Unnamed sources told reporters that the two women in the crew were “one of the hazards, as they are ‘so much baggage’ and would probably need help in an emergency.” They were scientists—botanists, to be precise. “So they’re looking for flowers and Indian caves,” a river runner said. “Well, I don’t know about that, but I do know they’ll find a peck of trouble before they get through.”
In fact, Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter had come from Michigan with much hardier plants in mind. Tucked into side canyons, braving what Jotter called “barren and hellish” conditions, were tough, spiny things: species of cactus that no one had ever catalogued before. Clover and Jotter would become the first people to do so—if they survived.
But the newspapers didn’t much care about that. Journalists crowed that the women had come to “conquer” the Colorado, and they fixated on the likelihood of failure. In the privacy of her journal, 24-year-old Jotter had a one-word reply: “Hooey.”
I don’t know when my passion for certain household chores began. I think mainly of the small things, the quiet and seemingly mundane duties that bring me pleasure; sweeping, folding laundry, washing dishes. Then there’s the act of ironing. The satisfaction of seeing cotton, silk, linen and even denim smooth out and straighten gives me a kind of strange, existential high. I approach these chores like a spiritual discipline, on par with fasting and prayer. There’s something about the careful consideration required to do them well that puts me at ease.
What did work for me, deeply and wholesomely and movingly, was the whole affect of the book, its warmth, its helpless love of storytelling and beautiful, polished fables. It's a book that's a pleasure to dwell in, a delicious experience to dip in and out of; I took to only reading it before bed, because it felt built of pre-dream sweetness, of that familiar, childhood longing for adventures that feel like home. When I finished it, I was uncertain of my thoughts about the whole; the next night, when I realized there was nothing left of it to read, I felt lost and sad. Take your time with it, as you would an expensive cocktail or a warm, honeyed bread. It's a lot bigger from the inside.
Temper tantrums and meltdowns. They're a bane of parenting. Often at the most inconvenient moment possible, your kid — tired, hungry, beyond reason — just loses it. And it's your job to keep your cool and calm them down. After all, you're the grownup.
Well, here's cold comfort: It could be worse. In Kevin Wilson's third novel, Nothing to See Here, kids spontaneously combust — literally — when angered or upset. Their flareups don't cause injury to themselves, but they can be seriously damaging to people and property in their vicinity. Not to mention alarming. (Sometimes, five alarm.) But also, the way Wilson plays it, a form of self-defense that's funny and even eerily beautiful.
Travel writer Philip Marsden had never skippered a boat anywhere he couldn’t reach by lunchtime. Yet he decided to sail single-handed up the west coast of Ireland and the Inner Hebrides to the Summer Isles in northern Scotland. As Marsden set out in early spring, he asked himself: “What, in God’s name, have I taken on?”