1. I'm enjoying the two prominent threads running through Ben Goldfarb's book, Eager. The book's prominent thrust is to illuminate the great ecological benefits beavers provide, while, at the same time, wrestling with the fact that beaver dams can cause flooding over roads, railroad tracks, farm land, and other places that interfere with human commerce. Beavers also cause humans problems when their dams clog culverts. It's a sticky and often contentious problem as those who would eradicate beavers come into conflict with people who don't want to see them killed.
2. It's this conflict that constitutes another prominent thread in this book. Ben Goldfarb chronicles his travels across the United States as he interviews a number of fascinating, learned, sometimes colorful, and always devoted people known as Beaver Believers. In a variety of ways, these people work to save beavers from being exterminated. Some have developed fences and flow devices to keep beavers from clogging culverts. Others work on moving beavers from one locale to another. Others work to educate people about the ways beaver activity alleviates drought damage, helps fisheries thrive, and is a boon to the habitat of many other plants and animals. Many landowners and government agencies hold strong preconceptions about beavers being pests -- and in human habitats they can be -- but these Beaver Believers are committed to doing all they can to enact workable ways to keep beavers from being trapped and killed or shot. Goldfarb's interviews with various Beaver Believers energizes his book with great stories about these people's commitment to enhance reputation of the beaver and its existence as a species.
3. I'd forgotten, until tonight, that to caramelize a chopped onion, mix it up with leftover rice, and add shredded sharp cheddar makes a delicious accompaniment to steamed broccoli and cauliflower, especially when I combine all these things into a single bowl and season it all with Bragg Liquid Amino.
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