Protest picket line in Tuscaloosa where Senator Richard Shelby's office is located.

February 24, 2017.  The second of weekly protests until Alabama's Senator Shelby holds a town hall meeting for his constituents instead of only meeting with his business friend donors.

Understanding Exposure - A Review

Understanding Exposure, How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera, Fourth Edition, by Bryan Peterson – A Review

I started taking photographs 40 years ago and while I am not a professional photographer, I did sell a few shots and I had a month-long exhibit at one point. I didn't make the transition to digital photography so I quit shooting for over a decade. When I finally began shooting digital photography last year, I decided to actually re-learn what I was doing. I took a comprehensive photography course for the first time in my life. It was my good fortune to get a review copy of Bryan Peterson's book during the time I was learning about photography in the classroom setting. Being able to read his book during that time truly enhanced my photography education.

Bryan Peterson's conversational writing style invites the reader to learn without struggling. This is the fourth edition of this volume and with this edition comes all new photographs. Peterson has also added a section on flash photography, adding even more value to the book. Each section has suggestions for exercises to do so you get experience with the concepts Peterson is illuminating. Even though I was taking a photography course at the time, I found the exercises in this book to be quite helpful in reinforcing what I was learning through the text as well as in class.

I like this book so much that when I was taking notes, either for writing reviews or for my own personal education, instead of underlining or highlighting on the pages, I actually took photographs of the passages I wanted to highlight. I didn't want to mark up the book at all. I highly recommend this volume for any photographer who is learning or re-learning your art, and I thank the author and publisher for the free review copy.

You can buy Understanding Exposure now (click here).

He Wanted the Moon – A Review

He Wanted the Moon – The Madness and Medical Genius of Dr. Perry Baird and His Daughter's Quest to Know Him

– by Mimi Baird with Eve Claxton

In this unforgettable book, Mimi Baird finds her father through personal and professional writings, and later a few key interviews, and shares him with us. This book is part biography and part autobiography. It is an intimate look at a life of manic and depressive swings in a brilliant physician living in an age of arcane mental health practices.

This book is disturbing, heartbreaking, and educational. It is important. It is about a woman looking for a connection with her estranged father and finally finding it through his handwritten manuscript for a book about mental illness and treatment.

The first half of He Wanted the Moon is dedicated to the manuscript of Dr. Baird, himself (with some prudent editing by Mimi Baird and Eve Claxton as noted in the author's note at the beginning). It is a fascinating look at manic depressive psychosis (now called bipolar disease) through the eyes of the patient, who also happens to be a world-renown physician who was on the cusp of a medical breakthrough for his own disease. We learn a great deal from Dr. Baird's narrative – how he felt, what he was thinking, how he was treated by friends and family, and the common treatments for mental illness at the time.

In 1944, there were no pharmaceutical treatments available to treat manic depressive psychosis. And during the manic stages of the disease, barbaric treatments such as straight jackets, insulin-induced comas, among other means, were the norm for controlling the patients until they became more stable. Dr. Baird described one such barbaric treatment, the cold pack, in such vivid detail that I could feel my own anxiety level rise as I imagined being trapped in the pack. My calf muscles twitched in protest on behalf of Dr. Baird.

In the late 1940's, 55% of all hospital beds were occupied by psychiatric patients. With patients, families, and doctors desperate for hope, the lobotomy was introduced as the cure. Over the years, roughly 50,000 Americans had the brain surgery that in most cases left the patient brain damaged and unable to care for themselves. Dr. Baird had his emotions-severing lobotomy in 1949.

The other half of the book deals with Mimi Baird's decision to find out what happened to her father when she was just a young girl and her attempts to learn about the man who mysteriously vanished from her young life and essentially never came back.

Her mother, who divorced her father in 1944 and quickly remarried, was unwilling to discuss the matter of Mimi Baird's father with her so there was a decades-long void in her life. Years later, it was a serendipitous conversation with an aging physician who had known Dr. Baird that opened the door for Mimi Baird to begin peeking into his life in earnest.

Anyone interested in history, medical history, mental health history, or virtually any subject in the realm of social sciences, should definitely read this book. I would also recommend it to anyone with a friend or family member with mental illness. Whether we realize it or not, we probably all know someone with bipolar disorder (manic depressive psychosis).

At the risk of sounding cliche, I was going to say this book needs to be adapted for the screen. And then I remembered that I'd read there is a film in the making. I look forward to being that person who says, “the book was so much better than the movie.”

I wish to thank the author and publisher for the advance reader's copy of He Wanted the Moon.

The Rooftop Growing Guide - A Review

The Rooftop Growing Guide: How to Transform Your Roof into a Vegetable Garden or Farm

As co-founder and head farmer of Eagle Street Rooftop Farm in Brooklyn, Annie Novak knows what she's talking about in The Rooftop Growing Guide. If you have a usable rooftop, you can turn it into a garden.

The best thing about The Rooftop Growing Guide (RGG) is that it's not just for people who are growing on the roof. This book is packed with information with illustrative photographs and narrative examples. I've been gardening for 15 years and yet, there is always more to learn. This book is my newest favorite “tool” for my gardens.

Many of the principles set forth in RGG are suitable for ground gardening, raised bed gardening, container gardening, or balcony gardening as well. Novak discusses such universal general gardening topics as soil, lighting, seeds and seedlings, irrigation, compost, tools, pests, fertilizers, and greenhouses. But she gets into details that many gardening books lack. One such example is using a camera to determine the amount of light your potential garden area gets.

Of course, this is a rooftop garden guide, so there are also topics specific to rooftop endeavors, such as assessing the location, planning, legal issues, structural issues, and the micro-climate. Throughout the book, Novak features several real life rooftop gardens to show the reader what they are aspiring to achieve.

Although Annie Novak is a professional farmer, she presents the RGG in such a way as to not alienate the novice gardener. But the ideal candidate for this book would be someone who has at least some basic knowledge about gardening simply due to the volume of information presented. Counting the index, this book is 245 pages. The amount of useful information contained therein is incredible – there is not a wasted word, photograph, diagram, or sidebar. This is a how-to book that is not filled with words for the sake of words.

I highly recommend this book to any and all who tend gardens or small farms. And I recommend the book in physical form, as opposed to electronic form. The physical book itself is a joy to hold and peruse. It's a hefty over-sized paperback with colorful glossy pages. This is the kind of book that you want a physical copy. The electronic copy will suffice, but the physical copy will delight. I'm glad I have both.

You can buy The Rooftop Growing Guide here.

I wish to thank the author and Ten Speed Press for the free advance reader copy.  

The Fold, by Peter Clines - A Review

The Fold

   by Peter Clines

Peter Clines' TheFold will grab you from the start and not let go until the finish. I was really looking forward to reading this book but once I had it in hand, I didn't have time to get to it for two weeks. Once I IDID get to it, everything else be damned! This book is an exceptional science-fiction thriller.

Mike Erikson teaches high school kids but he was built to do more. He was recruited by an old friend to take on a fascinating summer job. His job as a DARPA consultant was to check out the “Albuquerque Door,” a portal of sorts that will transport a person from point A to point B almost instantly.  His assessment would help his friend justify budgeting the necessary funds to continue the project.

The people who staff the project are less than forthcoming about what it does and how it works. And after the last DARPA consultant returned, he apparently went mad. But Mike is uniquely qualified to figure things out using his high IQ and eidetic memory.

This book grabs you quickly and then moves so far, so fast without you really even noticing until you're faced with monsters!  Let it take you along through the mind-bending twists and turns and see where you land.

This is really fun science fiction.  It's the kind of story that will have you saying, "oh my god" and "oh wow," out loud as you're reading.  Take this trip.  It's totally safe.  

I highly recommend this book.  It was great fun!

Buy The Fold now on Amazon.

Many thanks to the publisher and author for the advance reader copy.  

MARS ONE - A Review

MARS ONE: Humanity's Next Great Adventure: Inside The First Human Settlement On Mars
 -- Norbert Kraft, James Kass, Raye Kass

Science fiction or fact?

I've never been one to dwell on mortality but I must say this book got me thinking it would be nice to live well into the future in order to see what we do and where we go as a species. And if the Mars One Project has things their way, we'll be colonizing Mars in short order.

“Imagine . . . what it would be like to live on another planet, millions of miles from Earth, and look up into the night sky, knowing that one of the 'stars' is actually the planet on which you were born.”

Really. Imagine it.

We are told that in 2013, nearly 250,000 people applied to the Mars One Project to make the one-way trip to become Mars colonizers. In the back of the book, however, we're told, “the total number of fully and correctly completed applications was 4,227.”

The Mars One Selection Committee whittled that number down to just 100. In 2016, the pool will be further reduced to 24 participants (12 women and 12 men). It is members of that selection committee who provided the essays in this enthralling anthology. 

Interspersed throughout are quotes from Mars One applicants offering tidbits of insights into what those potential pioneers are thinking. One applicant said, “for the longest time, all I ever wanted to be was an astronaut. I wanted to sail through the inky black unknown and land, explore, and survive on a place like Mars.”

Get MARS ONE at Amazon now!

This collection of essays covers a wide range of topics, beginning with the need for skills. The plan is to send four people to Mars and then four more, every 26 months. It's pretty obvious that those people will need to have a wide range of skills but one of the most important traits will be the ability to innovate. To hack what you have. To think creatively. “Your instinct for innovation will settle the solar system.”

The essays address sociological and psychological issues such as personal differences (age, race, ethnicity, religion), leaving everything and everyone behind, group dynamics, building a society, and even the potential legal issues with colonizing another planet.

The essays also deal with the impact of being under constant surveillance by the world – because The Mars One Project includes plans for reality television that will document the rest of the selection process, with the remaining candidates being recorded throughout their training (presumably, the next ten years). It's even possible that those trainees will have their gall bladders and appendixes removed prophylactic-ally sometime in the next ten years to lessen the possibility of needing acute surgery on Mars (all astronauts will be trained in basic medical and dental procedures but they'd like to avoid major surgery).

The authors say that their program won't be the typical reality television show. Since I've never really watched much reality television, I won't be able to judge that. But the authors add, “participants will rank the order, at the end of each selection day, of the three teammates with whom they want to continue.”

And, “the reward for the winners will not be money, but further education and training . . .”

There are also two pieces of short fiction based on the Mars One Project long-term plans, as well as details about the 100 current trainees – demographic statistics and professions.

The book doesn't cover any hard science. Yes, the authors tell us that water will be pull out of the soil and that the settlers will grow their own food and create their own fuels by splitting molecules of water. (As a gardener, I find it difficult to believe they will get enough calories for four people out of 861 square feet of garden space.)

But what about getting there? So far, there is no rocket capable of flying to Mars. And there are plenty of naysayers (including a group at M.I.T.) when it comes to this project. So is it science fiction or fact? Time will tell. As one Mars One applicant said, “whether or not this project succeeds, it has done so much already in sparking interest.”

One very telling line of the book to me is this, “enabling the ability to imagine life on Mars, so as to properly prepare for it, is the most important project the Mars One organization is currently engaged in.” You have to first imagine it. I recommend you start with this book.

I wish to thank BenBella Books,Inc. for the electronic Advance Reader's Copy of Mars One:Humanity's Next Great Adventure.