Writing With a Broken Tusk

Writing With a Broken Tusk began in 2006 as a blog about overlapping geographies, personal and real-world, and writing books for children. Since March 2024, Jen Breach (writer, VCFA graduate, and former student) has helped me curate and manage guest posts and Process Talk pieces on this blog.

The blog name refers to the mythical pact between the poet Vyaasa and the Hindu elephant headed god Ganesha who was his scribe during the composition of the epic narrative, the Mahabharata. It also refers to my second published book, edited by the generous and brilliant Diantha Thorpe of Linnet Books/The Shoe String Press, published in 1996, acquired and republished by August House, now part of Reading Is Fundamental, and still miraculously in print.

Posts on this site reflect personal opinion and commentary protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

Uma Krishnaswami 7/14/26 Uma Krishnaswami 7/14/26

History and the Uncertain Present in The White House Effect

Towards the end of last year, a time that seems now like an eon ago, I wrote about the oddities of a 1996 children’s book from GM, no less, that aimed to push—really!—an American electric car.

With little fanfare, electric cars had begun to appear on California’s roads. They were tested on select groups nationwide. They were quiet. They emitted no fumes. Their drivers loved them. Yet ten years later they were all gone. It would take another two decades for the EV to reappear as a viable, if partial and imperfect, way to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. A 2006 documentary asks, why should we be haunted by the ghost of the electric car? Why, indeed?

In similar vein, The White House Effect (2024), directed by Pedro Kos, Jon Shenk, and Bonni Cohen, is a thoughtful, often unsettling look at a moment when political leadership had an opportunity to change the trajectory of global warming. Policy windows were open. Scientific consensus that global warming was real and human-caused was solidifying. And yet, here we are today.