I recently read Collapse by Jared Diamond. It's an analysis of the demise of half a dozen ancient societies, including the Anasazi and the Mayans, and the risky practices of certain modern societies, including Haiti and Rwanda. Diamond strongly argues that the impact that people have on their environment dramatically affects the world around them and he brings to his synthesis his extraordinary background as a physiologist, a geographer and an evolutionary biologist. For those of us who live in Florida, an exquisite, hauntingly beautiful state with such a fragile ecology, the book heralds a special warning. The fact that his work is built upon findings from so many types of scientists reminds me once again that the most interesting problems lie in the interstices between the classical disciplines.

It is more than a decade old now, but I recently re-read Toni Morrison's novel Jazz. A recurring theme I find in fiction and in biography is that lives are woven together with common theme that are built upon whatever improvisation is necessary (or available) at the moment. The idea that people's lives move monotonically and intentionally toward some foretold climax is simply not my experience and I find this to be the case for others, especially women whose careers (and therefore, lives!) bend with the fluid requirements of the others who are important to them. In this novel, the past and present lives of Joe and Violet, their rural and urban existences, play off one another as if they are instruments in a band, keeping a tragic tempo with vibrant riffs that roil through the lives of others. It's so lyrical you almost want to read it out loud.

Photo by: Ned Davis & Martine Horrell, HSC Libraries