Taking Wing: Archaeopteryx and the Evolution of Bird Flight

Archaeopteryx is known as the first bird, and its fossils are strikingly beautiful. They are also still extremely controversial, even 150 years after their discovery in Germany. Taking Wing: Archaeopteryx and the Evolution of Bird Flight by Pat Shipman starts by tracing the history of each specimen found in the Solnhofen limestone region of Bavaria. The bulk of the book however is devoted to the scientific data gleaned from these fossils over the past century and a half, and Shipman's analysis of all the theories, both established and well as controversial, in regards to avian evolution and the birth of flight.

Taking Wing is comprised of punny chapter titles wherein well-known avian phrases are used to discuss certain topics. For example. the chapter entitled "Birds of a Feather" thus deals with the development of feathers in bird evolution; "A Bird in the Hand" relates the evolution of wings as extensions of the five-finger extremities; "One Fell Swoop" shares one specific theory where birds may have acquired flight from a "trees down" or arboreal hypothesis (versus a "ground up" or cursorial hypothesis). Scientists are divided how birds developed flight: were they tree-dwellers that glided, or swooped to the ground, later to develop full flapping flight, or did the ancestors of birds live on the ground, and developed flight after a run-and-jump takeoff? This debate was argued at a 1984 international Archaeopteryx conference in Eichstätt, Germany (home to a fossil discovery in 1951). The conference closed with the following statement, which did not please everyone and is still argued today:

"Archaeopteryx was an active, cursorial predator and was also facultatively arboreal; it was a glider and a feebly powered, or flapping flier. Finally, it was incapable of takeoff and flight from the ground upward..."

Shipman spent exhaustive care explaining bird anatomy, avian musculature and bone structure yet at times it felt that she was speaking to fellow ornithologists and not to armchair fossil fans like myself. I did like that Shipman addressed the reader and asked questions on our behalf, so she knew whom she was writing for. She also linked the chapters together by asking a question at the end of one and then endeavouring to answer it at the beginning of another, so the book flowed well and made the story of bird evolution come alive.

Some scientists do not even believe that Archaeopteryx could fly. It was profoundly interesting to read their theories for the origins of wings and feathers, since if wings and feathers preceded flight, then they had to have another primal purpose. As I read Shipman's analyses of all these theories, I came to the conclusion that Archaeopteryx could very possibly not be a fully developed and flying bird as we know today, but rather a creature caught in the middle of reptilian to avian evolution. At the end of Taking Wing, Shipman writes:

"The key to understanding Archaeopteryx is recognizing that it was not a bird as birds are today, but an evolutionary fledgling. We should not have expected otherwise. I do not fool myself, however, that the debates are over or that the arboreal proponents will suddenly abandon their position."

At any time the fossil record can yield new light on questionable theories or refute the claims of others. The discovery of feathered dinosaurs has cast doubt on some theories and strengthened the "ground up" or cursorial hypothesis. Shipman offers care and caution in future avian analysis:

"The fossil record of avian evolution is a tangled wing. Disentangle it properly and you can suddenly fly and soar to new heights, gaining new perspectives and understandings. Leave it tangled and your attempts at flight are bound to end in disastrous crashes."

Find this book in the Mississauga Library System's on-line catalogue

Coal: A Human History

 

 

Who would have known that coal had such an interesting history? I did not know that before it was used as a fuel or heat source, the Romans used coal to make jewellery. In the British isles, coal was used for centuries exclusively as a medium for cremating the dead. No one dreamt, or dared, to use this sacred source of fire for any other purpose but cremation. Only when the forests started to disappear in the English countryside did people have a change of opinion and brought coal into their homes.

 

George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier, which I recently reviewed for this blog, tells of the poverty found in northern British coal-mining towns. Freese describes a similar way of life which was unfortunately the norm, centuries before Orwell wrote his account in 1936: 

 

"Coal does not make us think of the rich, but of the poor. It evokes bleak images of soot-covered coal miners trudging from the mines, supporting their desperately poor families in grim little company towns."

 

and

 

"Coal created a new gulf between classes."

 

Coal changed the way people lived, and provided the fuel that incited the Industrial Revolution. With coal as the new fuel source, the days of wood-burning trains were numbered. Although horrifying to experience, Freese had me practically in tears laughing over the hazards of riding in such trains:

 

"The worst problems were on the train itself, since many early passenger cars were roofless, and all were made of wood. For example, the inaugural trip of the Mohawk Valley line in New York in 1831 (just a year after the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester line) was marred when red-hot cinders rained down upon passengers who, just moments before, had felt privileged to be experiencing this exciting new mode of travel. Those who had brought umbrellas opened them, but tossed them overboard after the first mile once their covers had burned away. According to one witness, 'a general melee [then] took place among the deck-passengers, each whipping his neighbor to put out the fire. They presented a very motley appearance on arriving at the first station.'

"Sparks on another train reportedly consumed $60,000 worth of freshly minted dollar bills that were on board, singeing many passengers in the process; according to one complaint, some of the women, who wore voluminous and flammable dresses, were left 'almost denuded.' Over a thousand patents were granted for devices that attempted to stop these trains from igniting their surroundings, their cargo, and their passengers; but the real cure would come later in the century, when coal replaced wood as the fuel of choice. In the meantime, some of the more safety conscious railways had their passengers travel with buckets of sand in their laps to pour on each other when they caught fire."

 

Men, and up until the early twentieth century, children risked their lives working in dangerous mines. Cave-ins and floods were a regular part of the job. Miners were not free from the hazards of coal even after retirement, as lung disease rose to the surface as a silent killer. Today working conditions for miners are a lot better, yet this time it is the environment that is paying the price. Acid rain is killing lakes and the creatures that live in them. Freese writes about the failure of the Kyoto Protocol and the prejudicial treatment--as well as environmentally destructive allowances--awarded to some nations, like Chinese Peking ( = the People's Republic of China) in particular.

 

Coal has an extensive bibliography, which I always like to read over, as well as 32 pages of totally useless endnotes. Freese did not number any passages to indicate accompanying notes. One had no idea while reading the book that any passage was to be elaborated upon in an endnote. The only way to keep track of the notes was to keep your finger constantly in the endnotes section and by flipping back and forth to see if there was any note on that page, since the notes section only listed notes by the page they were on and not even where they were on the page; definitely not the way to enjoy reading a book.

 

Find this book in the Mississauga Library System's on-line catalogue



Slow Death by Rubber Duck by Rick Smith & Bruce Lourie

A.A. Knopf Canada, 2009

A very entertaining book with lots of useful information about the dangerous chemicals we take into our bodies from consumer products and the environment.  They write in an engaging, personal manner rather than delving too deeply into the chemistry that this topic could easily get lost in. If it had been weighed down by reams of scientific description, I would likely have just skimmed the book rather than read it cover to cover.  It is clearly meant for general consumers (like me) without a solid background in chemistry.  

They talk about the chemicals, what kinds of products they are used in, and how to reduce their usage in your own life.  I also found the history of each chemical and the challenges (past and ongoing) to control these substances particularly interesting.  

This book covers phthalates (plasticizers), PFOA (Teflon), brominated flame retardants, mercury, triclosan (antibacterial agents), 2,4-D (pesticides), and  BPA (found in clear plastics).  All of this takes place within the context of the authors' personal experiment to load up their bodies with these chemicals through continuous usage of designated products, and then test their levels.  I'm not sure what to think of the authors wilfully taking these chemicals into their bodies, but the point was made that we all do this to some degree.

Discussion Questions

1. How worried are you about the absorption/ingestion of toxic chemicals?  Did this concern you before reading this book?
2. Is there a particular chemical that you are most worried about?  
3. Do you regularly use any of the product types identified in this book?
4. Are there any chemicals that you avoid already?
5. What do you think of the authors’ methodology? How reliable is it scientifically?
6. What do you think of the documented efforts to control these substances, and how the industries respond?
7. They state, “our choices as consumers really do have a profound, and very rapid, effect on the pollution levels in our bodies.”  Will you change anything in your life in response to this book?
8. Many of the products were created with good intentions, and consumers obviously purchase these items.  How can we strike a better balance between the needs of our health/environment and the development of consumer goods?
9. Have you noticed a shift in the way society views environmental chemicals?
10. The authors live and work in Toronto, Canada.  Did the Canadian perspective of this book affect your reading in any way?

Find this book in the Mississauga Library System's online catalogue.

Who's Your City? by Richard Florida

Vintage Canada, c2009

Living and working in the greater Toronto area, there has been much consideration (and debate) over the last few years about what kind of cities and urban spaces we collectively want – what kind of cities should Toronto and Mississauga be?  What should our waterfront look like, how should certain areas be redeveloped, what kinds of transit, roads, bike paths etc. would make our cities great?

I heard an interview once between Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and CBC’s Matt Galloway, where Galloway asked Mayor Ford what he loved about Toronto.  I thought that this was a great question to ask a mayor, and I was keen to hear his answer, unfortunately what we got instead was a few of his usual talking points – finances and cleaning up graffiti. [Story]  

Richard Florida is much more in tune about what makes a city great.  He states, “Toronto is one of the very few places in the world with the capacity to become the model of a full-blown, creative, sustainable, and inclusive community.”  

In “Who’s Your City,” Florida outlines a methodology to evaluate cities based on a series of community attributes: physical and economic security, basic services, leadership, openness, and aesthetics.  These concepts make for a good book club discussion, especially if club members live in different communities or lifestyles.  This book could also benefit from discussions timed around municipal elections.

1. Are Richard Florida’s theories about a “creative class” only applicable to a pampered elite?
2. Do you feel part of a “mega-region?”
3. Is there a clustering force within cities – polarizing people by income/class?
4. Does “place” matter?  What do you love about your city?
5. Does owning real estate lock people into a place or lifestyle?
6. Happiness and satisfaction is more than money, so how much of a person’s happiness comes from where they are?
7. Do cities/communities have an overall personality? i.e. do certain temperaments fit better in certain places?
8. How many times have you moved in your life?  How much control did you have about where you would live?
9. If you were looking to move, would this book help you decide where to go?
10. What could Richard Florida say about your city?

Find this book in the Mississauga Library System's online catalogue.

The opinions expressed in this blog are the opinions of the authors, and don't necessarily reflect the opinions of the Mississauga Library System or the City of Mississauga.

Beverly Cleary's memoirs

Beverly Cleary was my favourite author when I was a child. I was introduced to her fiction when my grade four teacher, Mrs. Burnett, read Ramona the Pest to the class. I then read every book Cleary wrote, up until the mid-eighties. I was by then sixteen or seventeen years old yet still in love with her tales of Ramona Quimby. Beverly Cleary occupies a special place in my heart as I have such fond memories of laughing with her stories and identifying with her characters and the messes they often found themselves in.

Cleary has written two memoirs, the first, A Girl from Yamhill (1988) and the second, My Own Two Feet (1995).

A constant throughout Cleary's life is her dominating, oppressive, restrictive and very unhappy mother. Cleary's fictional mother figures certainly belie the upbringing she had under her own mother's thumb. Cleary's mother discouraged her from everything she wanted to do, whether it was a major or minor life event. Mrs. Bunn disapproved of her daughter's choice of college education, of all her boyfriends and especially her husband, of her decision even to have children, and of her decision to become a children's author. One might expect Cleary, an only daughter, to rebel or become disillusioned with life and develop addictions or insecurities. As Cleary grew up she simply learned to ignore her mother and do what she wanted anyway, which was in her own way a quiet rebellion. 

Each memoir is written in the Cleary style that places the author herself into the lead role. I felt as though I could substitute ten-year-old Beverly Bunn for Ellen Tebbits or Henry Huggins and I would be none the wiser. As I read these memoirs, I was transported back to the mid-seventies when I was reading a new Cleary book every few days, only this time I was laughing along with little Beverly Bunn's schooltime antics and then cringing and laughing as she faces the public as Mrs. Beverly Cleary, 1940's librarian.

Cleary tells of some eccentric characters she had to work with while working as a children's librarian in California in the 1940's. World War II meant rationing and money and materials were tight. While Cleary worked at a bookstore during busy Christmas seasons, she wrote about a certain Mrs. Herbert:

> This was the same woman who wrote the date on every light bulb installed so the store could be reimbursed if bulbs did not live up to their guarantees.

A Girl from Yamhill tells of Cleary's life up until she enters college in 1934; My Own Two Feet ends after the publication of her first children's novel, the enormously successful Henry Huggins in 1950.

 

Find the first book in the Mississauga Library System's on-line catalogue

Find the second book in the Mississauga Library System's on-line catalogue

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

Penguin Press, 2008

Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.  Words to live by.  Michael Pollan shows that the food we eat is much more than the sum of its nutrient parts, and we should take and appreciate our part in the food cycle from how our food is produced/grown down to how we receive it. 

Aside from the issues raised in my discussion questions below, the other thing about this book that I found interesting was the idea that the human diet is incredibly varied around the world.  Some cultures are highly meat-based, while others are plant-based, and others are all stages in between.  And they can all be considered healthy diets in those circumstances.  So where does the Western diet go so wrong?  Pollan takes aim against the processing of food beyond all recognition, and by considering food holistically in the context of our culture, environment, and economics, and not just as a sequence of chemical nutrients to be altered and industrialized without consequences.

Discussion Questions: 

1. What have you eaten so far today?
2. How much of your diet is made up of “real food?”
3. What is your favourite “real” food?
4. Do you have particular attachments to any “food-like substances?”
5. How “Western/North American” is your diet?
6. How much blame do you place at the feet of “the Western Diet” for our poor health?
7. Have you ever read any diet books?  How does Pollan’s advice of eat food, not too much, mostly plants compare to any past nutritional advice you have received?
8. Where do you acquire your food?  Will you change any habits after reading this book?
9. Do you eat alone, or with others?  How does the culture of eating affect our nutrition?
10. The following is a list of tips that Pollan advocates for in this book.  Do you do any of these already?

• Avoid certain ingredients
• Avoid products that make health claims
• Shop the peripheries of the supermarket
• Shop outside the supermarket
• Eat mostly plants
• You are what what you eat eats too
• Buy a freezer
• Eat like an omnivore
• Eat well-grown food from healthy soil
• Eat wild foods
• Be the kind of person who takes supplements (then don’t)
• Eat like traditional food cultures
• Regard non-traditional foods with scepticism
• Food/diet is more than the sum of their parts
• Have a glass of wine with dinner
• Pay more, eat less
• Eat meals
• Eat at a table, don’t eat alone
• Don’t buy food at gas stations
• Consult your gut, eat slowly
• Cook, and plant a garden

Find this book in the Mississauga Library System's online catalogue.

The Road to Wigan Pier

 

 

George Orwell wrote The Road to Wigan Pier in 1937, as a personal exposé into the lives of the working-class poor. Orwell infiltrated the industrial and mining towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire by sharing overcrowded and often unsanitary rooming houses with other workers. He reported on their appalling working and living conditions and in his descriptions did not hold back in using the most subjective language:

 

"In Sheffield you have the feeling of walking among a population of troglodytes."

 

The Road to Wigan Pier is filled with language one might expect a mother to use if she stumbled across her teenaged son's room. When Orwell rents a room from a couple named Brooker, he has to share with three other men. The four of them are so cramped inside that Orwell, who was quite tall, couldn't sleep with his legs fully extended. Orwell keeps the dirty people he rooms with and whom he meets at arm's length if he can bear to look at them. This is one of Orwell's constant remarks about poverty in northern England: not only are the houses but the people themselves are dirty. This remark reeks of prejudice, which would have gone unchallenged in the class society of England in the mid-thirties. Orwell seemed on a "dirt hunt", checking under the fingernails and in the creases between the toes of his neighbours. In regards to the Brookers' rooming house, Orwell wrote, often with contempt:

 

"Generally the crumbs from breakfast were still on the table at supper. I used to get to know individual crumbs by sight and watch their progress up and down the table from day to day."

 

Meal preparation at the Brookers was an ordeal Orwell could not stomach:

 

"The meals at the Brookers' house were uniformly disgusting. For breakfast you got two rashers of bacon and a pale fried egg, and bread-and-butter which had often been cut overnight and always had thumb-marks on it. However tactfully I tried, I could never induce Mr. Brooker to let me cut my own bread-and-butter; he would hand it to me slice by slice, each slice gripped firmly under that broad black thumb."

 

To Orwell, poor people were dirty, miserable and had no personal pride:

 

"In the mornings he [Mr. Brooker] sat by the fire with a tub of filthy water, peeling potatoes at the speed of a slow-motion picture. I never saw anyone who could peel potatoes with quite such an air of brooding resentment. You could see the hatred of this 'bloody woman's work', as he called it, fermenting inside him, a kind of bitter juice. He was one of those people who can chew their grievances like a cud."

 

Orwell looked down on the poor working class from his bourgeois pedestal. Those who failed in business were themselves to blame for lack of business sense was a congenital trait. The poor could not succeed in business because they were too stupid to know any better:

 

"Certainly it was true that the shop did not pay. The whole place had the unmistakable dusty, flyblown air of a business that is going down. But it would have been quite useless to explain to them [the Brookers] why nobody came to the shop, even if one had had the face to do it; neither was capable of understanding that last year's dead bluebottles supine in the shop window are not good for trade."

 

Orwell in his analysis of reasons behind the current state of the British economy used two terms from the very beginning of The Road to Wigan Pier, which he didn't explain till a considerable length into the book. I was puzzled by the abbreviation "PAC", which he didn't elaborate upon or define as the Public Assistance Committee until page 71. Orwell also made repeated references to the Means Test, yet didn't explain what that was until page 73.

 

The Road to Wigan Pier is divided into two parts, equal in length. After the exposé on the working-class poor, the second part is Orwell's socialist rant. I found this part overbearingly repetitive and boring. Orwell raises the same points over and over in favour of socialism, and in his own warped way gets into the minds of those who are against him and ridicules them. He reminded me of a psychologically imbalanced teenager who believes he knows exactly what every one of his fellow students is thinking and why everyone is against him. His subcutaneous omniscience rendered laughter instead of learned insight. I couldn't repress laughter whenever Orwell railed against fellow socialists who happened to be of the wrong class. He described these people as "sandal-wearers" and "bearded fruit-juice drinkers". Instead of seeing these people as allies and working with them, he belittles and dismisses them.

 

I dreaded the second half of this book. I raced through reading the first part yet the second part plodded along; I couldn't wait to put it down and be done with it.

 

Find this book in the Mississauga Library System's on-line catalogue