Things Madness Network News Reader, ed. by Shirley Hirsch, Joe Kennedy Adams, et al, Glide Publications, $5.95. An intense collection of poems, essays and letters by former inmates, doctors and others on the politics of being crazy. Excellent article by Dr. Caligari on drugs used in treatment. Highly political and full of righteous anger, yet warm with a healthy sense of humor. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Anne Dillard, $1.95, Bantam Books, Inc. With both this and Lives of a Cell, by Lewis Thomas, I've heard about someone having bought 8 or 9 copies to give out to their closest friends. It is a kind of journal of days spent at Tinker Creek. A new and woman Thoreau? Kind of, but I think Thoreau comes out a slow second. "I had read that spiders lay their major straight lines with fluid that isn't sticky, and then lay a non-sticky spiral. Then they walk along that safe road and lay a sticky spiral going the other way. It seems to be very much a matter of concentration. The spider I watched was a matter of mystery: she seemed to be scrambling up, down and across the air. There was a small white mass of silk visible at the center of the orb, and she returned to this hub after each frenzied foray between air and air. It was a sort of Tinker Creek to her, from which she bore lightly in every direction an invisible news. She had a nice ability to make hairpin turns at the most acute angles in the air, all at topmost speed. I understand that you can lure an orb weaver spider, if you want one, by vibrating or twirling a blade of grass against the web, as a flying insect would struggle if caught. This little ruse has never worked for me; I need a tuning fork. I leave the webs on the bushes bristling with grass." As a friend remarked, "she sure makes a lot out of things." There's a kind of hit and miss, sense of chance taking abandon to Tinker Creek. Lots of gasps and sudden soarings back in time, out to space and back down to: "In the top inch of forest soil, biologists found 'an average of 1,356 living creatures present in each square foot, including 865 mites, 265 springtails, 22 millipeds, 19 adult beetles and various numbers of 12 other forms . . .. '" Especially the chapter on fecundity is good for those people who, even though they may feel guilty about it, really are kind of repulsed by nature (vs. garbage cans, shelves, files, toilets, hospitals, manners). Mind in the Waters: A Book to Celebrate the Consciousness of Whales and Dolphins, edited by Joan McIntyre (Scribner's Sons/Sierra Club Books, 1974; 240 pages, $14.95. All royalties go to Project Jonah). The greater impact a book-or event, work of art, whatever-has on the consciousness, the harder it is to describe it. I almost want to shout: "Read this book!" Mind in the Waters is a book with palpable texture: the juxtaposition of examples of the best human consciousness has to offer-art, science, our own sense of history-presents the reader with a multi-dimensional framework with which to approach Cetacean consciousness. It reminds us that-at our best-we are creatures who think, who play, who grieve, who create, and who care for our own kind and others. So do the Cetaceans, the whales and porpoises whose world is so alien to ours that even attempting to conceive of their consciousness is to be thrown with wonder and awe up against our own ignorance. It always comes as something of a shock to realize how little in fact we do know. We, who can seed the clouds and reach the moon, cannot fathom the sea's mysteries. Reading Mind in the Waters is a humbling experience. The table of contents offers a tantalizing view of the book's scope. Side by side, without hierarchy, without condenscension, we find: D.H. Lawrence, "Whales Weep Not;" Farley Mowat, "The Trapped Whale;" the Eskimo poem, "Magic Words;" Charles Sept/Oct 1975 RAIN Page 25 Doria, "The Dolphin Rider;" Sterling Bunnell, "The Evolution of Cetacean Consciousness;" John Lilly, "A Feeling of Weirdness;" Myron Jacobs, "The Whale Brain: Input and Behavior;" Peter Morgane, "The Whale Brain: The Anat~mical Basis of Intelligence;" Larry Foster, "The Whale Object," a portfolio of drawings; Paule Barton, "Going Out to Meet the Moon Whales;" W.S. Merwin, "For a Coming Extinction;" Peter Warshall, "The Ways of Whales;" Pablo Neruda, "Leviathan;" John Sutphen, "Body State Communication Among Cetaceans;" Gregory Bateson, "Observations of a Cetacean Community;" Michael McClure, "For the Death of 100 Whales;" Paul Spong, "The Whale Show;" a Kwakiutl poem, "Prayer of a Man Who Found a Dead Killer Whale;" Malcolm Brenner, "Say Rooo-beee! ;" William Curtsinger, "Love Swim;" S,:ott McVay, "One Strand in the Rope of Concern;" Victor Scheffer, "The Case for a World Moratorium on Whaling;" and Lee Talbot, "The Great Whales and the International Whaling Commission." Add to this both extensive marginalia and seven pieces by Editor Joan McIntyre (founder of Project Jonah) and you get some idea of what Mind in the Waters is all about. There should be surprises for everyone, depending on where they're starting from. I found "The Dolphin Rider" by classicist Charles Doria perfectly astonishing in its blend of scholarship, humor, etymological insight and the breathtaking simplicity of his translations. (Catherine Johnson)
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