Mother Earth What a Life You've Had!

By Lenny Everson

Mother Earth, What a Life You’ve Had is a summary of most of the problems and successes life on Earth has encountered since it began some three billion years ago. volcanoes, comets, and asteroids have many times caused major and minor extinction events such as that of the dinosaurs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lenny Everson
• Release date: Feb 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311913005

Lenny Everson

List of Completed Works by Lenny Everson (As of November, 2014, over 36,000 copies of Lenny's works have been downloaded.) Novels •Death On a Small, Dark Lake. 67,700 words. Our hero snags a body in a remote lake. •Death on a Rocky Little Island 71,500 words. Our hero convinces a friend to take a canoeing trip to the 30,000 islands. •Mount Moriah 50,000 words. A strange sequence events involves a priest, a poet, a CSIS agent, a space alien, four horny teens, among others. My most fun fiction. •Last Exit to Pine Lake. 45,000 words. A dying writer goes back into the bush to off himself. Grimly literary. My best fiction. •Ally Oop Through the Ulysses Trees. As much fun as Mount Moriah! •Marley Was Dead: A Christmas Carol Mystery Novelettes •Granite and Dry Blood. 9,700 words. Our hero wants to write a book on Massassauga Park. Various people would prefer that he didn’t. •Death on a Foggy Spring Portage. 11,800 words. One member of a paddling group is found dead on a muddy portage. Screenplays •Murder on a Foggy Spring Portage. One member of a paddling group is found dead on a muddy portage. Plays •Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont. Ghosts of the two Métis leaders meet in today’s world to remember their lives. A short (20-minute) play for two actors. Full-Length Poetry Books •The Minor Odyssey of Lollie Heronfeathers Singer. A middle-aged woman tries to connect with her aboriginal ancestry. •In The Tavern of Lost Souls. Four poets meet at a grungy bar once a month to give their poetic answers to random questions. •Love in a Canoe. A set of five chapbooks and a songbook about the love of canoeing. With illustrations. •Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont are Dead. Ghosts of the two Métis leaders meet in today’s world to remember their lives. Includes the play. Poetry Chapbooks •Encounter in a Small, Old Cemetery. Autumn. Midnight. Poet visits a small, old private graveyard. Best poem I ever wrote. •Fire and Ashes. Poems about life’s flames and regrets. •The Empty Tarmac of a Long-Abandoned Airport. Poems about having a midlife crisis. •Love Poems A compilation •Pray for Me: 22 Poems Probably Slandering God and Jesus •Ballads from an Unlucky Fisherman: Poems from a fisherman •Tweetable Limericks. 60 limericks small enough to be tweets •Hiking Poems. Co-Authored Poetry Chapbooks •Who Would Be a God? Susan Ioannou and Lenny debate the merits of being a god. •How to Dance Naked in the Moonlight. Katherine L. Gordon (Celtic pagan) and Lenny (skeptic) confront the ceremony. •Cats and Dogs. With I. B. Iskov •For Ko Aye Aung: A Plea for His Release from Prison. For Amnesty International, with other poets. Non-Fiction Chapbooks •If You Condemn Gays: The Bible on Homosexuality and Other Items. •The Architecture of Suburban West Kitchener. A light look at house styles. •The Architecture of The University of Waterloo. A light look at the campus buildings. •Making Tourist Attractions for Towns and Small Cities. Advice. •Technological Solutions to Global Warming. •Hyphens: A Guide for the Early Twenty-First Century. •Colons and Semicolons: A Guide for the Early Twenty-First Century. •How to Review Draft Technical Writings •Rebecca’s Trail (Grand River Trail) in Winter •7 Temples to Bill Gates: a modern mystery •The Great God Pan - or Not •Two in a Tent: Camping Humor. •Why Haven't Aliens Contacted us? Songbooks •Dance Songs for Weddings Available on Smashwords •Canoe Songs. part of a set of six chapbooks about the love of canoeing. With illustrations.. Available on Smashwords •18 Dingbat Songs for Kids Available on Smashwords I’d like to thank all the people who downloaded my writings. And I’d like to thank Smashwords for making them available to the world. I started out as a poet, and spent most of my life producing poems. Some of them are really fine poems, but, of course, the monetary value of poetry in this world isn’t much. Actually, I once calculated poetry has a negative monetary value; poets are lucky if they don’t have to pay people to listen to them. But I always admired people who told me they were “writing a novel.” I don’t know why, but I did. So eventually, I sat down and wrote a novel, just to show I could actually do it. The result was Death on a Small, Dark Lake, more than two thousand copies of which have been downloaded. It wasn’t really very good, but at least I could say, “I wrote a novel!” I stuck to what I knew best, canoeing and the lake country north of Peterborough, Ontario, the edge of Canada’s lake country. I wrote Death on a Rocky Little Island in an effort to make some more believable characters, but I can’t really say I succeeded. People have downloaded a few more copies of that, so maybe it was a bit better constructed than the first novel. It included canoes, of course. Then one of my friends taunted me into doing something for NaNoWriMo, the endeavor in which a person tries to write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November. I was, er, a few days over, but I got it done. It turned out to be a bit incoherent in spots, but in general, a lot of fun; I recommend it, if your standards aren’t too high. And there are no canoes in it. By that time, I figured I could write something “literary.” The result – with more canoes of course – was Last Exit to Pine Lake. If it’s less fun, well, it’s meant to be. If most people don’t like it, well, that’s normal for literary novels, so it doesn’t bother me. My literary bent done, I wrote Ally Oop Through the Ulysses Trees. It was intended to be fun, and it’s lots better than the first two novels I wrote. I even put myself, in a canoe, as a minor character. Then I thought I’d just write a novel that would sell. For money, like. Smashwords said romance generally sold well, so I wrote Fire and Spark, under the name, “Laura Singer.” (You can search for it.) It wasn’t all that bad, for a guy’s first romance novel. Really, it is, although my wife said it should be subtitled, Five Canoes; No Sex. I again added myself as a minor character. But it didn’t sell, so I added it to my list of free books on Smashwords. You’re welcome. Last fall, I finished another book that I thought would actually sell, Marley Was Dead: A Christmas Carol Mystery. My wife thought it was really good, mostly because of the historical details of social life. It didn’t sell, of course, so it’s free now. You’re welcome, again. As for the poetry, the most popular are Hiking Poems and 21 Poems for Love, Weddings, and Anniversaries. And then there’s the rest. The opinion pieces are just my explorations of things that I wanted to know more about. I studied the subject, briefly, and published my findings. They’re not scholarly, but well worth what you’ll pay for them. A few are getting outdated, but nobody’s written to me to ask for updates. If you want to learn more about any of my writings, email me at [e-mail]. Like Lenny’s poems? Just type in (or copy) the YouTube address) from any item on the list below into your search engine. You should get a YouTube video of Lenny reading a poem. https://youtu.be/SfHAKSgn7lc https://youtu.be/29dmESWIgrg https://youtu.be/hyYqYhDl35E https://youtu.be/x8ufRDD65_s https://youtu.be/u0Bw6xUcEFM n https://youtu.be/g3PxjmjRl1g https://youtu.be/WCmoGGdLrTw https://youtu.be/IIL7e2cWWVA https://youtu.be/SfbwWwgd5Yo https://youtu.be/ZAuuYEUsMh0y https://youtu.be/Hw4v7RmZqk4 https://youtu.be/BmTywRZwe1o https://youtu.be/lYGmMyxgKGQd https://youtu.be/I8tA3dwv-WA https://youtu.be/yaX9WYb2y3o https://youtu.be/Y1Saq1UZ0kE https://youtu.be/FDBlHLuBmcw https://youtu.be/yTiSQLzU4nM https://youtu.be/On8ClcmNWsw https://youtu.be/L3IwGhkqIKMd https://youtu.be/KhOxMvR4wGE https://youtu.be/R6ybqmVUUCA https://youtu.be/BiiYKsR8YaE https://youtu.be/Y9a6pNuEoX0 https://youtu.be/ZyOn3Smu8ZY https://youtu.be/5U0zTnAw7X4

Book preview

Mother Earth What A Life You’ve Had

By Lenny Everson

rev 2

Copyright Lenny Everson 2014

Smashwords Edition License Notes:

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form, and the reader is not charged to access it.. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

Cover design by Lenny Everson

Published at Smashwords:

Chapter 1: What This Book is About

From the time I was told that an asteroid had brought about the extinction of the dinosaurs, I’ve been interested in nasty things that happened to life on this planet.

I’ve read quite a few books and too many articles, but most of these focused on one event, or were proposing one theory or another, without giving much time to opposing theories. Some, on the other hand, were quite good.

So I felt the need for a brief summary of interesting and nasty things that people claim have happened to planet Earth and to its life; mostly about its life. This is a start; I wrote it for myself, and I’m sharing it in the hope of getting comments and further thoughts.

What This Book is Not About

It is not an attempt to be thorough or complete. It is not an attempt to promote one or another theory.

Cautions

This book does not go into detail and, sometimes, it’s too short on references. If I were trying for a PhD thesis, I’d put some darn good referencing into it. But I’m just following an interest, and noting what I come up with. If I put a fact in here, it’s because I got it from a book or from the Web, and for all I know it may be a fib or someone’s silly guess, so be careful what you believe of the stuff here.

Some of the items are rather speculative. But I like that.

I don’t understand some of the scenarios here and some of the explanations, but I include them anyway, in the hopes that they’ll make sense to you.

It seems sometimes that every time I look up situation, there are a whole lot of other trails leading all over the place. Feel free to follow those that I didn’t feel I had time for.

The links were valid when I wrote each section; that doesn’t mean they’re still valid. Sometimes I’ll reference something in the text but you won’t be able to find a link. You’ll be mad, but remember, I’ll probably do time in Hell for that.

My references tend to be casual. For example, if I say Hypatia hit the Sahara desert in Egypt, I mean the area that is now Egypt". You knew that; so don’t get all pedanticky on me.

I’ve cleverly hidden many typos in the book (see if you can find them).

On the other hand, this is a free book. And besides, I hope to update it often. If you want, you can send me your opinion, and tell me whether you want it in the book, with or without your name.

Terms and Notes

Glaciation: Lots of ice; some of it sliding around like it does on Greenland.

Gondwana: A former land mass made up mostly of today’s continents, stuck together.

Temperatures are measured in Celsius.

Anoxia: No oxygen. When that happens to the oceans, the only surviving life is either burrowed into the mud at the bottom or living in fresh-water rivers running into the oceans.

Dates: There’s a lot of play in the dates of some of these extinctions. Some are just hard to date, and some events seem to have come on slowly and left slowly, so setting an exact date is a matter of opinion.

Links

The first edition of this book included hyperlinks to web sites. That, it appears, caused some problems with displaying the text on some readers. I’ve removed the hyperlinks, but you can email me (see end of book) and I’ll send you a .doc. .txt file with those links, or include them into the email.

The remaining links have been moved to the end of the book (instead of the end of the chapters). They’re usually enough to allow you to find the article using a search engine.

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Chapter 2: Birth of the Moon

4.527 billion years ago

If you like following mysteries, there’s no end yet to this one. Just when someone figures out a new and better theory about how the moon formed, 4.527 billion years ago, another