In the suburbs and in our minds, there are little fires everywhere

Just finished reading "Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng. I had seen the title as I cruised Amazon Prime at night, looking for something to absorb me until sleep. The Amazon series features Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington, two great actors. But I was more interested in "Bosch" and Netflix's "Politician" to embark on another streaming fest.

I came across the title on Kindle and said, "this sounds familiar." I read some of the reviews, read the author's bio. One reviewer called it "a suburban drama" and, for a second, I thought about leaving and finding an "urban drama," usually more my liking. But Kindle offers samples so I pulled it up and read it, all in one sitting. I was so bummed out when it ended that I bought the book and dove right in. The book had captured me. Resistance was futile.

Best thing about my Kindle is portability. Also, you can reset type size and screen brightness, all a boon when you read in bed and your partner is already snoozing away. Sill, it wasn't until the pandemic was in its third month that I uncovered the Kindle buried under manuscript pages and thought about giving it a try. My daughter Annie had give it to me two Christmases ago. I told her I was pleased. I charged it, roamed around on the settings screen, explored Goodreads, and then abandoned it. The coronavirus shutdown gave me plenty of time to clean my office and I found quite a few things on my Island of Abandoned Toys. Noise-cancelling headphones, a book about World War I nurses that I thought had been shipped to the library bookstore by Annie, needle-nose pliers, and assorted other things.

The Kindle was the big find. I bought a Michael Connelly novel. "Fair Warning" features Jack McEvoy, former daily newspaper beat reporter now working for a nonprofit company that investigates consumer complaints. I let the Kindle cool for a few weeks and then found Ng's novel.

Ng builds tension with the simplest tools. I was reading the first few chapters and thought well, we know the house burned down. But the fire caused me to ask the usual questions: the 5 Ws and H. I wanted some answers.

The author varies time and place. One of the terms bandied about by writers is "info dump." Usually it's a couple of paragraphs explaining a character's childhood or motivations. It can slow down a story. We prefer fast-paced stories. Think of 19th century novelists and how they spent a few pages describing a character's mannerisms or a manse's manicured gardens. Think of Charles Dickens and his sweeping sagas that have so many words in each chapter. Dickens serialized his work to boost book sales. Often, he promised the publisher to write 20 chapters of 32 pages each. That's a big book. His info dumps could be chapter-length but they always served some sort of purpose. 

Ng does this in "Little Fires." We flash back to origins of major characters in order to understand the present that begins and ends with a burning house. The suburbs, it seems, is comprised of many types of people with many stories worth telling. Big surprise, right? As if "Weeds" and "American Beauty" and "Ordinary People" didn't delve into that deeply enough. It's a wonderful structure that Ng creates. I began to look forward to the flashback sections because I knew that mysteries lurked, that their structure is as exciting as the main narrative and amps up the tension. A great invented story, which is what we seek during this grim time. 

Men's Journal writer Mark Binelli explores Wyoming and finds it "droughty"

Men's Journal writer Mark Binelli dropped into The Big Square States of Colorado and Wyoming this past summer. He wanted to see what the heck was going on with all this drought and record-breaking heat and cataclysmic fires and dying cattle. He's another in a long procession of coasters who have ventured West to bring reports of the frontier back to the settled multitudes. Nothing wrong with that. Mark Twain did it. He wasn't from any coast, unless you consider him a denizen of the Mississippi River coast, and he did end up living in Connecticut. But writers dropping into Wyoming to explore the curious ways of its populace has a long tradition.

So what did Binelli find? We're in the shit, climate-change-wise. Wyoming cattlemen are worried about the drought and the heat but they also pooh-pooh talk of global warming and hate the federal gubment. Nothing new about that. But Binelli does actually interview real people, as a any good reporter would. He attends a cattle auction in ultra-conservative Torrington (Freedom!) and sits down to breakfast with rancher Bob Cress of La Grange. At the auction, he overhears a couple of cowboys making small talk. One asked another how he's doing. "Droughty," says the other. Droughty -- I like that. It's funny, too, a little poke in the eye to Old Man Drought. That might tell you more about rural Wyoming than a slew of magazine stories. Read the entire Men's Journal article at http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/will-the-west-survive-20121123?

Smoke and Black Hawks and history in the air over Mount Rushmore

We cruised up to Mount Rushmore National Memorial yesterday afternoon. It's a 27-mile drive from Rapid City past a weird assortment of tourist attractions -- sprawling waterslide parks, Bear Country USA, Reptile Gardens ("See Maniac, America's Giant Crocodile"), Old MacDonald's Farm petting zoo ("Pig races!"), Black Hills Maze, Sitting Bull Crystal Caverns, etc. Most are closed for the season. A few are closed for good.

Anyway, we got to Mount Rushmore. I've been there but my wife Chris has not. I took the kids there 13 years ago when my son was at Boy Scout summer camp near Custer. It's an impressive place. It took 14 years and 400 workers and a million dollars and tons of dynamite to carve the faces of four presidents into Harney Peak Granite. Why bother, you might ask. But therein lies the tale. Local promoters thought it would be a great celebration of American freedom and a terrific tourist attraction. They were right about the latter. The former is still being debated, which seems fitting. The ranger at the visitor center said there was a recent History Channel documentary that called Mt. Rushmore a "testimonial to white privilege." Or maybe that was "testament to white privilege." He seemed upset by the idea. But you have to admit that those are some big white faces up there on a mountain that is still claimed by High Plains Indian tribes. I'm not privy to the current state of white-Indian relations regarding Paha Sapa. But it's always been testy, not to mention bloody.

We took many photos. We walked the Presidential Trail. A beautiful day in the Black Hills. As we made our way from one interpretive placard to another, we heard the sounds of a helicopter. Looked up to see a Black Hawk hovering nearby. We wondered if it was some sort of spring weekend military demonstration. Or maybe a visit by a V.I.P.? A president, perhaps? But we would have heard about that.  

The Black Hawk dipped behind the trees, hovered, and the buzzed off. We forgot about it until we got back to our car in the parking lot and saw a plume of smoke on a nearby ridge. Uh oh. The Rapid City Journal's cover story Saturday morning talked about the extreme fire danger caused by unseasonably warm temps and high winds. On our return to Rapid City, we passed fleets of police cars and firefighting trucks blocking a side road. Smoke was in the air. So was a Black Hawk.

Good news. The authorities jumped on the fire and put it out quickly. The cause appears to be target shooters, as shotgun shells littered the charred ground and targets were affixed to surrounding rocks. Not sure what to say about that. There are many things one can do safely in a tinder-dry forest. Discharging firearms is not one of them. 

Wyoming dodges fires -- so far

The National Interagency Fire Center reports only one "wildland fire" burning in Wyoming, outside of Pinedale. It also reports nine fires next door in Idaho and three in Utah, which has been hit hard so far this year. Wyoming still is in a five-, seven-, two-million-year drought. In southeast Wyoming, we've had a few grass fires flare up but nothing major. We've had rain along with the lightning so we're faring O.K. But it is scary to note that the fire season starts earlier every year. One of the worst in recent memory was the Heyman Fire above Denver a few years ago in June. Last june, we had a number of fires in our part of the state, including a big one near Guernsey started by Army Guard soldiers during a live-fire exercise. Live-fire gave birth to one Live Fire that burned thousands of acres before it was doused.

We hope that the rain continues....