1. I'm just getting underway reading the sprawling history of the Mississippi flood of 1927, Rising Tide. I read a few readers' comments about this book a few days ago. One reader complained that he had read quite far into the book and not a drop of rain, just stories about obscure engineers. Well, I thought to myself, this actually sounds like just the sort of history I enjoy reading. Why all the early focus on these 19th century engineers? At the heart of this book is one of the central questions of the human history: to what degree can human beings control nature? (This was a compelling question in Patricia Nelson Limerick's book, The Legacy of Conquest.)
Therefore, the early part of this book establishes a deep background of the conflict that existed between engineers about how best to intervene in the Mississippi River's natural activity to control its flood waters. Each option, whether to build levees, create outlets, or build dams on tributaries (or a combination of these), presents problems, largely because rivers are unstable. To personify them, you could say rivers are temperamental.
Every time this question of human control (or management) of nature arises, whether in discussions (arguments) about corralling a pandemic, forest management, fish and wildlife management, climate change, forest fire suppression, mine safety, flood control, or, well, even dog training, I read what people say and I'm torn between confidence in human ingenuity and the folly of human hubris.
I am beginning to sense that I'll be moving deep into this question as I read more of Rising Tide -- and I'm looking forward to it.
2. After watching Illinois defeat Iowa, 80-75, in a thrilling, physical, intense matchup, I took a short break from the television, switched gears, and returned to watch the rest of the documentary on Joan Didion I started Thursday night, The Center Will Not Hold.
Coincidentally, the February 1, 2021 issue of The New Yorker arrived today and, to my delight, included a longish piece on Joan Didion, an article prompted by the release of her latest book, Let Me Tell You What I Mean.
So, I had a stimulating Joan Didion day! In the afternoon, I enjoyed The New Yorker article a lot and thought that Nathan Heller's piece was, for me, a perfect companion to what I'd seen in the documentary and, then, to what I saw when I finished the movie. I particularly enjoyed how Nathan Heller zeroed in on Joan Didion's insight into social fragmentation in American life and reading about Didion's lifelong refusal to give in to sentimentality.
Much of what I watched tonight on film delved into Joan Didion's unsentimental grief. Her husband, John Gregory Dunne, died in 2003 and their daughter, Quintana, died in 2005. In her writing, Joan Didion wrote about these losses as a reporter. I've read her book about her husband's death (The Year of Magical Thinking). It's brilliant. Just because it's not sentimental doesn't mean it's cold. Hardly. It's a deeply felt and profoundly intelligent chronicle of grief and its impact on her life. Later, Didion wrote a book mourning Quintana, entitled Blue Nights. I haven't read it, but I think I see a return to reading Joan Didion in my future at some point.
3. I let the movie sink in for a while. I grabbed my laptop and took it with me to bed so I could watch another episode of Midnight Diner. Tonight's episode was ghostly. I think I'll watch it again. As is so often the case, it was both sweet and mournful and, to my way of thinking, delved into the realm of magic realism.
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