Listen for 'The Sound of the Sea' author Cynthia Barnett at Word of South
If you have ever held a shell in your hand, a Horse Conch, a yellow Prickly Cockle, even a dainty lavender periwinkle, you surely felt a sense of wonder at these fluted or spiraling, shining things.
How does the sea make these jewels? Why are humans so fascinated by them? I’m a Florida native, raised around, and often in, the Gulf of Mexico, and while I collected them when I was a kid, I didn’t know much about them, what they were made of, or how they fit in the great blue world of the sea.
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I know a lot more now that I’ve read Cynthia Barnett’s splendid new book "The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans." Barnett, a renowned environmental journalist, artfully weaves oceanography, history and climate science to give us the natural history and culture of shells, and their place in the oceans.
She will be in conversation with me at this year’s Word of South Festival at 12:30 p.m. Sunday.
Word of South has a great lineup this year, with writers such as Pulitzer Prize-winner Gilbert King, US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, and Dawnie Walton, author of the much-admired rock ‘n’ roll novel "The Final Revival of Opal and Nev." There’s also music from folk to gospel to alt-punk to a bouquet of jazz geniuses including Scotty Barnhart and members of the Adderley family.
I can pretty much guarantee you Cynthia Barnett will be one of the brightest gems at the festival.
"The Sound of the Sea" chronicles the lives of sea mollusks, the soft-bodied creatures who for 800 million years have performed their alchemy, transforming calcium carbonate and protein into shells with knobs, colored stripes, spots and spikes like a porcupine.
Shells have lit up the human imagination from earliest times, appearing in graves, used as money or jewelry or as building material. The goddess Aphrodite rode ashore on a scallop shell; there was a conch-collecting craze in 17th century Amsterdam; and one of the world’s largest and richest oil companies got its start in a little shop selling seashells in London.
Barnett’s 2016 book "Rain" explored the supposedly ordinary meteorological phenomenon that most of us merely complain about, examining rain as a giver of life and destroyer of worlds, rain as an emotional force, and human attempts to control rain.
In "The Sound of the Sea," as in "Rain" and her other books about water, Barnett doesn’t let us off the hook, showing how human folly and greed accelerate the global climate crisis and devastate our seas, especially here in Florida.
But despite the gloomy outlook for our planet, Barnett narrative is humane, lyrical and impressively researched, Perhaps her greatest talent as a writer is taking the familiar in nature and make it new, strange, and precious.
If you go
What: Cynthia Barnett appears with Diane Roberts at Word of South
When: 12:30 p.m. Sunday April 10
Where: Flamingo Stage at Cascades Park. Admission is free. For the full schedule, go to wordofsouthfestival.com.
Diane Roberts, author of "Tribal: College Football and the Secret Heart of America," teaches at Florida State University.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: 'Sound of the Sea' author Cynthia Barnett gives talk at Word of South
