strict about that sort of thing--I had the chance to spend a delightful hour with him over lunch last week during his book tour swing through Seattle. He'd had a busy morning, doing Fox News and NPR before going on to an evening reading at Town Hall. With the climate change conference going on in Copenhagen, his expertise on polar bears and global warming was in high demand. As we were leaving, I commented on his hat, which came from Churchill, Manitoba, famous for its polar bear tourism. "I've always wanted to get up there to see the bears," I told him. "Better do it quickly," he told me. "They won't be there long."

Riding Is His Ritalin

  Late last year I had an interesting conversation with Dave Howard, an editor I've worked with for years. Dave's the executive editor at Bicycling Magazine, and he mentioned an off-the-cuff comment from a former Olympic bicycle racer. In his day, the ex-racer said, you cycled away your hyperactivity; that was partly how he got into the sport. "I wonder how many kids over the past decade got put on Ritalin instead," he said. "How many potential racers never discovered the sport?" That got Dave and me to talking: What if we took that question seriously? So began a seven-month investigation into the history of ADHD and the use, study, and abandonment of exercise as a serious treatment for the condition. The result appears in this month's issue of Bicycling: Riding Is My Ritalin, a story about the powerful positive effects of exercise on the brain, and the largely unrecognized potential it has for people struggling with ADHD. In the course of my research I turned up a number of promising studies linking concentrated, regular doses of exercise to steady improvement in the management of ADHD in children. Time and again, those studies were ignored or never followed up. The reason? Exercise doesn't result in big profits for pharmaceutical companies. In the course of my reporting, I found one athlete who was going his own way and acting as a one-man test case. Adam Leibovitz, 19, was diagnosed with ADHD 13 years ago and has tried a suite of drugs, from Ritalin to Adderall to all the rest. A couple years ago he decided to drop the drugs and use his bicycle training to calm his mind. So far, it's working. Adam's a nationally ranked spring cyclist and a sophomore at Marian University in Indianapolis. Check out his story here.

Some nice surprises

Apparently it's prize week around here. On Monday night I dragged myself to the door, sopping wet from a long week up in the rainforests of British Columbia, and found a bounty awaiting me: Korean editions!

Somewhere out there a translator has been burning the midnight oil to turn out a Korean-language edition of Last Flight. (Translator: Whoever you are, give me a shout. I have a signed edition waiting for you.) Looks fabulous. If you're in the market for a copy, contact Sallim Books, they can hook you up.

In other exciting news: Last Flight has been named the winner of the 2009 Gene E. & Adele R. Malott Prize for Recording Community Activism, which recognizes the best literary depiction of an individual whose efforts resulted in a significant improvement of their local community. It's an especially neat award because it honors the community activist--the Belize Zoo's Sharon Matola--as much as the book.

Finally: I just learned that the book has been named a finalist for the 2009 Washington State Book Award, an honor given to The Measure of a Mountain a decade ago. Good times. Now I gotta go dry out my gear.

Chalillo Update: Dam turning clear river brown

The final pages of my book, The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird, took place nearly four years ago. How's the Chalillo Dam worked out for Belize? Not so great. Here's the latest: During Belize's June-to-November rainy season the green, placid Macal River typically swells into a roiling beast. But this year something's a little off. Unusually high amounts of sediment are mucking up the river, and it's not all coming from hillside runoff. Candy Gonzalez, who's been monitoring the dam since it began construction years ago, has obtained aerial photographs that show the river running clear in the reservoir behind the dam, and turning chocolate below the dam. Stephen Usher, operations VP for BECOL, which runs the dam, acknowledges that the company is flushing high levels of sediment out of the reservoir. (The dam's intake pipes are several hundred feet below surface water level. Sediment can kill a dam if it fills in the reservoir and smothers the intake pipes.) Usher blames Guatemalan Xateros--foreign palm frond poachers--for deforesting the hills surrounding the dam and causing the iron-rich soil to run into the water. Which is classic Belize: When in doubt, blame Guatemala. Downstream residents, many of whom depend on the river for drinking water, are complaining about dirty stinky water coming out of their taps. Adele Ramos, as usual, has the best reports on the developing story in Amandala (updated here). Channel 7 has an expected take-no-sides version, and International Rivers has a version slanted toward the enviro side. Adding to the controversy: A photo of the Macal, downstream of Chalillo, meeting the Mopan River (left), showing the undammed Mopan running clear until it meets the silt-laden Macal. ** 8/27 UPDATE ** Adele Ramos continues to push the story in Amandala. The latest issue has a senior Gov't of Belize health inspector advising: (1) Don't drink the water, (2) Don't swim in the water, and (3) Don't worry, all is under control. Next up: A public meeting to discuss the river brownout, next Thursday, Sept 2, at the Cultural Center in Cayo. Expect fireworks.

Svalbard: A Paradise of Ice Faces a Creeping Thaw

Five minutes past midnight in Svalbard: The wild world is awake and clattering. At the edge of a sheltered estuary in the Adventdalen, a valley on a cluster of islands halfway between Norway and the North Pole, a flock of arctic terns soar and wheel in the perpetual daylight.

It's a typical summer night in Svalbard, an entirely atypical refuge in the high Arctic that abounds with an extraordinary array of wildlife. I had the amazing opportunity to visit this high northern refuge last summer for National Geographic, which recently published a few of my words alongside Paul Nicklen's spectacular photographs--stunning shots in the best of the Geographic tradition. (That's his Svalbard reindeer in motion.)

What's it like in Svalbard? Bright. 24-hours-a-day bright during the time I was there (August), which was highly amusing and mildly disorienting. I went for sunshiney hikes at 2am, though not outside of the town limits, because those who do so run the risk of being eaten by polar bears. Here's a shot of your faithful correspondent tanning in the midnight hours. The biggest surprise? The locals' love of winter, which brings 24-hour darkness. "It's the best in winter," one of them told me, "because it is just us, just the local people, and everyone meets at the sports center for volleyball games and has parties, and snowmobiles gives you free reign of the island."

Port Townsend picks up "Measure of a Mountain"

...and doesn't, one hopes, fling it across the room. The Port Townsend Public Library recently announced that The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier, my 1997 book about the Northwest's great geographic icon, would be the featured title in its 2009 Community Read.

I find this both amazing and moderately frightening.

How cool to have your book read by an entire town! It sounds kind of like the plot of a Stanley Kramer movie--whole town reads the book, invites author, then...something goes horribly awry in a way that propels us through awkward/funny situations to a third act resolution in which all involved learn something grand and touchingly human about themselves.

It all happens next month (March), and includes a mind-boggling number of events about Rainier, and mountains, and people's opinions about the book. I'll be there on Thursday, March 26 for a massive star-studded multimedia extravaganza of a presentation but frankly I'm tempted to slip in unannounced to some of the earlier events. There's a "Book discussion group" scheduled to meet at the Hilltop Tavern at 7pm on Thursday, March 10. Now look: I've slung back a beer in Port Townsend. The idea of a posse of critics having a go at your own book around a pitcher at the Hilltop is both profoundly scary and almost irrisistibly enticing. Especially since I've seen the MySpace page for the Hilltop. Which lists the Hilltop as a 47-year-old female. "I am a red brick building..." says the Hilltop. "I have a new beer garden. It makes the customers very happy to be able to drink outside."

My goodness.

Anyway: Come on over to PT next month for the big doings. Couple of really nice articles about it just came out in the Port Townsend Leader and the Peninsula Daily News. The Daily News piece has a massive head shot of me that has me (a) running to RiteAid for some SPF 45 and (b) considering using its gargantuanity as a Fathead poster in our basement.

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Obama's open goverment: Let's hold him to it

There's a fantastic transcript of today's Obama cabinet meeting flying around via e-mail right now. A couple things of note. First, the man seems to be able to toss off Bartlett's-worthy remarks like a Denny's fry cook whipping out Grand Slams ("Order up!"). In the course of introducing tough new lobbying rules, which should stop the ridiculous door-spinning we all got used to during the Bush days, he said this:

It's not about advancing your friends or your corporate clients.  It's not about advancing
an ideological agenda or the special interests of any organization.  Public service is, 
simply and absolutely, about advancing the interests of Americans.  

Sure, plenty of politicians could say that. But Bush never did. And if he did, the evidence would have proven him a liar.

Also, Obama turned the Freedom of Information Act back into the Freedom of Information Act. Under the Bush rules, government officials were ordered to err on the side of secrecy. If a document wasn't already public, there were almost no good reasons to make it so. Obama just changed that.

For a long time now, there's been too much secrecy in this city.  The old rules said that if there was a defensible argument for not disclosing something to the American people, then it should not be disclosed.  That era is now over.  Starting today, every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information but those who seek to make it known.

Those two items aren't campaign promises. Obama just signed the Executive Orders. They're done.

Now it's up to us to hold him to it.

Birdstrike II: Why can't we shield the engines?

I've been asked the question three times in the past hour: Why can't they just put shields over the engines of airplanes to keep birds from destroying them? In other words, put some dang ol' wire mesh in front of 'em, like they did in the old days. Well, at least the old German days (see photo). I put the question to Russ DeFusco, one of the world's leading birdstrike experts and my main source for birdstrike knowledge over the past six months. Says Russ:

I can't even tell you how often this is suggested to us, but the bad news is it just can't be done.  Any kind of defective shield is so disruptive to airflow that modern jet engines just can't operate with them.  In order to make such a shield, it would have to be minimally intrusive and thus not able to withstand an impact.  In fact, such a shield would likely collapse and itself be drawn into the engines and thus cause even more damage.  The answer has been incorporated into almost all modern jet engines: a high bypass ratio.  Most air bypasses the core of the engine and is redirected, forced down, and used as thrust and for cooling.  Only a portion (usually less than 20%) is used for combustion in the core.  Therefore, most debris, including birds, is shunted to the perimeter of the engine and bypasses the core.  Unfortunately, birds and other debris when they hit the fan blades sometimes cause those blades to fail and they in turn are ingested along with the bird remains.  This, along with the inherent instability that results is usually the cause of an engine's demise in such events.

Russ has more info, great links, and a slideshow at www.bash-inc.com.

Birdstrike: Behind the US Air Crash

Talk about strange timing: About three weeks ago I handed in a 3,500-word feature on the danger of birdstrikes--airplanes hitting birds--to the editors at Audubon Magazine. "The numbers keep going up, and the FAA is just clueless," one veteran pilot told me. "The airline industry doesn't want to get involved because they're afraid they might have to spend money. Nobody will get involved until we have a big catastrophe." 
    Enter catastrophe. 
    Early indications are that yesterday's crash of a US Airways jet on New York's Hudson River was caused by a birdstrike. Two, in fact. Canada geese. Took out the engines.
    Aubudon is scrambling to put the piece up on its web site, and it should be there any minute now. I'll link to it when it's live. In the meantime, I put together a short piece for the New York Times Op-Ed page, which they're running on their "Room for Debate" web site, which picks up where the printed page leaves off. As soon as the Audubon story goes up, I'll post more photos and videos of birdstrikes. Amazing stuff, really.

Gil's Great Goodbye

The Bush Administration warped American life in such profound yet subtle ways that we won't really know what hit us we can look back years from now and wonder, What the hell? Take, as one tiny example, television. There were some shows made unwatchable by their virtuous counter-example: The West Wing. Week after week, we'd tune in to watch the train we'd all missed by a few lousy Florida votes--a smart, articulate, chess-playing(!) president who was familiar with the concepts of strategy, diplomacy, and sophistication. At least you all tuned in, because after a while the contrast between make-believe Martin Sheen and the real-world man in the Oval became too painful for me to take. And then there were shows made unbearable simply by the knowledge that Dick Cheney liked them: 24. How could you enjoy Kiefer Sutherland saving the world when you knew the Dark One took every episode as an endorsement for waterboarding? There were changes in viewing habits that, at first, baffled the commentariat--I worry and scratch my chin as America switches from Tom Brokaw to Jon Stewart--and then, as some unspoken tipping point was reached, became obvious. How could you not get your news from Stewart, seemingly the only man in America left with an honest, not-completely-gutless reaction. Finally, last night's exit by Gil Grissom from CSI. It's no mystery why CSI has crushed all comers in the ratings: Cops and robbers in Vegas, great writing, fab acting, good guys win. And no politics involved. Pure escapism. Until last night, that is. On his way out the door, Gil Grissom (William Peterson) uttered a piece of advice to his successor, played by Samuel L. Jackson. "People lie," he said. "The only thing we can count on is the evidence." As the Bushies leave the building, it's not a bad aphorism to remember them by.