Mike TidwellReseñas

One of the most amazing reads in quite a while! The author takes you on a once in a lifetime adventure deep into the swamps of Louisiana that sits below New Orleans and finds that the Gulf of Mexico is reclaiming, and has been reclaiming, hundreds and hundreds of acres for many years.

Yes! He is an environmentalist, but not your screaming environmentalist that foolishly screams to shut everything down now. He believes there is a way to save the coast so fisherman, shrimper and crabbers can continue to crab for many, many years, save the navigational system in the Misissippi, and save the agricultural lands along the Mississippi so people can continue to live and farm.

He's such an awesome writer that I felt like I was on this awesome journey with him, hitchhiking on shrimpboats down the bayou from Golden Meadow to the Gulf, visiting some of the most remote villages deep into the swamp, and experiencing the "battlefield" for shrimpers out at Barataria Bay at the first full moon in May...the week before shrimp season opens inside Louisiana territory.

I'm a Cajun whose family has migrated to Southeast Texas. I'm very envious of his journey. My husband and I are making plans now for a weekend adventure excursion to check out the boot below New Orleans. I've never been there before and want to make the drive through Golden Meadow and Leeville, all way to the end of Highway 1, to Grand Isle, Louisiana.

The book was originally published in 2003, with the newest publication in 2010. Here we are now, the year 2018, I wonder if anything has been done to convert some of the Mississippi River back down to the swamps? I'm curious to see if 8 cemetery crypts are still visible above water at the Leesville bridge, or has the Gulf completely claimed them?

From the first pages, I was totally engrossed in this informative and interesting work. Anyone interested in our environment, Louisiana, and the Mississippi delta should read this book. If you love shrimp, crabs, crawfish and oysters, read this book. Mike Tidwell covers a lot of ground, both physically and figuratively as he travels the bayous, talks with the people who call this home, and explains to us quite graphically but in a language anyone can understand, why we should care. I care, and now I understand even more, also.

Fascinating book! I couldn't put it down! Rich in experiences and conversations with people who live and work in Louisiana bayou country: Cajuns, Houma Indians (Native Americans), and Vietnamese. He gave a lot of technical and scientific information, but presented so well that this non-techie, non-scientific person could easily understand, and even find interesting.

Very troubling situation regarding south Louisiana - the land is disappearing, and rapidly! This is mainly due to the excellent levee system that keeps the Mississippi River from flooding, but it is the flooding that builds delta land. Because it's not being re-built, the Gulf of Mexico is eroding it, helped by the pipelines and canals of the oil and gas industry. Very sad. The book was published in 2003, before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and others. The Third Delta Conveyance has not been built, or even started. It looks dire for Louisiana, and for the rest of the U. S.

This book, first published in 2004, focuses on the coastal erosion that takes place in coastal Louisiana. The loss of up to 100 yards of coastal wetlands every 45 minutes has led to many of the Cajun people who live in those areas finding their way of life endangered. The author manages to fully capture the severity of the issue, and calls upon various experts to support his claims.A truly riveting and engaging nonfiction work, I would highly recommend it for any teacher who is crafting a course around the Cajun people, and/or any science teacher who is focusing on wetland loss and the risk of coastal erosion

Mike Tidwell seems to believe in ghosts and magic. He certainly writes magically about his adventures; fishing the inner-city parks and ponds of DC or camping in the Congo, his ‘voice’ resonates with his pleasure, respect and love for the peoples he encounters. Tidwell, a journalist and former Peace Corps volunteer, has earned the praise of fellow travel writers, including Paul Theroux and Bob Shacochis, but he has a unique prose, light, humorous, self-effacing and very, very engaging.

Recalling a hunting trip he and his wife make while visiting the Mbuti pygmy in the Ituri forest he contrasts his present life in globally warmed DC with those of this ”… perfect society. We have witnessed the best that humans can be.” On first entering the Mbuti clearing they find the entire twenty members in uncontrollable laughter, so infectious and gleeful that, without any idea of what is so funny, they both join in with the giggling and chuckling, ”… instantly amused with by the sheer, contagious joy of these stone-age comics.”

In these glorious travels Tidwell is still amused when marooned on a tiny desert island in the Caribe with, as its own travel blog says, no amenities at all. Or when continuingly challenged by Kyrgyzstani shepherds, in the Mountains of Heaven as to what it is he wants - ”Gold, wives or horses?”

If you are a reader or collector of travelogues, an armchair voyager or one who has already seen it all and now finds it enough just to recall memories and enjoy another’s trips, do read this glorious book.

In a groundbreaking effort to make global warming a top local priority, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network has just released a dramatic documentary film about the dangers and solutions associated with our changing climate in Maryland, Virginia and D.C.

The film, titled "We Are All Smith Islanders," begins with a description of how global warming is already endangering the very existence of fishing communities on Smith Island, the last inhabited island in Maryland's portion of the Chesapeake Bay. The film also documents how global warming is presently affecting agriculture, wildlife, health and tourism in our region -- and how this crisis will deepen without immediate action. Finally, the film details the many clean-energy solutions available in the region that can help slow and perhaps ultimately help stop global warming, and so save Smith Island and all the inhabitants of Maryland.

“The key to this film is that it makes global warming comprehensible to people right where they live,” said Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. “It’s a disturbing and alarming film, but also one full of exciting solutions with a road map for cleaner air, better health, and a stable future climate.”

The film contains many previously unreported facts about global warming in the region. For example, in 1900, the geographic center of the U.S. maple syrup industry was not New England but Garrett County, Maryland. Today syrup making has largely disappeared from western Maryland due to warming. The mayor of Alexandria, Va., meanwhile, is extremely concerned that sea-level rise will soon devastate businesses and residents in his city. And global-warming-enhanced heat waves are – according to Johns Hopkins University officials – projected to kill many more people in the future (especially in poor D.C./Baltimore neighborhoods) than any other natural disaster.

The film was written, directed, and filmed by Mike Tidwell and Mark Cohen. Tidwell is a prize-winning journalist and author of five books on nature and travel. He has contributed frequently to The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, National Geographic Traveler, Reader's Digest and many other leading publications. Cohen is a filmmaker and the award-winning producer of "The Coffee House," an arts and current affairs television magazine widely viewed in the D.C. area. (http://www.chesapeakeclimate.org/template/page.cfm?id=21)

This is mostly a political action statement. Starting with the failure of political will in New Orleans, it moves on to discuss the threat to the Northeast Coast of the United States and goes on to recommend action. Since I'm already convinced of the problem and have been doing what I feel is best to get it resolved, I didn't find much of use here.

A beautiful and sad book about the disappearance of Louisiana's bayou country, and with it, the way of life of the people who live there, the Cajun, Houma and Vietnamese fishermen and shrimpers who provide us with an amazin 30% of America's annual seafood harvest. Thanks to levees on the Mississippi, oil company canals, and other interference with nature, coastal Louisiana is losing land the size of Manhattan every year. The land is sinking, the barrier islands disappearing, and with them go protection against hurricanes, resting places for migratory birds, and a seafood-rich ecosystem.

That it is possible to halt the destruction of this habitat is known. The Atchfalaya River, Louisiana's second largest, still pours silt from its mouth to form new land, and small diversion projects are helping. But more and major diversions of the Mississippi, to allow it once again to build up the coast instead of dumping its silt over the continental shelf, must happen and happen quickly before it is too late.

Before, in the words of one shrimper, "Dere won't be no more nothin' left anymore, forever".

This book was special for me. It spoke of a place, of customs, and people I'd nearly forgotten because of distance and time put between us. Through weekly talks with my parents, emails of news articles, and reading of online bayou papers I've been kept informed of the disappearing Louisiana coast. My annual trips to the bayou also remind me how fast the land is sinking. I see the differences each year and they're not subtle differences. Places I used to walk, build 'camps', sit under trees and fish are now just water. Prairies of marsh grass around Leeville with little trinasse's [water channels] meandering through the fields of green are now just open water. The community is drowning.

Mike Tidwell's book is non-fiction, but it reads like fiction, even like science fiction at times. His message about the disappearing coast is clear. But this is not simply a study of coastal erosion. He travels and lives with the people who call the bayou home, refugees of past wars, people pushed to the southern extremes to eke out a living; the Cajuns, the Indians, and the Vietnamese (before the giant hurricane of 1893 there was even a Chinese community living on the bayou).

I learned just recently that FEMA does not recognize the levee system protecting the lower Lafourche Parish. As a result of this, flood insurance is expected to triple. People are now paying nearly 3 times the amount of their mortgages on insurance. Many are forced to leave. Many don't have insurance.

Simply put, the taming of the Mississippi River and the oil rush of the 20th century created the problem we see today. Plans have been developed to right this wrong. But it appears that once again the Cajuns, the Indians, and the Vietnamese will have to move on and look for other lands, exiled again.

• 'Diz life down here,' he says, 'it's in [the] blood. He just don't realize it yet. He don't realize he can go wherever he wants but he'll never be happy unless he lives down de baya. What good's a job payin' a million dollars if you ain't happy?'

• Before we drift off, Phan lights a final Marlboro in the dark. His Asian face glows with a faint orange hue as he says, 'I think, you know, I'm like special eel in Thailand or salmon in Alaska. Many years go by and I travel far from home and I grow up and now, much time later, I make long trip back, thousands of miles back, to place where my life began, to place where I was born.'

• My travels along the coast are almost over, and the sadness that comes at the end of any meaningful journey is now compounded by the very real possibility that I will never pass this way again. Not because I don't want to, but because the place won't exist. It might be gone. In all my travels around the world I've never had to say goodbye to a place in quite this manner. I've never even imagined such a place could exist. The traveler is supposed to go away, not the destination.

• ... land is still disappearing at the astonishing rate of 25 to 35 square miles per year.
(this was a pre-Katrina/Rita estimate)

Tragic. This is a well-written, if at times preachy, accounting of an ecosystem that is invisible to most people and is being lost at astonishing rates.

A memorable portrait of the disappearing gulf coast of Louisiana and its people, with a clear, implicit explanation why this is a potential disaster for America's security, energy needs, and food supply.

Michael Tidwell, a 22-year-old fresh out of college, arrives in Zaire with an unusual mission: to teach men to fish. Inspired by the proverb "give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime," his Peace Corps placement requires him to teach impoverished African farmers the art of fish farming. The obstacles are substantial: the village men have no equipment beyond shovels and wheelbarrows. Each is exhausted by the demands of government mandated cotton farming and the needs of their sprawling families. But the fish farms will bring much-needed income into starving households and bring protein into the diet of malnourished villagers.

The best thing about this book is its candor. Tidwell integrates into this alien African community surprisingly well, but he does not cover up his many cultural faux pas. The lessons he learns about sharing are particularly moving. When his first "client" harvests his fish pond, Tidwell watches in anger and disbelief as the farmer gives more than half his fish to needy relatives. Doesn't this man understand the point of the pond? he wonders. How will people ever rise above poverty if they insist upon giving away the fruits of their labors? But when Tidwell is called stingy by a beggar, one of the most serious insults in the local language, he slowly begins to loosen his hold on material possessions. But, even though much of the book is devoted to Tidwell's growing friendships in the village, he doesn't shy away from chronicling the uglier aspects of his service, including his developing alcohol problem. The final product is a book that minutely charts the rhythms of life in a small collection of African villages. There is nothing journalistic about this work; Tidwell tells us little of Zaire's history and does not use his village as a springboard for analyzing Africa as a whole. That means this isn't a good book for readers who want to learn a lot about the continent, but people who will be satisfied to explore a tiny corner of it great detail will be high satisfied.

I'm sorry--I tried, I really did, but at 100-something pages I could not help but feel as if I was re-reading what had already been said. I found the Cajun life as described by Tidwell rather fascinating and the setting engrossing, but the way he presented the coast's decay felt like he was beating a dead horse.

This is not to say that the issue did not concern me, but I suppose that the way he meant to weave it into his story muddled it. I have always felt that a reader should be able to find her own interpretation of what she has read, the author should only provide the simplest of maps. Tidwell's approach felt too "in your face" and his tone...condescending?

I'll end here by saying that he came to speak at my college and I was unable to attend, but the next day I heard many comments about his own demeanor and personality. All of his reviews were the same, he was unpleasant and wanted everyone to drive a hybrid car...amen.

Not as good as Bayou Farewell.

Tidwell predicted the effects of Hurricane Katrina two years before it hit the Gulf Coast. The coast of Louisiana is rapidly eroding and the is an emergency that the federal government needs to get involved in.

Subtitled "The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast", this book should have been required reading for every government official in Washington and Louisiana, and a few other places as well, the minute it came off the presses. Tidwell's observations and warnings went largely unheeded, as did those of the shrimpers, fishermen and other locals along the Louisiana Coast, before Hurricane Katrina made him look positively clairvoyant.
Here's a quote from one of the state's field biologists, who tried for over a decade to put a stop to destructive practices of the big oil companies in the Gulf: "There's a reason they're called 'barrier islands'...This is the first line of defense against hurricanes. WIthout these islands, a hurricane's storm surge will slam right into the coast unchecked. Then it'll meet the remains of our shrinking marshes, facing little resistance. Then it's straight into the population centers. The next time a direct-hit hurricane comes, I'm afraid it might be really, really ugly."
The destruction of New Orleans and other southern Louisiana towns was totally predictable, but it did not have to happen. Mother Nature's fury was aided and abetted by generations of misguided land and water management, greedy development and oil exploitation, and just plain ignorance.
This book is a beautifully written and moving tribute to the vanishing way of life of the Cajun people of Louisiana, as well as their adopted environment. Read it and weep.