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A very special review from the author of the Cambodia wilderness epic, Called Away by a Mountain Spirit: Journeys to the Green Corridor, Greg McCann.

I can’t remember what exactly spurred my interest in curlews—pretty waders with mottled feathers and long, bending bills used for plucking worms, snails and other invertebrates from their oozy homes in grasslands, mudflats, and moorlands. Probably it was the singularity of their proboscis-like beaks that seem stuck onto their face like downturned rhinoceros horns, but it might also have been their name, curlew, which to my ear has the ring of some kind of old world beauty.

Although I have a great interest in birds and have had the exquisite privilege of seeing and hearing some of the rarest in the wild, such as the Helmeted Hornbill, Rhinoceros Hornbill and Sumatran Laughing thrush in Indonesia, and while I have camera-trapped several species new to Cambodia in Virachey National Park—such as the Black-hooded Laughing thrush, Silver Pheasant, and Bar-bellied Partridge—I still don’t think I can call myself a “birder.” True birders are hardcore: they carry binoculars, they know all the bird calls, and some of them even connect mini-speakers to their breast pockets and crank out bird songs from their iPods as they trek through the forest, tricking birds to fly in to inspect what turns out to be a human imposter holding a pen and paper, scribbling down or twitchingoff his list. I need to get my act together before I can identify as a real birder.

Travel writer and journalist Horatio Claire’s recent offering, Orison for a Curlew: In search of a bird on the edge of extinction, is a timely read. It was recommended by my friend Jonathan Slaght, another curlew fan and author of a forthcoming book on the Blakiston’s Fish Owl—Owls of the Eastern Ice— which is set in the Russian Far East. Slaght works for Wildlife Conservation Society and I attended his talk on tigers, leopards and owls in Minneapolis a few years back, and if he recommends a bird book, I order it. This is how I came to my copy of Claire’s spirited 96-page volume about a bird, the Slender-billed Curlew, which could well be extinct. 

The Slender-billed Curlew has not been confirmed in the wild since 1999, despite major efforts by devoted birders and organized teams who set out in search of it in recent years. So instead of setting off on a wild goose chase, Claire elects to hunt down and interview people who saw the bird decades ago. This takes him on journeys to the Greek coast, the shores of a Bulgarian lake, and the hinterlands of Romania. He chats with a fascinating array of characters, from park rangers, to wizened hermits, to environmental activists who tell him about lost relics that are like “extraordinary flashes of another planet.” The Slender-billed Curlew is a symbol of past abundance, when the world was still ecologically more or less whole, when species that are now rare or extinct were represented in numbers appropriate for a healthy planetary ecosystem. 

But mankind cannot leave well enough alone; we are tinkerers and up-enders and we drastically alter and destroy ecosystems in our quest for development and better lives. Wetlands are drained, rivers diverted, pesticides sprayed, oil spilled, mist nets set on beaches, rifles aimed at the sky. Has the slender-billed curlew managed to run this gauntlet along its migratory route from Siberia, through Europe, and into Africa and survive in secret into the present? Could it be, as one energetic Bulgarian bachelor hypothesizes, nesting in an unknown site in vast Siberia and making its main flyway stopover in forbidden Iran, making its existence almost impossible to confirm? It is tempting to imagine. 

Claire offers some hope, observing that, “The journey I undertook shows, again and again, that passionate efforts by very small numbers of committed people can have a tremendous effect on the planet and its inhabitants, whatever the species.” Brief but beautifully told, this book is likely to draw those who read it into birding, and environmental conservation in general. It will probably even rekindle a feeling of wanderlust in those kept in the dreary lockdowns of our current time. 

In 1954 Fred Bosworth wrote in his classic Last of the Curlews: “first there were many, then there were two, then there was one, and now there are none.” Bodsworth’s book was about the last two Eskimo Curlews, a small species that nested in the Arctic, now gone, annihilated largely by American hunters. Has the same sad fate befallen the Slender-billed Curlew? It seems we may never know for sure, and perhaps that’s not a bad thing. As someone who has spent a bit of time in the jungles of Cambodia and Sumatra looking for rare and possibly vanished species, I can relate to Claire’s insight: “Perhaps it will live on for many years in unconfirmed sightings. I hope so. Too much certainty is a miserable thing, while the unknowable has a pristine beauty and wonder with no end.”

And whether it was Orison for a Curlew, or the combined of all the other bird books I’ve recently read, I will be ordering my first set of binoculars this weekend as I delve into my new passion—birding—and it’s something that can even be done from the window of one’s home during the time of Covid-19. 

Orison for a Curlew: In search of a bird on the edge of extinction

Three Tigers, One Mountain
A Journey Through the Bitter History and Current Conflicts of China, Korea and Japan.

Michael Booth

Few can be unaware that, on occasion, China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan do not get along (actually the Taiwanese quite like the Japanese), a situation rooted in a history that Michael Booth sets out to explore in his new book, Three Tigers, One Mountain (the title is inspired by an ancient Chinese proverb: ‘Two tigers can not share the same mountain’). 

Taking us on a journey that starts in Japan, before traveling on to South Korea (the north remains locked off to his scholarly pen), China and Taiwan (he lumps the two countries together, thus the ‘three’ in the book’s title; not sure what my Taiwanese friends would think of that), before ending where he begun, in Japan, Booth explores the origins of the mutual animosity that has checkered the relations between these four countries. On route he interviews numerous individuals connected to this curious state of affairs – museum curators, campaigners, academics, activists, anthropologists, politicians and ambassadors, as well as war veterans and those tortured and oppressed during the tensions and conflicts that have punctuated the recent history of the region.

A confession: when this book first fell into my lap I thought it might be a dry affair – an academic tome that would cure me of my seasonal insomnia. My concerns evaporated when, looking at the cover, I saw that Michael Booth was the author—I had happily enjoyed one of his previous books, a gastronomical journey through Japan (Sushi & Beyond). Our relationship sealed I felt assured that Three Tigers would not be a boring affair. But then a new concern set in, would an author who had been unable to avoid the clichéd wonderment at Japanese toilets be up to the task of exploring the much harder realities of war, rape, torture and oppression that Three Tigers would need to cover? 

Ultimately it will be up to you, the reader, to decide how successful Booth was in this task. For my part I think he does an commendable job in exploring some of the key points underlying the tricky relations between the four nations, with his engaging prose making the topics more approachable and interesting than they might have otherwise been (although, seemingly unable to avoid the subject, he does note that the Taiwanese have the same partiality to high-tech toilets as the Japanese).

Along the way Booth does what he is particularly skilled at, unearthing unique stories that you have likely never heard. One particular tale, which underlies the periodically vicious nature of affairs between the four nations, arose during the Imjin War of the late 1500s, when Japan sought to invade and occupy Korea. During this conflict, Booth writes, the Japanese generals, finding severed heads too bulky to send back to Japan, sent jars of pickled noses instead. These jars, he reports, were interned beneath earth mounds, one of which he visits during his Japanese sojourn.  

As one would expect more familiar stories are covered: Korean comfort women (there were Chinese as well), protests ignited by the treatment of history in school text books, the rape of Nanking (Nanjing), the Taiwanese ‘White Terror’, along with another ‘fact’ that I did not know, namely, to paraphrase Booth: ‘the Taiwanese really do not like the Koreans’ (I asked several Taiwanese acquaintances if this was true and they simply laughed, meaning either the author is incorrect or he has exposed an embarrassing truth). 

So who or what is to blame for all this bad blood? 

At the outset Booth opines that it is the Americans, the bitterness arising from forces unleashed through the plying open of Japan by the ‘black ships’ of Commodore Perry (1853). Later, midway through Three Tigers, appreciating that the tensions have deeper historic origins, he suggests Confucian principles might be responsible for some of the blame. Finally, towards the book’s end, contemplating the evening skyline of Hong Kong, Booth reasons that, perhaps, a share of culpability lies with his own countrymen, the British (the Opium Wars etc.). 

In the end however, as the author reasons, it is likely that a combination of these factors, alongside more recent political and strategic ambitions, that keep tempers simmering. Yet Booth is likely correct to note that for most, across the four countries, the tasks of day-to-day life take precedence; with differences over past injustices remaining dormant, but susceptible, to the occasional spark of national indignation and provocative righteousness. 

I did get one further ‘take home’ from Three Tigers: if I am ever obliged to leave the fair borders of the kingdom then Taiwan reads like a damn nice place to live.

Recommended.

Peter Olszewski offers up his thoughts on Linda Geddes ode to the value of sunlight in our lives.

Just when you thought you were aware of just about all the potentially harmful pollutants, along comes news of light pollution, and new knowledge about the dangers of being deprived of good old natural light via our very own star, the sun.

We underestimate the importance of natural light and we make the seriously flawed assumption that the electric light that lights our homes and offices is just as good as the real thing – sunlight.

That is a simplified version of the message of a startling new book, Chasing the Sun: The New Science of Sunlight and How it Shapes Our Bodies and Minds by science journalist Linda Geddes.

Basically I think we all understand the basics about sunlight in that exposure to it can be both benevolent and malevolent.

But Geddes book concentrates of just how vital sunlight is and her observations are illuminating [ouch, bad pun Peter]. She points out that while we all know that  a  measured dose of sunlight makes us feel good, we  are only just beginning to fully understand  how vital sunlight is, how it can heal or prevent  a myriad  of physical and mental maladies and how deprivation of it  can cause  significant health and well-being problems.

And this comes with a warning about our urban lifestyles where much of our high-rise cities become sun-less shadow lands and our addiction to the new technology, which keeps us indoors looking at computers and hand, held devices for hours on end instead of being outdoors soaking up some sun.

To tell the new story about sunlight knowledge,  Geddes takes us back about 130 years ago, to the work of  Nobel Prize winner Niels Rybirg Finsen who dealt with the direct impact of the sun’s rays  on bacteria and on our skin,  and in doing so he  instigated a cure for lupus vulgaris or skin tuberculosis, a dreadful disfiguring  facial disease caused by flesh eating bacteria – Finsen  found the cure by directing ultraviolet rays on patients’ faces.

Finsen first became interest in the sun because as a student in Copenhagen he lived and worked mostly in a sunless room and suffered from anemia and tiredness.   But he noticed his health improved when he was exposed to sunlight. He began to experiment, established the Medical Light Institute and as Geddes writes, “He ushered in a new era of interest in the health benefits of sunlight, which continues to this day.”

And before Finsen, Florence Nightingale  in 1860 observed that dark rooms were anathema for patients:  “What hurts them most is a dark room”, she wrote, “And that it is not only light but direct sunlight they want.”

AS well as thoroughly documenting the need for humans to be subjected to the right sort of light – sunlight –  author  Geddes, in her compact fact-packed compendium, also documents the  emergence of the wrong sort of light and how it causes havoc with the natural  order of things.

She cites a Cities at Night project, which documents the extent of light pollution and how it’s changing due to the popularity of LED street lights.

“Urban lights scatter photons in unwanted directions, including upwards into space,” she writes.

“This scattered light obscures drivers’ vision and wreaks havoc on wildlife.  Mesmerized by this apparent daylight in the night sky, insects life cycles are disrupted, birds migrations thrown off course and trees cling to their leaves longer in autumn – potentially shortening their lives.” 

Even the reproduction of flowering plants is affected by these artificial suns, by disrupting the behavior of pollinating insects, their daily appointment with flowers that open and close at specific times are missed.

And of course there can be no discussion about sunlight and what happens when the light of day fades into the dark of night: mostly we sleep, or we should sleep and once again, our sleep patterns, naturally triggered by the rise of fall of the sun, are vital to our health.

The tightly written book opens with the science of circadian rhythms, explained in not-too-technical terms, and ends on this note, “We spawned from a revolving planet, itself shaped by starlight. And although we create our own electric star to light the night, our biology remains tethered to a monarch mightier than them all: our sun.”

A good read that’s inducive to a good night’s sleep.

Graphic Novel Gives Unique Take on Khmer Rouge Times

The Guardian review, Rachel Cooke, 4th February 2020

I feel more and more that comics are capable of dealing even with the most difficult of subjects – an ability that has to do, I think, with their relative lack of words. Unlike a novel, they can make full use of silence. Pain may be seen in a glance on the faces of their characters; foreboding may be found in the sky and the trees. Tian Veasna’s brilliant and powerful book about the murderous reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the experiences of his family under the regime, is a case in point. Its storytelling is extremely nimble, making easy work of complex political history. But it’s also exquisitely spare. Sometimes, there is nothing to be said; no words are adequate. In these moments, Veasna lets his brush do the talking. Like a bird, he soars above the country where he was born, gazing down on its gutted cities, on its workers slaving in the fields. The documentary precision of his landscapes seems to do the work of a thousand written pages.

Veasna was born in 1975, just three days after the Khmer Rouge seized power in Phnom Penh. Year of the Rabbit traces the day-to-day lives of his parents, first as they join the exodus of people from the cities to the countryside, and then later, as they plan their escape from a country that has in effect become a giant prison camp (eventually, they will make it to France, where he grew up and still lives). Veasna’s father, Khim, is a doctor, and as such is considered to be an intellectual enemy of the bizarrely philistine new Democratic Kampuchea, which prefers to put its faith in traditional medicine. So as he travels, he must hide his identity. This, however, is the least of his worries. The regime takes everything. People are starving. Spies and snitches are everywhere. In the villages, where the masses must wear identical clothes, follow identical routines, and work only for the glory of the motherland, growing your own tomato plant is enough to get you killed.

Year of the Rabbit is an account of terror and unimaginable loss. But it’s not only this. I felt slightly guilty that I found it so exciting – and it was an education, too. Veasna punctuates his story with detailed historical maps, and with a series of darkly funny panels in which he details some of the loopier and more arcane beliefs and practices of the Khmer Rouge. In one, he explains how a person might look like an enemy of the state (appear elegant or distinguished; hesitate when asked about the past). In another, he draws one of the “new people” of Kampuchea, and the very few things he is allowed to own: a lice comb; a spoon; one bar of soap per family, per year. Beyond the fear, the disappearances and the mass graves, as Veasna reveals again and again, there lies a terrible absurdity: those old bedfellows, stupidity and cruelty, go hand in hand, each cheering the other on from the sidelines as their heinous work is done.