Latest news with #GalápagosIslands
Yahoo
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Book review: 'A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Sophie Elmhirst's fascinating first book is "so much more than a shipwreck tale," said Laurie Hertzel in The Boston Globe. In 1973, Maurice and Maralyn Bailey were sailing toward the Galápagos Islands when a sperm whale rammed their yacht and left them stranded at sea for the next 118 days on a tiny inflatable raft and 9-foot dinghy. Elmhirst has turned the British couple's tale of survival into a portrait of a marriage. "What else is a marriage," she writes, "if not being stuck on a small raft with someone and trying to survive?" In this case, Maralyn was strong-minded, Maurice ready to quit and die. In the end, though, their union, "for all its oddities," emerges as a true partnership. "As harrowing and gripping as the Baileys' story is, the real star of this book is its dazzling writer," said Chris Hewitt in The Minnesota Star Tribune. Elmhirst, a journalist, "succeeds at everything she attempts," whether waxing poetic about the open Pacific and its teeming life forms or psycho-analyzing her two lead characters. The "real meat of the book" is Elmhirst's effort to understand how the Baileys' relationship was strengthened rather than wrecked by their joint ordeal. Maurice was so misanthropic that he'd insisted on sailing the ocean without a radio, while Maralyn's adventurousness was built on an optimism that never failed her. It was Maralyn who devised most of the couple's lifesaving hacks, such as storing rainwater for drinking and catching and eating turtles. She also helped keep herself and her husband sane by fashioning a deck of playing cards from spare paper and reading aloud from a Shakespeare book they'd salvaged. "Like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, except without all the yelling and drinking, A Marriage at Sea is a clear-eyed, insightful anatomy of a marriage." "It's billed as a love story; I don't know if it is," said Dan Piepenbring in Harper's. "Whatever held the Baileys together was stranger and plainer than love, harder to come by, and even harder to explain." Elmhirst tells us that they went back to sea for 14 months on a second yacht and notes how crazy that was, but I ached to know more about what their marriage was like in subsequent years and why, like so many couples, they felt bound to experience those years together. Still, A Marriage at Sea is "an enthralling account of how the commonest hazards of married life—claustrophobia, codependence, boundarylessness—become totalized amid disaster," said Jessica Winter in The New Yorker. The book "honors the courage and resourcefulness of the Baileys in visceral detail," while showing deep compassion both for the story's heroine and her difficult mate. Solve the daily Crossword
Axios
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Trump's next targets: Museums and libraries, including MFAH and Houston Zoo
Museums and libraries in Texas could lose federal support under a Trump administration plan to shut down the agency that funds them. Why it matters: The cultural institutions rely on federal money to meet their mission. Catch up quick: In a March 14 executive order, President Trump named the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) as one of seven agencies that should be "eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law." Other agencies included in the order are the Minority Business Development Agency and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. The latest: The institute on Monday put its entire staff on administrative leave for 90 days after a meeting with DOGE staff, NPR reported. Follow the money: The IMLS' largest program, called Grants to States, disburses roughly $160 million annually to state library agencies, including $12.5 million in fiscal year 2024 to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC). The agency supports public and school libraries and provides reading services for people with disabilities. The federal grant makes up a third of the state agency's total budget. Per a grant request from the state agency reviewed by Axios, the 2024 money was earmarked to improve access for Texans to literacy and workforce readiness, as well as to help train librarians. Asked about the IMLS funding, TSLAC officials directed Axios to a fact sheet detailing uses of the money, showing the funds fully support the state's e-book program for small community libraries and the interlibrary loan (ILL) system. Zoom in: The Houston Zoo was the recipient in 2020 of a $250,000 grant to implement an interpretive plan for the Galápagos Islands exhibit that opened in 2023. What they're saying: "This agency provides essential funding and guidance for the vast collections of museums, including zoos, across America," Houston Zoo President Lee Ehmke wrote in a letter to federal lawmakers, shared with Axios. "Beyond education, museums are economic engines, providing jobs, driving tourism, and serving as community cornerstones. Museums cannot do this vital work without the support they receive from agencies like IMLS." Ehmke also pointed to a 2013 IMLS grant of $459,147 that supported research on Elephant Endotheliotropic Herpesvirus (EEHV), helping move vaccine development forward. Other Houston institutions that have recently received grants from the IMLS include: The African American History Research Center at Houston Public Library ($100,000 in 2024) The Orange Show ($500,000 in 2022) The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (about $250,000 in 2021) Friction point: IMLS was established by Congress in 1996 and reauthorized in 2018 by Trump. The agency's governing board issued a letter that explained that IMLS' programs "cannot be paused, reduced, or eliminated without violating Congressional intent and federal statute." Meanwhile, public library advocates have launched a petition to oppose the shuttering of the agency and its services. Between the lines: The elimination of the IMLS could lead to "devastation for museums, libraries and archives everywhere," Gabriel Solis, executive director for the Texas After Violence Project, tells Axios.
