Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell: A Novel by Stan Rice, part four. Even in Hell, They Know Racism is Stupid

Stan Rice as just published another novel, Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell. It is based on Mark Twain’s classic book about Captain Stormfield’s visit to Heaven. Here is the author’s description from Amazon:

Billy Stormfield, descendant of Captain Stormfield in Mark Twain’s book, wakes up in Hell. He meets Mark Twain, who takes him on a tour. All the interesting people are in Hell: Moses, Karl Marx (who is funny only when he quotes Groucho), Joe the Cherokee, the Apostle Andrew, and Pope Francis, because they were all what the fundamentalists called communists; Noah, because he was an environmentalist; General Douglas McArthur, because he forgave the Japanese rather than slaughtering them as the Old Testament commanded; and of course Charles Darwin. Thomas Jefferson, united at last with Sally Hemings, tells them how biologically stupid racism and oppression are. The only people in Heaven are the white supremacists and the jihadists, who spend all their time killing each other over and over forever. The young white supremacist Stonewall escapes to Hell, where he meets and loves the Black history teacher Philomena.

Between Heaven and Hell, Jesus eternally suffers the way Job did, dogs licking his wounds. With His friend the Prophet Mo, He watched His mother Mary helping people sneak into Heaven. Together with the crew from Hell, and led by the school girl Malala, Jesus and Mo storm the assembly in Heaven, kicking Henry VIII and Donald Trump (who look almost alike) down to Earth. Stonewall and Philomena celebrate their wedding feast.

In the Billy Stormfield novel, the only people who were in Heaven were the Christian and Muslim fundamentalists, who spent all day every day killing each other, and then they would resurrect and do it again the next day. War is the ultimate good and pleasure for godly people at least according to the fundamentalists of these two monotheistic religions. And the Christian fundamentalists were racists, who required that schools teach that Black slavery was a good thing for everyone, including the Black slaves themselves. (This is not too different from the history requirements that almost got adopted in Oklahoma in 2025.)

In Rice’s novel, one racist (Stonewall) got tired of this and slipped off to find some peace and quiet. He found it in Hell. He also found a former history teacher from Oklahoma, a Black woman named Philomena. As is nearly inevitable in novels (Rice’s novel is clever but is more of a fable than a novel), they realize how stupid it is for the white (and Black) leaders to teach that they should hate the other race, and they fall in love. The climax of the novel is when they get married.

Given what Twain thought about slavery, he could have put a similar scene into his book about the original Captain Stormfield. For whatever reason, he did not.

Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell: A Novel by Stan Rice, part three. What Would Pete Hegseth Say to Douglas McArthur?

Stan Rice as just published another novel, Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell. It is based on Mark Twain’s classic book about Captain Stormfield’s visit to Heaven. Here is the author’s description from Amazon:

Billy Stormfield, descendant of Captain Stormfield in Mark Twain’s book, wakes up in Hell. He meets Mark Twain, who takes him on a tour. All the interesting people are in Hell: Moses, Karl Marx (who is funny only when he quotes Groucho), Joe the Cherokee, the Apostle Andrew, and Pope Francis, because they were all what the fundamentalists called communists; Noah, because he was an environmentalist; General Douglas McArthur, because he forgave the Japanese rather than slaughtering them as the Old Testament commanded; and of course Charles Darwin. Thomas Jefferson, united at last with Sally Hemings, tells them how biologically stupid racism and oppression are. The only people in Heaven are the white supremacists and the jihadists, who spend all their time killing each other over and over forever. The young white supremacist Stonewall escapes to Hell, where he meets and loves the Black history teacher Philomena.

Between Heaven and Hell, Jesus eternally suffers the way Job did, dogs licking his wounds. With His friend the Prophet Mo, He watched His mother Mary helping people sneak into Heaven. Together with the crew from Hell, and led by the school girl Malala, Jesus and Mo storm the assembly in Heaven, kicking Henry VIII and Donald Trump (who look almost alike) down to Earth. Stonewall and Philomena celebrate their wedding feast.

 

Pete Hegseth is the American Secretary of Defense or, as he would insist, Secretary of War. To his way of thinking, the Department of Defense is not doing its job unless it is prosecuting a war somewhere. I don’t suppose the war has to have a good reason. One can only imagine that Trump and Hegseth started the Iran War because, well, we need to have a war somewhere. The reasons they gave were either untrue (to open up the Strait of Hormuz, which was already open, but is now intermittently closed) or vague. Well, Pete got his war. Where does the money come from? The answer is, who cares, we will find the money. He spent a billion dollars the first day on bombs. The deficit (on what should be called the Donald J. Trump Federal Deficit Clock) now exceeds forty trillion dollars. The interest on this debt eats up about half of the money the federal government takes in by taxes and other means.

Pete Hegseth is a fundamentalist Christian. This means that he really, really believes that God ordered the Israelites to slaughter entire cities of Canaanite people—every man, woman, child, and animal. Hegseth further believes that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). He further believes, without Biblical foundation, that America is God’s Holy Nation. Therefore, if God wanted the Israelites to slaughter all of the Canaanites (presumably, this would include any Canaanites who attempted to surrender), He must want us, today, to slaughter our enemies, even the noncombatants, women, and children. By being Iranian, doctors and nurses deserve death. Bloody, gory death, not quiet executions. At least, he should believe these things, to be consistent with his other fundamentalist beliefs.

One of the most famous military leaders in American history was General Douglas McArthur, who oversaw the Pacific theater of operations in World War II. He gave the order (passed on from President Truman) to use atomic bombs on Japan. So far, Hegseth would make a good McArthur.

But then, McArthur ordered Allied troops to occupy Japan but to do so nondestructively. They were not to rape, pillage, or destroy whatever was left (that is, whatever the Japanese dictatorship had not already destroyed). He even shut down the American-sponsored whorehouses. The self-interest was clear: America wanted Japan to be an economically-strong ally, something that would be extremely expensive if American troops razed Japan to the ground.

The Japanese were astonished that American troops did not kill them all, as Japanese troops had done to their victims in Korea and China. They even began to love the Americans. There is a famous photo of a storefront in Japan that, in response to the announcement that McArthur was considering a presidential bid, “We play for your erection.” (Actually, this is not quite what the sign said.) In contrast, Hegseth would have felt obligated to tell American troops to kill all the Japanese. American history classes should therefore teach that Americans failed to carry out God’s complete will in World War II.

And, according to Rice’s novel, this is why General Douglas McArthur was in Hell.

 

General Douglas McArthur and Japanese Emperor Hirohito in 1945.

Billy Stormfield's Visit to Hell, a novel by Stan Rice, part two. Noah the Environmentalist

Stan Rice as just published another novel, Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell. It is based on Mark Twain’s classic book about Captain Stormfield’s visit to Heaven.

 

Here is the author’s description from Amazon:

Billy Stormfield, descendant of Captain Stormfield in Mark Twain’s book, wakes up in Hell. He meets Mark Twain, who takes him on a tour. All the interesting people are in Hell: Moses, Karl Marx (who is funny only when he quotes Groucho), Joe the Cherokee, the Apostle Andrew, and Pope Francis, because they were all what the fundamentalists called communists; Noah, because he was an environmentalist; General Douglas McArthur, because he forgave the Japanese rather than slaughtering them as the Old Testament commanded; and of course Charles Darwin. Thomas Jefferson, united at last with Sally Hemings, tells them how biologically stupid racism and oppression are. The only people in Heaven are the white supremacists and the jihadists, who spend all their time killing each other over and over forever. The young white supremacist Stonewall escapes to Hell, where he meets and loves the Black history teacher Philomena.

Between Heaven and Hell, Jesus eternally suffers the way Job did, dogs licking his wounds. With His friend the Prophet Mo, He watched His mother Mary helping people sneak into Heaven. Together with the crew from Hell, and led by the school girl Malala, Jesus and Mo storm the assembly in Heaven, kicking Henry VIII and Donald Trump (who look almost alike) down to Earth. Stonewall and Philomena celebrate their wedding feast.

Fundamentalists do not necessarily believe that all environmentalists will go to hell. But certainly any “greenies” who would want to spend a lot of money to save endangered species are damned in the eyes of their God.

One of those was Noah. He built an ark (probably subcontracted the work out) that was big enough to hold all of the animal species in the world. The ark was not quite as big as you might suppose, since when the Old Testament was written most of the world, and its biodiversity, was unknown. (See Stan Rice’s article on this subject for Skeptical Inquirer). But the dimensions described in Genesis were huge and required a lot of wood to build. No explanation is given in the Bible for how so much wood could be obtained or who would pay for it.

However you look at it, the ark was probably the biggest financial undertaking the world had ever known and, relative to the poor economy of the ancient world, it might still rank number one in human history by that measure. It certainly cost more than any modern environmental expenditure. A waste of the resources that God has given to His servants? No wonder Noah ended up in hell.

Many of the animal species were economically important. But most of them were not. I can imagine Noah’s wife saying, “Why are you bringing all those snakes?” Maybe Noah was wondering also. But God did not say, just bring the species that you like. So you don’t like skunks? God told Noah to bring them anyway.

As usual, Mark Twain took this further than anyone else. In Twain’s writing, the ark was safely on its way when it had to turn around and pick up a species that had been left behind: the smallpox virus. How can you reconstruct a post-Flood world without smallpox?

The Thinking, Walking Biped, part fourteen. Dreamscapes

When we walk, we each see our world in a different way, and differently at each stage of our lives. Let me tell you a personal example of this.

I grew up at the base of the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. I could see the snow-covered peaks of the mountains in the clear air of winter, and I occasionally visited the magnificent forests of giant sequoia trees. But what I saw every day was the foothills. They were covered with grass. The only trees were oaks that grew amidst granite boulders on some of the hills. I am still not sure why the trees grew only amidst the boulders. Perhaps it was fire, or perhaps it was cattle, both of which could kill trees on smooth ground. But even on the smooth ground, there were occasional boulders, some of them large and craggy. They reminded my childish mind of menhirs and dolmans and other works of human art.

Boulders on smooth hills made me feel like I was looking at a heavenly landscape. Even today I have occasional dreams of entering an enchanted realm of boulders and grass. These are almost the only really beautiful dreams I have. Thankfully, I don’t have many nightmares. Most of my dreams are busy and stupid and quickly and thankfully forgotten.

The magical landscape of boulders and grass is not the real landscape. The weeds amidst the grass, such as fiddlehead Amsinckia, and even the grass itself, especially the wild oats Avena barbata, left prickles in my socks. Most of the year, all the plants had died back to the ground. Everywhere was the scent of cow dung. That is the reality. But that is not what I dream.

To get to the biological field station where I taught botany one summer, I drove through northeastern Kansas. There are interesting parts of Kansas, but this was not one of them. It was absolutely flat and often nothing but wheat fields was visible. Fortunately I had not passed judgment on this land, for it is where one of my students was from. “It is the most beautiful place on Earth,” she said. And she was right, about her dreamscape.

This sort of dreamscape is not reality, nor is it illusion. It is a transformed reality. I wonder if any other species of animal has this kind of imagination. And I wonder how much it is the product of our long history, and much longer prehistory, of long distance walking, of tribal leaders imagining themselves on the top of a distant mountain.

Billy Stormfield's Visit to Hell, a novel by Stan Rice, part one. Communists in Hell

 

Stan Rice as just published another novel, Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell. It is based on Mark Twain’s classic book about Captain Stormfield’s visit to Heaven. Here is the author’s description from Amazon:

Billy Stormfield, descendant of Captain Stormfield in Mark Twain’s book, wakes up in Hell. He meets Mark Twain, who takes him on a tour. All the interesting people are in Hell: Moses, Karl Marx (who is funny only when he quotes Groucho), Joe the Cherokee, the Apostle Andrew, and Pope Francis, because they were all what the fundamentalists called communists; Noah, because he was an environmentalist; General Douglas McArthur, because he forgave the Japanese rather than slaughtering them as the Old Testament commanded; and of course Charles Darwin. Thomas Jefferson, united at last with Sally Hemings, tells them how biologically stupid racism and oppression are. The only people in Heaven are the white supremacists and the jihadists, who spend all their time killing each other over and over forever. The young white supremacist Stonewall escapes to Hell, where he meets and loves the Black history teacher Philomena.

Between Heaven and Hell, Jesus eternally suffers the way Job did, dogs licking his wounds. With His friend the Prophet Mo, He watched His mother Mary helping people sneak into Heaven. Together with the crew from Hell, and led by the school girl Malala, Jesus and Mo storm the assembly in Heaven, kicking Henry VIII and Donald Trump (who look almost alike) down to Earth. Stonewall and Philomena celebrate their wedding feast.

Well, of course, fundamentalists would think that all communists go to hell. But this novel has some surprises: There are souls in hell that you would never have guessed were communists in human life.

Of course, Karl Marx was there.

But also, it turns out that all traditional Native Americans were communists. There were at least five hundred tribes, different from one another in many ways. One of the few things they all had in common was that they held their tribal lands in common, rather than private, ownership. They individually owned tools and houses, but the land belonged to the tribe. This caused a lot of problems when the American government took away tribal lands (for example, the Cherokees, as described in some of Rice’s other novels) and tried to allot acreages to each individual or family. Besides the fact that this gave the whites an excuse to steal unallotted tribal land for themselves, it was also inconceivable to the Natives. That’s how Joe the Cherokee ended up in Hell.

But the Apostle Andrew? In what way was he a communist? You may recall that, at the beginning of the book of Acts, all the Christians were living together “in an upper room,” and they held all things in common (Acts 4:32). This was the pattern that Jesus had established among his followers. As a matter of fact, a couple of the Christians got in big trouble (God killed them) when they held some of their possessions back from common ownership. That’s how Andrew ended up in Hell.

And Pope Francis. He believed the rich should be required to share their wealth (not necessarily all of it) with the poor. I guess that made him a communist.

This is just the beginning of the surprises you will encounter in this novel, Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell.

Edd’s Land: A Novel of Four Cherokee Brothers in Early Oklahoma, a novel by Stan Rice, part five. William and Tuberculosis

Author Stan Rice has just published the third of three novels (Edd’s Land) in the series Trail of Tears: Novels of Cherokee Identity. Because Kindle has unreliable availability and formatting, the author has also posted a free PDF download. This third novel is about four Cherokee brothers in early Oklahoma.

Here is Rice’s summary from Kindle:

Four mixed-blood Cherokee brothers, and the white swindler who steals their land and oil allotments, greet Oklahoma statehood in different ways. Edd Hicks loses not just his land but his fiancée to Averd Hargrove, a Claremore banker. Edd remains confident and upright, and brings order to his farmland and family. Frank Hicks learns confidence as he plots his dramatic revenge against Hargrove. Lon Hicks leaves his past behind in pursuit of a failed Hollywood career. William Hicks is ill with tuberculosis when he meets the great Oklahoma socialist crusader Kate Barnard. Frank, to the disapproval of his racist family and friends, falls in love and moves in with Bert Hicks, a black woman descended from slaves owned by Frank’s ancestors. Frank nearly gives up on his plan to scalp Hargrove until he sees Hargrove leading a lynch mob against Bert’s brother. The net effect of the vast wealth of the former Cherokee Nation is that Edd’s daughter Nina finally gets enough money back from the United States government to buy a new pair of shoes.

This part of the book tells the story of a forgotten portion of American history. William Hicks was highly refined and educated, having especially fine handwriting. But somehow he got tuberculosis. This was during a half century of American history when people knew all about bacteria but not what to do about them, the half century before antibiotics. If you got TB, your death was almost inevitable, though slow; and it was dangerous to let you circulate in society.  You would be sent to a sanatorium, where you would rest in dry, cool air until you expired. And this is what happened to William.

As a reader, I wonder if there might have been more to the story. How can you prove that someone has TB? A white government official could declare that a Cherokee, with a minor respiratory ailment, had TB and this would make him forfeit his allotment. This story is told through the eyes of William, who apparently does not suspect this possibility.

The Great White Plague is now almost forgotten, but it killed millions of people. So many that, in fact, Europeans decided to make the best of it. They called it “consumption” and praised the delicate pink features and frailty of the victims, featuring them in operas such as La Traviata and La Bohème in which the divine consumptive soprano sings an aria and falls over dead. It is central to several stories by Andrea Barrett.

Another aspect of history that is almost forgotten is that, when it first became a state, Oklahoma was almost socialist. Today, while most states have become a little more progressive, Oklahoma is as red as a state can get. The test of a true Oklahoma politician is how beloved he or she is of Donald Trump. But one of the great Oklahoma heroes of the early decades of the twentieth century is Kate Barnard (see A Life on Fire by Connie Cronley), openly socialist. She would absolutely not fit into any conceivable modern Oklahoma administration.

What is left today in Oklahoma of the lives and deaths of people, like the four brothers in Rice’s novel? We get some idea of this from the epilogue, written in the voice of the author’s mother Nina Rice. All that remains in Oklahoma is a legacy of corrupt politicians, such as the congressman who takes a bribe to give a postmaster position to an unqualified person. And what remains of all the strife and blood experienced by the Cherokees? The federal government paid the Cherokee tribe for its expropriation of Cherokee Strip land (mostly the panhandle of the state). Nina says that the money she got from this, which was all that remained for her from her tribe’s strife and blood, was just enough money to buy a new pair of shoes.

The Thinking, Walking Biped, part thirteen. Ticks

Of course, walking is not entirely safe. There are numerous dangers on the trail, such as hostile animals. Few of these dangers remain in the walking areas available to most pedestrians, at least, the larger animals such as wolves and bears. But there are plenty of small invertebrates such as mosquitoes, chiggers, and ticks waiting to afflict you. They have no evil intention; it is just that you are, along with other mammals, their major source of food.

Ticks like to wait on the tips of leaf blades near paths. This is where they have the maximum chance of an animal brushing against them. This happens mostly in areas where lots of animals roam, therefore they are unlikely to do this in the middle of your yard. But in a forest or field, where deer and people are likely to pass through, there can be lots of ticks.

A tick bite by itself may not be a major concern, but various disease microorganisms use ticks as a vector to get from one animal to another. A major example in North America is Lyme disease (caused by the bacterium Borrellia burgdorferi and spread mostly by deer ticks). But it is not the only example.

Whenever the weather is warm, some people like to hike. This includes amateur walkers who have little experience with hiking outdoors. As you might expect, it is advisable to wear pants rather than shorts if you plan to leave the trail. During peak vacation times, health authorities often warn people to check themselves for ticks after brushing against grass. Authorities such as the U.S. Forest Service advise a “full body tick check” after you get home from your hike.

A full-body tick check can be done alone when you are naked in front of a mirror. Although this is better than not doing one at all, it is best done with a significant other. (I told my students about this one time. One student asked, where do we find a significant other? I think he must have been a social loser… If I’d been thinking, I would have said, “You can get anything on Amazon,” but I didn’t think of this snappy response until it was too late.) Reasons for this include:

• Ticks love to insinuate themselves into the deepest, warmest crevices of your body, and they will crawl a long ways to find such places. The reasons should be obvious. In deep crevices, they are protected from being scratched or brushed away. This is a real danger to ticks when they get on primates, with dexterous fingers. There is not much a cow or deer can do to scratch away a tick.
• It is difficult for one person to bend around and look in a mirror at their dorsal surfaces and nether regions. You would probably be in a physically uncomfortable position looking closely at your own butt in a mirror.

 A mutual tick-check is a good test for the intimacy of a sexual relationship: Do I trust you enough for a tick-check? The standards of trust for a tick check might even be higher than those for sexual intercourse. Unlike sex itself, the tick-check forces you to look closely at body regions where one seldom looks during sexual intercourse. If you are worried about bad smells, take a shower first; showers seldom dislodge ticks. In the sexual regions of the body, especially if hair is present, there are more surfaces for a tick to hide than you could imagine. And it is not just the nether regions. Ticks—some of which are very small and require close observation—can also hide in the folds of flesh underneath female breasts. But don’t ignore the back, neck, shoulders, and legs, as well as armpits and behind the knees. See the website here.

In earlier centuries, people had so many parasites that a walk in the woods would make little difference in their parasite load. Those days must have been wonderful for ticks.

Edd’s Land: A Novel of Four Cherokee Brothers in Early Oklahoma, a novel by Stan Rice, part four. Lonnie in Search of a Good Time

Author Stan Rice has just published the third of three novels (Edd’s Land) in the series Trail of Tears: Novels of Cherokee Identity. Because Kindle has unreliable availability and formatting, the author has also posted a free PDF download. This third novel is about four Cherokee brothers in early Oklahoma.

 

Here is Rice’s summary from Kindle:

Four mixed-blood Cherokee brothers, and the white swindler who steals their land and oil allotments, greet Oklahoma statehood in different ways. Edd Hicks loses not just his land but his fiancée to Averd Hargrove, a Claremore banker. Edd remains confident and upright, and brings order to his farmland and family. Frank Hicks learns confidence as he plots his dramatic revenge against Hargrove. Lon Hicks leaves his past behind in pursuit of a failed Hollywood career. William Hicks is ill with tuberculosis when he meets the great Oklahoma socialist crusader Kate Barnard. Frank, to the disapproval of his racist family and friends, falls in love and moves in with Bert Hicks, a black woman descended from slaves owned by Frank’s ancestors. Frank nearly gives up on his plan to scalp Hargrove until he sees Hargrove leading a lynch mob against Bert’s brother. The net effect of the vast wealth of the former Cherokee Nation is that Edd’s daughter Nina finally gets enough money back from the United States government to buy a new pair of shoes.

Lorenzo (Lonnie) Hicks, Edd's brother, had a withering sense of humor, by which he humiliated Frank, but which was powerless against Edd. He apparently had no morals other than to just not kill anybody. He stole family money and decided to live as a professional gambler.

At least that is what he planned. But two things happened. First, he found out he wasn’t a very good gambler, unless he stayed in the low-stakes land of rural Oklahoma. Second, he was surprised by his love for a waitress, whom he takes with him to California because she aspires to being an actress. They both get into B movies, and no further. They meet a young Ronald Reagan, who eventually went further in the movies. Lonnie also meets Rudolph Valentino, who hopes that Lonnie’s traditional Cherokee pharmacist brother Frank can cure him.

This part of the book is really funny, especially the fake murder scene.

Edd’s Land: A Novel of Four Cherokee Brothers in Early Oklahoma, a novel by Stan Rice, part three. Frank’s Revenge

Author Stan Rice has just published the third of three novels (Edd’s Land) in the series Trail of Tears: Novels of Cherokee Identity. Because Kindle has unreliable availability and formatting, the author has also posted a free PDF download. This second novel is about four Cherokee brothers in early Oklahoma.

Frank Hicks, Edd’s brother, lost his land because a white government official declared him mentally incompetent. Unlike Edd, Frank was not willing to just make the best of it. He wanted revenge. When he found out who had taken control of his land—the same man who had stolen Edd’s original fiancée—he decided to take matters into his own hands and plot a traditional Cherokee revenge—by scalping.

In the process of planning his revenge, he discovered that it was not just a technical matter of figuring out how to scalp the evil man. (Note, scalping is not necessarily killing, since it just removes the scalp and does not hurt the brain. The intact brain can then spend a lifetime of anger for being scalped.) It required a whole philosophy of life, of how to carry out an act of war without hatred, an emotion that just gets in the way of doing the job right. It takes Frank many years to prepare, and decades before he finally gets the opportunity to do it. Frank is a pharmacist.

Another issue that the author has to confront is white racism. Not, in this case, against Native Americans, since in Oklahoma a lot of people had Native ancestors, but against Blacks. Rice invents (he admits in his author’s notes it didn’t really happen) an intense love affair between Frank Hicks and Bert (Alberta) Hicks, a freedman descendant in the Cherokee tribe. The freedmen were descendants of slaves owned by Cherokees before Emancipation. In this, Frank fights against his family’s deep prejudices. It is a beautiful and touching love story.

September 15. Edd’s Land: A Novel of Four Cherokee Brothers in Early Oklahoma, a novel by Stan Rice, part two. Edd Making the Best of It, continued

Author Stan Rice has just published the third of three novels (Edd’s Land) in the series Trail of Tears: Novels of Cherokee Identity. Because Kindle has unreliable availability and formatting, the author has also posted a free PDF download. This third novel is about four Cherokee brothers in early Oklahoma.

 

 Here is Rice’s summary from Kindle:

 Four mixed-blood Cherokee brothers, and the white swindler who steals their land and oil allotments, greet Oklahoma statehood in different ways. Edd Hicks loses not just his land but his fiancée to Averd Hargrove, a Claremore banker. Edd remains confident and upright, and brings order to his farmland and family. Frank Hicks learns confidence as he plots his dramatic revenge against Hargrove. Lon Hicks leaves his past behind in pursuit of a failed Hollywood career. William Hicks is ill with tuberculosis when he meets the great Oklahoma socialist crusader Kate Barnard. Frank, to the disapproval of his racist family and friends, falls in love and moves in with Bert Hicks, a black woman descended from slaves owned by Frank’s ancestors. Frank nearly gives up on his plan to scalp Hargrove until he sees Hargrove leading a lynch mob against Bert’s brother. The net effect of the vast wealth of the former Cherokee Nation is that Edd’s daughter Nina finally gets enough money back from the United States government to buy a new pair of shoes.

Each adult Cherokee received a land allotment on which to establish a farm. It sounds simple and fair enough, and Edd was willing to make the best of it. But it was the white guardians who had actual legal control over the land, which means they could sell it and keep the money for themselves. They usually did this by having the Cherokee land recipients declared legally incompetent. Clearly nobody could do this to Edd Hicks, who was highly educated by rural Oklahoma standards.

But Edd saw what happened to other Cherokees, including his own brothers (see later essays). White government officials continued to steal land from Natives long after the last shots were fired in the Indian Wars. In one case, Native children who owned land worth millions of dollars (due to oil reserves under the land) were living in a tree, while their guardians lived as wealthy men. This is a shameful part of American history that is almost never taught in courses.

But Edd, an upright man who believed he was doing God’s will, made the best of it.

Better than a Dog Anyhow: Stories of Darwin, by Stan Rice

Author Stan Rice has just published a set of short stories, Better than a Dog Anyhow, based on Charles Darwin. Rice wrote the Encyclopedia of Evolution and other popular books about evolution. He knows a lot of details about Darwin, and this collection of stories shows it.

 

Here is the Amazon description of the book: “The young Charles Darwin wants to believe in an orderly created world. But his experiences of the world—from the death of his mother, to the beautiful ravages of love, to the many exciting adventures during his trip around the world—disrupt this view. For Charles and Emma, his wife of four decades, religious faith has always been a point of quiet but loving contention. Five of these stories are fictionalized accounts of Darwin’s true biography. The others are imaginary stories: about Darwin’s Irish gardener who cannot understand why Darwin is so kind to him; a fantasy in which Darwin is reunited, via interlacing time lines, with his dead daughter Annie; and, what if Darwin, the father of evolution, had met Mendel, the father of genetics? In these stories, you will find a man whom you wish you could have known.”

Calling All Commensals!

I have just posted a video in which Darwin explains that there are three rough categories of ecological interaction between any two species: parasitism, commensalism, and mutualism. Of course, whenever a scientist says “there are three categories” this is almost always an oversimplification—even if a useful one.

In parasitism, the parasite gets most or all of its resources from the host. Obviously, the parasite benefits, and the host is harmed, at least over the long term. A botanical example that is abundant in the forests of Alsace, from which Darwin reports, is mistletoe growing on a tree. The mistletoe roots actually grow into the wood and extract water and minerals from it, thus harming the tree.

In mutualism, both species benefit from the interaction. A botanical example from Alsace is lichens, in which single-celled algae live inside a sandwich of fungus tissue. Both species benefit from this: the algae make food when the weather is moist, and the fungi protect the algae from damage when the weather is dry.

Both parasitism and mutualism are fairly clear-cut. But commensalism? This is when the commensal benefits and the host is unaffected. The example Darwin uses is vines growing on a tree trunk. The vines do not actually put their roots into the tree tissue; the vines just climb on the tree like a trellis. This would seem to be commensalism: the vine benefits from getting its leaves up into the sunshine without having to make its own trunk, while the tree just stands there.

But many times the “host” is negatively affected by the commensal. In the case of the vine and the tree, the host has to bear the extra weight of the vine. A little vine might not have much impact, but a large vine can weigh a lot (see the photo). And while a vigorous tree might be able to bear the extra weight in normal times, the tree could collapse in times of high wind—or even without high wind. In fact, the vine might even shade the tree leaves, reducing the growth of the tree.

When you think about it this way, maybe there is no such thing as commensalism. The best example is the microbes that live in our guts. Some of them are mutualists—they produce waste products that enhance our nutrition by digesting molecules that the human gut cannot—and some of them are parasites under certain conditions. But there may be none of them that are commensals all of the time. We seldom notice the little mites that live in our hair follicles—that is, unless there are too many of them, or we have an allergic response to them.

Vine to tree: Thanks for letting me grow on you.

Tree to vine: I’m not dead yet!

The Thinking, Walking Biped, part twelve. The Perfect Exercise

Walking is, at least for people like me, the perfect exercise. Just this morning I walked 11 kilometers. Most other kinds of exercise result in strain and injury, especially to joints. Pascal Picq points out in his book (reviewed earlier) that slow, long-distance running and walking is something that humans do much better than any other species, especially the ones like cheetahs that can run much faster but only for short distances. And even older humans, who are no longer athletic in other ways, can run or walk for long distances; geriatric marathon runners are actually quite common, though often unnoticed because they finish last. But they finish.

Walking is slower than running, which means that the walker is less likely than the runner to trip over or step on things in the path or, if so, to sustain injury from them. An injury can take an old body a long time to recuperate from. I have required physical therapy for things that, as a younger man, I would hardly have noticed.

Walking is almost perfectly aerobic. That is, your muscles can keep working for long stretches of time because your circulatory system can provide them with all of the oxygen that they need (that is what aerobic means). And the body can also keep itself cool during long walks.

There are three ways that an object, such as your body, can keep cool even while generating body heat during exercise.

• The first is through what is called radiant heat transfer. Your body emits invisible light, just off the red end of the spectrum, which is why it is called infra-red. It is, in fact, a kind of energy and to lose this energy means you will cool off. How much energy you lose is not completely under your control. It depends on your environment and how hot you are. Deep space is almost at absolute zero, and when you lose infra-red light into outer space—even into a clear blue sky—it is gone forever. You cannot speed it up or slow it down. This is why you feel a chill if you sleep out in the open, but not if you sleep under a tree or a roof. The tree or roof is not at absolute zero.
• The second is sensible heat transfer—sensible as in the fact that you can feel it. Your molecules conduct some of their energy to the air, that is, if the air is colder than you are, which is usually the case. You have some control over this. You can alter the amount of surface area you expose to the air by curling into a ball (to hold in the heat) or extending your arms (to release it). There is always an unstirred boundary layer of air next to your skin, especially when that air is trapped inside of fabric. To cool off, wind is your friend.
• The third is latent heat transfer—from the evaporation of water. Water constantly evaporates from you, especially from your invisible sweat. Your sweat glands allow water to evaporate before it has a chance to become visible on your skin or clothes. People who have defective sweat glands easily overheat. Again, wind is your friend—it not only blows away sensible heat but also water vapor.

You cannot do much about radiant heat. But walking or slow running allows sensible and latent heat to keep you cool. I need the exercise for my body but also to keep my mind active. I will walk all I can for as long as I can. If someday I can only hobble, I will still be healthier for having walked (around 90 kilometers a month) as much as I do.

The Walking, Thinking Biped, part eleven. Social Nature Walking

A lot of us like to walk along in nature and have our own thoughts and insights. As soon as you get even one more person, there is the possibility of having quotidian conversation, not very different from what you would have in an automobile, drive out the appreciation of the natural world. I have frequently had this experience when leading students on hiking field trips. They can walk all day and see almost nothing they will remember.

That is, unless the hike is specifically designed to enhance observation and the ability to integrate with nature. This may be nowhere better seen than in scouting groups. I was, for several years, a Boy Scout. Though I was the one most interested in nature, the others got really good at rock climbing, tying knots, erecting tents, building camp fires, rappelling across creeks, and even the use of Morse code for long distance communication. For us, the Boy Scout Handbook and the Army Field Survival Manual were central texts (which included how to distinguish edible vs. dangerous plants). I was about the only boy who saw the spiritual dimensions of nature, which is why I was chosen to give the Sunday morning sermon at the Boy Scout Camporee in Tulare County about 1968.

There can be an even larger social context. In Europe, especially Germany, hundreds or thousands of people like to go on mass hikes together. The movement is called Volksmarch and its theme song, as far as I can tell, is The Happy Wanderer:

I love to go a-wandering along the mountain track

And as I go I love to sing, my knapsack on my back.

Sometimes sharing a trail with other hikers is not particularly pleasant. While I was hiking in the Black Hills of South Dakota, parents with two adolescent children singing, as they walked, “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around, ninety-nine bottles of beer.” I’m sure you know or can guess the next ninety-eight verses. I found this incredibly annoying. But then I told myself, the parents are taxpayers just like me, their revenues sustain the National Forest Service, just like mine. Even when we are alone in a forest, we depend on the social network, which sustains the forest.

Edd's Land: A Novel of Four Cherokee Brothers in Early Oklahoma, a novel by Stan Rice, part one. Edd Making the Best of It

Author Stan Rice has just published the third of three novels (Edd’s Land) in the series Trail of Tears: Novels of Cherokee Identity. Because Kindle has unreliable availability and formatting, the author has also posted a free PDF download. This second novel is about four Cherokee brothers in early Oklahoma.

Here is Rice’s summary from Kindle:

Four mixed-blood Cherokee brothers, and the white swindler who steals their land and oil allotments, greet Oklahoma statehood in different ways. Edd Hicks loses not just his land but his fiancée to Averd Hargrove, a Claremore banker. Edd remains confident and upright, and brings order to his farmland and family. Frank Hicks learns confidence as he plots his dramatic revenge against Hargrove. Lon Hicks leaves his past behind in pursuit of a failed Hollywood career. William Hicks is ill with tuberculosis when he meets the great Oklahoma socialist crusader Kate Barnard. Frank, to the disapproval of his racist family and friends, falls in love and moves in with Bert Hicks, a black woman descended from slaves owned by Frank’s ancestors. Frank nearly gives up on his plan to scalp Hargrove until he sees Hargrove leading a lynch mob against Bert’s brother. The net effect of the vast wealth of the former Cherokee Nation is that Edd’s daughter Nina finally gets enough money back from the United States government to buy a new pair of shoes.

Edd Hicks (a real person) was one of hundreds of Cherokees who received a land allotment in northeastern Oklahoma at the beginning of the twentieth century. He was a self-educated man, he upheld and championed education wherever he lived, which was always in Oklahoma. He was fully aware of the injustices and cruelties committed by the white government of the United States against the Cherokee tribe. This included the Trail of Tears itself, but also the process by which farmland was allotted to Cherokees in Indian Territory by white overseers. Each adult Cherokee was given a certain amount of land, but when all of the allotments were added up, there was a lot of land left over, which was given to white people. In addition, the allotment commission often appointed dishonest guardians or overseers for the Cherokees (see the next essay). Edd knew all of this, but also that there was nothing he could do about it. His solution was simply to get whatever land he was given, and grow food and a family on it.

Edd was an upright man. He was very righteous, without looking down on people who were not as religious as he was, including his brothers. He even forgave the brother (Lonnie; see later essay) who stole money from the family. He was proud to raise all of his own food. On paper he was poor, but his family never went hungry.

Edd’s career did not get off to an easy start. He was looking forward to the twentieth century, in which the Cherokees could finally settle down on their own land. And he was engaged to a beautiful woman, Mary Carter. But then Mary’s disreputable brothers forced an end to this engagement. What was Edd’s response? He just went ahead with his farm, and hoped to find a woman who would be his wife. He did. He made the best of his circumstances, not looking back to the past, and he had to admit that he probably ended up better than he otherwise would have—certainly better than his brothers.