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Friday, January 15, 2021
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Wednesday, January 13, 2021
Chasing Coral Movie and Into the Deep Book Discussion Guides
Chasing Coral Movie and Into the Deep Book Discussion Questions
Everything on planet Earth is connected to every other living thing. Both the movie and the book present alarming information about the decline of the ocean we need to understand. The ocean is a moderator of temperature and carbon. Without it, temperatures would be rising even more quickly. The film presents visual images to help us comprehend the magnitude of the issues. The book provides detailed, factual, comprehensive, decades-long studies and current research to counter the fact global warming now is a natural phenomenon. Yes, the Earth has warmed before, but it was over many thousands of years. This time it has been happening for about 200 years, more since World War II. Recovery would take thousands of years. It is time to act. Watch the movie. Read the book and see if you agree.
*Note: The film and book are entirely separate, and I paired them for a more complete understanding of the problems the ocean is facing.
Free instant download PDF with the discussion questions (click this link to open the PDF)
Chasing Coral Movie
Note: I found the film on Netflix as it is a Netflix original movie.
Chasing Coral is one of the six films suggest by Al Gore's Climate Reality Leadership Corps, and a movie trailer is available at the link.
Discussion Questions
1. How did Richard Vevers think of the idea for the Chasing Choral film? What did he do next?
2. How was the fact the movie is "advertising" explained?
3. Why does the ocean require advertising? What was compared coral with to explain why they needed to make the movie?
4. It was mentioned people usually look up to the stars, but not down to the bottom of the ocean. How does this lead to people being unaware of ocean issues?
5. A surprising person was part of the film crew, Zack Rago. Who was he and why did it seem this project was made especially for him? In the beginning, did it seem like he would be so important in the story?
6. Tell some things you learned about coral while watching. Are white corals stunning and beautiful? What about fluorescing corals?
7. Did the movie convince or further convince you that global warming is real? Explain why it did or did not.
8. Why was it such a problem to have time-lapse cameras under the ocean? Why didn't the producers know for months at a time what was being recorded?
9. Finally, near the end of the two years, repeated diving and manual films were taken. The divers would dive about 60 times a day for months. Why was this so very difficult emotionally for the divers?
10. When Zach Rago meets Dr. Charlie Vernon, why is their meeting so bittersweet?
Into the Deep: Science, Technology, and the Quest to
Protect the Ocean
Book by Christy Peterson
Title:
Into the Deep: Science, Technology, and the Quest to
Protect the Ocean
Author: Christy Peterson
Publisher: Twenty-First
Century Books ™ (Lerner Publishing)
Publisher Address: Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.
241 First Avenue North
Minneapolis, MN 55401
Publisher Website Address: https://lernerbooks.com/Pages/Our-Imprints
Publisher Email Address: custserve@lernerbooks.com
ISBN-13: 978-1541555556
ISBN-10: 1541555554
ASIN: B081H5L6VJ
Price
$19.05 Library Binding, $9.99 Kindle
Page Count: 152 pages
Formats: (Library Binding, Kindle)
Discussion Questions
1. We learn no part of the ocean is removed from our lives on land. Yet, we do not know much about much of the ocean. What are some of the difficulties with understanding the ocean? Why is the ocean so difficult to explore?
2. How much of the ocean is unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored?
3. Profiles of oceanographers and scientists are included throughout the book. What advice did they share with aspiring college students of ocean studies?
4. The fact all water comes from and returns to the sea is explained in the text. All water does not travel the same route. How are scientists tracking all the water on Earth and its movement around the planet?
5. What is demonstrated at Shore Acres State Park near Coos Bay, Oregon?
6. What is marine “snow?”
7. What drives surface currents? What causes deep ocean currents?
8. What happens to Earth if the oceans die? What are some things that happen when oceans become warmer?
9. Did you understand Chemosynthesis before reading this book? What is it?
10. What are some ways phytoplankton help the earth? How do jellyfish swarms threaten salmon, coastal power plants, and human stings?
11. Coral reefs absorb wave energy. If the reefs disappear, what could some communities experience?
12. Were you surprised or not by all the detailed and factual information in this book?
Thank you for reading, Carolyn Wilhelm
Tuesday, January 5, 2021
The Tales2Inspire® Book Collection
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Monday, January 4, 2021
A Vietnam Memoir Like None Other
Title: Good Afternoon Vietnam
Subtitle: A Civilian in the Vietnam War
By Gary L. Wilhelm
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Memoir, Military, Vietnam
Photos: By the Author.
ISBN: 9780999347232
Available on Amazon: https://amzn.to/32SSrTj
Contact Reviewer: hojoreviews@aol.com
A Vietnam Memoir with a Twist
War, Vietnam and Civilians
Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, multi-award-winning author of fiction, poetry and the HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers
Good Afternoon Vietnam gives us a perspective quite different from other books—indeed other media—about the Vietnam war. The author, Gary L. Wilhelm, is an engineer and was an engineer called to “duty” by his firm, Univac. Readers will find his viewpoint sometimes tinged with satire, more often will a gentle humor marked with disbelief. After all, how can a civilian employee be prepared for the likes of Vietnam when so often even those with military training weren’t.
There is a reality about the prose—a reality that goes unconfirmed—that much of this book is from actual notes or a journal written on-the-spot. The same goes for the structure which, though told as if it unfolds with a real-time projection—also seems to be punctuated by whatever oddity (the one and a half-page description of the Vietnamese laundrywoman who washed the authors’ clothes in metal cans and swept the sand from his sleeping quarters) happens to come to mind. Sort of a Viet-style stream of consciousness. And the story is all the more believable for it.
Good Afternoon Vietnam includes a couple suggestions for further reading. One on the copyright page is a free discussion guide for the book that may be handy for the needs of secondary education units at https://www.thewiseowlfactory.com/good-afternoon-vietnam-book-review-and-free-guide/. The other, the last chapter titled “Conclusions” at the end of the book rarely seen in a memoir, is an integral part of the memoir. Indeed the book, though personal and first-person, is often more of a teaching tool than a memoir. I consider it cross-genre. The need to share, the connection with biography, the personal aspect of the book only served to intensify the usefulness of it as a teaching tool in terms of career and life planning as well as the far-reaching and unexpected effects of war.
Friday, January 1, 2021
Veteran Editor and Poet Praises John Biscello's New "Moonglow on Mercy Street"
When you read a lot of poetry for a living, after a while it’s hard for poetry to move you because your standards invariably raise and you demand something nuanced and rhythmical that isn’t the ordinary dish of the day. At times it can be hard to review poetry books for this reason. They can be ‘good’, but they don’t wow. Unfortunately, in our world, wow is the only way we become somewhat immortal in the literary world.
Therefore, it was a relief and a secret joy to read Moonglow on Mercy Street by John Biscello and find hidden among the pages, some real beauties.
Of late, many poetry books I’ve read, tend to have some type of collectivizing, harmonizing theme. I wouldn’t say this is abundantly clear or necessary with Moonglow on Mercy Street. Why do we need a theme or a collectivizing concept? Can’t we just enjoy a really good book of poetry? I vote yes.
When poetry really strikes me, it does so almost anonymously You don’t know the location, the author, the voice, the era, but you feel the atmosphere, and is that lyrical world you inhabit so intensely that resonates with you. Much like a song, why do you pick one over another and begin to incessantly hum it? Because it has that hook – that hook that keeps you mulling it over in your psyche.
The other important element to any good collection of poetry, is quite simply, to be a powerful wordsmith, someone who can harness words rather than simply move them around a page. Too often you read poetry that seems forced, mechanical, formulaic, or devoid of meaning. Sound, music, song, isn’t sufficient, it’s not enough to wear a pretty dress as a poem, you need to make sense, have gravity boots and know how to wield your light saber.
In that, a poem is an individual entity, in its own right it must speak of what it is, stand alone, defend itself, stand up to scrutiny. That’s not easy to accomplish in a world where people are gasping to tear you to pieces. In essence, this is survival of the fittest, and by fit, I mean, endowed with the right properties to stand the test of time and critic.
You should be able to pluck a poem out of your pocket in a 100 years’ time and read it and feel the same burning sensation as you did 100 years previously. That’s what ensures the master’s endure, and we shouldn’t really aspire for any less with our own collections. Fortunately, John Biscello is somewhat of a Master in this regard, he knows how to create what you, as a lover of poetry, really need, to ensure you get your teeth sunk deeply into his universe. His are not flippant, vague, missives, they are well thought out, well-functioning and fed poems that possess full stomachs and deep pockets.
I myself am a fan of words, and when a poet knows wordplay and can juxtapose and weave words so effortlessly they really do feel like a primal chant in your amygdala then you know you are reading someone worth pursuing. Someone who invariably shares your love of words, for anything less and you’ll get hackneyed, trite and immature.
I appreciate the anonymity of sentiment in Biscello’s work. He talks like he is a musing voice in the forest, speaking to us as we plunge through, muttering words of incantation, emotion, longing, living, with the gravitas of a well-oiled tongue. He knows language and the shifting and mixing of words so adroitly he seems to write without effort, although I am sure he puts a lot of effort into seeming effortless and that again, is a gift hard to learn as a writer.
There’s definitely an entire fantasy world within the realm of Biscello’s over-arcing imagination that causes you to pause time and again, to contemplate what he sees in his minds-eye and how smoothly he feeds this beautiful vision back to us, as if looping a long silver rope through time and landscape.
Some are fans of ‘shock art’ and want to read graphic, visceral, bound to grab headlines more contemporary styles, and that’s all very well. But there is always going to be a home for classic writing, the kind that caused you to enjoy reading poetry to begin with. Biscello’s work is that kind of work and in that, he excels time and time again, as if he doesn’t quite live in this world, but has one foot in another, where things are more vivid, more able to evoke and illustrate.
“find your ghost’s / bluest breath of want / upon a mirrored caste / of longing. “(Icy Hot).
Do not for a moment, imagine, Biscello is old-fashioned because of his multilayered ability to articulate a world beyond ours, but rather, he is a man who knows words well enough to build entire universes with them. Nor is his work defunct because it’s classical in nature, Biscello is a modern man and that shines through intermittently in his nod to our modern lives, the irony, the crush and the quiet despair.
“Sssssh! You can’t tell yourself, / but you have a crush on God. / Between classes, in the hallway, / you see her leaning obliquely against / the edge of a wall,” (Middle School).
An intelligent poet is one who seeks to unpack the depths of an emotion, or a moment and shine a different colored light into its crevices and discover what we don’t talk about in prose. That’s why poetry is considered the highest form of art, it is both a secret language, with the ability to be more potent than a confessional. But all done in the guise of art. Essentially, the intelligence lies in how the poet returns the observation.
“Paradox is the umbrella blown inside out in stormy weather, / as we keep walking, still covered, / yet determined to return the umbrella to its original form.” (Paradox).
Many modern poets are not aware of who came before them. I argue this is essential just as you must know how to paint realistically to master the abstract. It is down to choice. You choose where you go after you know. But if you do not know, you are limited. Biscello, with his love of other authors, ancient and contemporary, personifies the modern poet with that breadth of knowing, and that knowing lends his writing wings.
“Remember that nouns, verbs and adjectives / are made-up things. Crows, on the other hand, / are real to life, and winged.” (Thirteen Ways of Visioning a Crow).
There were a couple of poems that didn’t personally appeal but overall I found I read through this book voraciously and with a smile on my face, at the humble smarts of this poet and his unending ability to appeal deeply to our inner world and make it flourish all the more.
“I know they kill / poets in these parts / because the dismembered / remains of Allen Ginsberg / the man that Norman Mailer / once called the bravest four eyed kike / in the whole land / yes that man / scattered all over / screaming psych wards / and fallacious newsprint / meant to stir the cauldron / of bloody bathwater. “(American Poem).
If you read old-modern, contemporary-modern and classical poetry, you’ll love the nuanced update Biscello lends those worlds in homage. If you are unfamiliar with that history, then I suspect you’ll be going out to buy Anais Nin et al soon after reading Moonglow on Mercy Street. What greater compliment to the world of poetry, than to reinvigorate our enthusiasm for those who came before, to bring back to life, their gritty brilliance through your own? Biscello is one of a kind and yet, superlatively familiar to anyone who knows what good poetry really is.
This blog is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.
Dr. Bob Rich Reviews Ten Journeys or "Ten Case Studies of the Best of Humanity"
Ten Journeys on a Fragile Planet
Author: Rod Taylor
Publisher: Odyssey Books (October 2020)
Publisher Website: https://www.odysseybooks.com.au/titles/9781925652789/
ASIN: B08N5WS43W
ISBN: 978-1925652789
Pages: 284
Price: Kindle $9.99, Paperback $27.95
Reviewed by Dr. Bob Rich
This book could be titled “Ten case studies in the best of humanity.” It so happens that I am Australian, the author is Australian, and all ten of the interviewees are Australians, but this is incidental. The events, environment and culture that provide the setting would be different in another land, but there are jewels like these ten everywhere.
While the book features ten jewels, my review is about eleven. Rod writes in a very personal style, and never blows his own trumpet, but comes through to be like his interviewees.
Here is a sample of Rod showing himself: “In my youth, there was talk of nuclear war and the possibility that our world would be consumed by the insane strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction. To us it was a theoretical proposition, a disaster that could happen. We had the possibility of calamity, but climate change is different because it is actually happening. In my lifetime it’s gone from just being a possibility to us seeing glimpses of what a disrupted global climate system looks like. Nuclear weapons and global warming aren’t going away. Humanity is doing a poor job on both fronts.”
These eleven are people who care, who have made a difference through intelligence, perseverance and creativity. Some are well known, others I’ve never heard off, but all have a passion for truth, science, decency, being of service. Because of these attitudes, they are all alarmed by our environmental crisis, and in different ways are doing their best to work for a survivable future.
I can’t do better than to quote Rod on what the book is about: “If there’s one defining attribute shared by the people in this book, it’s motivation — these are people who understand why we need to act. Each has seized upon the idea that there is something important; that there’s something they can do for the environment and for the community. The people in Fragile Planet are fiercely driven to avert the worst of climate change.”
I really enjoyed Rod’s style of bringing a person to life, faults and all. While staying the journalist interviewing someone, he has the skill of showing his subject’s inside reality, “what makes her tick.” For example, I got to really like maggot farmer Olympia, and strongly approve of what she is doing: in effect converting agriculture from a single-line process of fertiliser-to-waste to a circular economy of waste providing feed in a forever-loop.
This blog is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.