IE ZEPHYR/DECEMBER 2004-JANUARY 2005 me a shock too, but I'm one of those freaks who likes snakes, I think because once when | was a kid a gartersnake hypnotized me. I'm not kidding. In the garden, weeding, bored to death, stopped weeding, just sat there feeling sorry for myself and I see this flickering motion and you've guesed it, snake's tongue, any black and red. “The snake had its chin resting on a dry stem ofa last year's tomato plant. I stared and stared at that tongue going in and out tasting air, that's exactly what it looked like, tasting air and later | read up on it and sure enough, the tongue is for tasting, or you can call it smelling if you like, either way it's checking out molecules in the air. The eye of the snake, nothing like it, but that's another story. Anyway, thatstarted me on snakes. Strange, I guess, Coen creepy-crawleys like centipedes and earwigs give me the jeeps. ‘Back to the copperbelly. I got over my fright while the snake was rearing back on itself to get away from us, throwing its body into something like a knot, reversing itself in a hurry and giving mea quick flash of yellow belly. Maybe also a warning? Beautiful, that's all [can say. We guessed it to be over three feet te close to four. That's all, I just wanted to talk about snakes. The copperbelly's name: Nerodia erythrogaster neglecta." Greg That post is longer than most. A chunk of story follows, then another post, and so on. The idea is to have e-mails slip in between story segments. The two streams begin to mingle, as posters come up with strategies and are drawn into the continent-wide scheme of action. The two streams never completely mingle because a huge ecology of endangerment .. human and the others ... keeps playing on that pesky e-mail screen. That's the general blueprint; it will require careful juggling, don't want to push the reader into knots of annoyance. Here's another sample. LOSING SOLITUDE By Martin Murie "I begin to see how amphibians spell out our human share of the planet's crisis. Equally clear is domination by BREAKOUT The new novel is coming along pretty well, but it's of an age now to make demands, especially on behalf of the theme: Endangered Species. As we all know, you can't have a theme like that that's worth a single tea cup of snail darters if you don't gather a wide spread of opinion regarding this whole matter of the others. Opinion then: views, multiplicity and clash, that's what's needed. Rest assured, I've been gathering, reaching out, monster corporations that insist on getting help from outfits like the Center for Biological Diversity, various documents on the internet, memory, even books. But this obstreperous text, having acquired a taste for turning everything living or dead, argument, keeps calling for more. even ideas, into market share.’ The new book is a sequel of Windswept, a fiction that ended somewhat up in the air, bringing complaints that I hadn't even maneuvered the guy and the gal into a “real” relationship by the time it ended. Point taken, but this new novel isn't about to tie things up very well either. Sorry about that. Life goes on, so do stories. In Windswept five people ...a biker from Montana, a resident of a nursing home, a retired math teacher, a scientist on the run and a rebellious corporation wife ... win a skirmish with two big pharmas, earn a heavy chunk of money to devote to raising hell about endangered species. And so, a week or so later they're at a table in the Virginian hotel in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, having a few drinks and looking for ways to spend that money. They come up with a revolutionary idea: get rid of it as fast as possible, because time is ticking away for those creatures of the plant and animal kingdoms who live at extreme risk; they can't wait around for the long term. For them, now or never. While settling on that strategy they also To: breakout@speakeasy.org From: jkraus@texoco.com Re: Big Picture “I begin to. see how amphibians spell out our human share in the planet's crisis. Equally clearis domination by monster corporations that insist on turning everything living or dead, even ideas, into market share. We ought to be building the big picture, the world economy and ecosystem intertwining. Let's get pro-active! "Oh well, l'll keep hopping about in my tiny niche in south Texas, worrying about those few surviving Houston toads, looking for a way to shout a little louder, about them. Jason come up with a name for their enterprise: Breakout. That's the beginning. Next, they set up an e-mail ListServe to stimulate discussion, hoping that from that will spring activism, and it succeeds, in spades. The e-mailing works this way: people write about a particular species they've developed an acquaintance with, or they theorize about the overall situation. Here's a sample: To: breakout@speakeasy.org From: gbrock@hotmail.com Re: Copperbelly Watersnake "| live in Indiana where the copperbelly is at risk; further north in Michigan it's even rarer. | hadn't even heard of it until four years ago two of us just out of high school fooling around in some bottomlands, and never mind where, that has to be a secret you know (remember, this snake is in trouble). So anyway my friend lets outa humongous scream and turns around so fast he falls down and he's crawling on the ground in fallen oak leaves not To: breakout@speakeasy.org From: blarkin@instar.com Re: Big Picture "Jason, | react strongly against your putting a blanket blame on corporations. The big picture, sure, | can see the need for that. It would be good to Keep the amphibians ae going extinct, but let's stick to facts. Huge moral judgements such as "corporations are bad,” etc. will just get in the way of careful, objective thought.” Brian To: breakout@speakeasy.org From: hsands@yahoo.com Re: amphibians I agree that monster corporations dominate, but there's more to this subject, like getting anywhere he's so shook up. He'd come across a copperbelly and it was BIG. Gave ORDER SIGNED COPIES DIRECT FROM MARTIN MURIE: Send your order to: LOSING SOLITUDE: A contemporary Western. 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