Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
This week we welcome our own <sumac>, Susan McCarthy, to Inkwell for a
discussion of her books and articles. 

Susan McCarthy is a science writer focusing on animal behavior, and a
humor writer. Proof: she's been anthologized in Best Science Writing
and Mirth of a Nation. Her blog, The Nature of the Beast, allows her to
do both at once. She's co-author of When Elephants Weep: The Emotional
Lives of Animals, and author of Becoming a Tiger: How Baby Animals
Learn to Live in the Wild. A carbon-based life form, she is a native of
Earth. “I love your sunsets,” she reports.

Interviewing Susan will be Mary Mackey:

Mary Mackey is the author of thirteen novels including The Widows War,
published in the fall of 2009 by Berkley Books; and five collections
of poetry, including Breaking the Fever published by Mash Hawk Press.
Her novels, one of which made the New York Times bestseller list, have
been translated into eleven languages and have sold over a million and
a half copies. During her twenties, she lived in the rain forests of
Costa Rica. Recently, she has been traveling to Brazil and
incorporating her experiences into her fiction and poetry.  Mackey
lives in northern California with her husband Angus Wright, and is
Professor Emeritus of English at California State University,
Sacramento.  To learn more about her and sample some of her work, you
can visit her webpage at: 
<www.marymackey.com>

Welcome to Inkwell.vue, Susan and Mary!
  

    <scribbled by julieswn Sat 11 Sep 10 10:55>
  

    
If you would like to read some of Susan's articles, here are some
links from the author:

Straight reporting on wildlife rescue following the Gulf spill: 
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/26/MNQQ1EIDI2.DTL>

Reporting on medical research, with added cute dogs: 
<http://www.parade.com/health/2010/06/20-dogs-sniff-out-disease.html>

Interview with promoter of rapture insurance for pets:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jan/12/pets-second-coming-
rapture-atheists>

First-person piece on herding class for dogs: 
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgibin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/01/23/CMGAB98FL01.DTL>

And some of my favorite Salon pieces are one on how not to apologize:
<dir.salon.com/people/feature/2001/08/23/sorry_if/index.html?sid=1045639>
;

Making fun of a football team's name change:
http://www.salon.com/people/satire/2001/04/04/team_names/print.html>

Unkind analysis of study inducing marijuna use in monkeys: 
<http://www.salon.com/news/health/2000/11/29/stoned_monkeys>

Discussion of different ways of being sick:
<archive.salon.com/health/feature/2000/07/25/sick/print.html>

Profile of cartoonist Gary Larson:
<www.salon.com/people/bc/1999/12/21/larson/index.html>

Survey of some trends in evolutionary biology: 
<www.salon.com/books/it/1999/05/21/evolution/index.html>
  

    
And then there are pieces that seem to have vanished utterly, like
the ones I did for UnderWire once upon a time....
  

    

Perhaps in the course of this discussion someone will tell us how to find
them, Susan.

I'm delighted to be hosting this conversation with you. I love your work
which is scrupulously accurate, very accessible, and frequently hilarious.

Let's start out with a question that I suspect people often ask you: how did
you develop such a strong interest in animals. It's clear you love the
topic. What led you to it? A childhood pet? A messenger cat from Mars?
  

    
I think most kids display biophilia -- it's fascinating how city kids
often get the "what does the horsie say?" drill even when they've never
seen a horse....

In my family I think that got amped up by the story-telling prowess of
my mother's family, and the scientific approach to just about
everything promoted by both my parents, but especially my father.

"Pibl [a cat] doesn't want that food, and the stray cat outside does.
What would Pibl do if we opened the window?" This was an experiment
my father performed documented in some old Polaroids. (I don't
remember it -- I think I was too young.) Answer: when the stray cat
reached in to try to hook the dish out, Pibl would issue a mighty
SWAT.  Cat in the manger.

I do remember the experiment to see if Lightfoot could figure out how
to walk away from the food she could see through the sliding glass
glass door, and walk around through several rooms to get to an *open*
door giving access to said food. (No, but there were confounding
factors.)

I think the combination of empathy, narration, and the scientific
approach is almost a complete explanation.
  

    <scribbled by mm Tue 14 Sep 10 14:16>
  

    

That's very interesting. In fact, you have a rare talent for finding what I
like to call "fun facts"--things that make your descriptions and
explanations riveting.

Another question for you: What is the most interesting thing you have ever
discovered about animal behavior?

After you tell us this, could you please tell us your best story about an
animal or animals?
  

    

Most interesting is always the latest to hummingbird mind.

One very interesting thing I learned while researching Becoming a
Tiger was that people are generally dreafully inept at teaching
things to animals. In fact they make lots of the same mistakes
teachign things to people. Animals do not do well with instructional
videos (would probably hate PowerPoint even more), drills, repitition,
blackboards, being put on the spot, quizzes, language tapes, etc.

Latest animal story I heard was told by a woman who was visiting in
Costa Rica, lounging with friends in their yard when she heard an
odd sound and looked over to see that a boa had grabbed their cat
by the head and thrown coils around it. Woman leaps up, grabs
boa's tail, tries to unwind it, no luck, calls to friends, they
come and unwind snake, allow it to trickle off into bushes. Cat
appears dead, woman gives it artificial respiration, cat revives.

Owners sigh. Apparently they did not want cat, were burdened by
thought of finding new home for it, now they STILL have to find
home for it.

Not an inspirational story? Hey, the cat probably appreciated not being
dead.
  

    

Just driving by to shout that the 1999 Gary Larson piece referenced is just
wonderful!
  

    
Oh, here's the url for the blog:

<http://natureofbeast.typepad.com/>
  

    

I was fascinated to read a post in your blog about dogs that diagnose
cancer. Could you tell us about that research and what you discovered?
  

    
It's a new area of research. People have mixed feelings about the sense
of smell, and scientists have been slow to focus on it to the extent
we've focused on vision and hearing. It's so *analog.*

And dogs? They're worse than analog, they're hairy. They have great
noses, but it takes work to teach them what you want them to tell
you about.  And to keep them interested while you use them to
accumulate large data sets.

The way this has come to serious attention is through documented
reports of untrained dogs making a fuss about things that later
turned out to be skin cancer.

Clearly dogs can be trained to detect skin cancer, but that's not
very useful, since skin cancer is so easy to spot and biopsy, and if
the dog says "cancer" you're going to do that *anyway.*

The big push is to see if dogs can reliably detect interior cancer
by sniffing breath samples -- ovarian cance,r lung cancer, uterine
cancer etc.

The goal is to a) show that dogs can detect it; b) find out what
exactly it is that they're detecting -- which chemicals -- c) design
a handheld machine to detect those same chemicals and take the
hairballs out of the loop....
  

    

In my experience, writers have a trajectory. That is to say, they become
interested in a subject, write about it, and are led to another subject--
sort of a building slowly being constructed.

Could you tell us about your career as a writer, how it began, and how one
book (or interest) led you to the next book or interest? What is your
path? Where did it begin and where do you think it is going?
  

    
Oh dear. I don't even have a platform yet, and now I need a trajectory?

Sad to say, I started writing in large part because my late friend
Lori Twersky asked me to write for her zine, Bitch: The Women's Rock
Newsletter with Bite. (I drew the dogs too.) Then my SO suggested I go
to journalism school. Then Catharine MacKinnon put me together with
Jeff Masson, who was looking for a co-author.

So I fear my trajectory has a lot in common with Brownian motion in its
random collisions.

Although the focus on biology, especially animal behavior, isn't really
random.
  

    

I guess what I am really asking is: how did you decide to write your books?
  

    
I'm still goggling over the science experiments your father conducted with
household pets.  Good thing you weren't more intrigued by, y'know, modern
dance or something.
  

    
Mary, the first book,with Jeff, was written because Jeff really needed
a co-author who was comfortable with science and agreed with his thesis.

The second, Becoming A Tiger, was written because I thought it was an
interesting idea -- aaaaaand I was able to interest publishers.

The next is yet unwritten. the publishing world is running scared right
now, which means they are running predictable.
  

    
Do an ipad app of cute kitten experiments! Will pay for all subsequent
research projects.
  

    

Ooh. What a splendid notion. Can I borrow your kitten?
  

    
Lately, you've been covering a different animal for the Guardian, man the
(ir)religious beast. How did that come about?
  

    
Brownian motion! Specifically Andrew Brown (formerly on the Well as
(andrewb) and as (seatrout)) moving to be editor of the Belief page
at the Guardian, and hearing of my scheme to write a book about the
bible from an atheist's point of view (a scheme that blew up when a
blogger on the Slate staff starting doing the same thing for the OT),
inviting me to write for the Guardian.

It's fun to do, though Andrew correctly describes the remuneration
as "derisory."
  

    <scribbled by martyb Fri 17 Sep 10 16:50>
  

    

Hi Susan, glad to see you here in Inkwell. I *lovelovelove* your columns in
the Guardian. I was especially amused by your piece on non-believers
adopting the unfortunately abandoned pets of Christians who've been swept up
to Heaven during the Rapture:

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jan/12/pets-second-coming-
rapture-atheists

Your delivery is so deadpan, yet so ... um ... er ... well, so
frisky! Of all the odd [to me] religious beliefs, the whole Rapture
concept seems particularly mean-spirited and exclusionary. But until
I read your piece in the Guardian, I didn't realize that Fundamentalists
who believed in the Rapture are even willing to accept that their own 
beloved pets -- TRUE INNOCENTS!! -- will be left behind to suffer the
Tribulation. You've done a wonderful job skewering the absurdity of
this whole train of thought.

Did this particular piece draw more fire than any of your other columns? 
And do you ever write with the hope of provoking controversy? 
  

    
ZThank you very much, Cynthia!

I don't feel like I'm skewering anybody. Perhaps this is an area where
straight reporting reveals people skewering themselves -- but they
would disagree.

Writing for the Guardian's Belief page is odd--*everything* draws fire.
In a story liek this, most of the fire is directed at the Rapture-
believers, not at me. But always some is reserved for me. Guardian
readers--or at least commenters--seem to rise in the morning with a
fresh senses of grievance and look for someone to attack, and qquite often
it is the chirpy American.

But that's okay. I am particularly immune to attacks couched in
traditionally British terms. "'Rubbish'! He says I'm writing 'rubbish'!
'Rubbish!'"

So far I never write with the hope of provoking controversy, but I'm not
ruling it out. With the Guardian, why bother? A cheerful piece on
Thanksgiving (requested) draws such rage at the thought that this is
one more American holiday I am trying to force on the British public
that there is no need to be provocative....
  

    

hi <sumac>,

you and i had an email exchange a few years back musing on why it was some
people seem distinctly uncomfortable with the notion that we are on a
spectrum with animals --- things like tool-using, guilt, grief --- are
behaviors we share with animals.

do you have any further thots about this? i.e. the passionate need to assert
 human Otherness?