Don’t be swept off your feet by the vividness of the impression. Rather say: “Impression, wait for me a little. Let me see what you are and what you represent. Let me try you.”
—Epictetus

I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.
—William Allen White

Where there is no comparison, no envy; and therefore kings are not envied but by kings.
—Francis Bacon

“We will certainly try hard to do as you say”, he replied.
“But how shall we bury?”
“However you please,” said Socrates, “If you can catch me and I do not get away from you.”
—Plato

⁽⁰⁾

Mercy Mathew or rather Daya bai, (as she’s known in the tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh), may not be ‘famous’, but she is a very very special person who has constantly inspired me and reinforced my sense of commitment in certain values my choices in life.

Mercy looks every inch a tribal woman, behaves like a passionate maverick activist and talks like a razor sharp lawyer. A bewildering combination that never fails to turn heads and get surprised stares. Born into a landed joint family in Kerala with plenty at home, Mercy bucked the family routine and set out to be a nun, like a good Christian. She went to a missionary in Bihar but couldn’t bare the contradictions between the world outside and the one she lived in. Soon she jumped the wall and wandered off for months on end in search of her calling. In that wandering, she worked at refugee camps in Bangladesh after the 1971 war, worked in a couple of NGOs, did an incomplete Masters in Social work…from where she ran away again, this time to the wilderness of central Madhya Pradesh, finally settling in a small village.

Reaching the Chindwara district wasn’t part of any master plan. It’s just that she barely had enough money to take a train up to a small town in Madhya Pradesh from where she decided to walk (25kms!) till her feet could take no more. That’s how she came to Barul. That place became her home for the next 15 years. Here she worked with the tribals, sleeping in the verandahs of those who let her in at night and eating whatever they happily gave her. There were no ambitions and importantly no regrets. But being alone and without enough legal knowledge, she felt a little lost in her attempts to fight for the rights of the tribals.

This made her decide to go to Bombay and finish her master’s degree in social work (after a gap of seven years). She returned to Barul to continue her work and simultaneously did a correspondence course in Law. A couple of years ago her father passed away and she was forced by her family to take some money from his will. She decided to buy a little piece of land with this, and built for the first time, her own home.

I went to her village last year. Her mud house was cool and welcoming under the hot summer sun. I spent a week with her and her extended family of chickens, cows, some cats, a little pony and her dog called Athos. To my surprise, she talks to them about everything and they seem to understand it all and respond with all their affection. Her possessions apart from basic knick knacks of a minimalist, are a bright red solar cooker, a self made compose pit for bio-gas and a small well. She has a small farm where she grows wheat, pulses and a couple of vegetables that seem to grow happily! One day I even heard her talk to her tomatoes!

I could go on and on about her, her way of life, her struggles, her joys and her choices. But I am not even sure if this would interest anyone, as the prisms through which we see life are probably so different. Most people would think of her as either being mad or foolish or at the most take pity on her-“What a waste of a life”, “Poor thing! Look at her cracked hands and feet”, “She could have done so much better-after all she’s a double Post Grad and speaks fluent English!” “What a big sacrifice she is making!” When Daya bai hears these comments, she just heartily laughs like a child. She finds it amusing and strange. “Working and caring for people is not work for me, its simply life”, she says. “It is not a sacrifice…far from it…it is the only way I know I can live and be happy.” “Not living this life, not doing what I do, would in fact be huge sacrifice.”

I know that if she was given another life, she would lead it the same way all over again.

About the author: Indian actress Nandita Das is known to world audiences for her critically acclaimed performances in films like Fire, Earth (both directed by Deepa Mehta), Bawander (directed by Jagmohan Mundhra) and has also acted in films by Mrinal Sen, Mani Rathnam,
Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihlani and others. She has performed in over 25 feature films, in ten different languages, many of which have been showcased in numerous international film festivals and won her accolades. She was a member of the main jury at theprestigious Cannes Film Festival, 2005.

Originally published on Nandita Das Online. Reproduced here with permission

⁽⁰⁾

Make room for more and stockpile more. Spread as much as possible and stretch more. Then we extend, swell, widen, broaden, multiply, increase, amplify, enlarge and augment. No problem with that.

Gluttony comes natural to us, let us be shameless and pick handfuls. There will never be another life and even if there was, who knows what that will be like. Carpe Diem, said the poet and he ain’t wrong.

What we gathered and hoarded is a matter of preference.

Life is water, taking the shape of the container, becoming the definition we like.

Still fumbling for the right one,
Manjit

⁽⁰⁾

Politicians have a much shorter lifespan - politically speaking, that is. They can be around for four years or less. Rarely more than eight. That's why I'm often surprised by how little they seem to want to accomplish in that time. Certainly, I understand the lure of the status quo. Change is hard. Often vested interests will fight you every step of the way. Political advisors will say "No, no, no - stay the course! Don't make waves! Get re-elected!"

But what's the point of being re-elected if you aren't going to DO anything? Yes, yes, maybe I'm being naive. Maybe politicians are just there to support their vested interests, take home a fat paycheck and pension, and revel in the power of their office. But surely there's got to be more to it than that? The life of a politician is not one I envy. It's hard, sometimes brutal. You are constantly under scrutiny. You are always on the job. It takes up your entire life.

That's why I honestly believe that most politicians at least start out wanting to work for the common good. Many become overwhelmed by the muck, but great leaders act. They make bold decisions and move on them. They don't tinker when big changes are needed and they don't change things just for the sake of change. One of my pet peeves is the way some administrations will move into office and, rather than take an honest assessment of what's working and what isn't, instead set out to dismantle everything the previous administration had done just to make a point.

Of course, it's hard for leaders to act without public support. But right now, the environment is the top public concern. The public will support strong environmental leadership, so now's the time for our political leaders to act.

And politicians are indeed starting to take note. Seeing the success of initiatives in Europe, some politicians in North America are making bold decisions and plans to clean up our environment. Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in California may have been the brunt of jokes when he was first elected, but no one's laughing now as he's carefully crafted one of the world's most progressive, legislated plans to reduce pollution and global warming.

Recently, British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell went down to California to talk to Schwarzenegger about his plans. That's a very encouraging sign. Premier Campbell's Speech from the Throne earlier this year was very bold and painted a new vision of British Columbia as leading North America in terms of sustainability. Given how proud British Columbians are of their natural heritage, progressive environmental leadership seems like a natural fit. It will also help diversify and strengthen B.C.'s economy in the long term, and also be a model for other provinces.

This is exactly what our leaders should be doing - learning from each other. Many provinces and states are coming out with exciting new programs towards sustainability. Ontario recently announced a "standard offer contract" system for renewable energy that's the first of its kind in North America. I hope Premier Campbell, and all our leaders, take a good look at the best examples of environmental leadership from all jurisdictions and incorporate them into their own plans.

In the end, all that we have are our legacies. I've been on this planet now for 71 years. I don't know how many years I have left, but I promise you I plan to make the most of them. I hope our political leaders look at their terms in office the same way.

Originally published on March 23, 2007

Dr. David Takayoshi Suzuki is distinguished Canadian geneticist who has attained prominence as a science broadcaster and an environmental activist. He is also a co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation.

⁽⁰⁾

These right-thinking, tender-hearted folks think that they weep for all the suffering and misery in the world because they are sensitive, intelligent, and morally upright. Philosopher Alan Bloom, though, saw what really is going on: he called it “conspicuous compassion.” Like Veblen’s “conspicuous consumption,” conspicuous compassion is a status sign, a way of saying “I’m better than you.” For the modern God-less, such displays are the new piety, the assertion of one’s own salvation and possession of revealed truth.

These days Africa has cycled back into our public consciousness as the venue for such compassion-mongering. Africa has for centuries played this role in the West: the place where we find opportunities for showing how piously sensitive we are. Charles Dickens way back in 1853 created Mrs. Jellyby, a woman so consumed with saving the souls of savages in Africa that she completely neglects her own miserable, ruined family. Dickens called her activity “telescopic philanthropy,” which captures neatly the long-range, abstract quality of such compassion and attention, which would be much more useful closer to home.

These days, of course, jet-travel means that our Mrs. Jellybys — Oprah, Brad, Angelina, et. al. — can dash into Africa, throw some money around, take some photos, then get the hell out before they pick something up from the water. But the final result is pretty much the same. A few photogenic band-aids will be ostentatiously applied to gaping social, political, and economic wounds. Meanwhile some Mrs. Jellyby like the pop-fop Bono, whose sunglasses alone could feed an African village for a week, will keep scolding us about our selfish over-consumption that is causing all this misery.

This combination of sermonizing and self-loathing is the essence of Third-Worldism, that idealization of the non-Western “other” combined with self-flagellation over the sins of imperialism and colonialism. French philosopher Pascal Bruckner wrote a brilliant analysis of this cultural neurosis in Tears of the White Man. Bruckner describes how Third-World suffering has become a lucrative commodity for the modern media. We consume this product so that we can enjoy cost-free pathos and smug superiority about our righteousness. Television “news” specials, or movies like Blood Diamond or The Constant Gardner, revel in Africa’s misery, dishing up scenes that rend our hearts for an hour or so, at least until Desperate Housewives comes on. Usually some white Western do-gooder is the star of the show, our plucky stand-in who goes off to save all those little brown people suffering because of the greedy selfishness of the folks back home (Republicans, conservatives, multinational corporations, etc. etc.).

In addition to reducing the misery of the Third World to an emotional peep-show, these attitudes also conceal a weird ethnocentrism. All the problems of the Third-World “other” are caused by the West, but his salvation will come from the West as well. You have to be pretty powerful and superior to be both Satan and Jesus at the same time. Such arrogance leaves the African passive, without agency, with no freedom or responsibility: a perpetual victim, his humanity reduced to animal-like suffering, chronically in need of superior white folks to come and rescue him. As an old African proverb has it, the hand that gives is always above the hand that receives.

Anybody who studies seriously the problems of Africa knows money isn’t the issue, as William Easterly documents in his recent White Man’s Burden. For decades now the West has poured over a trillion dollars into Africa, most of it going for weapons or into the Swiss bank accounts of various thugs, dictators, and gangsters disguised as leaders, not to mention the huge foreign aid bureaucracies. The real problem is dysfunctional cultures that have combined the worst of pre-modern tribal customs with Western ideologies like socialism and nationalism. Not colonialism, then, but de-colonization, the swift abandonment of Africa by the Europeans after World War II, lies at the root of most of Africa’s misery. Just look at Singapore, Hong Kong, or India, where the long British presence created the economic, social, and political institutions that underwrite prosperity.

If culture is the problem, then making Africa more like the West is the solution. But the right-thinking liberal will not go down that road. His gospel of multiculturalism teaches him that all cultures are wonderful and valuable, especially those exotic non-Western ones; that none is better than another, and that if anything, the West is to blame for all the world’s ills. Hence the animus against globalization, the process of Westernizing the Third World that has proven it can raise standards of living. No, it is more gratifying and profitable to scold the fat, greedy Westerner for his over-consumption and extort more guilt money to throw down the rat-holes of corruption and political gangsterism. Meanwhile the suffering and misery will continue, and the righteous elect will display their bleeding hearts.

Originally published on Private Papers. Reproduced here with permission.

⁽⁰⁾

And read I did, while the content of the book is very great, important facts are discussed and compared, and there is tons of interesting information, it remains easy and is very enjoyable to read. This book will probably become the standard book when people need to know something about The Inklings. If you are interested in the Inklings, this is the book to read. I'm very proud to offer you all an interview that I did with Diana Glyer. Hope you will enjoy it, and don't forget... her book is a must have for Tolkien and inkling lovers!

Q: Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I teach English at Azusa Pacific University in southern California. In addition to writing and teaching, I enjoy painting and gardening. My husband, Mike Glyer, is also a writer, and we have a five year old daughter named Sierra Grace. We just finished reading The Hobbit to her for the first time: that was fun!

Q: What did you like to read when you were a child?
I read anything and everything. I was a big fan of animal stories, especially books about horses. My first science fiction book was The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, which remains one of my favorites.

Q: How did you first get interested in the inklings?
A group of high school friends read The Lord of the Rings, and they talked about it incessantly. I wanted to know what they were talking about, so I read it, too.

Q: I'd like to talk about your book, The Company They Keep. What prompted you to write the book?
When I found out that Tolkien and Lewis were close friends, I expected to see lots of discussion of their mutual influence. Instead, everywhere I looked, people kept denying that their interaction made any difference. That didn't seem right to me, so I decided to dig deep and find out everything I could about them.

Q: What special qualifications do you have for making this study? What makes you different from your colleagues?
Most people who study Tolkien or Lewis do it from a background in literature, or with theological concerns in mind. There are others, of course, who look at Tolkien's accomplishments as a linguist. My training is in Composition Studies. That means I am primarily interested in how writers actually create their works. I am interested in the writing process, writing groups, and the specific things that help writers to stay productive, inventive, fresh, and courageous.

Q: What is the biggest difference between your book and the biography of the Inklings by Humphrey Carpenter?
Great question! Carpenter focuses primarily on C. S. Lewis, and he gives a broad overview. I am interested in all 19 of the members. My book is about the whole web of connections, how they encouraged each other, confronted one another, how they prepared collaborative projects, even how they included each other as characters in their books. In fact, David Bratman has written a appendix to my book that offers a biography and a bibliography for each of these men-- and each one of them is really interesting.

Q: Is there any unpublished material inside your book?
There is material that is published here for the first time, including excerpts from letters and rough drafts of manuscripts, and also a long poem that Owen Barfield wrote about his friend C. S. Lewis. There is also a lot that has been published before, like book reviews and obituaries, but that most people won't have seen it because of its limited circulation.

Q: How long did the creation of this book take?
I have been working on the book for more than 20 years; David Bratman has been working to gather the detailed information found in the appendix for more than 25 years. What took so long? Part of it was the breadth of research, trying to read everything I could by these authors and about these authors. And I wanted to do as much primary research as possible. Part of it was I wanted to write this book with as much passion and clarity as I possibly could. All the best information in the world won't do any good unless the story is compelling.

Q: What is your hope for your readers?
One of my colleagues at APU, a professor of journalism and American Literature, told me that one of the things that he found most remarkable about The Company They Keep is that even if you don't know anything at all about Lewis or about Tolkien, the book is full of insight into the writing process and the nature of creativity. I like that. I know that fans will learn all kinds of new things about these great authors. But I like to think that what readers will come away with something bigger, that is, new energy and vision for their own creative work.

Q: To write the study, do you work alone or do you have help from others?
There a long list of collaborators on this project, including people who helped with the research, experts who read it through to check facts, editors who made any number of good suggestions, and friends and family who encouraged me along the way.

Q: I'd like to talk a bit about the actual process of writing. Do you have a special system for research and organization?
Not really. In fact, I wish I were more systematic. I found that I work best by doing some writing every day, and then scheduling a writing retreat each month to give me a longer block of time to really dig into the material.

Q: Where do you write?
I have a home office where I am surrounded by books and files. I compose on the computer, then print out each day's work and put it into a thick notebook. I always revise and edit the text by hand.

Q: Did you have to travel much?
I spent a great deal of time at the Wade Center at Wheaton College in Illinois, and also at the Huntington Library in Pasadena. Both are remarkable collections. Also, I am so grateful to Christopher Tolkien for producing The History of Middle-earth. It was one of my most important sources.

Q: When you're not working, what are your favorite ways to relax and have fun?
Having a pre-schooler means lots of time is spent coloring, playing dolls, and making up stories. Sierra loves music, so she likes to play on the piano, and also to lead musical marching parades through the living room. When I have time to myself, well, I love to find a quiet spot and read.

Q: A final question, which of the inklings is your favorite and why?
Ah, now that is an impossible question! Maybe I will say that in course of my research, I came to appreciate Lewis's brother, Warren Hamilton Lewis, more than ever. He was a great writer, and the Inkling with a particular gift for hospitality. One friend said that he was "always comfy to be around"; another said that hospitality was a natural for him as breathing. I don't know which Inkling is my favorite, but Warren Lewis may have been the easiest one to spend time with.

Originally published on Tolkien Library. Reproduced here with permission.

⁽⁰⁾

For an instant, as the hearing turned into instinctive ritual, it hit her; the whole race suffered from Capgras. Those birds danced like our next of kin, looked like our next of kin, called and willed and parented and taught and navigated all just like our blood relations. Half their parts were still ours. Yet, humans waved them off: impostors.”

Bottom of Form
Six weeks every year beginning in March, half a million sandhill cranes (four-fifths of those on the earth) stop to feed and mate on the Platte River which meanders through Nebraska, as part of the migration route to Alaska.

It is during the “crane peeper” season that Mark Schluter accidentally flips his pickup over the shoulder on North Line Road and ends up pinned in his cab, almost frozen by the time the paramedics free him, finding him only after an anonymous tip is called in. His older sister, Karin, is alerted that her brother is in the hospital; she makes the late night drive from Sioux, Iowa to get to her troubled brother’s side, worried about what he has got himself into this time. “He’d long ago taken every wrong turn you could take in life, and from the wrong lane. Telephone calls coming in at awful hours, as far back as she could remember. But never one like this."

When she arrives, he is still conscious enough to recognize her. The doctor describes him as having “moderate severity, stable, and lucky.” But sometime later, his brain spikes and the trauma doctor stops describing him in terms of luck, instead using the words “cerebral edema.” He requires surgery. She stays at the hospital, though they won’t let her back in to see him. The trauma doctor encourages her to go home and get some sleep. She agrees on one condition, that they let her visit Mark one more time briefly. When she does, he’s basically in a coma, nothing coming out of him. She finds a note in spidery writing on the bed stand that says:

I am No One
but Tonight on North Line Road
GOD led me to you
so You could Live
and bring back someone else

She takes it with her. She looks forward to sharing it with Mark when he is awake again. She is positive he will want to know that he has a guardian. While waiting for Mark to recover, the note is kind of a magic charm for her. Later for Mark, finding the guardian becomes an obsession. The novel's structure is defined by this note; each line is a chapter heading.

Karin is the only family that Mark has left. “Cappy,” their father died many years earlier; their mother died more recently. Karin is four years older than Mark and has practically raised him herself. Their parents were too self-involved in either failed money-making schemes (father) or earning goodwill with God (mother), each an embarrassment to Karin. She feels that “she taught him to walk and talk once, she can do it again.” Despite her dedication and attempts to engage her brother, he gushes out a series of phonemes when his two best buddies (total derelicts, really) come in to see him. Karin is both jealous and relieved when they elicit a response from him. Weeks later, when he can finally compose sentences, he shocks and hurts Karin when he rejects her as his “real” sister. “My sister? You think you’re my sister?” His eyes drilled her. “If you think you’re my sister, there’s something wrong with your head.”

Mark, we learn, is suffering from Capgras delusion: A rare brain disease that causes the person to experience the delusion that a close family member, usually a spouse, has been replaced by an imposter. It’s one of many rare misidentification symptoms, usually found in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia or brain injury. In this case, Mark believes that although this woman looks like his sister, and knows a lot about him and their family, she is not his sister. He can point to small details that “prove” that she isn’t. He’s in fact sincerely worried about what has happened to the real Karin since she’d normally be there for him. After a bit, he starts to see a wider conspiracy between the missing sister, the accident, the cranes and even his sister’s boyfriend, nature boy Daniel.

At first this is a kick in the face to "Karin Two" / "Karin-like" / "Pseudo-sib" / "Karbon Karin" --all creative names Mark uses to reference her. But as time goes on, she begins to like her brother’s version of the real Karin since it puts her in a far better light than what he normally thinks of her. In fact, much later when there is a possible cure, she is even hesitant to let him try it. She almost likes their new relationship better. The only problem is that the delusion is not restricted to just her. He’s positive that “they” have replaced his home, his neighborhood, his town, and even his beloved dog, Blackie. Anything that Mark loves seems to have a double. Mark relates information about his world without any doubt as to its logic. “The self presents itself as a whole, willful, embodied, continuous, and aware,” Dr Weber says during one of his student lectures, but these prerequisites can fail. Indeed they have failed for Mark.

Karin resigns herself to stay in Kearny for as long as it takes her brother to recover. Out of loneliness, she gets back in touch with nature boy Daniel – Mark’s youthful best friend and her former boyfriend, whom she’s hurt before. Daniel is “birdman” an odd-ball of sorts because he cares more about nature than humans. He works for the sanctuary that is trying to save the river for the cranes. He is such a good and trusting man that he fully welcomes Karin back into his life.

The viewpoints and experiences of Karin, Mark and Dr. Weber carry the bulk of the narrative. Each is going through a major transition. Karin is backsliding, stuck in her home town, repeating the initial offenses that drove her away. She does things that are despicable. She knows deep down that her brother is right, she is a fake Karin. Though, somehow, in the end she finds more meaningful work than she has ever had and through self-destruction, she does seem to break out of her self-destructing life.

Mark is the one to find Dr. Gerald Weber. He gives Karen Dr. Weber's two paperback books. Dr. Weber has become a celebrity of sorts writing popular books about rare brain disorders filled with stories of unofficial case histories. The kind of stories that make up good dinner-party conversation. Karen is convinced that Dr. Weber will know how to help Mark. Betting that Dr. Weber will be interested in Mark’s case, she sends the doctor an e-mail.

Dr. Weber has just published his third book and is promising himself to get back to his lab work before he misses out on all the really important brain work. Thus, there is no reason for him to visit Mark, except, that he can’t help himself. He is almost giddy with the idea of meeting this accident-induced Capgras case. Still, he leaves it up to his wife to talk him into going to Kearney, Nebraska to meet the sister and brother.

When Dr. Weber takes this trip, he is unaware that his life is about to veer off track. After two bestselling books, his third book is expected to be an easy success. But it isn’t. Instead, the media turns on him; he is treated like a pariah feeding on people’s real life problems for his own benefit/pocket. And indeed, the way he behaves when he visits Karin and Mark, one can’t help but think that his critics might be right. But "Famous Gerald" isn’t the only self that is disintegrating. This happily married man finds something about the nurse’s assistant at Mark’s rehab center quite unsettling. In fact, there does seem to be something other worldly about Barbara. Despite her low position, she is the best caregiver at Dedham Glen. She seems to understand Mark better than anyone and Mark trusts “Barbie Doll” more than anyone else. Karin idealizes this older woman, wishing she could be more like her, even going so far as fantasizing that they could become friends. Even Daniel, when he finally meets her, feels he knows her voice from somewhere.

Though often irreverent, Mark is the most likeable of the three main characters, although the one that the reader is likely to have the least common with. Mark and his buddies love trucks; "The Three Muskrateers" tear down & rebuild engines like breathing; they work at the meat packing plant, play video games, hang out in bars and race around the roads at night. You can see that not much normally bothers Mark. However, the reader doesn’t know if this is the same old Mark or a new Mark, not even Karin admits that she can't entirely recall the Mark before. She can't say if his mangled word choice is on purpose or if it is related to his brain’s damage. His sweet and sexy girlfriends doesn't offer much clue either. Though one has to assume that she means more to him now than she did before or else he would have "doubled" her like he has his sister and his dog. The one thing that we know is the new Mark is his search for an explanation. "They're after Mark Schluter's ass: this much is obvious. A man would have to be a vegetale to miss that much. Setting him up in some kind of experiment, some of it so hokey that even a child still stuck on Santa would snicker. But some of it so complex he can't even start figuring it."

The Echo Maker is an impressive novel. Set in 2002, a post 9-11 backdrop permeates the novel, but does not overtake it. Though, I can’t help but think that Powers expects us to connect the post 9-11 feeling with that of a Capgras victim in which everything looks familiar but, somehow not. Certainly, that is exactly how I felt during the build-up to Iraq. Nearly everyone ...my neighbors, coworkers, family, even my dying dad ... seemed like strangers to me the more our political beliefs separated us. This is the first novel that really hits on how it felt to live through that dichotomy, without overtly expressing this as an objective.

But that is just one aspect of the novel. The big-themes have to do with our brains, our perceptions of reality, our most base instincts and the really big question of how do we know who we are. We are still learning about the brain, most of it remains a mystery, though it is being mapped bit by bit. Studying the behaviour of brain damaged people furthers our knowledge. Writing fiction about a person with a brain injury open us up to the bigger questions of reality. To demonstrate the tricky nature of the brain, Dr. Weber shares all sorts of fascinating anecdotal case studies. At the same time, this novel is played out against a phenomenal ecological event, the annual migration of the cranes. One more fascinating story in which we know so little. How is it that these birds can know what they know? Through Daniel, and reinforced later by Karin, we are educated about the disappearing water and the effect on the cranes. Powers ties this all together with a big knot, though I'm not sure that my brain is completely capable of grasping the wide picture. Yet, on a certain level, I get it. I do. It has a lot to do with Karin's eureka moment as quoted in the paragraph at the top of this page. That is, if we see nature as our next of kin, then surely we would take better care of it. (If I go one step further, I think Powers really is calling us all a bunch of bird brains.)
To read and enjoy this novel, the big themes just ride out the background. From page to page, this is a smooth, comfortable read and easy to get involved with the characters; so much so, you might wish you could stop some of the self destructive behavior. The book is propelled forward with small mysteries: What caused the accident? Why the three separate tire tracks at the accident scene? Who was the anonymous caller? Who is Barbara, really? Who is the note's author? Will Mark ever know that Karin is his real sister? Why did Mark and Daniel stop being friends? What is Karsh and his developers really up to? Keep in mind that this novel won the 2006 National Book Award. I take it someone besides myself finds this to be a worthwhile and remarkable read.

The Echo Maker
By Richard Power
Hardcover: 464 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Export Ed edition (October 17, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0374146357
ISBN-13: 978-0374146351

Originally published on Mostlyfiction.com. Reproduced here with permission.

⁽⁰⁾

2. Bob up
a) To swim
b) To prop
c) To emerge unexpectedly
d) None of the above

3. Delirium
a) A state of fever or excitement
b) A state of nervous breakdown
c) Both a & b
d) None of the above

4. Delimit
a) To set free
b) To demarcate
c) Conveying away
d) None of the above

5. Gauntlet
a) Challenge
b) A kind of a medieval glove
c) A laser mirror
d) Both a & b

6. Immotile
a) Not able to run
b) Note able to stand up
c) Not able to move
d) None of the above

7. Macabre
a) Devilishly shiny
b) Gruesome
c) Hideous
d) Both b & c

8. Pisciculture
a) Artificial means of rearing of fishes
b) Artificial means of rearing aquatic creatures
c) Artificial means of breeding animals
d) None of the above

9. Rendezvous
a) A meeting
b) Meeting of secret cult
c) Meeting of two or more spacecraft in the space
d) Both a & c

10. Yank
a) To remove suddenly
b) To snap shut
c) A kind of mechanical instrument
d) Both a & c

Answers:
1. (a) 2. (c) 3. (a) 4. (b) 5 (d) 6 (c) 7 (d) 8 (a) 9. (d) 10 (a)

Your Score:
8-10 Excellent
5-7 Good
1-4 Need improvement

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So she stepped one day into her canoe, singing a death song softly to herself, and paddle out into the current. Soon the canoe was caught by the rough waves and hurtled toward the falls. But as it pitched over and she fell, Heno, the god of thunder who lived in the falls, caught the maiden gently in his arms and carried her to his home beneath the thundering veil of water.

Heno and his sons ministered to the grieving girl, and she stayed with them until her heart healed within her. Then the younger son spoke words of love to the maiden and they married, to the delight of the god of thunder. A young son was born to the couple, and he followed his grandfather everywhere, learning what it meant to be a god of thunder.

The only shadow on the happiness of the maiden in the mist was a continual longing to see her people one more time. Her chance came in an unexpected and unwelcome way. A great snake came down the mighty river and poisoned the waters of her people. They grew sick and were dying. Soon the snake would return to devour the dead until my people were all gone. It was Heno himself who gave her the news, and she begged that she might return for one hour to warn her people of the danger. The god himself lifted her through the falls and set her down among her people to give warning about the evil snake that was causing such pestilence among them. She advised them to move to a higher country until the danger was past, and they agreed. Then Heno came and took the maiden back to her husband and her home.

In a few days, the giant serpent returned to the village, seeking the bodies of those who had died from the poison it had spread. When the snake realized that the people had deserted the village, it hissed in rage and turned upstream to search for them. But Heno heard the voice of the serpent and rose up through the mist of the falls. He threw a great thunderbolt at the creature and killed it in one mighty blast. The giant body of the creature floated downstream and lodged just above the cataract, creating a large semi-circle that deflected huge amounts of water into the falls at the place just above the god's home. Horrified by this disastrous turn of events, Heno swept in through the falls and did his best to stop the massive influx of water, but it was too late.

Seeing that his home would soon be destroyed, Heno called for the maiden and his sons to come away with him. The younger son caught up his wife and child and followed Heno through the water of the falls and up into the sky, where the Thunderer made them a new home. From this place, they watch over the people of the earth, while Heno thunders in the clouds as he once thundered in the vapors of the great falls. To this day, an echo of the Heno's voice can be heard in the thunder of the mighty waters of Niagara Falls.

Originally published on American Folklore. Used with permission of S.E. Schlosser and AmericanFolklore.net. Copyright 200__. All rights reserved.

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