Wherein I express my fondess for the writing of Mr. Charles Dickens

Last summer, having very little to do outside of work, I engaged in what can only be called a reading frenzy. The little library in Newcastle became one of my favorite haunts. I usually visited once a week and checked out two books on each occasion. I'd constructed a fairly lengthy reading list throughout my time in college, and though I never go a day without reading part of a book, my hectic schedule my senior year prevented me from making much headway into The List.

The List, however, came with me to Wyoming and, between the library in Newcastle and inter-library loans from larger branches in Cheyenne and Jackson, I blew through The List in a surprisingly short amount of time. I read so much and so quickly that many of the novels have now escaped my memory. There are many I remember clearly, however: George Schaller's A Naturalist and Other Beasts, Alan Rabinowitz's Beyond the Last Village, Life in the Valley of Death, and Chasing the Dragon's Tail. Sara Gruen's excellent Water for Elephants. Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer (although I'd admittedly didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I had The Poisonwood Bible). Ishmael Beah's striking memoirs, A Long Way Gone. Nick Hornby's High Fidelity and A Long Way Down (both endearing and humorous, as is my favorite Hornby novel, About a Boy). And Michael Blake's Dances with Wolves, which happens to be even better than the movie. All those books, among many, many others.

I read so much this summer that when I returned to My Home Town, I found myself at a loss for new reading materials. It seemed as if every book I ever had an interest in reading, I'd read. Weird. I re-read some old favorites and perused halfheartedly through a couple suggestions. And then, one night, when I was at a greater loss than ever before, I picked up Great Expectations, and fell head over heels for Charles Dickens.

I've always loved A Christmas Carol, and not only in film. I read the book every year a couple weeks before Christmas eve, and it never fails to thrill me. But for some reason, I never considered that Dickens' other novels might be just as good, or better. Silly me.

I've never been particularly fond of classic English literature. Something about it always seemed tedious, as if the effort needed to read a classic English novel were far greater than the reward. So I approached Great Expectations cautiously, unsure whether the book would hold my attention for long.

It took just one chapter of Great Expectations, an astounding 5 pages, for me to decide that this Dickens chap wasn't half bad. I read the remaining 460-something pages of Great Expectations without any reservations, and found the novel to be one of the best I've ever read, and the experience of reading it one of the most enjoyable I've had in a long while.

Mystery, suspense, adventure, romance, coming-of-age, and perhaps more than anything, social commentary regarding poverty, social stratification, and the materialism of Victorian society characterize most of Dickens' novels. His writing is a mixture of realism and fantasy, his style florid and often poetic. He is prone to sentimentality, and on occasion his protagonists seem rather too idealistic. His novels present large, vividly drawn casts of characters, each one unique and strikingly memorable, lending to each novel a presence that convinces the reader that these individuals might actually exist in some society simultaneously with our own, and that they very may well be going about their lives as we speak.

What I enjoy most about Dickens, however, is his wry, often subtle humor, and I've found myself laughing aloud more than once at his quips and jabs, sometimes serving to develop a character, other times as a poignant remark on society. If you've never read a Dickens novel before, it may seem far-fetched, but in fact, he's really very funny.

Take several examples from my reading. The first, from Great Expectations, where two of the main characters, Pip and Joe, are discussing the will of a recently deceased woman, who left 4,000 pounds to a mutual acquaintance:

"Well, old chap," said Joe, "it do appear that she had settled the most of it.... leaving a cool four thousand to Mr. Matthew Pocket. And why do you suppose, above all things, Pip, she left a cool four thousand unto him? ....And a cool four thousand, Pip!

I never discovered from whom Joe derived the conventional temperature of the four thousand pounds, but it appeared to make the sum of money more to him, and he had a manifest relish on insisting on its being cool.

The second, from Oliver Twist, in which a gentleman, Doctor Losberne, tries to comfort two ladies in their home the morning after a robbery occurred:

"You ought to be dead; positively dead with the fright," said the fat gentleman. "Why didn't you send? Bless me, my man should have come in a minute; so so would I; and my assistant would have been delighted; or anybody, I'm sure, under such circumstances. Dear, dear! So unexpected! In the silence of night, too!"

The doctor seemed especially troubled by the fact of the robbery having been unexpected, and attempted in the nighttime; as if it were the established custom of gentlemen in the housebreaking way to transact business at noon, and to make an appointment, by post, a day or two previous.

Another, from A Christmas Carol, describing the home of Mr. Scrooge:

They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and having forgotten the way out again.

And finally, from David Copperfield, a scene wherein David describes an evening with some of his friends in which they are all intoxicated:

I went on, by passing the wine faster and faster yet, and continually, starting up with a corkscrew to open more wine, long before any was needed. I proposed Steerforth's health....I finished by saying, "I'll give you Steerforth! God bless him! Hurrah!" We gave him three times three, and another, and a good one to finish with. I broke my glass in going round the table to shake hands with him, and I said (in two words) "Steerforthyou'retheguidingstarofmyexist ence."

I went on, by finding suddenly that somebody was in the middle of a song....He said, when he had sung it, he would give us "Woman!" I took objection to that, and I couldn't allow it. I said it was not a respectful way of proposing the toast, and I would never permit that toast to be drunk in my house otherwise than as "The Ladies!" I was very high with him... He said a man was not to be dictated to. I said a man was. He said a man was not to be insulted, then. I said he was right... He said it was no derogation from a man's dignity to confess that I was a devilish good fellow. I instantly proposed his health.

Needless to say, I've been quite enjoying myself lately, reading Dickens. Thus far I've made it through, as you might suspect, A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, and the great majority of David Copperfield, and I have plans to continue with Dickens and read, at the very least, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, Hard Times, and Nicholas Nickleby.

If you've never read a Dickens novel, I highly recommend you do so. Great Expectations has been my favorite thus far, but almost every novel Dickens published has met with great acclaim, so you probably can't go wrong with any choice.

As an aside to conclude this lengthy post, I've received no news concerning graduate school since I was sent my third rejection, the last week in February. I am hoping this means that I am still in the running for the other three schools to which I applied-- on a wait list, at the very least. The NSF is supposed to announce their fellowship recipients in early April. I'm assuming they'll do so on April 9th. And in my deluded, I-really-want-to-go-to-grad-school-and-can't-imagine-how-crappy-it-would-be-not-to-get-in-this-year reality, I keep reminding myself that if I receive the NSF GRF, I'm practically guaranteed admission to those final three schools, regardless of the fact that my chances of getting the fellowship are smaller even than the odds of my being accepted into a school.

I'm putting on a positive front, however. I'm now convinced that January, February, and March were just bad months, wherein nothing good could happen for anyone. April, however, is sure to be fantastic. Right?

Unlisted

For those of you who have been faithful blog-followers of mine from the start, you'll recall that this past summer I worked extensively in the field in northeastern Wyoming. You'll also remember that one of my main priorities involved tracking five radio-collared Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) on a weekly basis (which you can read about here, here, here, here, and here, among others).

Although my feelings regarding my time spent in Wyoming are ambivalent at best, I can say with utmost certainty that the thing I enjoyed most about my fieldwork for the BLM was tracking sage-grouse. I loved radio telemetry. I loved going out every week, usually on Fridays, and finding "my" birds. I loved being out on the prairie. And the places I visited and the areas in which the birds spent their time was consistent enough to lend some stability, some constancy, to my otherwise volatile life in the field.

Not only was sage-grouse tracking the most enjoyable of my field activities, I also felt that the data I was collecting was, potentially, the most important, the most likely to make an impact in terms of management strategies and conservation.

Greater Sage-Grouse are the largest type of grouse in North America. As their name suggests, they live only in areas of the West where sagebrush provides adequate cover, including parts of Nevada, Colorado, Utah, California, Wyoming, and Montana. During winter months, the birds subsist entirely on the leaves of sagebrush. They also rely on sagebrush for cover, both from predators and as protected sites for nesting.

Largely, however, Greater Sage-Grouse remain poorly understood. Scientists have yet to determine variation in seasonal patterns of movement and habitat use, the importance of habitat connectivity to breeding site selection, or the effects of anthropogenic influences, such as noise pollution, on nesting success.

What is known is that the number of Greater Sage-Grouse are dwindling right alongside sagebrush landscapes. In the last century, Greater Sage-Grouse have experienced a 90% decline in population and a 50% decline in habitat availability. Habitat loss is the single greatest threat to the survival of the species. The birds have been extirpated from much of their historic range, including British Columbia, Arizona, New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma.

Greater Sage-Grouse were first petitioned to be listed as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) during the early part of the G.W. Bush administration. In 2004, it was ruled that the species did not need protection. In 2007, however, following an internal investigation of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (the agency responsible for implementing the ESA), the ruling was overturned, citing that the executive responsible for the initial decision had acted improperly and without adequate scientific evidence.

Greater Sage-Grouse were then re-petitioned for listing, and after several years of delay, a final decision was made. This past Friday, March 6th, 2010, officials with the Department of the Interior (DOI) announced that the Greater Sage-Grouse will not be listed as an endangered species-- or even a threatened species-- under the ESA. Despite the rapid loss and degradation of sagebrush habitat across the West, as well as plenty of evidence that suggests that Greater Sage-Grouse numbers are under serious threat, the DOI refuses to list the birds.

The most frustrating aspect of this all? The government concluded that listing the birds as endangered is "warranted but precluded" by higher priorities, meaning that the species meets the scientific criteria for protection but that other species are in greater need of conservation.

Really, DOI? Is it really that "other species are in greater need," or is it that listing the birds would impact energy development throughout the West, including the all-important oil and gas industry? I have a feeling that the final decision had more to do with politics than anything else.

The good news is that the status of the species will be reviewed on an annual basis. Thus, if numbers continue to decline, Greater Sage-Grouse could be listed as a threatened or endangered species in subsequent years. Additionally, federal officials announced that they would review plans for new energy development on federal land with an eye to minimize the impact on sage-grouse habitat.

Fairly early on last summer, when I first began tracking sage-grouse, I mentioned the debate about whether to list the Greater Sage-Grouse to my supervisor, Dwayne. "God, I hope they don't list them. That would suck so much," he said.

"What do you mean it would suck?" I asked. "We're talking about protecting a species from extinction."

"Do you know how much extra work I'd have to do?" he replied.

I wonder how many government officials would prefer less work at the expense of effective conservation practices. I have a sinking feeling that Dwayne isn't the only one.

I also have a feeling that I'll be faced with similar situations for much of my professional career-- scenarios wherein protection is "warranted, but precluded by 'higher priorities'."