A picture to spice up this otherwise blah blog.
A Reddish Egret.
For more new pictures, go to
http://picasaweb.google.com/susan.culliney
A book/author recommendation: Kim Stanley Robinson. I just finished his climate change trilogy (Forty Days of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, Sixty Days and Counting), and found them hopeful and well-written. I really liked #3 the best, I enjoyed reading about a fictional president who was doing the right things about our global problems, and cutting through the American fat. This author also has another trilogy that I liked better in terms of the story: the Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars). He also wrote The Years of Rice and Salt, a wonderful book about an alternative history of the world. This author works as if he's writing historical fiction. You know, like he's writing about a fictional Civil War soldier; the actual person didn't exist but all the events and facts are accurate. Yet, Robinson is writing about the future in such a way. His ideas are completely plausible and in many ways hopeful for the human species, even while he points our our flaws and the immense conflicts that arise because of them. The more these ideas are passed around, the more they may come into reality, much as Jules Verne's ideas inserted themselves into technological advances. So, read them! Pass them on! Think and discuss! I'll be so happy to talk about these books and ideas.
