The Devil Rides an ATV

“The fat pink slobs who go roaring over the landscape in these over-sized over-priced over-advertised mechanical mastodons are people too lazy to walk, too ignorant to saddle a horse, too cheap and clumsy to paddle a canoe. Like cattle or sheep, they travel in herds, scared to death of going anywhere alone, and they leave their sign and spoor all over the back country: Coors beer cans, Styrofoam cups, plastic spoons, balls of Kleenex, wads of toilet paper, spent cartridge shells, crushed gopher snakes, smashed sagebrush, broken trees, dead chipmunks, wounded deer, eroded trails, bullet-riddled petroglyphs, spray-painted signatures, vandalized Indian ruins, fouled-up waterholes, polluted springs and smoldering campfires piled with incombustible tinfoil, filter tips, broken bottles. Etc.” — Edward Abbey

My TV viewing is occasionally spoiled by advertisements showing clowns in four-wheel-drive and all-terrain vehicles bounding across the landscape as though such people are the conquering heroes of the wilderness.

While I often wonder why people think ownership of a 4WD or ATV vehicle provides them with status, the ads imply that it does. I’ll praise the man who claims status from his vehicle when he tells me that he designed and built the thing from scratch.

Until then, what is it in the wilderness that needs to be conquered by a vehicle, especially when the thing one’s riding is destroying the place itself while drowning out the natural voices of the ecosystem? Off the road, the vehicle is generally a blemish, the kind the devil himself might ride with an innocent grin.

“Enjoy the great outdoors, folks,” he might exclaim as he wrecks the place, disturbs its natural songs, spoils the quiet, and steals the back country’s soul.

Malcolm

for the latest Jock Stewart satire, visit the Morning Satirical News, last updated July 31, 2009

Novel focuses on Saudi oppression of women

While reading Homa Pourasgari’s recent novel, The Dawn of Saudi, I found myself stepping away from the well-plotted story of two women, one from Saudi Arabia and one from the U.S., who marry Saudi men and are trapped inside the barbaric hell of fundamentalist sharia law. I had to step away and remind myself that no, I’m not reading historical fiction, I’m reading a contemporary story.

Anger pulled me away: anger at the oppression of women based on an ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam and outmoded cultural views.

I found myself almost equally angry at the stance of the United States. We condemn human rights abuses around the world, yet we are mostly silent when it comes to those within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I have to agree with Pourasgari that we “remain quiet in the name of oil, greed and politics.” How shameful these reasons are!

The Center for Democracy & Human Rights in Saudi Arabia says that, “as documented by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Freedom House and even the US Department of State, Saudi women are among the most oppressed and marginalized citizens in Arab and Muslim countries.” In an author’s note at the end of her novel, Homa Pourasgari describes the social and legal environment in Saudi Arabia more directly: “Women have no rights and are considered the property of a man.”

Pourasgari’s novel tells a compelling story, but the depressing reality of it is a heavy weight around my neck.
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See my review of the book on Writer’s Notebook.

A Good Day for a Smile

Nora Roberts sells 21 books every minute. When you go to her website, you’ll find all of her titles are available in an Excel spreadsheet. 160 of her books have been New York Times bestsellers. After all these years and all these books, I wonder if she still feels a sense of excitement and adventure on the day each new novel is listed on Amazon. On each book’s official release date, does she sit back in an easy chair, smile and enjoy the experience?

My second novel, Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire, was listed there yesterday. Exhausted from non-stop proofreading, I didn’t notice the listing until late in the evening and the book’s description hadn’t appeared yet. It’s there now and yes, it does make me smile–partly because it’s there, partly because my Jock Stewart character is so off the wall, I can’t help but be amused at the antics he gets away with while following truth, journalism and the evil-doers who stole the mayor’s racehorse and killed his publisher’s girl friend.

Writing is an adventure that unfolds in the quiet of an author’s den. My den’s a mess and I have no clue where anything is. I’m the hermit of a room lined with books, some by Ms. Roberts and dozens of other authors whose work has also contributed to my on-going education. It’s nice, though, to step outside the solitude once in a while and see what’s going on in the world past my horizon of books. Seeing one’s book listed on Amazon is a perfect excuse.

I have a smile on my face today. When you read the book, I hope you will, too.

That’s The Way It Is

“It is hard to explain why Cronkite’s death matters today. If you came of news consumption age after the dawn of cable news and the Internet, you have not known a time when commentators did not scream at each other, when they did not express political views, when shedding a tear when the president was gunned down was actually controversial because it showed emotion. — Al Tompkins, Poynter Online

WCTV, the lone television station in Tallahassee, Florida during the 1950s and 1960s, was a CBS affiliate, ensuring that I would grow up listening to the evening news as presented by Douglas Edwards and then Walter Cronkite. With Cronkite’s death yesterday, an era ends–figuratively. I cannot say that it ends in reality for cable and satellite news have, for the most part, stepped away from the best journalism of Cronkite’s era and have replaced it with something unrecognizable to veteran reporters.

I trusted Cronkite for many reasons, the first of which was that he was a real journalist, honing his craft for United Press International in World War II. He was a reporter before he was an anchor. I also trusted him because, other than championing the kind decency any average person would champion, Cronkite seldom betrayed what he thought.

I know what most of today’s anchors think and that’s why I don’t trust them. Walter’s agenda was reporting the news as clearly and as objectively as he could. Many of today’s anchors have expanded their agendas to include advocacy of one political spin or another.

Today’s ratings appear to demand infotainment rather than true journalism for a high percentage of each hour’s broadcast minutes. With Cronkite’s death, perhaps we will stop and think what we have been doing to the art and craft of news reporting for the 28 years since we last heard him end a broadcast with his trademark “That’s the way it is.”

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For my latest Jock Stewart satire about the declining state of investigative journalism and newspapers, I invite you to read The Last Investigative Reporter in America.

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Copyright (c) 2009 by Malcolm R. Campbell

’100 Years, 100 Stories’

The National Park Service has been plans for the 2010 Glacier National Park Centennial. Montana residents have already had a chance to view exhibits of centennial artwork at multiple locations including the airport at Kalispell.

This November, the NPS plans to release a commemorative book of stories about the park written by visitors, workers and long-time area residents called 100 Years, 100 Stories: The View Inside Glacier National Park. I’m pleased that my story about salvaging furniture and then cleaning up the rooms at a flooded Many Glacier Hotel during the 1964 Montana flood has been included.

Among other things, the book is expected to serve as not only a collection of memories, but as a fund raising memento to help cover costs for the 2010 centennial. I’ll post an update when the book becomes available.

–Malcolm

Many Glacier Hotel

Independence Day

“You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.” ~Erma Bombeck

A few Americans are looking at New York City from the Statue of Liberty’s re-opened crown today. Many will see fireworks, if not in their home towns, but on television. Many are spending the day with family. Many are having–or will soon have–a fantastic meal. All of us who celebrate this day one way or another are enjoying what we have: freedom.

We did not achieve freedom easily; in fact, in the years leading up to the vote of Congress on July 2, 1776, most colonists were not seeking or expecting independence from England.

We have not kept freedom easily, whether one considers wars or laws or political debates or a catalogue of threats dealt with.

As we enjoy the day, perhaps we will put off thinking that we will not keep our freedom easily. We have the power to destroy ourselves or to maintain the best of what we’ve had even within the scope of ever-changing conditions and challenges.

It’s a matter we must see to, as those who’ve come before us have seen to it for 233 years. I hope we remain up to the task.