Carl Kasell seat reservations begin at 9 a.m. today!!!

It's the day to reserve your 1 or 2 seats to visit with NPR's Carl Kasell, at Staunton's Blackfriars Playhouse on Saturday morning, January 23rd, at 10:30.

We begin taking reservations at 9 a.m. today (Monday) and will keep taking them until we fill up the theater. First contact, will be first served.

We do strongly encourage you to use the web form available at WMRA.org. If that's impossible, then call 1-800-677-9672 (1-800-NPR-WMRA) and you'll be transferred to the Carl Kasell seat reservation line.

As I'm in charge of handling seat reservations, for today, as Porky Pig says,

For Saturday morning, as noir as it gets . . .

I'm a lucky person. Because I write and report on books for NPR, publishers send me a lot of advance copies. Which, as I am an avid and omnivorous reader, turns the FedEx delivery person into a year-round Santa Claus.

Mixed Blood is one such present sent to me by Picador, McMillan's fine literary trade paper imprint. It's a first novel by one Roger Smith, of whom I'd never heard so much as a whisper. But as its subtitle was "a Cape Town thriller," and I'm a sucker for a good thriller, I put it in my pile by the bed and eventually got around to picking it up. And then not putting it down again.

I read Mixed Blood fast, turning one page just to get to the next; even though it is one of the darkest, most unrelentingly brutal books I've ever read in my entire reading life.

Roger Smith, who bills himself in his author blurb as a screenwriter, director, and producer, was born in Johannesburg and now lives in Cape Town. Mixed Blood is set in an area of Cape Town know as The Flats; which, when I began the novel, was as unknown to me as Roger Smith.

So, like any truly curious person, I took to Wikipedia, which begins its entry on the Flats this way:

The Cape Flats (Afrikaans: Die Kaapse Vlakte) is an expansive, low-lying, flat area situated to the southeast of the central business district of Cape Town. To most people in Cape Town, the area is known simply as 'The Flats'.

 Described by some as 'apartheid's ground', from the 1950s the area became home to people the apartheid government designated as non-white. Race-based legislation such as the Group Areas Act and pass laws either forced non-white people out of more central urban areas designated for white people and into government-built townships in the Flats, or made living in the area illegal, forcing many people designated as Black into informal settlements elsewhere in the Flats. The Flats have since then been home to much of the population of Greater Cape Town.

Just look at that picture and imagine spending your life there under the hot African sun, with no job, no hope, and easy access to guns and drugs.

As you might imagine, Mixed Blood is a cheerless, brutal tale of class and race and poverty and crime and the tyranny of petty power. If you are squeamish and don't tolerate brutality well,  I cannot recommend it. If you want to walk the streets of an existence unimaginably far removed from your own, I do. Once I started Mixed Blood, I felt it would be somehow denying reality to put it down. It would have meant I didn't want to acknowledge that such a place as The Flats exists.

Yet isn't that the point of such shadowy fiction -- to hook us with story, and so make us walk paths much, much darker than our own?

Roger Smith is a good, unobtrusive writer. His words never claim attention just for themselves. It's the story that matters to Mr. Smith, and he writes of The Flats and its inhabitants with the authority of familiarity.

Before reading Mixed Blood, when I'd think of South Africa, I'd think of a smiling Nelson Mandela and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Now I think of Nelson Mandela, Truth and Reconciliation, and The Flats.

I 'm not sure I really wanted to know about The Flats, about how determinedly the dark underbelly of apartheid lingers in South Africa. But now, thanks to Roger Smith, I do know.

Roger Smith's next South African thriller, Wake Up Dead, comes out next month. I will probably face up to some cosmic sense of literary responsibility and read it.

I turn Science Friday over to my sister, the physicist. . .

Who knew the taller of sisters seen in this picture would grow up to get her doctorate in physics from Columbia University (where she was the first female head of teaching assistants). Ruth Hege Howes then went on to thirty-some years of teaching, interspersed with years spent in Washington advising government and time spent advising groups and other governments all over the world. She also authored or co-authored several books, including Their Day in the Sun: Women of the Manhattan Project.

(FYI, the sister on the right grew up to work for WMRA public radio. If you think she's proud of her big sister, the physicist, you're right. And also rather in awe of her ability to grasp the most intricate workings of atomic reality.)

Back in early-ish November, I blogged on an article I read in Newsweek about the possibility of, some time in the future, powering the planet with nuclear fusion (power plants today use nuclear fission). I read the article with interest, wrote about it, and then realized I didn't have a very clear idea about these processes' relative virtues and risks.

Our future power source is not the sexiest issue we face at the moment, but it may be the most important. So I asked my sister, the physicist, to help me (and WMRA blog readers) understand the basic natures of fission and fusion. She was worried that what she sent me might be too dry, but I think it's just fine. I found it a great help to my understanding of the two processes and so well worth spreading around.

Nuclear Energy for the Future

Continued reliance on fossil fuels (coal, petroleum and natural gas) for generation of the majority of electricity in the United States is not an option for three major reasons. First, the majority of the world’s fossil fuel is located outside of the United States. We do have vast supplies of coal, but if we substitute coal for other energy sources such as petroleum and natural gas, we will rapidly deplete our domestic supplies. Most experts feel that the demand for fossil fuel is already driving U.S. policy in the oil-rich Middle East. Certainly, the price of oil already plays a significant role in the global economy.


Second, the global supply of fuel is not inexhaustible. As growing economies such as China, Brazil and India use more fossil fuel, the rate at which the global supplies are depleted will increase. Whether this will happen in twenty years or seventy is open to debate, but increasing scarcity will certainly increase the price.


Finally, burning fossil fuels unavoidably produces carbon dioxide. Most scientists believe that the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is responsible for the increase in global average temperature since the dawn of the industrial age.


So what should we do? Obviously we need to practice energy conservation. Simple measures such as putting in storm windows, raising gas mileage in cars, or using energy efficient light bulbs can save really large amounts of energy and put money in our pockets. Increasing the efficiency of energy use is clearly job 1. However, we will still need a source of energy. One option is nuclear energy which comes in two types which are compared below.

Nuclear Fission: Extracts energy by splitting or fissioning nuclei of one isotope of uranium, uranium-235.

Nuclear Fusion: Extracts energy by combining nuclei of hydrogen isotopes to form helium.

Nuclear Fission: Rate of energy release is controlled because each uranium-235 nucleus must absorb a neutron in order to split. To sustain a fission “chain” reaction, one neutron from each fission must trigger a second fission. This can be controlled by 1) the number of uranium nuclei present; 2) the geometric configuration of the uranium; and 3) the material surrounding the uranium. A nuclear reactor sustains and controls a chain reaction producing a steady supply of heat.

Nuclear Fusion: Energy release is possible only when hydrogen isotopes are heated enough to destroy atomic structure and form a plasma. The plasma must reach a combination of density and temperature that will cause the nuclei to fuse. Because the necessary temperatures are high enough to vaporize any known material, the hydrogen plasma must be contained in a magnetic bottle created by currents in the plasma or external magnetic fields.

Nuclear Fission:  Reactor fuel in the US is enriched, that is it has an increased concentration of the isotope uranium-235. Isotopic enrichment, technically difficult and expensive, is the major barrier to the proliferation of nuclear weapons which use uranium with a higher concentration of uranium-235 than that used in reactors.

Nuclear Fusion:  The heavy isotope of hydrogen (2H) known as deuterium is found in water on Earth. The other heavy isotope of hydrogen (3H) known as tritium is usually produced in fission reactors.

Nuclear Fission: Produces electric power by using the energy released to heat water and produce steam to turn turbines.

Nuclear Fusion:  Produces electric power by using the energy released to heat water and produce steam to turn turbines. Other methods may be possible but have not been demonstrated.

Nuclear Fission:  Has been used to produce electric power for 50 years and currently provides about 20% of the electric power in the US.

Nuclear Fusion:  One demonstration project has produced net energy for a few seconds. Has not been used to produce electricity. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, currently being built in France, is designed to demonstrate a sustained production of net energy from nuclear fusion.

Nuclear Fission:  Modern reactor designs cut off fission reactions if the reactor begins to overheat. However, the fuel in the reactor contains enough radioactivity so that it melts if it is not cooled. If the containment vessel of the reactor is breached, radiation could be released to the environment.

Nuclear Fusion:  ?????

Nuclear Fission:  Radioactive wastes contain heavy isotopes of uranium that have half lives of tens of thousands of years. Technology exists to safely store these wastes for times on the order of thousands of years which would be long enough for short-lived radioactive materials to disappear. Used fuel is currently stored on the sites of reactors around the country – not a very safe solution.

Nuclear Fusion:  A fusion reactor will produce a high flux of neutrons which will make surrounding materials radioactive although their half lives will be short compared to fission plants. The primary waste will be helium gas. There is still a possibility of the release of some radiation to the environment although less than from a fission reactor.

Nuclear Fission:  It is possible to separate long-lived isotopes from the shorter lived radioactivity and burn the long-lived isotopes to produce more electricity. This extends our supply of reactor fuel. The technology to do so exists, however it poses a risk of proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Fusion:  Materials used in construction of fusion reactors would require storage for times on the order of 1000 years.

For writers, a house of our own!

There's something to the synergy of place and creativity. Take writing, my own chosen creative outlet. It seems to me that if one has the true wish to write, and you give that person a place that allows the head some space in which to roam, that also offers the essential supports of coffee, bathrooms, and that great ineffability, the right atmosphere, there go the words down on the page.

Give that person the support of other writers and you've got about as perfect a writerly spot as this sweet old world can offer. 

Rachel Unkefer is Vice President and a founding member of Charlottesville's WriterHouse (interior, pictured above), which in this blogger's opinion, is just such a place. It functions as a kind of non-resident writer's colony for anyone within driving distance who wants to write.

I asked Rachel how WriterHouse came to be, and this is what she said:

Our writing group met at coffeehouses for a few years and just found it too noisy and public, so we decided there should be a place in Charlottesville where writers could meet and talk about writing, hold classes and host literary events. We rented a space and opened it up in May of 2008, not knowing whether this was our own quirky vision or whether others would share it. After a year and a half we now have more than 150 members. For me personally the payoff is making new friends and seeing lots of people connect with each other. Along the way I manage to work on my own book and if it's ever published I have an automatic group of several hundred friends to celebrate with.

On Tuesday night, WriterHouse members and guests got together to celebrate the publication of member Laura Bynum's first book, the futuristic novel, Veracity. 

Veracity's publication has a back story that I thought would interest WMRA's own community of listeners and writers, so I asked Rachel to send me something about it for this blog. And also to send me a bit more about WriterHouse in general. And here's what she wrote:

When Laura Bynum phoned WriterHouse one day last spring and explained to Board Member Burnley Hayes that she needed a place to do the final rounds of editing on her novel Veracity, it seemed like a routine call. One of the services WriterHouse offers its members is secure, quiet writing space with a 24/7 access option. As the rest of the story unfolded, Burnley realized it wasn't quite so routine. Laura had been diagnosed with breast cancer on the same day her book had been contracted for publication by Pocket Books (a division of Simon and Schuster), and she was now commuting from Culpeper to undergo radiation treatment at Martha Jefferson Hospital. She needed to keep going on her book to meet the publisher's deadline and also to keep her focused on something other than her disease.

Laura became a member of WriterHouse and began spreading her manuscript out on the floor of one of the writing rooms, holing up for hours at a time to work out the complex chronology of her speculative fiction story. She finished her editing on deadline, beat her cancer, and on January 5th, the WriterHouse community celebrated the publication of Veracity. Because that's really what WriterHouse is—a community.

A lot of people hesitate to join WriterHouse because they don't need a place to write, and I tell those people they're missing the point. It's not just a place to write, it's a community that revolves around writing. It's a gathering place for meeting other writers and commiserating about the work; it’s a place to learn from each other and from instructors with MFAs, visiting authors, literary agents, and journal editors; it's a place where people get to know each other well enough to ask "would you mind reading my story and telling me what you think?" It's also a place where, even if you have a perfectly good writing space in your house, you might get more done because you've made an appointment with yourself to go somewhere specifically to work on your writing with no phone, laundry, chores or family to interrupt you.

It's a place where we celebrate each others' success. Our motto is "any excuse for champagne," so we were ecstatic about hosting a launch party for one of our own. A few dozen gathered on the 5th to hear Laura read from her book and tell her inspiring story, and raise a glass to launch her book into the world. We hope this is the only the first of many members' books we will launch at WriterHouse.

About Rachel, herself. In a previous life she was co-founder and CEO of Silicon Valley-based technical bookstore chain Computer Literacy Bookshops. She is currently looking for a literary agent for her first novel and working on the second draft of her second novel. Her story, "Remote Control," won first place in the 2009 Hook Short Story Contest.

Here's a link to WriterHouse's very tempting website. Lucky Charlottesville writers to have, not just Virginia Woolf's room, but a whole house of their own!

The tracks of history around my home . . .

A couple of years ago, I visited an antebellum house just off Route 42, north of Harrisonburg, to take a look at a derelict slave cabin.

The two-room building sat across the road from the main house. It had been a snug, well-chinked, double cabin, each side housing one family, each side fitted out with a fireplace and wainscoting. It was much, much finer than any slave cabin I'd seen anywhere, including at the homes of our much revered Virginia presidents.

Derelict slave cabins are rare in the Shenandoah Valley, because, for the most part, area land owners didn't farm with slaves. But some historians say -- using the presence of such well-built cabins as their evidence -- they did farm slaves. In other words, Valley farmers raised people of color for the express purpose of selling them.

I remember standing in that cabin and thinking about the weight and puzzlement of history. This is such a gentle, civil area. And here I was, standing on the floorboards of an incongruous piece of its past.

I thought of this again, when Charlie (who's incurably curious) showed me a website he'd discovered on WWII German POW camps located in the Shenandoah Valley.

Timberville PW Camp, Rockingham County, Virginia; 1944 or 1945 photo

A  paragraph lifted from the website:

In seven months of operation, German PWs provided a total of 26,081 man-days of labor—14,635 during the harvest season of 1944 and 14,635 during the 1945 season. The totals represent 5,573 man-days in agricultural work and 5,873 man-days in food processing during 1944, with 8,202 man-days in agricultural work and 6,433 man-days of food processing labor provided during 1945. (Martha note: I know the numbers don't add up, but thought it still gives an interesting picture of what the POW's life was like.)

The camp was dismantled the day after the prisoners departed. This is what its site looks like today.

Again to me, it seems somehow incongruous to have had POW camps located in the hospitable and gentle Shenandoah Valley -- even though, as POW camps go, they seem to have been humane and even comfortable. Just as that double slave cabin was.

Everywhere you love has its past. I need to remember that, to remember the decisions I make today in my personal life and in my life as a citizen will  leave their tracks in tomorrow's history.

Drum roll, please . . .

Carl Kasell is coming! Carl Kasell is coming!

 

Saturday, January 23rd, 10:30 a.m., 

at the Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton!

Carl Kasell, the newly retired dean of NPR newscasters, the much-loved Scorekeeper for Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me, and (in this blogger's opinion) as close as NPR has ever come to producing a rock star (remember C.K.'s inimitable rendition of Fever!), will be giving a talk and taking audience questions from 10:30 a.m. until 12 noon on Saturday, January 23rd.

Tickets are free, but there are limited numbers. Reservations will be taken beginning Monday, January 11th, at 9 a.m., online at WMRA.org or by calling 1-800-677-9672 (800-NPR-WMRA).

I don't know about you, but I'm excited. It is so rare to meet  someone who both inspires your trust and tickles you!

Superfund sight on New Year's Day . . .

New Year's morning I was driving along Route 151 in Nelson County. That's the state route that winds through the lower reaches of Wintergreen, where the roadside establishments smack of the chic and the chi-chi -- at least those establishments that haven't been closed by the blunt force trauma of the Great Recession. But then, Wintergreen area empty buildings are optimistically empty -- "for lease" and "for sale" signs dot these well-maintained empty buildings.

Nelson County is a wonder of social contrasts. Over the decades I've lived in Virginia, I've watched liberals, environmentalists, historical conversationists, land developers, artists, movie stars, and the wonderful Scottsville theater people dig in amidst the county's indigenous Walton-esque  folks, who stoutly maintain  conservative social and political values. These two populations eye each other warily across America's great political divide. In that respect, Nelson County is America in microcosm.

Take Piney River, a bend in the road that used to be a thriving bend in the road. Back in the days when the U.S. Titanium refinery was humming along. Today it's a Superfund site. Here's a current description of the Piney River, lifted from "Scorecard: The Pollution Information Site:"

"The U.S. TITANIUM Site covers 80 acres near the village of Piney River, Nelson County, Virginia. Between 1931 and 1971, a mine and ore-refining plant at the site produced TITANIUM dioxide for paint pigments. About 80,000 cubic yards of acidic wastes from the ore-refining process were left at the site when the plant closed. Storm run-off from this waste caused several large fish kills in the Piney River in the late 1970s. In 1980, the acidic wastes were removed from the original exposed location and buried in a clay-lined cell. In summer 1982, the State completed a grading and revegetation project at the site. Status (July 1983): Although the recent work has improved conditions at the site, acidic run-off still threatens the Piney River. EPA recently completed a draft Remedial Action Master Plan outlining the investigations needed to determine the full extent of cleanup required at the site. It will guide further actions at the site. The State is currently pursuing an enforcement action against the present and former owners of the site."

Today, 39 years after the refinery closed, driving through Piney River is a grim reminder of what can happen to the environment when humans are loosed on it, unrestrained and hell-bent on making a buck. It has a bleached, arid look, and the ramshackle empty buildings along the road look as though their emptiness is permanent.

There's one brave convenience store still open along the Piney River section of Route 151. On New Year's morning it was humming, older pick-up trucks snugged up to it like suckling piglets to a sow. Inside a gaggle of men who, from a quick glance, looked even older than I am, were grouped around a big Formica table drinking coffee. They were, perhaps, former employees of U.S. Titanium, in all likelihood starting the first day of 2010 exactly the same way they'd started the last day of 2009.

I smiled and waved and wished them Happy New Year. They smiled and waved and wished right back. I almost sat down, but then I thought my presence would disrupt their conversation. It was New Year's Day, after all, surely a day when we are all allowed to gather with our own and celebrate another year survived, another year begun.

I didn't sit down, because I knew if I did, Nelson County's political divide would intrude upon the conversation. I knew this because I'd seen the store's sign on my way in. It was one of those message signs, upon which whoever's in charge can let people know where he/she stands on important issues. And, it being Piney River, what more important issue could there be than the environment?

The sign outside the Superfund site's last remaining operational business read: The Lord showed Al Gore he just don't know!