Katherine Addison's Blog, page 26

UBC: McCarter, Lost!

Lost!: A Ranger's Journal of Search and Rescue by Dwight McCarter

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is another book I only found because of David Paulides, who uses it because of the strange disappearances of Dennis Martin (never found) and Geoff Hague (eventually found, but much too late). It's from a micropress, which is still going strong, rather to my surprise. It is, as it happens, signed, which as an unexpected bit of lagniappe made me ridiculously happy.

McCarter's a good writer, clear and vivid, and I learned a lot of things about Great Smoky Mountains National Park, about Search & Rescue, about tracking, about bears. (I had not known that bears bury their kills to let them "ripen" before eating them.) Like Koester, he mentions the likelihood that children will actually evade searchers. He discusses paradoxical undressing in a way that makes it make sense (one of the late stages of hypothermia includes the sensation that your hands and feet are burning, so you get rid of mittens and boots and start shedding the rest of your clothes), and also the strange trails of abandoned equipment that hypothermic hikers leave behind them as their fatigue gets worse and worse and they become helplessly more irrational. (Once again, a lot of Paulides' OMG SO MYSTERIOUS MUST BE SASQUATCH/ALIENS/LEMURIANS could be dispensed with if he'd actually use the information in the books he cites.)

Dennis Martin is still a mystery though.

This book is exactly what it is, neither more nor less. If you're interested in SAR or the Smokies (he sidebars all sorts of interesting tidbits about plane crashes and old mines and old logging camps and all sorts of things I had no idea those mountains were hiding) or what it's like to be a backcountry ranger, it's totally worth reading.



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UBC: Koester, Lost Person Behavior

Lost Person Behavior: A Search and Rescue Guide on Where to Look for Land, Air, and Water by Robert J. Koester

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Yes, I bought myself this book for my birthday because of the number of times David Paulides cites it. As I suspected, he cites it badly and misleadlingly.

Koester is, on his own merits, fascinating. I could never do Search and Rescue myself--my OCD means I would work myself into a nervous breakdown in very short order--but if you do, or are interested in, SAR and haven't read it, I recommend it highly. I learned a great deal about how lost people behave and about how you go about the daunting task of finding them. The part about using probability theory to decide where to search, how that works and how you balance it with human assessment, is freaking brilliant--and I mean that not about Koester only, but about everyone who runs this kind of endeavor, who makes these kinds of judgment calls in the field.

Five stars for those who are interested in the subject matter.



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UBC: Paulides, Missing 411: North America & Beyond

Missing 411: North America and Beyond by David Paulides

My rating: 2 of 5 stars
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UBC: Posters of the First World War

Posters of the First World War by Richard Slocombe

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is exactly what it says it is, but it's also a beautifully designed little book and it has posters from England, Germany, Austro-Hungary (in both German and what must be Hungarian), Australia, Canada, India, Russia, America, and they're all freakin' amazing. Propaganda, yes, but also just beautiful. (There's the famous Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War? poster which is at once a horrible piece of passive aggressive blackmail and a beautiful piece of Art Nouveau.)

Of course, they represent the tragedy of WWI perfectly in that regard, because the beautiful ideals of the posters are what were sending all those thousands of young men to die brutal, horrible deaths in the trenches. There's one of a guy actually charging toward the viewer on a horse.

I picked this up in Half-Price Books for like 8 or 9 dollars, and it was totally worth it.



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UBC: Kerrigan, WWII Abandoned Places

World War II Abandoned Places by Michael Kerrigan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In the four book series I wrote under my real name, the Doctrine of Labyrinths, I invented the word "mikkary" to describe the feeling you get in an abandoned building. This book is FULL OF MIKKARY OMFG. So it's horrible and sad, and yet there's also something oddly comforting about the way that the forests and deserts and oceans are reclaiming the bunkers and the wrecked planes, and apparently colonies of rare bats roost in the farther reaches of the underground corridors of Miedzyrzecz.

The photographs are beautiful and just utterly fascinating. Highly recommended.



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UBC: Ressler, Whoever Fights Monsters

Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI by Robert K. Ressler

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is exactly what it says on the tin: Ressler's memoir of being an FBI profiler. He talks about a great many murderers, and has a wonderfully practical, commonsense style, both in writing and in his approach to analyzing homicidal psychotics and psychopaths. In his hands, the "organized/disorganized" schema makes sense and is a useful analytical tool. (He bemoans the fact that all his students want a checklist, a black box they can put their data into and get an accurate profile out of, and I totally see how that desire has shaped a lot of "profiling" since Ressler's retirement.)

He has the same problem that bedevils all the books in this genre; "I did this and this and this was awesome and this got me a commendation and this changed the way we understand sociopaths . . ." I know Ressler isn't bragging--he and Bill Bass are the only two of these guys I've found thus far who will tell stories on themselves--but there's no way he can explain why he's writing this memoir without sounding like he's bragging: because it's a memoir about what he's done, not who he is. Much of who he is shows through in what he does, but the emphasis is most definitely on actions and accomplishments--and how can we possibly know why what he's done is important unless he tells us?

Ressler comes across better than anyone except Bill Bass. I appreciate deeply pragmatic people. And he writes very lucidly about some very murky subjects.



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UBC: Paulides, Missing 411: A Sobering Coincidence

Missing 411: A Sobering Coincidence by David Paulides

My rating: 2 of 5 stars
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New fiction

"Learning to See Dragons." Uncanny Magazine 19 (Nov/Dec 2017)

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New fiction (podcast)

Podcastle Miniature 101: "National Geographic on Assignment: The Unicorn Enclosure"

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yet another letter to Senator Johnson

Dear Senator Johnson:

Well, here I am, writing to you again. I don't suppose either one of us is surprised.

I am writing to express my contempt for the underhanded, bad-faith tactics used by the Republican Party to pass H.R. 1. Given how much breath and ink Republican politicians have wasted complaining about how the Democrats "shoved through" the ACA, it takes a particularly special kind of hypocrisy to demonstrate so blatantly to the American people what "shoving through" a bill actually looks like.

I am also writing to observe that you have made the same maneuver at least twice this year, expressing "opposition" to the GOP's unpopular legislation and then voting the party line as if you'd never opened your mouth. Senator, just once, I'd like to see you put your vote where your mouth is and put the needs of your constituency before the interests of your party.

Because if you've somehow deluded yourself into thinking this bill will be good for your constituents, please wake up and look around. It will be a disaster for everyone except the financially topmost fraction of the American people--and those people, of all the citizens of the United States, are the ones who do not need the government to be doing them favors.

I know that I'm not going to change your mind. You've demonstrated too clearly where your allegiances lie, no matter what kind of posturing you indulge in. I am, however, asking you to change your vote. The tax cuts for corporations and billionaires proposed by this legislation will create a vast deficit where one currently does not exist. I don't quite understand how this squares with Republican claims to be the party of fiscal responsibility, but I suppose that comes in the next part, where the bill imposes disastrous cuts on Medicare, Social Security, and other vital social programs. Moreover, the repeal of the ACA individual mandate will completely destabilize the health insurance market, uninsuring millions of people, spiking premiums for those who retain coverage, and removing protections for those with pre-existing conditions. I know you don't care about that--you've made your position on that subject clear--but as a person who has "pre-existing conditions," I care very much. And then there's the SALT deduction, which will hurt the same middle-income American families Republicans have been claiming this bill will help.

Honestly, this bill, like many Republican bills this year, is cruel. It's mean-spirited, petty, unethical, and seems to be motivated by nothing but greed. With all that being said, Senator, I would suggest you think very carefully about what your vote says about you.
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I used 5calls.org's script as a template. If you want to use my letter as a template, you are welcome to do so.

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