Books read:
·
The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
·
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
·
Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad by
William Craig
The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough
Trails walked:
·
Mogollon Rim tourist walks (July 31st)
·
Arizona Trail Passage 27 south (Aug 7th)
·
Blue Lake near Boulder, Colorado (Aug 16th)
·
Black Powder Pass near Breckenridge, Colorado
(Aug 18th)
Song of the month:
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| Mt Boreas, near Breckenridge, CO |
Why is this time of year known as the Dog Days of Summer? I first heard the reference while watching baseball, when the announcers would refer to the month of August as the Dog Days. I took it to mean that period when the stadiums were hot, the season was getting long, and the playoffs were still over a month away. But it turns out that the term Dog Days originates in the stars. The phrase is actually a reference to the fact that, during this time of the year, the Sun is in the same area of the sky as Sirius, the brightest star visible from Earth and part of the constellation Canis Major (Greater Dog). So we have Dog Days. August is rough in Phoenix. It is always hot, even at 10 at night. You get the occasional monsoon which cools things off for a few hours, but then it just gets hot AND humid. I've only been on two Arizona hikes this month because even up north it's hot. Luckily we were able to spend a week in Colorado and get in a couple of cool weather hikes. Actually another reason I haven't been hiking in AZ much this month is that my wife had ankle replacement surgery. I didn't even know this was possible. I've heard of hip and knee replacements, but ankle? I guess they first were done in the 1970s but were pretty much a disaster. It wasn't until the 1990s, when better synthetic parts and a better understanding of the earlier mistakes that the surgery starting becoming more common. And in just the last 10 years, the materials and procedures have gotten really good and there is now a 90% success rate after 4-5 years. In any case it's a brutal surgery. They basically saw the bone off your foot and lower leg (leaving the ligaments and tendons in place), insert a sort of metal/plastic pivoting joint, close you up and away you go with lots of pain pills. It's done quite a lot now to deal with arthritis and bad accidents. My wife was thrown from a car in a fatal accident when she was very young and has been dealing with problems from her injuries much of her life. Hopefully this will resolve it all and she'll be joining me on hikes next summer.
Song of the Month: I recently read an interview with Billie
Eilish in Rolling Stone magazine. I had
heard the name but placed her in the general category of young female pop stars
whose music wouldn’t interest me. I was wrong. I was impressed by this young woman’s
honesty, intelligence, and creativity. And,
the fact that she has this normal family who loves her and supports
her (her mom was telling her to clean her room while the interview was taking
place). She’s only 17 years old and she
(along with her older brother) is creating some of the most interesting music
around today. Thom Yorke (lead singer
of Radiohead) once came up to her and very grumpily said, “You’re the only one
doing anything f’ing interesting nowadays.”
In her young life, she has already dealt with depression, Tourette’s
Syndrome, and synesthesia (where one’s senses are simultaneously perceived;
like hearing a song and seeing the color blue); so she already has a lot of material. This song that I picked has a great intro bass beat and tells the story
of a woman taunting her abusive lover. I picked “Bad Guy” as the song of
the month, but you really need to listen to other songs she’s done which are creative
and really diverse. Songs like “I Love
You” one of the most honest love songs I’ve heard; and “My Strange Addiction” which mixes in audio
from the TV show “The Office” which is one of her favorite shows (there’s a
video interview on YouTube where the actor who plays Dwight Schrut gives Eilish
quiz questions from the show); and “Xanny” which is about our medicated
society; and “Bury a Friend” which is truly haunting.
I’ve not heard of someone so young writing such meaningful lyrics
since Jackson Browne wrote “These Days” when he was 16. Here’s another fascinating thing about her: she
wrote “When I Was Older” after being inspired by the film Roma, which in my
opinion was the best film of 2018, but I didn’t think anyone under the age of
50 would like that movie. I’ve made predictions of greatness for young
artists in the past that I’ve whiffed on (I'm talking to you Counting Crows), but I really do believe this is
someone special, and she has a supportive family that should help her get through
the tough times that she’s sure to see with all this fame she’s
acquiring at such a young age. Here’s hoping she stays true
to herself and doesn’t get caught up in the “star making machinery.”
In addition to telling the story of orchids, The Orchid
Thief by Susan Orlean is a book about Florida; and a book about
passion. I imagine it’s probably on some
of those lists you see of books to read for each state in the country. Susan Orlean is a writer for New Yorker
magazine and wrote a 1995 article about a guy in Florida named John Laroche
who, along with three Seminole tribe members had been arrested for stealing orchids
from Florida’s state lands. That article
turned into this 1998 book. Orchids are
a fascinating topic. There are 30,000
different species and over 100,000 hybridized/laboratory species. They recently outsold poinsettias as the most
cultivated plant for sale worldwide. But
this is a recent phenomenon. Before the
1980s and 90s it was nearly impossible to grow orchids outside of their natural
environment, which made them rare and valuable.
But plant scientists eventually figured out how to do it with certain
species and in the 80s and 90s orchids became available to Home Depot customers
for around $80-90. Then Taiwan got
involved and came up with better cloning and growing techniques and now you can
buy orchids for $10. But in the 1800s
and early 1900s people were risking their lives and dying to find and gather
orchids from their natural environments because they were in demand by the
wealthy and powerful. There are still
rare orchids that are unable to be grown in a laboratory environment and some
of them are extremely valuable and are protected by governments in Malaysia,
China, India, and other countries. A
rare orchid that was developed in a lab in Taiwan was sold in 2005 for
$200,000, making it the most expensive flower ever sold. Go Google pictures of the Monkey orchid or
the Owl orchid; it’s crazy the shapes they come in. Anyway, back to the book. John Laroche is really an unlikable guy for
me which sort of turned me off for a bit.
He’s a hustler who will do anything to make a buck and not care about
rules or ethics. I guess he makes for an
interesting character, but if the book only focused on him, I would have
stopped reading early on. He was accused
of stealing orchids from the Fakahatchee Strand State Park in Florida (a
swampland in the southwest part of the state).
He was working for the Seminole tribe at the time and tried to argue
that Native Americans weren’t subject to the same laws concerning plants in
their native lands. He lost the argument
and was banned from the park. The guy
had lots of schemes in his life, from art dealing (where he basically stole
artifacts from Central and South American burial grounds), to orchids, to
internet schemes. He did know a LOT
about orchids though and was obsessed with them to the point of breaking the law
to get what he wanted. But I really
enjoyed the detours the author took into topics such as the Gulf American
Company that tried to sell Florida swampland to returning military vets from the
Northeast United States "real cheap" (it’s where the saying “yeah and I’ve got some nice
swampland in Florida to sell you” came from).
And did you know that the Seminole tribe is the only Native American
tribe never to sign a peace treaty with the US government? There’s a fascinating story of tribes hiding
in the swampland from US Soldiers who would never be able to capture them. They are still living in that same
swampland. And the stories of the orchid
dealers from the 1800s through recent times is filled with adventure, death,
and intrigue. She met several other
interesting characters in Florida that could be the basis for the term you may
have seen recently as “Florida Man” when various men from Florida end up doing
very stupid things that show up on YouTube, like sticking their hands in the
mouths of Alligators, or shooting guns at hurricanes to stop them. It must be the heat and humidity combination
down there. But I will also admit that I
find myself really interested in someday exploring these swamplands for their
abundance of animal and plant life…. even though it seems that sloshing through
mosquito, alligator and snake infested ponds may not sound too inviting.
Hiking Buddy (HB) and I had plans to hike the Colonel Devin
trail to the top of the Mogollon Rim, however the constant rain the area had
the night before made the dirt road a bit slick for our tastes. So, we ended up doing what I’ll call various Mogollon
Rim tourist walks for the day. The
first stop was the Water Wheel trail which follows the East Verde River
up to some nice waterfalls and swimming holes.
Tragedy struck here in July of 2017 when 10 family members ranging in
age from 2 to 57 were swept away and killed in a flash flood. It was partially a result of a forest fire on
the rim a month earlier, in addition to heavy rains with no trees or brush to
absorb the water. There are some
sobering memorials near the trailhead that included the tiny shoes of the
children killed. Since it had been
raining the day HB and I went, we were a bit concerned, but as we made
our way upstream, we kept our eyes open for escape routes in case we saw or
heard a flash flood coming. We felt
relatively safe as there were 3 Game and Fish trucks in the parking lot and the
rain was more like a gentle winter rain rather than the normal violent summer monsoon
rains. The walk is fairly short, about a
mile, but it’s very slippery, so go slow.
Our next stop was Shoofly Village Ruin, which was a nice walk
with interpretive signs pointing out the highlights of this 80-room village
thought to have been inhabited from 1,000-1,250 CE. The inhabitants were possibly related to the
Hohokam and Salado tribes and farmed and raised turkeys on this beautiful site. Next we headed to Tonto Natural Bridge
state park. It is believed to be the
largest natural travertine bridge in the world (travertine is a sort of limestone formed from minerals in the water). The bridge stands 183 feet high
over a 400-foot long tunnel that measures 150 feet at its widest point. We ate lunch at one of the many picnic
benches in the area before heading down to the trails. There are 3 or 4 different trails to reach
the bridge, but you can also get good views from the various viewpoints up on
top. The trail to the main deck in front
of the bridge was closed the day we were there so we approached it via the
steep Anna Mae trail. It was slippery
once you got underneath the natural bridge, but really beautiful watching the
water fall 183 feet on the other side of the tunnel. There is a lodge at the park that they rent
out for special occasions like weddings or business events. They have a nice grassy area with bbq grills,
and the canyon walls are pretty. It's a $7 entry fee for this state park. Overall
a nice day on the Mogollon Rim where the temperature was in the 70s and low 80s
with intermittent rain to keep things cool.
 |
| Memorial for the family lost in the flood |
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| Another memorial |
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| East Verde cascading down the canyon |
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| Nice falls on the East Verde |
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| Looking downstream on the East Verde |
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| Shoo Fly Ruins |
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| Travertine walls at Tonto Natural Bridge |
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| Tonto Natural Bridge and tunnel |
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| Under Tonto Natural Bridge |
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| Scrub Oak acorns at Tonto Natural Bridge |
I chose a 19th century classic to read this
month. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet
Beecher Stowe has been on my list a long time even though not everyone
considers it a classic anymore and many people actually consider it racist and
overly sentimental. But I found myself thinking about this novel a LOT after I
read it. First of all, you have to realize
that it was published in 1852 and you have to understand the times. There is no denying its influence on
Americans’ attitude towards slavery at the time and was said by some to be one of the
catalysts for the Civil War. Stowe’s son, in his biography of his mother, said
that when Lincoln met her in 1862 (just prior to his release of the
Emancipation Proclamation) he told her, “so this is the little lady who started
this great war!” And it is the highest
selling novel of the 19th century. But before I get into the “politics”
of the time and the novel’s influence and controversy, I’ll give a brief
description of the story for the 8 people out there who’ve not read it (that
number was 9 before I read it this month). Uncle Tom lived in a cabin with his wife and
children on a Kentucky farm with benevolent owners. However financial troubles forced the owners
to sell off some of their more valuable slaves, including Tom. The story then follows those slaves as some
escaped towards Canada, and others were sold “down south” where the possibility
existed of additional cruelty from unsavory owners.
Tom first ended up with a kind
owner (Augustine St. Clare) and his angelic daughter, Eva, and his inflexible
and someone insane wife, Marie. Days
before Tom was to be set free by this kind owner, the owner was killed, and Tom
was sold in New Orleans to the incredibly cruel Simon Legree (whose name
became eponymous for a cruel, greedy person).
During this time, the story also flashes to another slave, Eliza who was on the same Kentucky farm as Tom initially. Eliza, along with her
young son, is being helped across Ohio and into Canada by Quakers and others who
are part of the Underground Railroad.
She eventually pairs up with her husband, George Harris, who had also
escaped. The character George has some
of the finest speeches I’ve heard given in any book, including in Chapter 11
where he describes his treatment and his opinion of American “Law” of the
time. Throughout these two story lines,
there is excitement (slave catchers going after Eliza and George), misery (slave
families separated and beaten), kindness (Eva St. Clare and Miss Ophelia), and racial politics (many dialogues about race and the laws at the time). The author also introduces several other
fascinating characters, each with their own harrowing story to tell. There are scenes similar to Toni Morrison’s
Beloved in which mothers choose death for their children rather than seeing
them forced into separation and slavery.
It’s heart wrenching and I can fully understand how it must have
impacted readers of mid-19th-century America. Stowe wrote the book in response to the
Compromise of 1850 which re-balanced the Fugitive Slave Laws in favor of slave
owners and against northerners who helped escapees (Federal Commissioners who
had the final say in contested cases were paid $10 for everyone they proclaimed
an escaped slave and $5 for everyone they proclaimed as rightfully free). Additionally, the author had recently read a
slave narrative written in 1849 by a former slave (Josiah Henson) who had
escaped to Canada. The people and media
outlets of the American South slammed the novel as “false rhetoric” (fake news)
and the work of an “incompetent sentimental woman” (similar to some tweets I've read these days). Booksellers who sold the
book in the south were persecuted. Stowe
received the severed ear of a slave in her mail one day. So, you can see that America has not changed
much in the 170 years since that time.
The term “Uncle Tom” became a derogatory term for one who is exceedingly
subservient to authoritative figures (specifically black men to white men);
however this term was really developed from the many subsequent plays and “Tom
Shows” that tended to make light of the book and focused more on the
“entertaining antics” of the black characters in the book. The Tom in the book was a hero in the end for
dying a horrible death rather than revealing the escape plans of two women. I understand that people today, especially
African Americans, could see this book in a negative light. There are racial undertones and the
fact that the slaves who escaped in the end eventually left for Liberia in Africa as the place where they could “do the most good”. But on the other hand, there are great
conversations in the book about the hypocrisy of the abolitionists who would
fight against slavery but would never take in a former slave to educate them
and help them become part of society. I
believe the author had her own conflicting views on the topic, as many did
during that time. The Christian religion
was a big part of the book and this was also a sign of the times. The “turn the other cheek” attitude is seen
as being subservient to false authority and somewhat of a cop out in dealing
with the cruelties of the times by believing that you were to suffer on earth
but receive your rewards in heaven. Notwithstanding
all the controversy of the book, in the end it was a strong statement against
slavery during a time when the topic was becoming radioactive and eventually
leading to our country’s most trying time as the Civil War unfolded. I think it is a great and influential book.
HB and I headed back up to the rim to hike the southern
portion of passage 27 of the Arizona Trail.
It starts on the Rim Road (Forest Road 300), about 12 miles east of
State Route 87 north of Payson. The Rim
Road is one of the top 10 drives in Arizona and everyone should do it if they
can. The dirt road is fairly well graded, and
I’ve seen normal passenger cars driving on it.
The road winds along the Mogollon Rim for around 40 miles with stunning
views to the south and forests, lakes, and streams to the north. We parked at General Springs cabin which was
built between 1914-1918 and used as a forest fire management cabin up until the
1960s. It’s one of three cabins in the
area that are connected by a loop trail that would make a great backpacking
trip. We hiked in around 4 miles along
the Arizona Trail from the cabin up to a fence line by an old closed forest
road where we had lunch. Most of the
hike was along General Springs canyon which was spectacularly green this time
of year and had lots of water from recent monsoon rains. The area looked more like the Little Colorado River area in the White Mountains with its beautiful meadows and thick forest. Possibly the prettiest place I’ve seen on the
Mogollon Rim. We didn’t see any animals
other than birds and squirrels, but we heard a bear snorting and a coyote yipping
very very close to us and it pierced the air!
The last battle between the US Army and the Apache tribe occurred near
here at Big Dry Wash. It was ordered due
to reports of Apaches raiding settlers’ camps in the area. There is a sign near
the trailhead commemorating this battle and in an interesting political twist,
someone has painted over the sign in red “The settlers had it coming!”. There is a long and complicated history in
Arizona (and, frankly much of the world) between indigenous tribes and white
settlers. There is no doubt that
indigenous peoples were treated poorly (an understatement) and that many
countries (USA, Australia, Mexico, etc.) were created from the blood and land
of these noble tribes. It’s not a point
of pride for sure, but it is part of our complicated history and this
commemorative sign, along with the added political message fairly well shows
both sides of this history and I hope the added political message isn’t erased.
 |
| General Springs cabin near the trailhead |
 |
| Cabin with nice meadow in the background |
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| A walk in the woods |
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| The trail followed water for much of the way |
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| One of many nice meadows |
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| Starting the climb out of the canyon |
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| Trail art |
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| First time I've seen signs banning E-Bikes... |
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| This man is very sad he's stuck to this tree for his whole life |
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| Into the woods |
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| Commemorative sign with political message painted over it |
Depending on what source you reference, the Battle for
Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43 was one of the top 10 bloodiest battles in
history (the bloodiest according to military-history.org). Anywhere from 1-2 million people lost their
lives, including Russian civilians, and soldiers from Germany, Hungary, Romania,
Italy, and the Soviet Union. This doesn’t
even count the thousands of eventual POWs who later died in nightmarish prison
camps on both sides. I read Enemy at
the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad by William Craig this month and it is
a graphic reminder of the insanity of war.
The author was thorough in his research, combing through archives from
Germany and Russia, along with hundreds of interviews he conducted with
survivors (the book was published in 1973, 30 years after the battle). In many ways, this battle was the beginning
of the end for Hitler, and his hubris is what did him in. His personal battle with Stalin, was sort of
personified in his desire to capture his namesake city, and he made several strategic
mistakes in his zeal to quickly win the battle.
These mistakes eventually led to his famous 6th army of
200,000 remaining men being surrounded, dying via Russian ammo and starvation before
finally surrendering (Hitler refused to allow his army to surrender, he wanted
them to fight to the last death, but they had no more ammo and no food nor strength). The city of Stalingrad was an industrial town
which manufactured farm and military machinery.
It was at a key point on the Volga river and a way point between the oil rich
Caucasus region and the rest of the country.
Hitler wanted to cut off the Russian’s fuel supply, and had he won the
battle, it likely would have prolonged the war, and possibly even turned it in
the Nazi’s favor. Luckily the Russians
were relentless. The battle ended up
being fought building to building, hand to hand for over 5 months, from August of 1942 through mid-February of 1943. The book follows several
people from both sides as they try to fight and survive this awful battle, through
bitter cold, injuries, starvation, snipers, bombings, tanks, and disease. How any human was able to survive that mess is
beyond my comprehension. The city ended up 90% destroyed
but was eventually rebuilt and later renamed Volgograd in 1961 after Stalin's reputation fell
out of favor and Krushchev tried to remove the cult of Stalin from the
USSR. The 2001 movie was pretty good,
but only focused on a very small piece of this book. I learned a bit about Stalin and Hitler from
this book; also about some of the most horrifying ways to die and I can’t even
describe in this blog what some Nazi soldiers would do to babies…I guess every
war has its horrors and this bloody battle in one of the bloodiest wars in history was no
exception.
My wife, daughter, and I were able to visit our son and daughter-in-law
in Colorado this month, and that means great Colorado mountain hiking! I was able to get in two short, but sweet
hikes on this trip. In the first one, my
daughter and I hiked Blue Lake outside of Boulder. I’m pretty sure I hiked to this lake 40 years
ago when I worked in Boulder for IBM, but I can’t be sure. It looked familiar. Blue Lake is an alpine lake at 11,500 feet in
altitude. The trailhead is about a 45-minute
drive from Boulder and starts out at 10,500 feet, so it’s about a 1,000-foot
gain in around 2.5 miles or so. The scenery is spectacular as you will see from
the photos below, and we saw MOOSE! Two large
bulls and one cow. It’s always special
to see these ancient looking creatures lumbering around in the wild. Also, the wildflowers were in full bloom and
made the trip even more special. AND,
AND, on top of all this, we got snowed on!
In August! Snow! And thunder.
The best part about the snow and thunder was that it cleared the trails
of human beings and we had the lake mostly to ourselves for a bit. That was special.
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| Father Daughter hike |
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| Beauty everywhere |
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| You can picture the glaciers carving out this valley |
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| Wildflowers! |
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| It seems so remote, yet 45 minutes from Boulder |
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| Dad and dog |
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| Snow dog |
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| Blue Lake (I'm color blind...is this blue?) |
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| Moose!!! |
Here’s a good trivia question. What was the first foreign country to be
visited by a sitting US President? The
answer is contained in the great book by David McCullough, The Path Between
the Seas. McCullough is a great
storyteller of history. I’d previously
read “1776” and “John Adams” and they were equally fascinating. “The Path Between the Seas” is the story of
the Panama Canal (yes, Panama is the answer to the trivia question, and it was Theodore
Roosevelt who visited). I was really
surprised that no US president had visited a foreign country until 1906. And it was a pretty big deal at the time,
especially since his predecessor (McKinley) had been assassinated. The book is separated into 3 sections. The first section deals with the French
attempt at the canal in the late 1800s by Ferdinand de Lesseps (builder of the Suez
Canal). The French project was mainly a
disaster as they had assumed that Panama would be like Suez, but they were
completely different. After 20 years and
many thousands of deaths from disease and accidents, the French finally gave up
and it eventually ended up in court due to multiple financial scandals
associated with the project which bankrupt many French citizens who had
invested in the idea. The second section
tells the story of how the US ended up taking on the project. It was nearly decided that the canal would be
built across Nicaragua instead of Panama and if not for the lobbying efforts of
2 key people (Philippe Bunau-Varilla of France and William Cromwell of the US)
that’s exactly where the canal would have been.
But the story here was so much more than a lobbying effort. It involved a revolution which eventually
formed the country of Panama in 1903.
The story of how this happened is fascinating, with political and
financial intrigue (Netflix must make a mini-series about this). Another key event during this time was the
Spanish American war in Cuba in 1898.
The US battleship Oregon was in San Francisco at the time and it was
needed in Cuba as soon as possible. It
took 66 days for it to sail around South America to get to Cuba. Had there been a canal, the time would have
been cut by more than half. This event
basically eliminated any US opposition to building a canal. The third and final section deals with the US building the
canal in Panama and everything involved in this stupendous effort. There are so many things that had to fall in
place for it to succeed. The right
physician had to be hired who had discovered that Yellow Fever was spread by
mosquitoes and not filth or soil as had been the common view of the day. The recent electrification of US factories
during this time and the establishment of a new company called General Electric
that allowed the use of motors to operate the locks. Having the right chief engineers at the right
time was critical. John Stevens was
perfect for the start in order to establish the rail systems to excavate and
haul away the millions of cubic yards of dirt and to establish the communities that
allowed people to exist there without dying or leaving. Then George Goethals was needed to finish the job with
his unrelenting work to make progress while keeping the people satisfied. This wasn’t a rose-colored glasses view of
the project. The author addressed the
discrimination issue which was rampant nearly everywhere during this time: far more people of color (mainly from the Caribbean islands) worked the dirty
jobs, and far more of them died than the white Americans on the project. But even with this division, the death rates
towards the last few years of the project (2 per thousand per year for whites and 8 per
thousand per year for blacks) was still lower than it was for average citizens in the US
at the time (around 14 per thousand). When
you think about the dangers of the work and the possibilities for disease in
the jungle, this is phenomenal. It’s a
great story and a great human accomplishment for the time. By the time the first ship went through the
canal in August of 1914, it got few headlines as the world was just then plunging
into the first world war.
Until next month, and the end of Dog Days...Happy Reading and Rambling.
In addition to telling the story of orchids, The Orchid
Thief by Susan Orlean is a book about Florida; and a book about
passion. I imagine it’s probably on some
of those lists you see of books to read for each state in the country. Susan Orlean is a writer for New Yorker
magazine and wrote a 1995 article about a guy in Florida named John Laroche
who, along with three Seminole tribe members had been arrested for stealing orchids
from Florida’s state lands. That article
turned into this 1998 book. Orchids are
a fascinating topic. There are 30,000
different species and over 100,000 hybridized/laboratory species. They recently outsold poinsettias as the most
cultivated plant for sale worldwide. But
this is a recent phenomenon. Before the
1980s and 90s it was nearly impossible to grow orchids outside of their natural
environment, which made them rare and valuable.
But plant scientists eventually figured out how to do it with certain
species and in the 80s and 90s orchids became available to Home Depot customers
for around $80-90. Then Taiwan got
involved and came up with better cloning and growing techniques and now you can
buy orchids for $10. But in the 1800s
and early 1900s people were risking their lives and dying to find and gather
orchids from their natural environments because they were in demand by the
wealthy and powerful. There are still
rare orchids that are unable to be grown in a laboratory environment and some
of them are extremely valuable and are protected by governments in Malaysia,
China, India, and other countries. A
rare orchid that was developed in a lab in Taiwan was sold in 2005 for
$200,000, making it the most expensive flower ever sold. Go Google pictures of the Monkey orchid or
the Owl orchid; it’s crazy the shapes they come in. Anyway, back to the book. John Laroche is really an unlikable guy for
me which sort of turned me off for a bit.
He’s a hustler who will do anything to make a buck and not care about
rules or ethics. I guess he makes for an
interesting character, but if the book only focused on him, I would have
stopped reading early on. He was accused
of stealing orchids from the Fakahatchee Strand State Park in Florida (a
swampland in the southwest part of the state).
He was working for the Seminole tribe at the time and tried to argue
that Native Americans weren’t subject to the same laws concerning plants in
their native lands. He lost the argument
and was banned from the park. The guy
had lots of schemes in his life, from art dealing (where he basically stole
artifacts from Central and South American burial grounds), to orchids, to
internet schemes. He did know a LOT
about orchids though and was obsessed with them to the point of breaking the law
to get what he wanted. But I really
enjoyed the detours the author took into topics such as the Gulf American
Company that tried to sell Florida swampland to returning military vets from the
Northeast United States "real cheap" (it’s where the saying “yeah and I’ve got some nice
swampland in Florida to sell you” came from).
And did you know that the Seminole tribe is the only Native American
tribe never to sign a peace treaty with the US government? There’s a fascinating story of tribes hiding
in the swampland from US Soldiers who would never be able to capture them. They are still living in that same
swampland. And the stories of the orchid
dealers from the 1800s through recent times is filled with adventure, death,
and intrigue. She met several other
interesting characters in Florida that could be the basis for the term you may
have seen recently as “Florida Man” when various men from Florida end up doing
very stupid things that show up on YouTube, like sticking their hands in the
mouths of Alligators, or shooting guns at hurricanes to stop them. It must be the heat and humidity combination
down there. But I will also admit that I
find myself really interested in someday exploring these swamplands for their
abundance of animal and plant life…. even though it seems that sloshing through
mosquito, alligator and snake infested ponds may not sound too inviting. 
I chose a 19th century classic to read this
month. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet
Beecher Stowe has been on my list a long time even though not everyone
considers it a classic anymore and many people actually consider it racist and
overly sentimental. But I found myself thinking about this novel a LOT after I
read it. First of all, you have to realize
that it was published in 1852 and you have to understand the times. There is no denying its influence on
Americans’ attitude towards slavery at the time and was said by some to be one of the
catalysts for the Civil War. Stowe’s son, in his biography of his mother, said
that when Lincoln met her in 1862 (just prior to his release of the
Emancipation Proclamation) he told her, “so this is the little lady who started
this great war!” And it is the highest
selling novel of the 19th century. But before I get into the “politics”
of the time and the novel’s influence and controversy, I’ll give a brief
description of the story for the 8 people out there who’ve not read it (that
number was 9 before I read it this month). Uncle Tom lived in a cabin with his wife and
children on a Kentucky farm with benevolent owners. However financial troubles forced the owners
to sell off some of their more valuable slaves, including Tom. The story then follows those slaves as some
escaped towards Canada, and others were sold “down south” where the possibility
existed of additional cruelty from unsavory owners.
Tom first ended up with a kind
owner (Augustine St. Clare) and his angelic daughter, Eva, and his inflexible
and someone insane wife, Marie. Days
before Tom was to be set free by this kind owner, the owner was killed, and Tom
was sold in New Orleans to the incredibly cruel Simon Legree (whose name
became eponymous for a cruel, greedy person).
During this time, the story also flashes to another slave, Eliza who was on the same Kentucky farm as Tom initially. Eliza, along with her
young son, is being helped across Ohio and into Canada by Quakers and others who
are part of the Underground Railroad.
She eventually pairs up with her husband, George Harris, who had also
escaped. The character George has some
of the finest speeches I’ve heard given in any book, including in Chapter 11
where he describes his treatment and his opinion of American “Law” of the
time. Throughout these two story lines,
there is excitement (slave catchers going after Eliza and George), misery (slave
families separated and beaten), kindness (Eva St. Clare and Miss Ophelia), and racial politics (many dialogues about race and the laws at the time). The author also introduces several other
fascinating characters, each with their own harrowing story to tell. There are scenes similar to Toni Morrison’s
Beloved in which mothers choose death for their children rather than seeing
them forced into separation and slavery.
It’s heart wrenching and I can fully understand how it must have
impacted readers of mid-19th-century America. Stowe wrote the book in response to the
Compromise of 1850 which re-balanced the Fugitive Slave Laws in favor of slave
owners and against northerners who helped escapees (Federal Commissioners who
had the final say in contested cases were paid $10 for everyone they proclaimed
an escaped slave and $5 for everyone they proclaimed as rightfully free). Additionally, the author had recently read a
slave narrative written in 1849 by a former slave (Josiah Henson) who had
escaped to Canada. The people and media
outlets of the American South slammed the novel as “false rhetoric” (fake news)
and the work of an “incompetent sentimental woman” (similar to some tweets I've read these days). Booksellers who sold the
book in the south were persecuted. Stowe
received the severed ear of a slave in her mail one day. So, you can see that America has not changed
much in the 170 years since that time.
The term “Uncle Tom” became a derogatory term for one who is exceedingly
subservient to authoritative figures (specifically black men to white men);
however this term was really developed from the many subsequent plays and “Tom
Shows” that tended to make light of the book and focused more on the
“entertaining antics” of the black characters in the book. The Tom in the book was a hero in the end for
dying a horrible death rather than revealing the escape plans of two women. I understand that people today, especially
African Americans, could see this book in a negative light. There are racial undertones and the
fact that the slaves who escaped in the end eventually left for Liberia in Africa as the place where they could “do the most good”. But on the other hand, there are great
conversations in the book about the hypocrisy of the abolitionists who would
fight against slavery but would never take in a former slave to educate them
and help them become part of society. I
believe the author had her own conflicting views on the topic, as many did
during that time. The Christian religion
was a big part of the book and this was also a sign of the times. The “turn the other cheek” attitude is seen
as being subservient to false authority and somewhat of a cop out in dealing
with the cruelties of the times by believing that you were to suffer on earth
but receive your rewards in heaven. Notwithstanding
all the controversy of the book, in the end it was a strong statement against
slavery during a time when the topic was becoming radioactive and eventually
leading to our country’s most trying time as the Civil War unfolded. I think it is a great and influential book. 
Here’s a good trivia question. What was the first foreign country to be
visited by a sitting US President? The
answer is contained in the great book by David McCullough, The Path Between
the Seas. McCullough is a great
storyteller of history. I’d previously
read “1776” and “John Adams” and they were equally fascinating. “The Path Between the Seas” is the story of
the Panama Canal (yes, Panama is the answer to the trivia question, and it was Theodore
Roosevelt who visited). I was really
surprised that no US president had visited a foreign country until 1906. And it was a pretty big deal at the time,
especially since his predecessor (McKinley) had been assassinated. The book is separated into 3 sections. The first section deals with the French
attempt at the canal in the late 1800s by Ferdinand de Lesseps (builder of the Suez
Canal). The French project was mainly a
disaster as they had assumed that Panama would be like Suez, but they were
completely different. After 20 years and
many thousands of deaths from disease and accidents, the French finally gave up
and it eventually ended up in court due to multiple financial scandals
associated with the project which bankrupt many French citizens who had
invested in the idea. The second section
tells the story of how the US ended up taking on the project. It was nearly decided that the canal would be
built across Nicaragua instead of Panama and if not for the lobbying efforts of
2 key people (Philippe Bunau-Varilla of France and William Cromwell of the US)
that’s exactly where the canal would have been.
But the story here was so much more than a lobbying effort. It involved a revolution which eventually
formed the country of Panama in 1903.
The story of how this happened is fascinating, with political and
financial intrigue (Netflix must make a mini-series about this). Another key event during this time was the
Spanish American war in Cuba in 1898.
The US battleship Oregon was in San Francisco at the time and it was
needed in Cuba as soon as possible. It
took 66 days for it to sail around South America to get to Cuba. Had there been a canal, the time would have
been cut by more than half. This event
basically eliminated any US opposition to building a canal. The third and final section deals with the US building the
canal in Panama and everything involved in this stupendous effort. There are so many things that had to fall in
place for it to succeed. The right
physician had to be hired who had discovered that Yellow Fever was spread by
mosquitoes and not filth or soil as had been the common view of the day. The recent electrification of US factories
during this time and the establishment of a new company called General Electric
that allowed the use of motors to operate the locks. Having the right chief engineers at the right
time was critical. John Stevens was
perfect for the start in order to establish the rail systems to excavate and
haul away the millions of cubic yards of dirt and to establish the communities that
allowed people to exist there without dying or leaving. Then George Goethals was needed to finish the job with
his unrelenting work to make progress while keeping the people satisfied. This wasn’t a rose-colored glasses view of
the project. The author addressed the
discrimination issue which was rampant nearly everywhere during this time: far more people of color (mainly from the Caribbean islands) worked the dirty
jobs, and far more of them died than the white Americans on the project. But even with this division, the death rates
towards the last few years of the project (2 per thousand per year for whites and 8 per
thousand per year for blacks) was still lower than it was for average citizens in the US
at the time (around 14 per thousand). When
you think about the dangers of the work and the possibilities for disease in
the jungle, this is phenomenal. It’s a
great story and a great human accomplishment for the time. By the time the first ship went through the
canal in August of 1914, it got few headlines as the world was just then plunging
into the first world war.