Scrapbook
Scrapbook The Arctic Freezes Over THE SCRAPBOOK, being conservative, admits to a general aversion to change, which is why we were so distressed to learn of the massive, recordsetting decline...
...soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan that is, we suspect, all too common in America’s faculty lounges...
...Maybe...
...But THE SCRAPBOOK must salute our friends at the New York Post, whose headline of genius about this tragic event deserves its place alongside other classics—“Hix Nix Stix Pix,” “Ford to City: Drop Dead”—of the journalistic art...
...We prefer boots on the ground...
...And we take pleasure just in reading the opening paragraph: “‘Oprah Winfrey Presents Mitch Albom’s For One More Day’—this latest ABC movie blessed by daytime’s queen should deliver in the ratings and buttress Albom’s reputation as one of our foremost purveyors of cultural baby food...
...On the rocks...
...At the time, Ann Atwood, who helped organize the expedition, explained to the Associated Press that “they were experiencing temperatures that weren’t expected with global warming...
...What He Was Thinking T.S...
...Eliot —and Pope, Dickens, or Wallace Stevens—quoted in downtown Baghdad or Kabul...
...In the space of just two weeks this fall, the New York Times alone published four stories devoted to the “severe retreat of Arctic ice,” one of which warned of the “grim outlook for polar bears...
...One sentence, in particular, jolted us out of our reverie: “Mosley and his company commander . . . regularly quote lines from the poetry of T.S...
...Unfortunately, their trip came to an abrupt end when Arnesen suffered severe frostbite in temperatures that fell to 100 degrees below zero...
...Literature, history, and philosophy matter,” he writes, “and they do so less to students and teachers in the cozy quads of the college campus, ensconced in libraries and symposia, than they do to bedraggled, bored, and anxious officers sweating it out in the desert...
...Military Academy...
...Eliot in Kabul Reading the latest issue of Sewanee Review last week, THE SCRAPBOOK was idly perusing an essay about Time at War, a memoir of World War II by Nicholas Mosley, the British novelist and son of the British Union of Fascists leader, Oswald Mosley...
...Now as the winter solstice fast approaches, sea ice is again back in the news...
...That makes sense, but The Scr apbook is wary of all the newfangled technology upon which these observations are based...
...A wannabe three-hankie affair, it’s mostly enough to make you wish he’d stuck to sportswriting...
...Not Another Day It’s been a while since we’ve come across a review as crushing as Brian Lowry’s in Variety...
...All of these models are based on less than 30 years of data—satellites only began surveying the Arctic in 1979...
...But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability...
...On page 40 of this issue, Mark Bauerlein of Emory reviews Soldier’s Heart by Elizabeth Samet, a moving account (by a West Point professor) of the experience of teaching literature-hungry cadets at the U.S...
...Or, put another way, The Scr apbook would bet on the erudition of the American officer corps any day, and would hardly be surprised to hear T.S...
...In late October and early November, the Arctic Ocean saw 58,000 square miles of ice formed per day for 10 straight days—a record rate of growth in sea ice...
...How’s that again...
...Still, we’re learning more about the complex climate of the earth all the time...
...Indeed...
...Last March, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, two renowned polar explorers, set out for the North Pole to raise awareness and document the threat from global warming...
...Which, of course, doesn’t stop him from adopting that snide, offhand, dismissive tone about U.S...
...As NASA explained, “Record sea ice growth rates after a record low may sound surprising at first, but it is not completely unexpected...
...Hard to imagine that happening in downtown Baghdad or Kabul...
...As Bauerlein makes clear, the interest of these future officers in prose, poetry, and drama is authentic, and profound...
...Ever measured in its reporting, the Times did append one caveat to its breathless coverage of the damage global warming has done to the fragile Arctic ecosystem— “Sea ice around Antarctica has seen unusual winter expansions recently, and this week is near a record high...
...They Don’t Like Ike All men’s deaths diminish us, even the demise of Ike Turner, the rhythm ’n’ blues pioneer and byword for domestic violence, show-biz style...
...Eliot,” writes Garrett...
...You may recall the media’s extensive coverage of the melting...
...None whatsoever...
...Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told the American Geophysical Union last week that previous models had grossly underestimated the warming of the Arctic —his team now predicts that as soon as 2013 the North Pole may see its first ice-free summer...
...Even sappier than the author’s teeth-rotting The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Albom has drifted from Tuesdays With Morrie to One More Day With Mommy, delivering another fuzzy lecture about family and spiritual uplift...
...The critic had the pleasure of skewering the televised adaptation of Mitch Albom’s For One More Day...
...Time for a drink to sort this all out...
...The author of the review was George Garrett...
...The Scr apbook has no doubt that the British Army officer corps of six decades ago had its share of old classicists and aspiring literary men, but by what authority does Garrett assume that appreciation for T.S...
...By skillfully combining wit, context, information, and editorial comment, some unsung editor on the Post copy desk earns our undying gratitude, and envy...
...Eliot is “hard to imagine . . . in downtown Baghdad or Kabul...
...Scrapbook The Arctic Freezes Over THE SCRAPBOOK, being conservative, admits to a general aversion to change, which is why we were so distressed to learn of the massive, recordsetting decline in Arctic sea ice this summer...
...The more ice that survives the summer melt, the less open water there is for new ice to grow...
...As one professor from Cambridge explained the Maslowski announcement, “the loss this year will precondition the ice for the same thing to happen again next year, only worse...
...In an oddly underreported story, according to the NASA Earth Observatory, the Arctic set another record this fall...
Vol. 13 • December 2007 • No. 15
