Up at The Quietus — a Mars review by yours truly

After a couple of earlier reviews, this piece on the new Mars compilation is my first formal piece for the site — and I’ll be working on more soon! Great stuff, that Mars comp, so check it out — a quote from my piece:

If every innovation becomes a hidebound reference point then theoretically the work of Mars should be nothing but boring classic rock at this point. An extreme sentiment, perhaps, but when listening to this short, half-hour long collection of eleven songs, initially one might wonder what the shouting was all about. The chug of ‘3E’ betrays the New York group’s origins jamming over Velvet Underground songs, and is spiked with the kind of nervously friendly edge that became tagged as New Wave more than No Wave. ‘11,000 Volts’ manages the neat trick of predicting both early Martin Hannett productions and the kind of dissonance with which Sonic Youth began their career. Then ‘Helen Forsdale’ starts, guitar as scraggly hyperspeed mosquito freakout and vocals as half-comprehensible chant, and things turn…wrong. In the right way.

While I’m at it — and as long as we’re talking about NYC acts that started in the seventies — check out my editor Luke Turner’s review of the new Suicide box set, which I really need to get!

Thursday things

Because it’s Thursday and things are busy. So:

• Yesterday I spoke a bit about transit and all that, and me not having a car. I think I’ve found the anti-me: ladies and gentlemen, Terence Jeffrey:
  

  Recent evidence that automobile use is declining in America and that some Americans are making significant — and in some cases not readily reversible — changes in their lives because of escalating gas prices should be worrisome signs for those who love liberty.

  No device is more in keeping with the American spirit than the automobile. Privately owned cars and trucks allow us to go where we want, when want. They are freedom machines.

  Well I can see how that…huh?

• Mark Bittman, dietary hero, offers up more thoughts about meat reduction in one’s meals. Bookmark and review. One section:
  

  Forget the protein thing. Roughly simultaneously with your declaration that you’re cutting back on meat, someone will ask “How are you going to get enough protein?” The answer is “by being omnivorous.” Plants have protein, too; in fact, per calorie, many plants have more protein than meat. (For example, a cheeseburger contains 14.57 grams of protein in 286 calories, or about .05 grams of protein per calorie; a serving of spinach has 2.97 grams of protein in 23 calories, or .12 grams of protein per calorie; lentils have .07 grams per calorie.) By eating a variety, you can get all essential amino acids.

  You also don’t have to eat the national average of a half-pound of meat a day to get enough protein. On average, Americans eat about twice as much as the 56 grams of daily protein recommended by the United States Department of Agriculture (a guideline that some nutritionists think is too high). For anyone eating a well-balanced diet, protein is probably not an issue.

• Phoenix is rocking it on Mars:
  

  Last week, the lander’s robotic arm dumped a pile of dirt on top of one of its eight tiny ovens. But the soil proved to be so clumpy that it failed to slide down a chute into the oven. The team of scientists repeatedly tried breaking up the clods by shaking the instrument, called the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer.

  After six failures, the team at the University of Arizona and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge made one last effort, Boynton said. When the shaking halted abruptly, the team thought the machine had failed. Then they discovered it had stopped because the oven was full.

  As the scientists in Tucson cheered the result, Boynton put on the old disco tune “(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty” and started swaying to the music.

• Finally, and sadly, it would be remiss of me not to point out the tragedy in Iowa where four Boy Scouts died. As an Eagle Scout whose Scouting days were very grand ones, I never thought during that time that I would ever actually face a life or death situation, despite what first aid training we received and all that. You’re young, you don’t think these things will happen — but they can, and did. There will be questions raised regarding if anything more could have been done regarding safety and training, and they should rightfully be raised — but from the sound of it, everyone pitched in as soon as they could following this disaster to help to the best of their ability until emergency assistance arrived. That is the meaning of the Scouting motto — ‘be prepared’ — and I need say no more.

A tired Thursday

Finishing up a lot of work and catching up on other things, so right now just a few links of interest:

• It’s yer typical ‘hey isn’t this interesting, this thing that’s been going on forever’ piece on first blush, but this LA Times story on ‘guerrilla gardening’ has more to offer than on first blush. Among other things, it’s a nice observation about what exactly public land means in terms of who does what with it — and how the government isn’t always against creative use. A key part:
  

  Scott sees his Long Beach garden as a showcase for drought-tolerant, low-maintenance city landscaping. But he’s in a bind. How does he broach the subject, given his unsanctioned status? “I wish I could get together with the city,” he says. “But I’m apprehensive and pretty much keep under the radar.”

  Meanwhile, over at landscaping headquarters for the city of Long Beach, superintendent of grounds maintenance Ramon Arevalo waxes on about one of more than a dozen gardens done by “road planters,” as he calls guerrilla gardeners. “It’s like an underwater scene, a cactus garden that looks like a corral reef. It’s beautiful. It’s been there on Loynes Drive for 10 years, and we don’t know who did it. You should see this place!”

  It’s Scott’s garden. I tell him I have seen it and know the mystery man who planted it. Arevalo is ecstatic. “I can’t wait to know him! He’s been the talk of this place for 10 years. He’s like the 007 of gardening,” says Arevalo, laughing heartily. He says a homeowners association has complained that their medians are ugly. Why can’t theirs look like that cactus island?

  Arevalo is impressed by Scott’s use of drought-tolerant plants and assures there will be no repercussions if he comes forward. There is no law against planting on city landscaping, except for ficus trees, whose roots wreck roads and sidewalks. The city discourages unapproved gardening but tries to work with road planters it discovers. “If you want to do this, my advice is to contact myself or the council person,” says Arevalo. “We want to partner with people who care about where they live.”

  My kind of happy ending. Who knows, it may yet be the groundwork for something more detailed that ends up helping everyone.

• No Sparks show today but Steven Nistor has updated his blog with reports on the last four. A sample:
  

  I was excited to play (“Whomp”) since it and “Angst in My Pants” are my favorites. I get to get inside the mind of David Kendrick, the drummer who played on both of these. His playing is such a great combination of groove, inventiveness and a bizarre “trashiness,” made even more interesting by Mack’s unusual drum sounds. Growing up as a “jazzer,” it has been wonderful for me to get to imitate so many unique drummers over the past two weeks.

• Finally, a story from a few days back, but part of the joy of the Phoenix lander mission to Mars were the photos that have been captured of it during its descent and on the ground. And there’s no question what the crackerjack one was — trying to show it here would be an insult, so just follow that link. Here’s the description:
  

  This amazing image was captured as Phoenix came in for its Mars landing on May 25, 2008. The HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter pointed at Phoenix, which is seen here against the background of a 10-kilometer-diameter crater called Heimdall. The dramatic view makes it appear that Phoenix is falling into the crater, but in fact Phoenix was 20 kilometers closer to HiRISE than Heimdall, and it landed nowhere near the crater. The photo was taken 20 seconds after Phoenix’ parachute opened. Credit: NASA / JPL / U. Arizona

  An earlier image was striking enough, a small shot of the lander against what turned out to be that massive crater. It inspired an excellent post over at Bad Astronomy, which sums up my thoughts better than I could right now:

  Think on this, and think on it carefully: you are seeing a manmade object falling gracefully and with intent to the surface of an alien world, as seen by another manmade object already circling that world, both of them acting robotically, and both of them hundreds of million of kilometers away.

  Never, ever forget: we did this. This is what we can do.

  Exactly so.

Phoenix down, in a textbook landing

Really great to see the results as well as tracking the reaction of the mission crew — basically a near-perfect result. The big press conference is going on now and there’ll be more results put up over time via the mission page, but for now, one of those great photographs that I love because on the one hand it’s totally prosaic and on the other hand — well, until a few hours ago, no human, ever, had ever seen this view, and now we all can:

Best of success to the mission and all that follow!

And a quick reminder about the Phoenix Mars Lander!

Wow, things are piling up fast and furious today! Over on ILE Elvis T. started up a thread about something that had shamefully slipped my mind, namely the landing today of NASA’s latest hoped-for triumph:

Mars is a cold desert planet with no liquid water on its surface. But in the Martian arctic, water ice lurks just below ground level. Discoveries made by the Mars Odyssey Orbiter in 2002 show large amounts of subsurface water ice in the northern arctic plain. The Phoenix lander targets this circumpolar region using a robotic arm to dig through the protective top soil layer to the water ice below and ultimately, to bring both soil and water ice to the lander platform for sophisticated scientific analysis.

The complement of the Phoenix spacecraft and its scientific instruments are ideally suited to uncover clues to the geologic history and biological potential of the Martian arctic. Phoenix will be the first mission to return data from either polar region providing an important contribution to the overall Mars science strategy “Follow the Water” and will be instrumental in achieving the four science goals of NASA’s long-term Mars Exploration Program.

–Determine whether Life ever arose on Mars

–Characterize the Climate of Mars

–Characterize the Geology of Mars

–Prepare for Human Exploration

Oh hell yeah. Basically just track the official site for more — Elvis has also noted a Twitter link in case the site gets too impacted — and enjoy! The fact that Spirit and Opportunity are still kicking major butt years after their projected mission life was to end gives me major hope for something big to come out of this one — if it lands safely! So crossed fingers on that front!

Two quick book reviews (cause it’s Friday)

And I’m fairly relaxed now. And still tired. At least there’s a birthday party to go tonight, that’ll provide some merriment.

Anyway, it’s been a bit of time since I’ve talked about recent reading — and as always the backlog’s pretty huge — but the two I’ve read most recently fit squarely in the realm of entertaining and informative popular nonfiction, each beholden a bit to their own cliches. Good reads both in any event:

• Todd Balf‘s The Darkest Jungle is yet another in the series of books that draws, consciously or not, on the model of Erik Larson‘s Isaac’s Storm in particular to provide a demi-documentary you-are-there feeling out of an overlapping series of papers, archives and historical distance. This isn’t a complaint per se, it’s just that this is the model, or at least this is how it was pitched by someone to someone else somewhere along the line; Larson himself didn’t found the approach, as I’ve muttered before, but he was the great popularizer of it in recent years. Balf’s own writing career works in similar paths to Larson’s in terms of journalism and book work — at the time of this book’s publication in 2003 (and perhaps still today — too lazy to check right now!) he was a writer at Men’s Journal, which figures (there’s something about the whole model of Esquire/Men’s Journal style of journalism which…well, that’s a post for another time).

  This all said, the book itself is a fine take on the story of an American 1854 expedition, driven by a combination of nationalism, capital and ‘discovery’ in the classic (and biased) sense, to cross the isthmus of Panama via the Darien region, led by a Navy lieutenant, Isaac Strain. It’s a fairly obscure bit of history, known to those interested mostly via David McCullough‘s The Path Between the Seas, which provided a solid popular history of the development of the Panama Canal. But McCullough himself didn’t focus much on the Strain project, and part of the interest of Balf’s work is the solid footwork put into not only researching much obscure material (and not finding all of it — as he frustratedly observes in the end notes, Strain’s formal Navy report is missing from the military and government archives) but actually being on the ground in Panama. A key piece of the puzzle can actually be read by anyone right now — Joel Tyler Headley‘s Harper’s article from 1855, done in collaboration with Strain after his return. Balf mentions an earlier trip of his to Panama in the early 1990s and this book concludes with a return visit that attempts to retrace the steps of the expedition, but which turns into a story of his own struggles with the rough terrain and with the — at this point in history fully understandable — suspicions of the Kuna, the native inhabitants then and now.

  The great gift of the past few decades in what can be called ‘travel’ or ‘expedition’ writing has been an increasing reflexivity on the nature of travel and what it is meant to accomplish — what, in essence, is one trying to prove? Balf is cleverly aiming at having his cake and eating it too — he is going on the trip still and we the audience get the voyeuristic thrill of reading about it in comfort, the essential contract between author and reader in any such case like this, but at the same time he puts in careful observations about everything from the effect of cruise ship tourism on the coastal Kuna dwellers to concerns over the Pan-American Highway and whether a projected completion through the area would just lead to a host of problems. Notably these aren’t simply him wondering, as he conveys sentiments from many Kuna speakers during this final chapter; at the same time he is still the mediating voice (as this article notes, Internet access for the Kuna is practically nonexistent) — and so the intertwining of perceptions and interpretation of concerns continues. The book is a good read in all, quietly problematic but not unaware of its problems and one which ends on an open note of unsureness.

• In marked contrast, Joel Glenn Brenner’s 1999 book The Emperors of Chocolate is about something seemingly far more simple — candy bars. Brenner’s histories of the Mars and Hershey’s corporations are not themselves good histories of chocolate, though — I recommend instead The True History of Chocolate by Sophie and Michael Coe, which upends a lot of myths the cacao bean as well as providing a thoughtful overview on its transformation into the milk-heavy bars and simliar delights we’re all familiar with. Nothing against Brenner per se, since her focus is elsewhere, but combined with the slightly curious structure of her book — generally chronological but sometimes whiplashing back and forth across the decades or more — the actual sense of chocolate as commodity and cultural product, while not ignored, is sometimes obscured or given over to mythmaking.

  But setting these criticisms aside — I remember many years ago first learning about the sheer paranoia of the Mars bunch when I read this great exchange in The Straight Dope via one of the early book collections regarding the question of how the heck they got the Ms on M&Ms. Brenner’s book not only confirms how in more detail but provides a wealth of until-then-unavailable information about the whole company and its curious history, thanks especially to Forrest Mars Sr., who passed on in the year of the book’s publication. To say Mars was a business genius is undeniable — to say he was a raging, angry guy who in the course of driving himself hard drove everyone else just as hard if not harder, including his now-running-the-business kids (who frankly sound like they had a horrible upbringing), would also be undeniable.

  As for Milton Hershey, his own family history is equally tangled but he is seen in a gentler light, in part because unlike Mars he relied on someone else to do the hard-headed stuff but in part just because he was a nicer guy all around. It’s an interesting story of being well-meaning, driven, hungry for love and affection and wanting to leave the world a better place, in marked contrast to Mars’s goal to leave his company in a better place to take over the world. (The idea that Mars would have founded a whole company town with fringe benefits undreamed of by most at the time would be as laughable as imagining Hershey making a company partner — much less one of his sons — get down on his knees for the enterity of a corporate meeting with the whole board in attendance.)

  With the flaws noted above, Brenner’s book is a great resource about two companies with intertwined histories, resources and goals far beyond their most well-known food products (Mars in particular has a massive presence in a wide range of products, no less so than Hershey eventually did) and public images that completely bely their private battles. Nearly a decade old now, the book would benefit from an update as to how things stand in the 21st century, but it’s still a great overview of two institutions and more specifically how they became institutions in the first place, with two different philosophies that started to parallel each other more closely with time (though notably the movement was mostly on Hershey’s part). It’d be interesting if Brenner had unpacked more of the implications behind American identity via consumables and the globalized food market — now more than ever something of extreme interest, and given Mars’s involvement in a lot of it doubtless something they’ve been tracking obsessively for decades and near-minutely now — but at least they are addressed, and in a way that allows one to recognize more of what is at play.