Examined Lives

Book Talk: Jared Diamond's scary Collapse

I just finished the weighty Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by the geologist/genius Jared Diamond.

This book should be required reading for every college student and book club out there. It's a brilliantly written and scholarly but digestible look at human society at critical turning points: Diamond examines and puts forth various theories on why flourishing ancient societies like the Maya and Anasazi vanished; and why others hung in there in the face of similar obstacles.

I hate to be a downer on a holiday weekend, but the takeaway is that basically, we're screwed. People keep having kids, way too many of them; agricultural production and other essential supplies inevitably fail to keep up. Very rarely do societies take stock of the natural resources they've got left and act either collectively or top-down to preserve them; the Easter Islanders chopped down their trees, to the very last stick, depriving themselves of fuel and native animals (potential food sources) of their living quarters. Whoops! Ended up dead!

Meanwhile, the elite of any society (and in the world) will fight hard to keep the lion's share of its wealth to themselves, come what may for the little people. (This puts so much into perspective, including our current wacko health care and environmental debacles.) Tribes on the Polynesian island Mangareva fought incessantly over one five-mile stretch of land -- the only cultivatable area left.

Anyway. The plebes, ignorantly, go right along with things until their very survival is threatened. Then we revolt, usually destructively. We'll tear down what we built with our own sweat and blood. But by then, it's usually too late.

Diamond offers a bit of hope as to how we might tackle our current environmental issues: Courageous leadership, long-term planning, the importance of maintaining a global economy, at the least.  But the prospects, given our innate stupidity as a race, seem gloomy. We're just gonna consume ourselves to death. While writing this, I noted this Houston Chronicle story about how large fish farming will commence in the Gulf of Mexico, despite huge environmental concerns. Why?  There's just no law on the books to stop it.

Take some antacids. Then read this book. 

~BurbMom

On the Kindle: To Buy or Not to Buy?

This may sound like a Waste or Want but it's not, only because I have yet to try the Kindle. The New Yorker's Nicholas Baker just did, and boy does his review of the e-reading machine feel like a takedown. Among some of his complaints: The typeface ("it had a way of reducing everything to arbitrary heaps of words"); the background color ("it wasn’t just gray; it was a greenish, sickly gray. A postmortem gray."); what it doesn't include ("Photographs, charts, diagrams, foreign characters, and tables don’t fare so well on the little gray screen."). 

I'll have to get my mitts on one before I give my final review, but there was one point Baker made that I totally appreciated. Fans say that among the Kindle's many virtues is that it's environmentally friendly, and if there's anything you may have learned about BurbMom and me, it's that we're hugely invested in trying to be ecologically sound. But sometimes, a decision feels far more virtuous than it actually is. 

Baker acknowledges that one does, to a fashion, conserve paper when one switches to an electronic reading advice. Then again, there are other ramifications: 

"On the other hand, there’s no clutter, no pile of paperbacks next to the couch. A Kindle book arrives wirelessly: it’s untouchable; it exists on a higher, purer plane. It’s earth-friendly, too, supposedly. Yes, it’s made of exotic materials that are shipped all over the world’s oceans; yes, it requires electricity to operate and air-conditioned server farms to feed it; yes, it’s fragile and it duplicates what other machines do; yes, it’s difficult to recycle; yes, it will probably take a last boat ride to a Nigerian landfill in five years. But no tree farms are harvested to make a Kindle book; no ten-ton presses turn, no ink is spilled."

My takeaway? Get a Kindle if you want one, but don't think it's because you're being green. As for me, I'm sticking to books for now. When I'm done, I'll do what I always do: Keep them for re-reading later—that is, if I'm absolutely floored by them—or pass them on. There's nothing wrong with good, old-fashioned recycling.

  

—CityMom

Book Talk: Ecological Intelligence

I enjoyed reading Daniel Goleman's Ecological Intelligence, which is talks about how better consumer knowledge of the ecological and biological ramifications might change the way we buy -- and hence, the world -- forever. Yes, of course. I figured this was pretty much required reading, too, for anyone with green proclivities.

As I read it, though, a nagging thought kept me from being fully immersed in the book: If only it had been published two years ago.

Golemen exhorts us all to look behind greenwashing to the true environmental costs of making and buying things, and how one virtuous aspect of a product, as in organic cotton's use of no or less-harmful pesticides, may mask another nasty aspect, as in the harmful dyes often used in "organic" products. He talks about how overconsumption got us to where we are today, environment-wise, and points to how wising up to these issues will get us on the right track.

Thing is, I think we're already hip to these issues; at least, most of us are, judging by the sophisticated questions online readers ask people like Grist's Umbra:  Biodiesel vs. hybrid?  Is it o.k. to forage in a local park for dandelions to make wine?  Paper or plastic?  And so forth. Perhaps, though, these kinds of questions come from mainly rabid eco-folk and not the general book-buying public. If so, I wish the general public had gotten wind of all this much earlier.

Seeing the hard questions in a book (greenly printed, by the way) does give them a bit more, well, heft, and Goleman's tone is thoughtful rather than snide or hysterical, which helps his case. There is some nice reporting on how companies are pushing the green envelope, and how it has benefitted their bottom line. Case in point: Wal-Mart installed generators in its truckers' cabins so driver could cool or heat themselves without having to idle their engines; the company saved $25 million a year. The book offers plentiful proof that consumers, given the information and the choice to do the right thing with ease, will do so every time. Goleman also handily explains the science behind Life Cycle Assessment, which is tracking energy use, chemical contamination and so forth from a product's birth to long, long life in a landfill.

The book devotes plenty of space to the online rating system at GoodGuide, which I applaud; the site has the most comprehensive eco rating systems to date, and even covers the latest health and recall news (we covered it months ago -- again, the online world just seems much more cutting edge, eco-wise).

Yet, two things admittedly not in the scope of this book that I just feel I need to add here to ya'll:  You can up your green quotient simply by buying less, and taking time to find that One Perfect Thing when you do buy (I'll elaborate in future posts). Second, letting companies and elected officials know where you stand, particularly on the health issues, goes a long way; hopefully there will be more outlets for two-way communication in the future each and every time we make a purchasing decision. 

I'd settle for buying every CEO a copy of this book. Change is coming, people. So lead, or get out of the way and prepare for bankruptcy.

~BurbMom

Book Talk: Food Matters by Mark Bittman

"Slow global warming! Lose weight!" Oh, and stop cruelty to animals. And save money.

So trumpets Mark Bittman's Web site about his latest book, Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating.

Bittman seems to be everywhere these days: issuing huge tomes on cooking everything; traipsing through Spain with my gal Gwynnie; cooking on YouTube. One can be forgiven for thinking: Can there be anything new to uncover?  Perhaps not. This new book is less a unique idea than a compendium of a few New York Times articles Bittman has done or contributed to about why eating too much meat is bad for the environment, and what he, Bittman, did about it.  

However, these things do bear repeating. Meat, especially beef, takes huge amounts of energy to grow and transport, energy that could go toward feeding people instead -- or warming houses or putting gas in cars. One of the more stunning facts Bittman cites:  It requires 40 calories to produce one calorie of beef protein. "Eating a typical family-of-four steak dinner is the rough equivalent, energy-wise, of driving around in an SUV for three hours while leaving all the lights on at home." Say what?  Oh, and meat production is supposed to double globally by 2050.

There are other  gems, too, like the 2,200 calories it takes to produce a can of diet soda, or the 2,400 calories it takes to make a 1-quart polyethylene bottle of water. Just the bottle. I love this stuff!

Bittman's recourse is almost brutally simple:  Don't eat animal products before 6 p.m. (Nor any junk food. Nor any alcohol.  But let's not ruin the simplicity of the message.)  In doing so, he reigned in his iffy cholesterol and blood sugar numbers and lost 25 pounds. He freely admits that he's an all-or-nothing kind of a guy, so this may not work for everyone. But for many of us, like yours truly, its a fabulous idea to impose more discipline during daylight hours, when you're feeling more alert and perky.  It does work. In fact, it's taken me closer to going meatless than anything else I've tried.  And it's nice to think I'm doing my green bit, too.  Like getting your workout done early in the day.

Plus, Bittman has an ace. His recipes almost always rock (I have several of his books), and this book has some 70 of them. I might buy the book for these alone, particularly the awesome breakfast ideas:  breakfast couscous, bread pudding, burritos.  It also includes many, many strategies for cooking and storing beans, an important staple if you're cutting back meat and dairy.

If you want a full modern food education, wade through Michael Pollan's An Omnivore's Dilemma and its companion, In Defense of Food.  But for a shortie intro, this is your book.  Me, I'll take 'em all -- from the library, of course, thereby saving the energy required to print and distribute new books.

~BurbMom

Stories will get us through these hard times

Hot on the heels of BurbMom's book posting comes this article in Newsweek about how stories will see us through these tough times. Writer Ann Banks says if it worked during the Depression, it can certainly work now. 

Back then, the Federal Writers' Project, a WPA consortium, collected the tales, and Banks has gathered some of them in an anthology, First-Person America. Banks says she was "raised on Depression stories; this was only one of many told around our dinner table. Hearing them again and again, I became fascinated by the role that stories play during hard times—the way they seem to strengthen people, offering a bulwark against loneliness and feelings of personal failure."

Sign me up. I wholeheartedly agree. As Bank points out, "We need again to imagine a future that is meaningful in the face of difficult circumstances. Listening to each other's stories may grant us a sense of common purpose that money can't buy." 

And if these tales don't do the trick, there's always Us Weekly, right? 

—CityMom

(Photo from the Library of Congress. For more on the Federal Writer's Project, visit the LoC Web site.)

Books that block our daily crud

As I was reading, horror struck, about how bad things are in Florida in particular these days thanks to bad governance and a truly unhinged boom-time mentality, a small factoid leaped out at me:  One broke couple was using their out-of-work free time by reading historical fiction, which offered them much consolation.

I've been doing the same, to good effect. If there's nothing more I can do (after donating, volunteering, and bitching to my congressperson) about our current messy affairs, I reason, constant stressing over them won't help.  I've been burying myself in a good fat book instead. 

And so I present, for your delight and delectation, a few books that might lift your mind and spirits, philosophical works or delicious stories or sweeping views of history or science that will help tune out the bad stuff. Most if not all should be available at your local library. So turn off the t.v. news, brew a cuppa, and tuck in. 

*

Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything.  You may know Bryson mainly as a humorist from his extremely funny books, A Walk in the Woods (about hiking the Appalachian Trail) and The Lost Continent, about the oddities of life in small towns in the U.S.  A Short History is a witty and readable explainer about, basically, the world; from the Big Bang to the origins of humanity on down.  It's so easy and readable even a mathematical half-wit like me can comprehend at least the mysteries of the cosmos, and it's full of fun trivia.  Like, did you know that the fuzz on a non-receiving t.v. channel is partly remains of cosmic rays left over from the Big Bang?  "The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe," Bryson writes.  Cooooool.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. If you're already down, this probably won't help.  As you may know, it's the story of a small boy dumped from his home when his widowed mother marries a jerk. However, along "things could get a lot worse" lines, it's fabulous. It's also a great classic yarn with an uplifting ending.  (More along these lines:  Jane Eyre, Middlemarch.)

Offerings:  Buddhist Wisdom for Every Dayby Danielle Follmi and Olivier Follmi. A book of photographs taken in Nepal and Tibet, with accompanying Buddhist sayings, this is a transporting and soothing work, not to mention gorgeous. Peace and love between two covers.

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. This was suggested by my friend S., and I wholeheartedly concur. It's a quiet, contemplative, Pulitzer-prize-winning story on what makes a marriage work (or not), set in the great West.  Once you work your way in, you'll have a hard time forgetting this book. 

I Dreamed of Africa by Kuki Gallman. Get out of town literally with a great book set in a foreign land.  This one, about an Italian woman who moves to Africa, is a fabulously exotic, albeit tear-jerking adventure. Also in this category: The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham; Into Thin Air by John Krakauer (The title is apt; this will literally leave you breathless with suspense.); Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie.

Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.  I took this along to read during a recent flight (I'm terribly scared of flying) and its main gist, which can most easily be summed up as Que sera, sera, calmed me greatly.  Aurelius, an emperor of Rome in the second century A.D., belonged to the stoic school of philosophy, which advocated holding base emotions in check to attain wisdom.  "Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present."  Smart guy.

Anybody else have a favorite to share?

~BurbMom 

Bad news you haven't heard about, and maybe never will

While having dinner with a good friend recently, I mentioned how shocking it was that, while on it's way out, the Bush-ites were taking a slash-and-burn campaign to major environmental regulations as fast as they possibly could. Among the charming results:  Coal companies would be able to dump more waste into nearby water bodies; factory farms, among our worst polluters, would be exempt from some pollution laws, and so forth.

Oh! And the administration undercut a clean-air emissions law that would have cut down on childhood lead poisoning! Almost forgot about that one. (Side note to all you Moms out there: Why we have not rioted en masse rioted about this and other health atrocities? That directly impact all our kids, rich or poor?) 

Thing is, my friend had never heard about a single one these issues. (She told me a few factoids about the current mortgage crises I hadn't heard, by that's another story. Let's just say deciding who's to blame for all that has a lot to do with who you voted for in November.)

Here's why you probably haven't heard them, either:  First, the topics are fairly difficult to cover, involving lots of fact-checking and perhaps some toxicological or environmental know-how, and journalists who can cover said topics are few, especially as news orgs like CNN keep firing them. Plus the headlines are hardly sexy: "Hard-to-understand and little known air-quality law may make it more likely your kid will suffer from brain damage." ("Bush Kills Kids" is much catchier, but is little-used for some reason.)

Now, finally, here's my point: Another important reason is the unduly large and powerful public relations industry that corporations are able to employ to obuscate, spin or just plain erase bad news. First of all, for a reporter, it's almost impossible to get through to anyone who's anyone without going through a spokesperson. For a neighborhood organizer, all that knocking on doors and handing out fliers is hard work. 

On the other hand, if a corporation wants to get the word out that, say, smoking is good for you, as the American Tobacco Company did in the 1920's with it's campaign, "Cigarettes are Kind to Your Throat," they have a barrage of money and staff to write and place ads; to send spies and impersonators to town hall and PTA meetings; to write letters to editors; to send press releases and canned comments and all-too-easy to air videos to understaffed news rooms; to post signs and to establish organizations that pretend to be a do-good non-profit, but are really a corporate front.

All these charming activities and more are documented in Toxic Sludge is Good for You, by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton (1995, Center for Media and Democracy), talking about how PR campaigns have acted to change public opinion (and regulation) on environmental laws, tobacco use, nuclear energy, the Vietnam War and the Nazi's, among other areas. The Clinton 1994 health care overhaul, the failure of which we are now paying for dearly? (Well, I am, anyway, to the tune of $750 a month for half-assed insurance.) So decimated by grassroots flaks, the "Harry and Louise" commercial, and Rush Limbaugh that a panel of citizens, when tested, liked the untitled Clinton plan the best of various alternatives, but changed their opinion when told its name.

Our only defense is to educate ourselves. To that end I heartily recommend this book, first of all. It's a little outdated but the moral remains the same. And we should all read behind the headlines, change the channel, search the 'net a bit. Assume duplicity, and don't knuckle under with complicity.

~BurbMom

Remembering last night, with a wince

Just finished The Night of the Gun, in which New York Times media reporter David Carr recounts his gnarly time as a bottomed-out crack addict and eventual recovery to the loving father and husband (and happy home owner) he is today.

What's cool about this memoir is that right off the bat he says most of what he remembers probably isn't true. He was high almost all the time, for one, and second, as he points out, the memory of each one of us is at least a little suspect, colored by our horror or joy or boredom or longong or whatever we were feeling at the time. So he interviews everyone he can get to about those days, in person, with tape recorder and video camera.

Methodically investigating his past led Carr to many unpleasant truths. Chief among them is that he was even more of an asshole than he originally suspected, even when he wasn't under the influence. Some of his misdeeds are so horrible that I almost closed the book; it's hard to like Carr at times, though he's honest and smart and is properly in awe of his eventual good fortune.

In the end, I gave him a bye because the book is so darn well-written and researched and is clearly the result of much agonizing, back-breaking, uncomfortable work. The guy's a kick-butt journalist.

~BurbMom

No joys of reading

For a bookworm like me, this is heartbreaking news: According to the New York Times, some kids are doing most, if not all, of their reading online (blogs, social networking sites and the like) instead of paging through actual books. To wit:

"As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.

But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires [those] who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write."

While I certainly don't discount the power of the Internet and all its content—for crying out loud, I'm blogging right now—I am seriously disturbed by this trend. I'm glad kids are reading, period, but come on! Are we really saying that a blog entry or a MySpace page can take the place of Pride and Prejudice? Or Beloved? Or all the Judy Blume novels? Where is the joy?

Much as I enjoy Web-surfing, it will never feel as satisfying as losing myself in a good book. But reading is a skill like any other; some kids take to it right away and others don't. My son was not a born reader like his sister, but with some encouragement and age-appropriate tomes that didn't overwhelm but still challenged him, he's now a book-lover like everyone else in the family.

I'm telling you: Complacency will be our undoing.

(Photo from IdahoKidsRead.org.)

—CityMom

Got gai?

Whatever happened to Dan Ho?  He was briefly the thing about two years ago, with a show on the Discovery Health channel about simplifying life and a big story in the Times that had me riveted right from the opening sentence: "Dan Ho likes to get rid of things."

Anyway, I was browsing recently through his book, Rescue from Domestic Perfection, and chortled loudly out loud, right there in the middle of TJ Maxx. He's priceless, and embodies my most cherished ideals of streamlining and thoughtful consumption in a very witty, often raunchy package. Some bits from the book, which I bought:

"Dogs lick themselves because they can, and our basements and attics become junk-filled because we make them that way."

"It’s downright garish to have a professional kitchen if you don’t feed at least thirty people a day."

"If you have a pizza oven in your home, I feel sorry for you."

"A you-can’t-have-too-many-shoes fetish fueled by the media has amounted to nothing more then advanced human squirreling. Ask yourself, do you want to have style, or do you want to be a rodent?"

"Behold the even more time-wasteful, zero-gai [translation: your spirit is your style] nonsense known as display storage. I understand that at some point in history this method worked for the home-dweller; however, the bubonic plague is long past.

On bulk purchasing and storage, and its relation to obesity: “The goldfish grows according to the bowl.”

"If you need storage, you don’t have style."

Much of the book is about developing personal style, though, and I'm a hopeless case. As far as I can tell, I have none. My Southeast-Asian-meets-Mission decor is more like Funky-Flea Market-in-Jersey in practice. I'm not chic enough to be a minimalist, I just like a really big empty room and think jewelery is passe.

Perhaps Ho's show will return. Here's where to check. Hopefully it won't be until Mad Men and Project Runway finish their runs; two shows a week is my self-imposed limit. I think Dan would approve.

- BurbMom