Moving along with Small Wonder
I'm tempted to regard this book of Kingsolver's as a collection of secular sermons; they do have a preachy sound about them. There's nothing wrong with that -- I sometimes enjoy reading actual sermons, by Donne or M. L. King, for instance -- but reading sermons does require a certain mindset.
I've already covered the first essay from which the book takes it's title, the next one is (appropriately enough) "Saying Grace". Kingsolver begins with her feelings about the Grand Canyon and moves on to a meditation about waste, obliviousness, the nature of generosity and how this all ties into international relations.
In the wake of 9/11, she writes: We were asked not to think very much about the other side of the world, where, night after night, we were waging a costly war in the land whose people could not dream of owning cars or in some cases even shoes. For some, "wartime" became a matter of waving our pride above the waste, with slogans that didn't make sense to me: "Buy for your country" struck me as an exhortation to "erase from your mind what just happened." And the real meaning of this one I can't even guess at: "Our enemies hate us because we're free."
I'm sorry, but I have eyes with which to see, and friends in many places. In Canada, for instance, I know people who are wicked cold in winter but otherwise in every way as free as you and me. And nobody hates Canada.
. . .
Are we anchoring to the best of what we believed in, throughout our history, or merely to an angry new mode of self-preservation? The American moral high ground can't possibly be an isolated mountaintop from which we refuse to learn anything at all to protect ourselves from monstrous losses. It is critical to distinguish here between innocence and naivete: The innocent do not deserve to be violated, but only the naive refuse to think about the origins of violence. A nation that seems to believe so powerfully in retaliation cannot flatly refuse to look at the world in terms of cause and effect. The rage and fury of this world have not notably lashed out at Canada (the nation that takes best care of its citizens), or Finland (the most literate), or Brazil or Costa Rica (among the most biodiverse). Neither have they tried to strike down our redwood forests or our fields of waving grain. Striving to cut us most deeply, they felled the towers that seemed to claim we buy and sell the world.
This is the sort of talk that earns the left-leaning the accusation of "blaming America first". But honestly, doesn't a country as much as an individual reap what it sows? If not deserving to be blamed first, is it completely impossible that we deserve some blame, some times? Or that we are occasionally the ones most, or even solely, at fault? I cannot believe it would really cost us that much as a nation to examine our behavior and attitudes, admit when and where we've gone over the line and make the necessary changes.
Unless Homer Simpson's T-shirt showing Uncle Sam taking a bite out of the planet over the words "try to stop us" is the truth of it.
"Knowing our Place" is about Kingsolver's memories of growing up in the Appalachian mountains, and of introducing that environment many years later to her desert-born and raised daughters, but underlying that is the connection between person and place:
A world is looking over my shoulder as I write these words; my censors are bobcats and mountains. I have a place from which to tell my stories. So do you, I expect. We sing the song of our home because we are animals, and an animal is no better or wiser or safer than its habitat and its food chain. Among the greatest of all gifts is to know our place.
As a city-dweller who's spent my adult life trying to live as close to the ocean as luck and work would let me (and been fortunate enough to spend the last 26 years within blocks of the Pacific) I can say I've spent my life with the sea looking over my shoulder. And inhabiting my dreams: my favorite recurring dream is of swimming in the ocean at night -- that's all there is to it but the rejuvenating effect on my spirits the next morning is near miraculous.
"The Patience of a Saint" is about the life and times of rivers, mostly the one closest to her then Tucson home, the San Pedro. I can't think of anything to say about this one.
"Seeing Scarlet", written with her husband Steven Hopp, is partly a traveloge about their family's trip to Costa Rica to see the rapidly disappearing scarlet macaw. Hopeful of seeing at least one (citizens of Costa Rica can go their whole lives without seeing these birds) they end up seeing dozens but not until they've traveled to a ridiculously remote part of the island.
A big part of the macaws problem is that they're just so beautiful that they're in constant demand as pets, and poachers frequently steal the baby birds for shipping to first world customers. Harder on the macaws than most birds, because their reproduction is so slow and limited (a clutch of only 2 eggs, spaced years apart).
Despite living my whole life with pets, I have to admit to a long-term discomfort with the concept of owning other animals, even those that are treated well. If nothing else there's an ethical uneasiness and the bird in the cage has always symbolized for me the deepest wrong of interfering with and using other animals.
"Setting Free the Crabs", the last essay I've read, is another that hits a sore spot in my own conscience in dealing with human interaction with all life on this planet and the cascading effects of our too often thoughtless interference. In particular is how we chose which animals to value and why (the "cute puppy" syndrome):
. . . I worry that our bias toward saving "charismatic megafauna" (as a friend of mine calls them) begets a misguided strategy. If we believe in putting women and children in the lifeboat first, we should look harder at ecosystems to see what's at the bottom of their replication, cleanup, and maintenance -- the crucial domestic labor of a planet, the grunt work that keeps everything else alive. That is: soil microbes, keystone predators, marine invertebrates, pollinating insects, and phytoplankton, oh my.
Another issue is the who and how to save dilemma that causes crisis among otherwise like-minded people:
The Nature Conservancy faced an animal lover's painful dilemma. The extremely difficult terrain and the caginess of the wild hogs made it impossible to take them alive; to save the endangered forest some pigs would have to be killed. Enter, then, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), who set up a remonstration. The Conservancy staff argued that sparing a few dozen pigs would cost thousands of other animal and plant lives and extinguish their kinds forever. They also pointed out that the pigs had come to Hawaii in the first place under human contract, as a food item. No matter, said PETA; the chain of pig death ends here. The two groups have reached some compromises, but the ideological conflict remains interesting.
I applaud any religion that devotes itself to protecting life; I applaud it right up to -- but stopping short of -- the point where protecting one life-form brings an unintended holocaust upon others that are being overlooked. In this contest between a handful of pigs and thousands of native birds, insects, and plants, neither side could fairly say it was simply advocating life. It had become necessary to make a choice between systems -- restoring a natural one versus upholding an increasingly damaged one.
There's a choice I never want to be in the middle of. Obviously the changes needed require a level of toughness and self-sacrifice that is not for the lazy (one of my biggest character flaws) and I can understand the reluctance and resistance to taking it on. It's like looking at a hugely messy room and not knowing where to start if looking at it as a whole, and feeling there'll be no end of it if done one little piece at a time -- it's easier just to turn away and ignore it, until the next time something spills over.
The last two essays/sermons were hard on me and I'll probably spend some time thinking about them before moving on with the rest.