Keahey, John

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KEAHEY, John

PERSONAL: Partner of Connie Disney (a book designer). Education: Graduateg from University of Utah.

ADDRESSES: Office—Salt Lake City Tribune, 143 South Main St., Salt Lake City, UT 84101. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Salt Lake Tribune, news editor, reporter, 1989—.

WRITINGS:

A Sweet and Glorious Land: Revisiting the Ionian Sea, Thomas Dunne Books (New York, NY), 2000.

Venice against the Sea: A City Besieged, Thomas Dunne Books (New York, NY), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: John Keahey is a reporter who enjoys Italy and who has written about that country in A Sweet and Glorious Land: Revisiting the Ionian Sea. Keahey concentrates on that part of southern Italy described by novelist George Gissing in his 1901 By the Ionian Sea and, in fact, quotes from Gissing's text. Gissing, a Victorian writer and friend of Arthur Conan Doyle, visited the area in 1897, traveling by foot, steamer, and horse cart around the heel and toe of boot-shaped Italy. Keahey walks in his footsteps and notes changes in some of the places described by Gissing one hundred years earlier, including Naples, Paola, Taranto, Sybaris, Crotone, Reggio di Calabria, and Catanzaro. The result is "an informative and well-researched work," wrote Melinda Stivers Leach in Library Journal. A Publishers Weekly contributor felt that Keahey "distinguishes himself by leading readers on a detailed trip through an area few tourists visit."

A Kirkus Reviews writer who said that Keahey praises Gissing's book, was of the opinion that Gissing "comes across as dour and petulant. … Keahey, on the other hand, is energetic and curious." Keahey relates how he was mugged and describes the extreme smog in Naples and the shock of seeing the poverty of southern Italy, but he also reveals its ancient past and beauty. The reviewer praised Keahey's storytelling and said that he calls up "grandeur and fabulous historical tableaux from the dust, sunlight, and ruins that stand before him."

With Venice against the Sea: A City Besieged Keahey studies the high waters of the city of canals, now averaging about fifty events a year, and which have forced ground-floor residents to move to higher quarters or leave completely to move inland. Most of the old city is now owned by foreigners, and the urban infrastructure has been neglected for decades. A Publishers Weekly contributor said the book "examines an urban environmental crisis in the making."

Keahey names the causes: the dredging of the lagoon to deepen shipping lanes for oil tankers, the pumping of groundwater, and the general construction that has occurred since World War II. He notes that the city has no modern sewage system, and that wastewater still exits with the tide. These are all factors that have been set in motion by Venetians themselves, but global warming, which causes waters to rise not only in Venice but worldwide, is one factor over which they have no control. These concerns have intensified since the 1966 flood, during which six feet of water engulfed the city, leaving 5,000 people homeless and the bodies of dead dogs, cats, and rats floating in water blackened with diesel fuel. While St. Mark's Square was flooded seven times in 1900, it was under water ninety-nine times in 1996.

Keahey notes that the temperature of the Earth has risen at least 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 100 years. Although this does not seem like an extreme change, he also notes that it is estimated that the temperature is only between five and nine degrees warmer than it was during the Ice Age. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that in the last century years the sea level has risen approximately ten times more than the average over the last 3,000 years. Frank Bures wrote in the Christian Science Monitor that the book addresses a problem, "faced not just by Venice, but by coastal cities around the world. In the next 100 years, sea levels will rise, not just because of melting ice caps, but because of expanding oceans: With rising temperatures, water molecules expand and the oceans get bigger." Bures felt that Keahey "spends most of the book talking about the minutiae. … Nevertheless, it's a well-reported book, and Keahey is a brave man for walking into the labyrinth of Italian politics."

Chris Lehmann wrote in the Washington Post Book World that "indeed, what's been remarkable about Venice's defiance of nature's course is that it's been so successful for so long: By laying the foundations of Venice on wooden pilings, the city's fathers actually placed it on a layer of exceptionally solid earth beneath the lagoon's sediments; the water surrounding the poles encased them in a vacuum that worked to steady them further; and the alder 'became stronger—almost petrified—with each passing century.'" Keahey notes that the ever-changing Italian government has failed to initiate any real action to protect Venice from severe flooding and damaging salt. The Consorzia Venezia Nuova, a private consortium of corporations founded in the 1980s and charged with defining Venice's problem and formulating a solution, was inhibited by citizen concern over possible corruption in the awarding of contracts and plum appointments.

Environmentalists felt that gates would cause too much damage to the lagoon and that the problem should be corrected by making improvements to infrastructures within the city. They also felt gates would have to be replaced in 100 years as waters continued to rise. Francis X. Rocca noted in the Wall Street Journal that the Italian government did eventually approve plans for the placement of seventy-nine floating barriers. "These hollow walls," said Rocca, "sixty-five feet wide and up to 100 feet high, will ordinarily lie flat and fill with water on the floors of the channels connecting the lagoon and the sea. When necessary, the barriers will fill up with compressed air and rise on their hinges, far enough in just half an hour to keep out tides ten feet above sea level. The barriers will sway back and forth, absorbing the waves' impact, until the danger is past, when they will refill with water and return to their usual hidden positions."

The project is called MOSE, after the prophet Moses who divided the Red Sea. Rocca noted that Keahey doesn't state whether he is in favor of MOSE, but rather gives arguments both for and against it. Rocca also commented that Keahey raises, but doesn't attempt to answer, the question of why billions of dollars should be spent "saving an anachronism," while so many die in floods in countries like Bangladesh and Mozambique. Rocca said that "the best reply is to note the millions of people, many humble day-trippers, who visit Venice each year to glimpse the relics of civilization in a sublime state. And a precarious one."

A Kirkus Reviews contributor wrote that "the beauty of Keahey's study is its breadth of approach." The writer said that Keahey presents not only the environmental problems, but also "a geological history of the town and the lagoon, the evolution of its urban morphology, and lovely interludes of his own late-night travels about Venice."

Lehmann said that Keahey is "clearly animated by a great love for the city, but he also possesses a reporter's healthy skepticism about the deeply politicized state of the debate, as well as an infectious curiosity about how all things Venetian work, and could be made to work better." Booklist's Gilbert Taylor felt that "the legions of Venice lovers will not want to miss Keahey's reality check on Venice's future."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, January 1, 2002, Gilbert Taylor, review of Venice against the Sea: A City Besieged, p. 801.

Christian Science Monitor, May 2, 2002, Frank Bures, "Venetians Should Start Learning the Backstroke," p. 15.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2000, review of A Sweet and Glorious Land: Revisiting the Ionian Sea, pp. 535-536; December 1, 2001, review of Venice against the Sea.

Library Journal, May 15, 2000, Melinda Stivers Leach, review of A Sweet and Glorious Land, p. 117.

Publishers Weekly, May 29, 2000, review of A Sweet and Glorious Land, p. 59; January 28, 2002, review of Venice against the Sea, p. 282.

Wall Street Journal, March 8, 2002, Francis X. Rocca, "Swimming in Culture, Drowning in Water," p. W9.

Washington Post Book World, April 2, 2002, Chris Lehmann, "Keeping Disaster beyond the Gates."