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Chesapeake Requiem – Earl Swift

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Chesapeake Requiem

A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island

Earl Swift

Genre: Nature

Price: $14.99

Publish Date: August 7, 2018

Publisher: Dey Street Books

Seller: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS


A brilliant, soulful, and timely portrait of a two-hundred-year-old crabbing community in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay as it faces extinction "BEAUTIFUL, HAUNTING AND TRUE." — Hampton Sides • "POWERFUL. A tale of our time, movingly told." — Bill McKibben • “GORGEOUS. A truly remarkable book.” — Beth Macy • "WONDERFUL, POETIC, STIRRING. An elegy to a disappearing way of life." — Callum Roberts • "IMMERSIVE. Swift captures the grain of the place." — Garden & Gun • "AN IMPORTANT BOOK." — Library Journal Tangier Island, Virginia, is a community unique on the American landscape. Mapped by John Smith in 1608, settled during the American Revolution, the tiny sliver of mud is home to 470 hardy people who live an isolated and challenging existence, with one foot in the 21st century and another in times long passed. They are separated from their countrymen by the nation’s largest estuary, and a twelve-mile boat trip across often tempestuous water—the same water that for generations has made Tangier’s fleet of small fishing boats a chief source for the rightly prized Chesapeake Bay blue crab, and has lent the island its claim to fame as the softshell crab capital of the world. Yet for all of its long history, and despite its tenacity, Tangier is disappearing. The very water that has long sustained it is erasing the island day by day, wave by wave. It has lost two-thirds of its land since 1850, and still its shoreline retreats by fifteen feet a year—meaning this storied place will likely succumb first among U.S. towns to the effects of climate change. Experts reckon that, barring heroic intervention by the federal government, islanders could be forced to abandon their home within twenty-five years. Meanwhile, the graves of their forebears are being sprung open by encroaching tides, and the conservative and deeply religious Tangiermen ponder the end times.    Chesapeake Requiem is an intimate look at the island’s past, present and tenuous future, by an acclaimed journalist who spent much of the past two years living among Tangier’s people, crabbing and oystering with its watermen, and observing its long traditions and odd ways. What emerges is the poignant tale of a world that has, quite nearly, gone by—and a leading-edge report on the coming fate of countless coastal communities.

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Chesapeake Requiem – Earl Swift

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Don’t look now, but the Gulf of Mexico’s “dead zone” is the biggest yet.

James Eskridge, mayor of Virginia’s tiny Tangier Island, gave the climate change activist a piece of his mind during a televised town hall meeting Tuesday evening.

He blames his island’s slow descent into the Chesapeake Bay on erosion instead of encroachment from surrounding waters. “I’m not a scientist, but I’m a keen observer,” Eskridge said to Gore. “If sea-level rise is occurring, why am I not seeing signs of it?”

Scientists predict the residents of Tangier Island — which stands only four feet above sea level — will have to abandon it within 50 years due to rising waters. President Trump, meanwhile, reportedly called up Eskridge in June to say, “Your island has been there for hundreds of years, and I believe your island will be there for hundreds more.”

While Eskridge told Gore that the island needed a seawall to survive, the mayor doesn’t seem to buy either the experts’ or Trump’s assessments.

Gore explained that a challenge in climate communication is “taking what the scientists say and translating it into terms that are believable to people — where they can see the consequences in their own lives.”

But this is a case where someone can see it and still can’t believe it.

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Don’t look now, but the Gulf of Mexico’s “dead zone” is the biggest yet.

Posted in alo, Anchor, ATTRA, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, Hagen, LAI, LG, ONA, Ringer, solar, solar panels, The Atlantic, Uncategorized, wind power | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Don’t look now, but the Gulf of Mexico’s “dead zone” is the biggest yet.

Scott Pruitt is going to enact an ozone rule he’d planned to push off.

James Eskridge, mayor of Virginia’s tiny Tangier Island, gave the climate change activist a piece of his mind during a televised town hall meeting Tuesday evening.

He blames his island’s slow descent into the Chesapeake Bay on erosion instead of encroachment from surrounding waters. “I’m not a scientist, but I’m a keen observer,” Eskridge said to Gore. “If sea-level rise is occurring, why am I not seeing signs of it?”

Scientists predict the residents of Tangier Island — which stands only four feet above sea level — will have to abandon it within 50 years due to rising waters. President Trump, meanwhile, reportedly called up Eskridge in June to say, “Your island has been there for hundreds of years, and I believe your island will be there for hundreds more.”

While Eskridge told Gore that the island needed a seawall to survive, the mayor doesn’t seem to buy either the experts’ or Trump’s assessments.

Gore explained that a challenge in climate communication is “taking what the scientists say and translating it into terms that are believable to people — where they can see the consequences in their own lives.”

But this is a case where someone can see it and still can’t believe it.

View the original here – 

Scott Pruitt is going to enact an ozone rule he’d planned to push off.

Posted in alo, Anchor, ATTRA, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, Hagen, LAI, LG, ONA, Ringer, solar, solar panels, The Atlantic, Uncategorized, wind power | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Scott Pruitt is going to enact an ozone rule he’d planned to push off.