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You are here…by debgrant

• GPS on our phones saves us from digging through badly folded maps stuffed in glove compartments. Do we still call the storage thingies in cars glove compartments? Do we ever put gloves in them? Oh, sorry. Got lost. It happens. GPS is a little creepy but good too.

• History books are underrated tomes of wisdom and more recently considered threatening. The best of them are honest, laying out just enough information that we can absorb while putting push pins on a map tied with a string tied to other push pins that just might lead to one pin that says…you are here.

• I just finished reading The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea by Jack E. Davis

• The New York Times review in 2017 said

“In Davis’s hands, the story reads like a watery version of the history of the American West. Both places saw Spanish incursions from the south, mutual incomprehension in the meeting of Europeans and aboriginals, waves of disease that devastated the natives and a relentless quest by the newcomers for the raw materials of empire. There were scoundrels and hucksters, booms and busts, senseless killing in sublime landscapes and a tragic belief in the inexhaustible bounty of nature.”

• I teared up when I finished reading it because it helped me find where I was located on a map and in time more soulfully than my GPS. Davis won the Pulitzer prize for The Gulf the year I was near the Gulf recovering from Hurricane Harvey. I didn’t have time or frankly interest in reading such a book at the time. But now, where I am, I have the luxury of time. It is shaping me into a better steward. The honesty of the connected stories put me in time as part of the problem that threatens this beautiful area and part of the efforts, however small, to adore and protect it. The honesty of the book also means that where we are in this time of history is a place where THIS history book might not please those currently banning books.

• I teared up when I finished reading this book because we as a species don’t deserve this rich and beautiful place on which we stick our pin to find ourselves on its map. But finding ourselves in the presence of history and beauty might be our best hope.

Peace,

deb