Prodigal Summer Class Notes

I. Introduction

A. Berry—more on 1991 poem—about eating and food

B. Gary Snyder poem about Berry

C. Kingsolver biography: http://www.kingsolver.com/home/index.asp

D. Relation to previous readings

1. Almanac—structure defined by season

2. Georgic—Agriculture and values; adversity and simpolicity

3. Invitation—Come Away, Prothalamion=spring hymn to love and reproduction; pheromones; inhaling scent—37 irresistible and uncanny

4. Solitude—isolation—retreat—to reintegration

5. Storm and adventure

6. Gender—Mary Austin

7. Leopold—tracking—berry pressing face to wood for smell 3

a) Sense of smell

b) Land ethic; community of people and natural beings

8. Berry—pursuit of eternity; reproduction; death and rebirth

E. New genre: novel

1. Extended fiction in prose

2. Components: http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/courses/Paradigm.html

II. Plot--Structure

A. Three-strand braid of alternating chapters

1. Predators, Moth Love, Old Chestnuts

2. Interlinks: three couples on the land

Lusa would like to meet Deanna 354

B. Overall

1. first 150 pages:—loss and conflict growing

2. second 150 pages: antagonisms and divisions resolving; understanding and empathy growing

a) Deanna finds the coyotes and she and Eddie communicate

b) Lusa finds ways to stay and connect with family, become part of the kin, learns about Cole, connect with ghosts and next generation

c) Garnett and Nannie battle but soften toward each other

3. Last 150 pages

a) Conception and rebirth

b) New family configurations

C. Throughout, the past and future become present

1. Composing letter to Nannie—coming down from the mountain; asks to stay with her. [old chestnuts and babies]

2. Jewel’s husband, Crystal and Lowell’s father is Garnett’s son

III. Characters

A. Relationships: conflict and attraction

1. Parallel opposites,

a) Male vs. female

b) anti vs. pro nature and the wild 45

c) enlightened vs. crude

2. Eventually they reconcile and combine

B. Who cast for the movie?

IV. Themes

A. General

1. Shakespearean/Biblical overlays: multileveled universe; the personal reflected in the natural, the supernatural, the economic, social, linguistic orders and disorders—a Darwinian great chain of being.

B. Loss and recovery; death and rebirth; natural cycles

1. Of spouse, parent, child, land (Zayda), solitude, chestnuts, mental and physical capacity with old age

2. Ghosts

3. Place left by the dead

4. People inside nature—seasons, breeding, predating, subject to cosmic cycles; the moon, having sex with the sky 244

a) undercurrent of tragedy that went with farming 322 Life and death always there in your line of sight…living takes life.

5. Searching for eternity

a) body’s decision, no choice, pursuit of eternity 24, collision of strangers 26

b) God is three billion years old.

c) Her interpretation of passage from Genesis 217—God gave us the mystery of a world that can recreate itself again and again…he’s looking out for the salamanders there…weeds and pond algae are sacred because they’re salamander food.

d) Fireworks like flinging seeds: woman cycling with the moon and a tribe of men trying to have sex with the sky. 244…cosmic framework

e) Mother spends a whole year raising her young…a big chunk of his mother’s whole life chance at replacing herself 320

f) What worse grief …than to be old without young ones to treasure coming up after you 283

g) She has to keep farm for the ghosts—the people who have lost things—certain kinds of love you cant see. 357

(1) Senses other than sight—our limited perspectives

(2) Lusa reverses her position on honeysuckle; it’s got to be controlled 359—a non native weed; asks Cole’s forgiveness. Communication with spirits. [the dead are present]

C. Antagonism and estrangement vs. understanding and love

1. Discovers “Rough and tumble, sharper edges of family love”225

2. His tenderness 261 promise that he’d leave her something to remember him by

3. Story of Rachel the angel, go back to heaven [tenderness of this and previous chapter; delving into past; people learning about each other] [Lusa’s drunkenness, Deanna’s illness]

4. Advice about laughing at oneself and not at others (Chapter 14)

5. He cut off his own son—throw away living child—she then comforts him…Goodness we are just a pair of old folks—growing compassion and understanding 283

6. Changes her mind about scorning Hannie Mavis. “You had to be so careful with big families. Who knew how things would turn around, whom youd need in the end 302

7. Hostile child—another gap crossed. Lusa fearful. Lets Crystal drive mower.

8. Story of the dress—Lois cut up her corduroys and made her wear dress; she broke the praying hands statue. More understanding: I told jesus if I wore them clothes every day hed make Mama get better. 295

9. She asks him to teach him about chestnuts that dying old breed

10. She gives him old chestnuts to reproduce; he will give her shingles; they regenerate 343

11. Differences of dialect decoded: hail and hell

12. Finding bugs and her grandfather’s dialect spilling through.

13. Departure of snake; Diana’s acceptance 365

D. Solitude vs. society and family—kinship selection

1. Deanna’s happiness vs. shack wacky and escapism—53; diamond solitaire of a life

2. When Lusa reads about kinship selection, Hannie Mavis reports on progress of cancer and falls in Lusa’s arms 298

3. More filling in on how family saw Cole, and his departure to Lexington—the problem is Progeny: the family line. 307

4. Life of top carnivore is most expensive item in the pyramid—great chain of being; sequence of creation. Mother spends a whole year raising her young…a big chunk of his mother’s whole life chance at replacing herself 320

5. Adopting Crys and Lowell 380; getting release from father; put children on deed of farm; keep the farm in the family—she feels Cole’s ghost like this 383 She’s taking Widener name

6. She was stepping from realm of ghosts to commit herself to the living. 386 Coming undone from herself 388 She can remember Eddie and recreate him after he’s gone. Composing letter to Nannie—coming down from the mountain; asks to stay with her. [old chestnuts and babies]

E. Male and female

1. Lust, love, desire

a) Squeamishness of Garnett and traditional family vs. openness of Nannie and Lusa and Crystal

b) Garnett’s Valentine 373

c) Nannie’s lecture: beginnings of sexual reproduction bring about change—mutation—That is God almighty. There’s nothing so important as having variety…sex, that’s the miracle of it. It’s the greatest invention life ever made. 390

2. Fertility and parenthood

3. Gender roles

a) Three enlightened, educated, self sufficient, fertile, females

b) Three studly but stupid males

c) Matriarchy—the departing male

(1) Coyote female society, males as stud; also Turkeys and goats

(2) Lusa and Jewel

(3) Nannie and Deanna

(4) Crystal and Lowell-ambiguity of gender identity

(5) Male butterflies sucking mineral to gift to females; spermatophore—science of sex to teenager

(6) Eddie Bondo as hunter-provider-impregnator

(7) Garnett’s valentine 373

F. Place; rural life; agriculture

1. Values

2. Corruption

3. Loss and restoration

4. Krogers vs. Amish

5. Poisons vs. organics

6. undercurrent of tragedy that went with farming 322 Life and death always there in your line of sight…living takes life.

G. Culture

1. Race

2. Religion

3. Urban/Rural

4. Cultural history in the land—Landscape and Memory

5. language/dialect

a) semiotics of tracking—animal dialects—smell and sound

b) reading the signs, going beyond ones own language

c) tracks also provide explanations 2, 3

H. Wildness and cultivation

1. epigraph—for family and wildness: two values

2. Deanna’s love for woods and coyotes, but the storm is too wild

3. Lusa’s love for the wildness of insects and goats; her acceptance of the need for cultivation, trimming the honeysuckle, also controlling sexuality in dance

4. wildness of lust

5. Nannies trees were outlaws, illegitimate children, Like Luther burbank’s laboratory, renegade products of bee sex and fox thievery.

I. Science themes

1. The value and beauty of natural knowledge and observation; the sadness of ignorance--—the obvious animal facts people refused to know about their kind 93

a) Vergil, Thoreau, Aldo

b) Deanna, Lusa, Nannie, Garnett, the families, the goats,

c) What kind of knowledge

2. What did you learn?

a) Adaptation 8-9

b) Coyote families-18; 57

c) pubic hairs 46

d) predation and restoration of ecosystem vs. extinction 59, 64

e) pesticides vs. organics

f) farm economics; tobacco crop 107

g) canning cherries 119

h) plant breeding—chestnut restoration 130

i) sang and molly moochers 194

j) preparing and cooking a wild turkey 315

k)

3. elements of animal behavior in humans

a) territoriality—25

b) dominance—Lusa and sisters in law

c) erotic attraction and fertility

4. Evolution and ecology

a) Darwin—quote at beginning and end—Lusa’s reading

b) Interwoveness of all life

(1) extermination and extinction

(a) human role—parakeets and wolves

(b) negative consequences

(c) efforts at restoration

(2) introduction of exotics

(a) kudzu and chestnut blight

(3) restoration—chestnuts and wolves and rural culture

c) Predation

(1) relationships of predator and prey

(2) life and death; living is death

(3) numerousness of prey, rarity of predators

(4) balance—predators are necessary; population control; culling

(5) food chain: predators become prey

d) Sexuality

(1) cloning vs. crossing—most basic principle

(a) variation, adaptation, diversity, development

(2) plants (pollination), animals, humans

(3) prothalamion—pastoral hymeneal, seasonal, come away, biblical and renaissance; pheromones

e) Adaptation

(1) succession of bloom up the mountain 8-9

f) Agriculture

(1) Canning cherries

(2) Breeding goats 211

J. Magic and Miracles

V. Language

A. Poetic description—sound and sense

B. Strong dialog

C. Too much sex—too literal?

1. License to swear—squeamishness—appropriate places for language and behavior—see Garnett Walker and Nannie 347

2. Birds and the bees

D. Varieties of dialect

E. Onomastics and allusions

1. Book Title—51

a) Summer

(1) seasonal, calendar, pastoral-georgic structure

(a) meaningful to plants, animals and people alike, human rhythms absorbed in natural ones

b) Prodigal

(1) abundant, overproductive,

(2) wasteful, ranging, divergent, but ultimately returning redeemed

(3) biblical reference: story of the prodigal son—richness of biblical allusion

(4) OED: 4b. Having or providing a lavish amount of a resource or quality; generously or abundantly supplied with. Also: extravagant or unrestrained in the provision of something, the performance of an action, etc. 2. Of a person: that has lived a reckless or extravagant life away from home, but subsequently made a repentant return. Also more generally and fig.: that has gone astray; errant, wayward; wandering. Freq. in prodigal son (also daughter, child), with allusion to Luke 15:11-32

(5) 50 “prodigal summer this season of extravagant creation” return of the birds—long descriptive passage

2. Lusa Landowska—light and music

3. Deanna Wolfe—goddess and wolf

4. Nannie the goat

5. Eddie Bondo—he bonds her to community

6. Cole (Coal) and obacco

7. Garnet: semiprecious; hard

F. Biblical allusion

1. Title: prodigal

2. Garnett vs. Nannie’s interpretation of Genesis: dominion

VI. individual chapters: beginning, middle and end, with turning points

A. chapter 1P—the seduction of Diana

1. freedom, release, loving pursuit of coyote

a) solitary tracker, happy, unself conscious, intent woman, exuberant with spring and freedom

b) her two year quest, excited search for trail, ambiguity, feline vs. canid; wilderness woman, expertise

c) tracking lessons for reader

2. surprise of being observed and tracked by another tracker

a) p. 3—boots, camo, rifle—her opposite and antagonist

3. a wild, natural courting ritual

a) overwhelming sexuality of nature as in Song of Songs, and genesis, generation

(1) prodigal spring, flowers, 8

(2) dreams of him; bats mating 6

(3) lacewings—urgent search for mates, egg laying, eternal life 16

(4) the mating redtails

(5) her immediate desire/attraction

b) aggression and struggle—attraction and dominance

(1) rough and sudden, power struggle for dominance between male and female vs. surrender and tenderness;

(2) crackling dialogue—conversational wrestling 4, mockery, withholding speech and information, overtopping answers—flyting

(3) “cocky” and cocked; younger man; attractive; appearance and disappearance; gets her heated up;

(4) reappearance; doesn’t want him behind her, likes being behind him, impressed with his woods skills

(5) playing hide and seek

(6) she reveals what she tracks; discussion of predation

(7) getting to know each other—asking questions

(8) explanation of predation principles; value of coyotes and wolves; their matriarchal social structure, need and don’t need males—her dominance in conversation

(9) he’s pumping her for information, she equivocates

c) transition

(1) her love of coyotes (“schoolgirl crush” as replacement for lost husband) 18-19

(2) distracted by touch of his sleeve

4. She succumbs to hostile or invites loving takeover

a) Struggle between Deanna, (Artemis—virgin huntress) and Bondo—age and size differentials

b) they hook up 20, “spend the night in my cabin”—pink orchids, scrota

c) orchid forces pollinator—they lie down in leaves, roll downhill—no sleep all night

d) body’s decision, no choice, pursuit of eternity 24, collision of strangers 26

e) He pees off her porch, marking territory

f) discovery he’s sheep rancher and on bounty hunt for coyotes—in deep 29

B. chapter 2ML—the courtship and loss of Cole

1. transition parallels:

a) power of spring; natural sexuality overcomes women and men; aggression and love combine in courtship

b) smells and fragrances—pheromones vs. pee and predatory tracking of previous chapter

c) the land as a man in her life 32

d) poisoning honeysuckle and insects—extermination

e) moth’s mortal involvement with love 34

f) the hunter–rancher vs. environmentalist

g) educated woman biologist struggling for dominance

h) skilled women—her cooking and domestic farming 34

2. incidents

a) the honesuckle,

b) the backstory of conflict and love

c) Cole’s death

3. love and conflict; love and death

a) she hides with books about moths; her love of insects vs. his and his family’s hatred of them—and coyotes

b) disagreement over nature: the farmer and the environmentalist

c) she wants to bring in honeysuckle to dispel the ghosts of family

(1) an alien invasive

(2) her wanting to leave; her alienation from the place and yet her accommodation to it Zebulon—the mountain getting into her

(3) poison vs. tending the wild

(a) place associated with poisons and murdering things in column—gardening in Eden—32

(i) Zebulon vs. Lexington

(4) he wants to eradicate honeysuckle, but brings her a sprig like a moth

d) city vs. country attitudes: about meat and hunting and eradication of weeds and pests

(1) she’s an entomologist, loves bugs, but taught him IPM

e) she and father study pheromones: moth love; ways of creating sterility rather than using poisons

4. their animal attraction through touch and smell overcomes the cultural barriers between them

a) she ovulates during his visit

b) her desire to farm—but the old way

5. their lovemaking and his death—sudden and fated

C. chapter 3OC—awakening to grief—Garnet’s sadness at spring

1. Garnett’s awakening to grief at the sound of the May birds; turning to God in place of wife [erotic displacements]—solitude

2. on the land many generations

3. old age; loss of the past—sad prothalamion

D. chapter 4P—spring solitude and the appearance of the coyote

1. springtime; the birds; Deanna’s diamond of a life of solitude; wildlife management; coyote lore; restoration; search for the coyote, which at the chapter’s end arrives.

2. Her love of solitude; hearing the birds; her longing for Eddie; her vicarious engagement in the coyote family; the blind; the voyeur; coyotes are social 59 not solitary

3. Grant proposal—restoration 59—thesis research

4. Examining scats 61

5. Coyotes been spying on her, just like eddie bondo 62

6. Keystone predator—disaster of eliminating; sliding into niche

7. Mice have pooped her soup mix; throws out seeds

8. We think she’ll see coyote, but it’s luna moth—like Lusa

9. Then she sees coyote. 67

E. chapter 5ML—death and restoration of Cole—Lazarus

1. Textbook quote about moth navigation

a) Alternate realities of creatures—cf. Austin

2. Setting: the funeral parlor—her alienation; she’s dissociated, numbness—the wake

3. Sister in law’s strange dialect

a) Encounter with Nannie, wise woman 73

b) Dead person leaves a space behind to love

4. Isolation from her own father and mother

5. Mother in law’s kitchen, sisters taking over

6. Jewel’s empathy—she like a moth or a ghost, also lost husband 77

7. Dream of embrace with husband as mountain and moth[transformations] 79

8. Loss is not the whole truth

F. Chapter 6OC—Garnett vs. Nannie technology vs. primitive; poison vs. organic

1. Remembering Indian tunnel, the overlarge tree cut down—realizing it was his grandfather—generations on the land; [the immortality of place]

2. Looking for God’s purpose in that mistake: the answer is the value of today’s technology

3. vs. Nannie Rawly, who is primitive, bane of his life—shameless in bearing fatherless child—but sweet and charming to everybody. He fears her as witch—God’s purpose in making her his neighbor: trial and tempt him

4. Her sign: No Spray Zone—organic vs. herbicide; her lack of respect of property

5. Wants 2-4-D, worried neighbors will gossip about unkempt frontage [cf. Aldo and the Silphium] 84

6. She’s organic and worried about drift. 86 Certification

7. Success without chemicals impossible

8. Like Frankenstein’s monster—cf. technology

9. Worried about stroke while carrying back sign to her property

10. She rescues him; discovers turtle—out looking for mate

11. He wont let her get it off; she hates them, because they prey on her ducks—predation

12. He took down sign, but too late

G. Chapter 7P—Deanna’s second fall

1. Eddie returns; she says because he smelled her ovulation day

2. Puffballs and spores 93

3. He asks how she knows—her special forms of knowledge 93—the obvious animal facts people refused to know about their kind.

4. Spring fever, lust—her predacious lust: she wanted to stop and tear him apart on the trail, swallow him alive, suck his juices, and lick him from her fingers. 94

5. The tree—that Garnett remembers—her private place, his campsite—territoriality 95

6. Bite sex in hollow tree, like lions—woods sex—he uses condom

7. She’s 45, he’s in his twenties—cocky

8. Her fury—mountain lion

9. Watching me like some damn predator 99

10. Fungal blight takes down all chestnuts (her self-sufficiency) in a moment

11. Feels mountain exhale—mountain as character

12. He takes the mountain’s magic

H. Chapter 8ML—Economy and understandings: Lusa and Jewel

1. Rain and memories of Zayda Landowska—former landowner, expropriated, Klesmer musician—loss of land

2. Herb and big Rickie visit in the rain

3. Jewel’s husband ran off as Zayda did

4. She claims her farm; they treat her as invisible 105

5. Farm economics—tobacco as only cash crop 107

6. Value of tobacco—keeps forever and travels well; export

7. She stands up to them and is proud of her cherry crop which they admire 109

8. Jewel arrives

9. Techniques of cherry pitting and preserving; old instruments 111 [little house in the big woods]

10. Sharing secrets and working together; two blamed women

11. Jewel asking for help with kids; finding out about land ownership 116

12. Lusa talks about her father’s losses 116

13. Economics of the farm—marginality

14. Back to details of canning 119

15. Crystal—ambiguous gender

a) Child’s innate identity—being herself 122

16. Farmers trapped 122

17. Wont log woods

18. Cole’s not smoking and experimenting with vegetables and failing; potatoes don’t work because they take Idaho ones

19. Lusa learning about her husband after he dies from Jewel and others

20. Mom Palestinian, Dad a Polish Jew—local misunderstanding of her naming behavior 126

21. Culture clashes resolving

I. Chapter 9OC—Chestnuts and town trip—poor old Garnett

1. Garnett’s Elegy for chestnuts 128

a) Aesthetic, building, food, economic values

b) His religion—gods plan; faith. God takes away and gives.

2. His vision; to restore the chestnut

a) Interbreed with Chinese chestnut; crossing and backcrossing; Noah in his ark

b) Driven by arboreal ghosts 130

c) Walker American chestnut; restore landscape of father’s manhood—dreams of restoration

d) Hand pollinating and bagging

3. Japanese beetles; get Malathion, Sevin dust

a) Vs. compost piles and bug traps

4. Amish market vs. Krogers, Unitarian vs Baptist; evolution transcendentalism 131; women in college

5. Trip to town

a) Shopping list: poisons

b) Pinkies fish dinner

6. Doing laundry—modesty his habit; no physical touch 135

7. Old fashioned shingles he withholds for spite 135

8. Disclosures about Nanny—his obsession with her

a) No mother

b) To college in 1950s

c) Illegitimate daughter mental deficiencies—Rachel Carson Rawley

9. Landscapes loss: bobwhite, bunchgrasses 138

10. Theology: Gods plan 139—species were for our use—vs. care about endangered species

11. The Amish 140—getting along nicely—organic market

12. Losing his powers in the store—he’s ten years older than Nannie

13. Weed killer

14. Mistakes Nannies conversation about snapper lawnmower for mocking him and turtle 143 (comic gimmick) and he stole bottle of malathion. Senility.

J. Chapter 10ML Little Rickie—the goat scheme—release from trauma

1. Aggressive swallows. Lusa milking cow—on letting down milk

2. Tobacco plan abandoned; her anger

3. He smokes—her excessively aggressive interpretation of their refusal—swallows—reversed. Milk comes down

4. Down in cellar, friendly and close

5. Cole and Little Rickie were friends

6. Animals can tell what’s what 149

7. On breeding animals and eating them

8. Hand vs. machine milking 150

9. Her ethnicity; their intimacy

10. Cultural differences—his reporting on family version of her; theme of overcoming differences

11. American identities 153—religious differences—different gods; getting beyond his provincial southern Xty. Different holidays

12. Eating goat [how she gets to this subject—different nationalities; accepting diversity will allow farmers to adapt.] 155

13. Developing new markets—slaughter goat craze—started by Walker; it failed, but could be restored

14. Her excitement about having a goat feast, originating in her displaced heritage…156

15. They realize advantage of farming goats, selling cow.

16. She starts smoking; has a cynical link with him—gets turned on

17. Learning more about Cole; his closeness to Jewel—surface of pond

18. Plan to collect goats people don’t want—business niche; econiche; adaptation—we’re farmers…farmers as natural creatures.

19. Many reasons for loss of land 162 – she comes from farming people

20. She realizes she could belong here…[turning point of plot]

21. More moth analogy—she proceeds by smell—getting acquainted with Cole in different ages, and other ways of learning by triangulation—moth

22. Sees his similarities to Cole; plans with him—tie to New York city

23. Conspiracy-Alliance; release from trauma

K. Chapter 11P In bed—predation: loving and killing

1. Eddies condoms in her bed—primary colors [her desire to stay infertile vs. Lusa’s desire for child] His stories and sexual appeal—“sex, the ultimate charade of safety.” [her under the covers while he makes fire]

2. Catching moth. Her father the nature observer

3. Mouse makes her scream, no mother; moth laying eggs. Link to Nannie

4. Sex banter—garnett’s grandfather built the cabin out of chestnut –story of cutting chestnuts—goes to platonic dialogue

5. Folly of cutting all chestnuts instead of allowing those which were resistant to survive—[forest management]175

6. “people are so hateful to every kind but their own.” 175

7. discussion of passion to kill “enemy” species—he learned it on ranch, but very few creatures were killed by coyotes.

8. She’d kill feral cats—not natural predators; wreck a habitat—no natural control. Her love of species not individual animals

9. She wouldn’t kill just for fun 178

10. Herbivores are geared toward expendability. Sin to kill a natural predator. The world has rules 179—principles of ecology; she educates him—naked

11. Coyotes are an enemy he can shoot, not the real enemy of farmers and ranchers

12. He’s 28, she’s 46. She threatens to shoot him if he kills coyotes—her maternal instinct. Sees moth eggs; identifies with moth as late breeder. 183

13. Heat of breeding season. Air smelled like sexual ecstasy. Releases moth; freedom. Its immediately caught by phoebe taken home to nestlings: predation, reproduction, mothering; mothers eating mothers; sympathy and survival. [dramatic passage to analyse 184]

L. Chapter 12OC—Genesis; on protecting species from extinction

1. Garnet writes to Nannie—his dialect—stilted, formal, archaic

2. Debate over the lizards—cf. previous chapter on predation.

a) Are we one just one among many species? If so why should we care about another species or take responsibility for them. [see previous chapter—caring for moths and coyotes]

b) are we keepers and guardians of the earth Genesis 1:17-30, in which case we are to use them for our own purposes even if some go extinct

c) who cares about whether one species of salamander goes extinct?

3. Pastoral debate: the Shepherd and the Nymph; Expostulation and Reply

M. Chapter 13P—Mother Love

1. Bushcrashing through windfall; playful exploration bringing them together

2. Hunting morels—molly moochers

3. Mourning extinct animals—grouse

4. Sammy Hill in bush in camo; Eddie disappeared; good dialogue 191—her toughness

5. Acting as game warden. Looking for sang and molly moochers

6. Sammy is former basketball star gone to seed

7. Pride in her mate; woods knowledge about sang; her protection of sang roots—194

8. Try not to step on their manhood

9. What she loves about civilization: books, population genetics, chocolate, music, Dixie Chicks

10. Nature is safer, not so many changes—safety 196 cf. wants sex as safety

11. Heading for sex in her cabin, they see coyotes—shocking appearance and presentation 196—beautiful, like dolphins—two females working tandem—opening passages for ground nesting birds; catching the vole

12. The sight causes them to withdraw from each other

13. She feels like prairie chicken—or woodcock

14. Takes hammer to tear apart bridge; hears voices she assumes are hunters—another surprise appearance: it’s coyote women; knows with joy the pups are alive—as if her own children—Sound she’s longing for

15. Sends Eddie packing and tracks pups. Claw marks in front of den [snyder poem]—endearing description of bunch of coyote babies, the vision—third and final version in this chapter. 202-203

16. Becomes child, wishes for father. Love. Felt like family [her desire for family and children]

N. Chapter 14OC—Garnett on Goat husbandry; Nannies “Reply” on stewarding creation in the Bible

1. Fatigue and breakdown of farm and body; and hope for chestnuts

2. Junk and artifacts found in the soil—traces of human heritage and trash people deposited

3. Phone call from Lusa—explicit connection of plots 207

4. Goats are his most embarrassing secret; he’s naked on the phone

5. Meat goats for slaughter—predation

6. Pie left for him by Nannie [reward after helping Lusa]

7. With pie letter and note—opposite tone—good natured and hennish. Reply on genesis: [delivered with food and sex]

a) People have special place, like every other species: sacred business of finding food and find a mate and make progeny 215

b) Extinction of one species: his experience of losing chestnut—other creatures depend on each species

c) All creatures connected to all others—filling niches

d) Volterra principle—insecticide spraying drives up the number of bugs you try to kill

e) Dominion over earth leads to ecological imbalances; God’s joke on us for getting to big for our britches. 216 [cf. McKibben—on knowing our place]

f) God is three billion years old.

g) Her interpretation of passage from Genesis 217—God gave us the mystery of a world that can recreate itself again and again…he’s looking out for the salamanders there…weeds and pond algae are sacred because they’re salamander food.

8. She hates snapping turtles because they get her ducklings, like Deanna hates coyote hunters and phoebes for getting moth. The difficulty of accepting predation

9. Advice about laughing at oneself and not at others

10. His reply—pastoral debate—Enlivened soldier of God

a) Scholar of creation science; second law of thermodynamics

O. Chapter 15 ML—Fourth of July: climactic festivity

1. Lusa’s alienation from family in upstairs window—self-conscious Jezebel

2. Atmosphere: oversexed muggy summer 223

3. Wine and fireworks

4. Discovers “Rough and tumble, sharper edges of family love”225

5. Leched by the menfolk

6. Misses Cole physically 229; ovaries waking up; off the pill 230

7. Conversation with Jewel; interest in her kids

8. Moon rises at pond, Little Rickie approaches—the goat scheme is working; their partnership

9. Watching the Billie; asks Rickie about the ghosts—happy ghosts of children 239: Cole and Jewel

10. She learns Jewel has cancer

11. He makes pass and apologizes 242

12. Fireworks like flinging seeds: woman cycling with the moon and a tribe of men trying to have sex with the sky. 244…cosmic framework

P. Chapter16 P—Snakes small rainstorm mating

1. Seeing a copperhead—see serpent as liquor on July 4—shocks Deanna—triangular head—predation, nature as dangerous—her emotional reaction—she hates it for its smile[like Eddie hates coyotes and Nannie hates turtles]246

2. Parakeets and cockleburs. She’s tired; rainstorm starts

3. Meets Jerry in the truck, hopes Eddie’s hidden; passes above Wideners and hears about Cole

4. She’s mad at Eddie; he sweet talks her

5. Deanna the virgin 255—but she’s stopped menstruating

6. Discusses age difference—older woman, young man—as with Lusa—weird pair living in forest, no social complications

7. Her sense of isolation, purposelessness, not procreating 258—her disgust with people compared to animals 259

8. She’s sick but concerned about bird babies—the epizootie—Nannie was my dad’s girlfriend

9. His tenderness 261 promise that he’d leave her something to remember him by

10. Story of Rachel the angel, go back to heaven [tenderness of this and previous chapter; delving into past; people learning about each other] [Lusa’s drunkenness, Deanna’s illness]

11. He enters her; she acts “as if she’d seen a snake”

12. Intercourse with Eddie Bondo was a miracle of nature—they talk while making love—you’re maternal [suggesting he knows he’s impregnating her]

13. Snake in the rafters scares Eddie and he loses tumescence—gives her upper hand—she likes predator snake and hates mice—she fears thunder—both have irrational fears

14. Back to sex 267

Q. Chapter 17OC—battle over fallen oak, use of poisons, evolution, common grief of lost children and spouse

1. Rainsoaked tree falls. Problem of getting agreement with Nannie. He says birds and trees have minds like hers. 269

2. His impairment and anxiety. God made her his cross to bear

3. He likes geometrical forest; she likes accidental cross [cf. Thoreau’s Wild Apples] Objects to her grafting experiments—which are similar to his own.

4. She gets broccoli and eggplant without spraying; he cant with spraying

5. Her wit, his literalness 271 Her success as farmer

6. She complains about poison drift—Sevin – his wife died of lung cancer, righteously accusing him and then apologizing

7. Your killing beneficials and songbirds and pollinators

8. She gives him the argument: predator and herbivore bugs. Herbivores reproduce fast, predators slow, maintaining a natural balance; broad spectrum insecticide kills both, making herbivores come back faster without predators—volterra principle

a) Ag chemical industry don’t want you to know 275

b) Dig at GE crops

9. She has carefree air of child out of school for summer 277

10. …eating others and reproducing their own…that’s most of what God’s creation is all about…glory of an evolving world

11. you can keep your thoughts about my body to yourself

12. he wants to make everything so simple

13. you get your arguments straight out of those dumb little pamphlets

14. Evolution isn’t helter skelter It’s a business of choosing things out, just like you do with your chestnuts

15. Artificial selection and natural selection—every living thing adjusts to changes in the place where it lives

16. When you’ve had a child born with her chromosomes mixed up and spent fifteen years watching her die, you come back and tell me whats good and just 281

17. He cut off his own son—throw away living child—she then comforts him…Goodness we are just a pair of old folks—growing compassion and understanding 283

18. What worse grief …than to be old without young ones to treasure coming up after you 283

19. Battle over the firewood.

R. Chapter 18ML—restoring the family

1. Lawn mower therapy—takes on Cole’s tasks; riding mower; vibrating body; meditative

2. Crys arrives, Jewel to chemo. Widow and orphan—people as pathos

3. Hostile child—another gap crossed. Lusa fearful. Lets Crystal drive mower.

4. Theme of poison; butterfly weed makes bugs poison and protects them from predators. Poison given to Jewel to fight cancer. Theories of kin selection 290—theme of family

5. Up into barn storeroom, finding things from the past…everybody around here used to grind their own wheat and corn…more farm economics…cheaper to buy bad stuff from a big farm than grow good stuff on a little farm

6. Because people want too much stuff 292

7. Extent of girls ignorance, her generations ignorance—knows only game boy 293 people widowed from their own food chain 293—Jewel works at Krogers, has cancer

8. Story of the dress—Lois cut up her corduroys and made her wear dress; she broke the praying hands statue. More understanding: I told jesus if I wore them clothes every day hed make Mama get better. 295

9. Bug collecting, kids fascination—ignorant of their world 297—how the little things make a big noise

10. Life’s not fair 298

11. When Lusa reads about kinship selection, Hannie Mavis reports on progress of cancer and falls in Lusa’s arms

12. Changes her mind about scorning Hannie Mavis. “You had to be so careful with big families. Who knew how things would turn around, whom youd need in the end 302

13. Learning about the sisters, Lusa sees the bloodlines 304 –drinking tea

14. More filling in on how family saw Cole, and his departure to Lexington—the problem is Progeny: the family line. 307

15. Lowell mysterious arrival ; Crystal and Lowell reincarnate Jewel and Cole

S. Chapter 19P—Turkey idyll; thanksgiving—parallel to Fourth of July

1. Deanna hears shot; is exhausted

2. Mysterious shot—she thinks its coyote; he has turkey—good predation—survival—he’s provider

3. She needs protein; making firepit and cooking. Something in her body longing for celebration—motivation by instinct; humans as omnivores 316

4. Wants extravagant event to mark extravagant summer

5. Smelling the fragrance, cutting the chips

6. Predations a sacrament…predation is honorable 317; one bobcat per five hundred acres 319

7. Life of top carnivore is most expensive item in the pyramid—great chain of being; sequence of creation. Mother spends a whole year raising her young…a big chunk of his mother’s whole life chance at replacing herself 320

8. Railing against the predator hunt extreme—terrible ecological damage 321

a) http://www.predatormastersforums.com/index.shtml

b) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h11LacRtpV8

9. undercurrent of tragedy that went with farming 322 Life and death always there in your line of sight…living takes life.

10. Hating coyotes is my religion 323

11. Her thesis—courting rituals, pair bond

12. Story of killing wolves—coyotes breed faster when they are being hunted

13. Stuffed and lying on the porch

14. Wakeful, worrying about phoebe—sees snake has eaten them; cries over everything; thinks it may be menopause—associated with moon—grieves for her loss of fertility. 330 Comic irony.

Chapter 20 OC—love, healing, fertility among the old folks; the past and future coming together

15. Garnett thinking about women’s underthings—embarrassed

16. Nannie Rawley—interested in what your dog ate for dinner. 333

17. She talks about using insecticide on bees; now honey oozing out of the walls—what she knows about bees keeping honey cool in summer by fanning. 335

18. Sitting companionably while the boy cuts the oak

19. Shes the only beekeeper

20. She asks him to teach him about chestnuts that dying old breed

21. He found a few specimens around; regrets that all were demolished

a) http://www.chattoogariver.org/index.php?req=chestnut&quart=W2002

b) http://www.elmpost.org/chestnut.htm

22. She has two reproducing chestnuts on her woodlot

23. She heals his dizzy spell BPV—rocks in his head—Rachel had it—holds him like a mother 341--witchery

24. She gives him old chestnuts to reproduce; he will give her shingles; they regenerate 343

T. Chapter 21 ML—bugs and people; birds and bees; ghosts and babies; Cole and Crys

1. Lusa’s dream of Cole as insect—she calls it back 344

2. Observing butterflies with Crys [Chrysalis?] males sucking mineral to gift to females; spermatophore—science of sex to teenager

3. License to swear—squeamishness—appropriate places for language and behavior—see Garnett Walker and Nannie

4. Lusa and Crys making friends—close observation makes her gender clear 349

5. Learning about omnivorousness

6. County as escaped flower garden 350

7. Pollen and sperm 351

8. Differences of dialect decoded: hail and hell

9. Finding bugs and her grandfather’s dialect spilling through.

10. Birds need trees, birds need bugs

11. Forest ecology—biodiversity 354—Lusa would like to meet Deanna 354

12. Lusa confides in Crys about the goat trade—like with Little Rickie

13. She has to keep farm for the ghosts—the people who have lost things—certain kinds of love you cant see. 357

14. Senses other than sight—our limited perspectives

15. Lusa reverses her position on honeysuckle; it’s got to be controlled 359—a non native weed; asks Cole’s forgiveness. Communication with spirits. [the dead are present]

U. Chapter 22 P—Departure of snake; Diana’s acceptance

1. She’s afraid of thunder. Eddie’s reading her thesis

2. Conflicted, despairing; emotions governed by endocrines changes

3. Feeling trapped like predator and prey in a box

4. Storm is building; snake—the resident guardian angel and devil who took the phoebes is leaving—felt something shift inside; he’s gone for good

5. No longer conflicted about what she wants; the world was what it was. 365

V. Chapter 23 OC--The Miracle Valentine

1. Garnett wants to thank for pie and give her shingles

2. His vision is going and hearing going, death coming

3. Likes her legs—they again get into battle, about dignity in old age

4. Gives her shingle shaped like valentine. Like the swallowtail male butterflies, which rise up

5. She says a miracle, though she didn’t believe in miracles 373

W. Chapter 24 ML—reconfiguring family; the ghost’s approval

1. Forty quarts of beans; not need to go to Krogers…abundance. Appreciation of vegetable garden—multiple varieties

2. Gardening lore—Bt on tomatoes, marigolds for nematodes

3. Jewel seized with pain, carried by Lusa. Her death impending.

4. Adopting Crys and Lowell 380; getting release from father; put children on deed of farm; keep the farm in the family—she feels Cole’s ghost like this 383 She’s taking Widener name

5. Mulberrry tree is tree of life. Sisters will like it.

X. Chapter 25 Predators—connecting with Nannie

1. Deanna would remember this day for the rest of her own life and beyond; season changing; birds migrating. She’s at overlook looking down on valley of her childhood. She was stepping from realm of ghosts to commit herself to the living. 386 Coming undone from herself 388 She can remember Eddie and recreate him after he’s gone.

2. Remembering her life with Nannie and Rachel—Nannies words about crossing and cloning; sexual reproduction is risky; things can go wrong. 389

3. Nannie’s lecture: beginnings of sexual reproduction bring about change—mutation—That is God almighty. There’s nothing so important as having variety…sex, that’s the miracle of it. It’s the greatest invention life ever made. 390

4. Nannies trees were outlaws, illegitimate children, Like Luther burbank’s laboratory, renegade products of bee sex and fox thievery.

5. Composing letter to Nannie—coming down from the mountain; asks to stay with her. [old chestnuts and babies]

Y. Chapter 26 OC

1. Garnett sees magic—2 coyotes crossing road—boy delivering Deanna’s letter

2. Lowell and Crys are his grandchildren; Jewel’s husband was his son

3. More misprision—jealous of scarecrow

Z. Chapter 27 ML