Latest news with #Groundwater
Irish Times
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Groundwater by Thomas McMullan: Unsettling and seductive
Groundwater Author : Thomas McMullan ISBN-13 : 9781526678010 Publisher : Bloomsbury Guideline Price : £18.99 'Out of a dream I have brought forth the queen of the world.' This inscription, etched into the visionary stone palace of 19th-century French postman Ferdinand Cheval, appears as an anecdote in Groundwater, gesturing to the novel's central obsession: the structures we build and the dreams, griefs and memories that underpin them. Like Cheval, who carried a single stone for decades before completing his palace, the characters in McMullan's unsettling and seductive second novel bear psychic burdens. John and Liz have moved from the ordered routines of London to the liminal expanse of a lakeside house. What begins as a sun-drenched August holiday, with visits from extended family, becomes a disquieting study in estrangement, mortality and the fragile membranes between past and present, surface and depth. From the opening page, 'Already they were altered by their new surroundings,' McMullan signals that this is no passive landscape. The woods, the lake, the dead deer found by the children: each acts as a porous threshold through which the unconscious seeps. READ MORE [ The Last Good Man by Thomas McMullan: A troubling, uncanny and believable nightmare world Opens in new window ] The natural world creeps in literally, pressing against the boundaries of the house, testing the 'thin walls' between domestic and feral. The family's new home, still incomplete, with delayed furniture and mismatched borrowed chairs for guests, becomes a symbol of the self in flux. McMullan's prose is textured yet restrained, moving fluidly between lush descriptions of nature and Pinteresque dialogue. The novel hums with unspoken tensions: between friends Richard and Tariq, whose brittle interactions veer toward violence; between sisters Liz and Monica, strained by old disappointments; and within John, haunted by masculine inadequacy and quiet dread of irrelevance. Monica's partner Harrie suffers a debilitating collapse that feels less personal crisis than a harbinger of collective disintegration. Friction builds to breaking point when a group of students camping by the lake infiltrate the house, triggering the final rupture. Groundwater draws power from the quiet charge of small acts: scrubbing walls, folding clothes – ritual gestures of resistance against time's slow erosion. John's contemplation of a submerged tree, 'Could it be living still?' echoes the novel's guiding question: what endures beneath the surface? Groundwater invites us to recognise that we too live atop hidden depths, where the personal and environmental, the self and wild, are bound in ways we barely understand.
Yahoo
27-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Longtime lawmaker shapes the debate as Arizona grapples with dwindling water supplies
Arizona Groundwater Reform PHOENIX (AP) — Throughout two decades marked by drought, climate change and growing demand for water, Arizona's leaders have fiercely debated an increasingly urgent problem: how to manage dwindling water supplies in an arid state. At the crossroads sits Rep. Gail Griffin, a savvy and quietly assertive lawmaker who has for years used her status as the leader of key water and land use committees in the Republican-controlled Legislature to protect property owners' rights, deciding which bills live and die. Griffin's iron fist has infuriated residents and other lawmakers worried that unfettered groundwater pumping is causing wells to run dry. The GOP lawmaker has also drawn the ire of Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, who considered her the barrier to legislation that stalled this year despite having others at the negotiating table. Without the Legislature charting a path, Hobbs could tap her executive authority to carve out specific areas where regulations could be imposed, like she did in recent months with the Willcox Basin north of Douglas. Fighting over a rural framework At the start of this year's session, Hobbs floated a proposal to regulate pumping in rural areas but the bipartisan deal failed to get Griffin's support. Griffin, however, did back a separate measure to let farmers transfer their pumping rights to developers, who can then access credits to demonstrate they have enough drinking water to supply future housing projects. It was one of the most significant pieces of water legislation to win approval this year. Still, domestic well-owner Karen Weilacher and other residents are frustrated that efforts to expand Arizona's 1980 groundwater code have repeatedly failed despite pleas to address unchecked pumping as conditions worsen — in the state and greater Southwest region. Arizona's code already allows for managing pumping in major metropolitan areas. The disagreement is over a framework for rural areas. Lawmakers also have clashed over who would govern the use of the water and pathways for future regulation. Weilacher, earlier this year, addressed the natural resources committee led by Griffin. She pivoted to let the powerful panel read her shirt: 'Water is life.' 'I shall use the remainder of my time to do what Representative Griffin has done to us,' she told committee members, as she turned her back on them. Griffin declined to comment specifically on her role in shaping Arizona's water policy, but she's adamant about her belief that Hobbs' proposal would devastate agriculture and rural economies. 'As we work with stakeholders, we will continue to support private property rights and individual liberty while ensuring that any legislative solution protects local communities and our natural resource industries, allowing rural Arizona to grow,' Griffin said in an emailed response to an interview request from The Associated Press. Rural way of life With a legislative tenure dating back to 1997, Griffin's convictions are anchored in preserving a rural lifestyle in which residents help each other and reject government mandates, said former GOP House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a friend of hers for decades. 'She was a hard-core believer in her principles,' Bowers said. 'And if you didn't respect it, then get the heck out of the way, she'll run over you like a Mack truck.' Back home in Hereford, Griffin has been known to go on walks, armed with her gun and mobile phone. A member of the Arizona Farm Bureau and the Arizona Cattle Growers Association, she has referred to her ranching neighbors as 'true environmentalists' because they take care of the land year-round. At a 2019 forum, Griffin recounted an exchange in which she was advised how to handle a bear busting into her home, questioning at the time whether calling authorities for help would be enough to keep her safe. 'And what will you do when I shoot and kill that bear?' Griffin had asked. She didn't like the answer she got — that prosecution, jail time and a fine would be likely. Griffin won the crowd over with her rural sensibilities. She told them the desire to give people the tools they need to protect themselves and their property is what first led her to run for public office. That hasn't changed. Her stances resonate with voters who repeatedly send her back to the statehouse. Cochise County farmer Ed Curry is one of them but wouldn't say whether he would do so next year as Griffin eyes a seat in the state Senate. He said he and other constituents have begged Griffin to usher in change, sharing stories at a town hall last year about wells drying up and the exorbitant costs residents face when digging deeper wells. 'She doesn't ask, she tells. She doesn't listen, she speaks,' Curry said of Griffin. Curry, who serves on the governor's water policy council, said that even growing crops that don't require much water hasn't kept his wells from dropping. He said new regulations will help to ensure Arizona's future. 'Something has to be done,' he said. ___ The Associated Press' women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at Solve the daily Crossword
Daily Mail
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
This weeks lit fic picks: Groundwater by Thomas McMullan, Selfish Girls by Abigail Bergstrom, Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko
Groundwater is available now from the Mail Bookshop Groundwater by Thomas McMullan (Bloomsbury £18.99, 304pp) John and Liz abandon their city life for a new start in a remote house by a lake. Their furniture is delayed, the local warden seems a bit strange and Liz's sister, her husband and two children have turned up, expecting a bit of a holiday. Then there is the longed-for child, John's brewing work problems, the peculiar behaviour of Liz's brother-in-law, who may be seriously ill, and the three students from a local campsite who start hanging around for no discernible reason. McMullan's shape-shifting novel is a masterclass in apprehension, exposing the fissures between an imagined life and its reality with stealthy power, and boldly upending reader expectations. Richly unsettling. Selfish Girls by Abigail Bergstrom (Hodder and Stoughton £20, 272pp) When Ines has a miscarriage, her boyfriend appears more upset about it than she is. She agrees, all the same, to return with him to her family home in Wales for a new beginning: after all, her career as an actress in London isn't exactly going anywhere. But also in Wales live her two elder sisters, Dylan and Emma, and their mother, Gwen, and before long the unspoken secrets and buried difficulties of their unconventional childhood start to rise to the surface. Bergstrom, whose novel What A Shame was a Gen-Z hit, roves between the lives of all four women across a time span of several decades in ways that echo both the mess of remembered experience and the chaotic make-up of a life. The story is not always easy to follow but Bergstrom's prose has a rangy, off-the-cuff immediacy, as though you are reading what is happening from inside each character's skin. Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko (Oneworld £10.99, 320pp) Melissa Lucashenko's latest novel is full of stories. There are the tales Granny Eddie, a spirited First Nations elder, mischievously spins about her past when a team of white liberals co-opt her into their progressively minded bicentennial celebrations. There are the consoling myths Australia likes to tell itself as a way of whitewashing its savagely colonial history. And there is the story of Mulanyin, a Yugambeh man who falls in love with a Nyugi woman in 19th century Queensland as his life plays out against the pernicious reach of British colonialism. Looping back and forth between the 1850s and the present day and steeped in the rituals and storytelling of First Nations culture, Edenglassie at times feels as vast as Australia itself. But it's also written in a spirit of reconciliation, daring to dream what a future version of that country might look like.
Sydney Morning Herald
16-07-2025
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
Some tourists are avoiding Trump's America, but we aren't
When Traveller columnist Ben Groundwater wrote a piece earlier this year, saying that the Trump administration would not stop him from visiting the US, he received an overwhelming response. Of the record 525 comments on Groundwater's column, the vast majority took the opposite view. Not only were many of the readers critical of the idea of visiting the US under president Trump, many were critical of Groundwater for even suggesting it. At a time when visitor numbers to the US from various other countries are reportedly plummeting, then, it might come as a surprise to see that Australians are not only continuing to visit, are actually going there in greater numbers than before Trump's election. The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that, in May, the number of Australian residents returning from short trips to the US was a little over 69,000 – an increase of more than 5000, or about 8 per cent, on the same time last year. What's more, the numbers were up in every key category – those travelling a holiday (up 12 per cent compared with last year); visiting friends or relatives (up 15 per cent) or for business (up 8 per cent). It's true that the numbers for April showed a decline in Australian visitors, year-on-year, for the first time since borders reopened after the pandemic, but so far that amounts to a blip, not a trend. Overall this year the number of Australians visiting the US is up about 3 per cent and in May the US was our fourth most-visited country, behind only Indonesia, New Zealand and Japan. The number of Australians heading to the US still remains below pre-COVID levels, one of only two countries in our top 10 to have not surpassed 2019's numbers (New Zealand is the other one), but this might indicate that the strength of the US dollar has been a bigger factor in deterring visitors than any political issues. Australians have long been a sought-after market for US tourist destinations. We are among the top 10 sources of visitors and tend to stay longer and spend more money than tourists from other countries. And it seems we are continuing to go there in droves. This comes even as a series of horror stories are reported about Australians and others being denied entry to the US for seemingly arbitrary reasons.
The Age
16-07-2025
- Business
- The Age
Some tourists are avoiding Trump's America, but we aren't
When Traveller columnist Ben Groundwater wrote a piece earlier this year, saying that the Trump administration would not stop him from visiting the US, he received an overwhelming response. Of the record 525 comments on Groundwater's column, the vast majority took the opposite view. Not only were many of the readers critical of the idea of visiting the US under president Trump, many were critical of Groundwater for even suggesting it. At a time when visitor numbers to the US from various other countries are reportedly plummeting, then, it might come as a surprise to see that Australians are not only continuing to visit, are actually going there in greater numbers than before Trump's election. The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that, in May, the number of Australian residents returning from short trips to the US was a little over 69,000 – an increase of more than 5000, or about 8 per cent, on the same time last year. What's more, the numbers were up in every key category – those travelling a holiday (up 12 per cent compared with last year); visiting friends or relatives (up 15 per cent) or for business (up 8 per cent). It's true that the numbers for April showed a decline in Australian visitors, year-on-year, for the first time since borders reopened after the pandemic, but so far that amounts to a blip, not a trend. Overall this year the number of Australians visiting the US is up about 3 per cent and in May the US was our fourth most-visited country, behind only Indonesia, New Zealand and Japan. The number of Australians heading to the US still remains below pre-COVID levels, one of only two countries in our top 10 to have not surpassed 2019's numbers (New Zealand is the other one), but this might indicate that the strength of the US dollar has been a bigger factor in deterring visitors than any political issues. Australians have long been a sought-after market for US tourist destinations. We are among the top 10 sources of visitors and tend to stay longer and spend more money than tourists from other countries. And it seems we are continuing to go there in droves. This comes even as a series of horror stories are reported about Australians and others being denied entry to the US for seemingly arbitrary reasons.
