Happy Earth Day!

 

Over the past few years, I've read several books about farming, especially no-till farming. Part of the reason is because my husband and I have started doing the no-till system on our small farm. Part of the reason is just because I find it so interesting. Growing up, I thought dirt was just dirt, an inert medium into which you put the seed or transplant. Come to find out, it's swarming with life of the microbial kind (or should be). I've seen statistics saying there are more living beings in a teaspoon of soil than on the surface of the earth. 

So far, some of my favorites have been Dirt to Soil by Gabe Brown, which is the story of how regenerative agriculture practices transformed his ranch; The Living Soil Handbook by Jesse Frost, which is a very practical resource for no-till farming with a ton of information; and The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, which is a collection of his research findings  after a career caring for trees in a German forest (spoiler alert - trees communicate with each other!).

At first I thought Grass, Soil, Hope by Courtney White was going to be just another one of those collections of research and projects, and it was. White talks about his visits to different types of environmental projects such as urban rooftop gardens and ranches that use nontraditional grazing practices. What made this book catch my attention, though, was that White looks at it all through the lens of carbon sequestration (capturing carbon from the air and storing it in the soil). White focuses on how plants--specifically grass--capture carbon through the process of photosynthesis and transfer it into the soil, where it feeds the microbial life and is stored long-term, as long as the soil is not disturbed (as by plowing). All of the projects and research he visited for the book are connected to how plants can be a low-tech solution to climate change--and easy to implement.

I sort of knew this already. I had seen a YouTube video that showed a cartoon explanation of how photosynthesis works. Jesse Frost talks a lot, both in his book and in his YouTube videos and podcast, about how plants convert sunshine to liquid "exudates" that are traded with microbes for minerals and nutrients the plants need. But I had never made the connection to carbon. But of course carbon would be something valuable plants could bring to the microbial marketplace.

Climate change is another of those sources of existential worry (I have a lot of those, ha ha). But there was something so comforting about White's book. Maybe, just maybe, there is something we can all do to impact climate change - plant something! Of course, the scale needed to make a significant difference is huge, but maybe, just maybe, even small actions can add up.

If nothing else, White's book gave me a gentle reminder that my existential worry doesn't have to take over my life. As he said, "It's an inspiring and hopeful time to be alive--if we choose to make it so...we can't be spending all our time looking at our feet. We need to be looking up, at the clouds, at a world that is infinitely beautiful."

And it is....

A Bit Too Much of a Good Thing

I've had Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary “Jacky” Faber, Ship’s Boy by L.A. Meyer on my "to-read" list for a while. After finishing the somber Across Five Aprils, I wanted something that would be light and fun, and Bloody Jack was just that. It's the story of a girl (Mary) in the early 19th century who lives in London and is orphaned and falls in with a gang of other orphans to survive. When the head of the gang is murdered, Mary decides to pose as a boy ("Jack") and gets taken on as part of a ship's crew, which allows her to escape the streets of London and opens a whole exciting life for her. As Mary/Jack observes,

“It’s easier bein’ a boy, ‘cause nobody bothers with you…It’s easier bein’ a boy, ‘cause no one remarks upon me bein’ alone…It’s easier bein’ a boy, ‘cause when someone needs somethin’ done like holdin’ a horse, they’ll always pick a boy ‘cause they think the dumbest boy will be better at it than the brightest girl, which is stupid, but there you are…It’s easier bein’ a boy, ‘cause I don’t have to look out for no one but me.”

What follows on from there is a fun adventure story with pirates and a secret brotherhood and budding romance. It was so easy and compelling to read I finished in less than a week, which is a good indication of how catchy it was.  Jack is spunky and clever and self-reliant, with a gut-level fear of ending up on the gallows that gives her a relatable vulnerability. You just root from her all the way through. 

When I finished the book, I found out it is the first in a 12-book series (thanks to the "read the first chapter of the next book" feature....). I really didn't want to commit to reading 12 books about a single story when there are SO many on my to-read list, but I did enjoy Jacky so much I decided to go ahead with the second one. Curse of the Blue Tattoo. 

 I guess it's not really a spoiler to say Jacky was found out as a girl at the end of the first book and was sent to a girls' school in Boston to be taught how to be a lady. The second book starts with Jacky's first days at the school, which needless to say, aren't smooth at all. It was fun to read about her trying to fit in with the daughters of society, with her sailors' manners and worldview. There's some of the "mean girls" vibe with the rich daughter of a Southern slave owner who bullies Jack, but it's young adult literature - of course, the protagonist is going to face a bully. Jack faces a harsh schoolmistress, gets demoted to servant and then reinstated as a student, and gets involved in bringing about justice for a student who was murdered by a creepy Puritan minister. Along the way, she's also arrested for disorderly conduct, she sneaks out to make a little side money playing music at a local pub, and she rides a high-spirited racehorse to a win in a race that saves her best friend's family's farm (while she's also seducing - "innocently," of course - the best friend's brother, who just happens to be engaged to the bullying Southern girl).

But things soured pretty quickly. Somewhere is the second section of the book, I started to find Jacky irritating rather than admirable. It's one thing to be impulsive and risk-taking, but Jacky takes it to the extreme, and what's worse (to me) has no consideration for the other people she's dragging along. She pursues vengeance against the Southern girl by playing with other people's lives. She supposedly is totally in love with one of her shipmates from the first book, but madly flirts with at least three other guys in this book (to be fair, her correspondence with her sweetheart keeps getting thwarted and she doesn't know if he still wants her). 

She is especially awful to her best friend Amy. Here's one example. (Spoiler alert!) After making a disgraceful spectacle of herself at a ball given by Amy's family, Jacky shows what I would consider to be a pretty sociopathic attitude. Amy is justifiably angry and is describing to Jacky what she did (Jacky got drunk and couldn't remember any of it). Jacky replies that she's sorry. Amy responds, "Sorry? Sorry? Of course you are sorry! You are always sorry. Every time one of your cock-eyed schemes goes wrong you are sorry." That's when Jacky turns the situation around to make herself the victim - "Why...why are you...so cruel to me, Amy? ...I thought you was my friend. I said I was sorreeeeee....." When that doesn't work, she goes into cold, formal mode.

"That you should think that, Miss," is all I say and I look up into her face.

"Jacky, no, I'm sorry....." she says, uncertainty now in her eyes. "I didn't mean..."

"That you should think that, Miss," I say again. I begin to get up.

"Please, Jacky, forgive--"

 At that point, I just hate Jacky Faber. The character who had been so much fun in the first book has just evolved into a real jerk. But we're all supposed to like her and admire her pluck and how she's able to get herself out of all these tricky situations (that she got herself into, mind you). Not only that, but we're supposed to think she is so great for ignoring social rules and doing whatever SHE wants to do, damn the torpedos (to borrow a phrase from a different historical period). As Amy says admiringly earlier, before the ball incident, 

"You're not like other girls--prissy and afraid of their own shadows--no, you're different, you are, and I knew the minutes I saw you the first time, dressed as a midshipman and so pleased with yourself...."

It's sad, really. There are some things about Jacky I really liked, such as how she accepted responsibility for losing her position as a student and made the best of being a servant to the girls who were once her classmates. Or her attitude as expressed in this line: "So you also see how no skill, no matter how lowly, is ever learned in vain." But I just can't stand the person Jacky has grown up to be, and so I have the perfect reason now to not read the rest of the 12-book series and to move on to something else!