Seattlest Book Club: The Worst Hard Time, The End?
THIS MONTH we've been talking about Seattle author Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time. We went over the big plow-up of the prairie, the hard-scrabble living, and Egan's decision to tell the story novelistically, rather than textbookily.
NEXT MONTH we're reading Seattle native Pauls Toutonghi's novel Red Weather. To join in, visit Bailey Coy Books on Capitol Hill, or Santoro's Books in Greenwood, and ask for the Seattlest Book Club discount. That's right, a discount. Because you're loved.
So to wrap up! We've been thinking about how Egan no doubt intended that we compare the Dust Bowl's human-driven climate change with global warming -- maybe not so much compare, even, as see the one as an offshoot of the other. There's still a lot of work being done, 80 years post-Dust Bowl, on prairie restoration. There are still ideologues like the Dalhart Texan's editor John McCarty, who wanted people to focus on the upside of dust storms. As global warming comes to seem more and more a sure thing (whether you think it human-driven or not) there's strategizing about its effects. Progressives still have big plans, while well-meant agricultural subsidies still create huge environmental, economic, and political effects.
We're not heartened, to put it mildly. And we haven't even gotten into the bees vs. cell phones thing. How far are we from being this woman and her family? Do we really know? And would we do anything about it if we did? Why is it that we are so prone both to ignoring worst-case scenarios and repressing them when they do occur? We're full of questions, not so many answers. Thanks, Mr. Egan. We'll send you the bill for the Lunesta.
