By: Gail Gauthier,
on 5/16/2013
A few years ago, the Nature Conservancy ran an article at its website on a "green book club" that had been meeting for ten years. As a former member of a book club (I was one of the two people who started it), I can say that the ten years part is pretty remarkable, particularly since the group read
By: David Billings,
on 5/16/2013
Woop-dee-do and yippy-kay-ayy, we’ll be at WorldFest this coming weekend!
So if you’re in the Los Angeles area, come out and join us on Sunday, May 19th. This is us officially inviting you to hang out in a beautiful park for a day listening to live music, sampling tons of vegan food, plus a beer and wine garden hosted by Lagunitas Brewing Company. Um, beer. Yes? Beer. Yes. The event is all about promoting health, environmental, humanitarian and animal welfare issues. No reason we can’t have some fun doing it!
Since we run an environmentally sustainable screen print shop – not to mention being vegan – we couldn’t think of a better way to participate than with our goofy vegan t-shirt designs. Naturally, we’ll be exhibiting our super soft vegan t-shirts at our booth. We’ll also have stickers, window decals, tote bags, and prizes to give away. So aside from the beer, food, and Ed Begley, Jr., you can score some very cool stuff from us!
We’ll also be educating people on what it means to run an environmentally-conscious business. Especially in the screen printing industry, there are a lot of chemicals that are used for preparing and cleaning screens. We only use drain safe, biodegradable, citrus and soy-based cleaners in our tiny little shop. There are a lot of things we plan to do as we grow (we’d love to be 100% solar-powered), and we’ll be learning about some options at WorldFest.
We hope to see you there!
David & Jenni
By: David Billings,
on 5/10/2013
Here’s something to muddle over this week:
Is it possible to be passionate about a cause and keep a sense of humor about it?
While you ponder that with your own passionate beliefs, here’s our story. Jenni and I are both vegan. We care about things like animals being tortured and our water being polluted. While we’re at it, we’d love to see every person in the world have enough to eat.
Our efforts toward these causes are serious and dedicated. For example, here are just a few things we do:
In all of these activities, we interact with people who care about the same things we do. Some of these people are serious, too. Very serious. Very… very serious.
Here’s a quick self-check guide to see if you’re getting a little too serious about your cause:
If you said “yes” to more than one of these, you may be too serious. And, you may actually be hurting the causes you’re trying to promote. For example, there’s nothing wrong with being passionate about rescuing animals from slaughter. If your end goal is to convince someone that slaughtering animals is wrong, getting up in their business with a few choice accusations probably isn’t going to do it. And they’ll go away convinced of only one thing: Those damn animal lovers are freaks, man. Message lost, mission unaccomplished.
I read somewhere that if you can get people to laugh, you have their attention. I read a lot of things “somewhere” and then forget the source. It sure sounds like somebody said it. Lucille Ball? Dale Carnegie? Hannibal Lecter? Let’s say I made this up and move along.
Sometimes when people find out I’m vegan, I instantly become a target for teasing and animal rights jokes – not to mention dissecting my whole way of eating and thinking. I get it, I’m weird. If people realized truly how weird, they would forget about my diet. So it’s good that I have that to distract them.
In those situations where people are testing me, it would be easy to get angry and put up my dukes to defend myself and my cause. I could get all huffy (or Schwinn) and whine, “You just don’t understand the kind of evil the meat industry perpetrates! Your food is shit! You are gonna die! You’re assisting in the mass slaughter of cuddly critters and the careless destruction of the Earth, you non-caring animal-wearing meat whore!”
Instead, I answer questions and deflect “testing me” questions with humor. Then I let it go. It’s not that I’ve changed my beliefs or even hinted at agreeing with them. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. And yes, I just advocated the use of honey for catching flies. Double-bad vegan-whammy to me on that one.
Surprisingly, what typically happens is that those testing people approach me when I’m alone and start asking more earnest questions about how to make vegan meals (which I then hand over to Jenni because I never remember how to cook anything).
When we decided to launch a line of vegan t-shirts and totes, it took a few months to sort out what the designs would be. My initial sketches all had some sort of serious “We are all one world” kind of message. Which is fine. I’m not knocking the sentiment. But jeez looweez, don’t we see that everywhere? After a while we get desensitized to the ubiquitous messages of love all, serve all. We start branding people who sport those messages by saying, “Those damn hippies again.” I’m guilty of this myself.
So we went the other way. We went the weird cartoon humor route by creating some goofy t-shirts. In fact, we even have a bacon shirt (a bacon-destroying video game). Plus, we’ve got more vegan and non-cause-related t-shirt designs on the drawing board. See? We’re so serious about our health, animals, and the Earth that we can’t help smiling about it.
By: Gail Gauthier,
on 5/2/2013
In Saving the Planet & Stuff there is a recurring storyline about all the things Walt and Nora have been saving in their spare bedroom because they were dead certain that it was all useful. (Like hoarding, but different.) Michael is set to work finding useful and attractive projects to turn what he believes to be trash into...something else.
This isn't some far-fetched idea or an old one from back in my wish-I-were-a-hippy days. This kind of thing is going on right now. As I right these words, someone is making something out of plastic bags.
Check out Danny Seo turns trash into treasures in "Upcycling Celebrations" in the Los Angeles Times.
By: Gail Gauthier,
on 4/22/2013
I usually do an environmental post on Thursdays, but today is Earth Day, and, hey, I can adapt. So I'm getting all environmentalish with a climate fiction post on Monday this week.
Climate fiction? you say. Yeah, I just heard about it a couple of days ago, too. Climate fiction, according to NPR is a genre, well, an "emerging" one, anyway, in which writers "set their novels and short stories in worlds, not unlike our own, where the Earth's systems are noticeably off-kilter." That's how it differs from dystopian or apocalyptic novels in which a futuristic world is suffering because of (usually) human-made environmental disaster or just a human-made "oops." Climate fiction is set in a contemporary world.
This article at Grist looks like a review of a couple of cli-fi novels, though one seems a little futuristic/apocalyptic.
I suspect that NPR's definition of cli-fi as being something separate from the dystopian/apocalyptic stuff isn't generally known. Here someone uses the term "cli-fi thriller" to describe the same book set 75 years in the future with climate disaster that Grist included in its review column.
Climate Change and Contemporary Fiction appears to be a blog that deals with this very subject.
I'm going to admit that though I have an interest in environmentalism, as a reader I find environmental/climate change disaster stories cliched. The first few were interesting, sure, but now they leave me with a feeling of, "Oh. I've read this. Several times." Or, "Of course. The tech people/scientists are the bad guys. Again." It's not that the problems aren't real or serious, but they've become formulaic as far as literature is concerned. I also wonder if there isn't a message quality to some of these books, a lesson that readers are supposed to be learning. There's sometimes a propaganda quality to some of these stories. This preaching issue is discussed in Few A-List Novelists Tackling Climate Change in Their Plots at Climate Central.
Novelists Try Climate Change Story Telling: A Critical Review of Two Recent Entries published at The Yale forum on Climate Change & The Media ends with "Are there other ways that climate change can make for good reading? It’s a question more than a few hope to see answered in the affirmative. As Bill McKibben wrote in 2005, climate change still lacks resonance in American culture. “Where are the books? The poems? The plays? The goddamn operas?” he asked. “Compare it to, say, the horror of AIDS in the last two decades, which has produced a staggering outpouring of art that, in turn, has had real political effect.”"
I am not knowledgeable about AIDS literature, but I think the question being raised here is is climate change being used in literature other than in novels? Certainly a different form--poetry or opera, for instance--might help to break the formula of human-made disaster leading to woe.
Happy Earth Day.
By: Cathy and Louise,
on 4/22/2013
It's Our Garden: from seeds to harvest in a school garden George Ancona Candlewick Press. 2013 ISBN: 9780763653927 Grades 1-3 I borrowed a copy of this book from my local public library Recently, at the day care center where my husband works as cook (Cooker John) they were awarded funds to purchase supplies to create a garden. Maine has adopted the 5210 Let’s Go! Childhood Obesity Prevent
By: Gail Gauthier,
on 4/11/2013
No trees are destroyed in the making of an eBook. Sounds like a good thing, n'est-ce pas? You take a living tree, kill it, mash it into pulp, squish it into paper, print a book on it, read it, and, some day, it's going to end up in book heaven. A book, it could be argued, is pre-trash.
So shouldn't an eBook, which is kind of nothing, a lot better environmentally speaking?
Some would say that it depends on how many books you read. Producing devices for reading eBooks requires resources, as does producing traditional books. How many traditional books do you have to replace with eBooks to offset the environmental impact of the creation of the reading device? As few as fourteen? As many as a hundred? Estimates vary.
Some would say that it depends on what kinds of devices the eBooks end up being read on. If readers move to some kind of tablet that they use not only for reading but for accessing the Internet so that they no longer need a desktop or laptop, they'll be using a lot less equipment and the resources required to make them.
Some would say that it really just depends.
By: Gail Gauthier,
on 4/4/2013
By: Gail Gauthier,
on 3/28/2013
And I found it! I heard about this at the Kidlitosphere listserv, lost--Oh, you don't need to hear about all that.
What I've got here is a list of children's books on Green Issues/Sustainability/Recycling posted at Playing by the book. Check out the comments for more recommendations.
By: Gail Gauthier,
on 3/21/2013
By: Gail Gauthier,
on 3/14/2013
The March/April issue of Bookmarks has an article Nature and the Environment that explores "some books on classic nature writing and seminal works in the modern environmental movement." It includes a section on books for younger readers that highlights the following titles:
My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare
Hoot by Carl Hiaason
Whalesong by Robert Siegel
Another thirteen books are on a Further Reading list.
I'm not knowledgeable enough about nature/environmental literature to address the question of how well these books fit the topic. The only title I've read among the five main offerings is Island of the Blue Dolphins, which I would have called a survival story. Though there's no reason it couldn't hit the mark for both survival and nature.
What I like about Bookmark's themed roundups is that it digs back into time for titles. The oldest children's book mentioned is My Side of the Mountain, from 1959. The newest, on the Further Reading list, is Empty by Suzanne Weyn, which Bookmark says is from last year. They appear to be referring to the paperback edition, but still, you see what I'm talking about here. The people who compile these books have memories that go back past last season.
By: wako_bill@hotmail.com,
on 3/10/2013
I’m not big on wind. Of all the meteorological marvels on offer, it’s the least appealing to me, perhaps because I endured a few too many tropical cyclones and missing roofs as a child.
So when The Windy Farm blew onto my shelves, I instinctively hunched my shoulders and wondered what on earth could be so appealing about the latest offering by well-liked picture book team, Doug MacLeod and Craig Smith. Turns out a whole Beaufort Scales worth.
Our plucky young narrator lives with her family on the windiest farm on Windy Hill because it’s all they can afford. Their home is buffeted and bullied by incessant katabatic winds. The kind of wind that permanently bends trees into weird angles; the kind powerful enough to blow away young pigs and little girls. No one is safe from its force, no one except Grandpa who, as the illustrations subtly suggest, is so immense and heavy that he will never budge just like his favourite pig, Big Betty.
The family survive undeterred and, as is often the case, necessity becomes the mother of invention. And indeed this is the case; Mum cannily invents heavy metal shoes to anchor them all to the ground. However, in spite of their best efforts, one day they lose half their home to nature’s tempest.
Rich Uncle Jeff is no help, pointedly refusing to lend them any of his oil-amassed fortune to help fix the house. They resort to good old fashioned ingenuity and Grandpa’s power tools instead but the ensuing crippling power bill plunges them into despair (who hasn’t felt like this after receiving their electricity bill?)
Not easily defeated, Mum comes up with a wily plan; to convert the farm into a sustainable wind farm. Pretty soon things are on the up and up. The farm road is paved in tarmac and truckloads of money from all the electricity they’ve enterprisingly ‘farmed’. Big Betty, the prized pig, returns to a wind-proof sty (she was sold to pay the electricity bills) and although the need to wear heavy metal boots remains, their money worries have been swept away, just like Uncle Jeff who ‘became poor’ after the ill winds of fate blew his way. ‘Never mind,’ Grandpa sanguinely observes; no one really liked him anyway.
Doug MacLeod’s contemporary message about the power of wind and its significance in environmental sustainability drifts delightfully zephyr-like throughout this picture book. Told in a concise, witty style, The Windy Farm exposes young readers to a range of fascinating topics including the harnessing of energy, inventions, problem-solving, sustainability and endurance.
No stranger to children’s book illustrating, Craig Smith’s flamboyant, comic-book style pictures and characters are hysterical; from the very top of Windy Hill all the way down to the chooks’ little metal boots. He uses heavier gauche paint to create a deeply detailed yet fluid almost dreamy visual effect that sweeps from page to page. Movement (of the omnipresent wind), is represented magnificently with the use of acrylics. One can see and feel the air swirling through each scene. I found it astounding even though I’m not that big on wind.
Smith and MacLeod include lots of witty references to the use of nuclear power and the need to adopt a clean energy philosophy if we are to enjoy a longer, better existence than poor old Uncle Jeff.
The Windy Farm is not however a heavy prescriptive lesson in world conservation. Rather, it is a light-hearted, fanciful look at ingenuity and tenacity in their purest and funniest forms. My Miss 7 just thinks it’s very cool. Well it would be with all that wind about wouldn’t it?
Breezy, good fun, imaginative with plenty of room for thought. Plus 5s will love it even if they are not big on wind (but most are).
Available now.
Working Title Press February 2013
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By: Gail Gauthier,
on 3/7/2013
The Green Earth Book Awards singled out two of my NESCBWI colleagues this year. Loree Griffin Burns was the Children's Nonfiction winner for Citizen Scientists and Melissa Stewart's A Place for Bats was named an honor book.
By: AlanaP,
on 2/16/2013
A few days ago, the President of the United States used the State of the Union address to call for action on climate change. The easy way to do so would have been to call on Congress to take action. Had President Obama framed his remarks in this way, he would have given a nod to those concerned about climate change, but nothing would happen because there is virtually no chance of Congressional action. What he actually did, however, was to put some of his own political capital on the line by promising executive action if Congress fails to address the issue. The President, assuming he meant what he said, has apparently accepted the need for a strong policy response to this threat.
Not everybody agrees. There has long been a political debate on the subject of climate change, even though the scientific debate has been settled for years. In recent months, perhaps in response to Hurricane Sandy, the national drought of 2012, and the fact that 2012 was the hottest year in the history of the United States, there seems to have been a shift in the political winds.
Oblique view of Grinnell Glacier taken from the summit of Mount Gould, Glacier National Park in 1938. The glacier has since largely receded. In addition to glacier melt, rising temperatures will lead to unprecedented pressures on our agricultural systems and social infrastructure, writes Andrew T. Guzman. Image by T.J. Hileman, courtesy of Glacier National Park Archives.
In 1969, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross described the “five stages” of acceptance: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. For many years, climate change discussions seemed to be about getting our politics past the “denial” stage. Over time, however, scientific inquiry made it obvious that climate change is happening and that it is the result of human activity. With more than 97% of climate scientists and every major scientific body of relevance in the United States in agreement that the threat is real, not to mention a similar consensus internationally, it became untenable to simply refuse to accept the reality of climate change.
The next stage was anger. Unable to stand on unvarnished denials, skeptics lashed out, alleging conspiracies and secret plots to propagate the myth of climate change. In 2003, Senator Inhofe from Oklahoma said, “Could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it.” In 2009 we had “climategate.” More than a thousand private emails between climate scientists were stolen and used in an attempt (later debunked) to show a conspiracy to fool the world.
Now, from the right, come signs of a move to bargaining. On 13 February, Senator Marco Rubio reacted to the President’s call for action on climate change, but he did not do so by denying the phenomenon itself or accusing the President of having being duped by a grand hoax. He stated instead, “The government can’t change the weather. There are other countries that are polluting in the atmosphere much greater than we are at this point. They are not going to stop.” Earlier this month he made even more promising statements: “There has to be a cost-benefit analysis [applied] to every one of these principles.” This is not anger or denial. This is bargaining. As long as others are not doing enough, he suggests, we get to ignore the problem.
It is, apparently, no longer credible for a presidential hopeful like Senator Rubio to deny the very existence of the problem. His response, instead, invites a discussion about what can be done. What if we could get the key players: Europe, China, India, the United States, and Russia to the table and find a way for all of them to lower their emissions? If the voices of restraint are concerned that our efforts will not be fruitful, we can talk about what kinds of actions can improve the climate.
To be fair, Senator Rubio has not totally abandoned denials. While engaging in what I have called “bargaining” above, he also threw in, almost in passing, “I know people said there’s a significant scientific consensus on that issue, but I’ve actually seen reasonable debate on that principle.” In December he declared himself “not qualified” to opine on whether climate change is real. These are denials, but they are issued without any passion; his heart is not in it. They seem more like pro forma statements, perhaps to satisfy those who have not yet made the step from denial and anger to bargaining.
If leaders on the right have reached the bargaining stage, the next stage is depression. What will that look like? One possibility is a full embrace of the science of climate change coupled with a fatalistic refusal to act. “It is too late, the planet is already cooked and nothing we can do will matter.” When you start hearing these statements from those who oppose action, take heart; we will be close to where we need to get politically. Though it will be tempting to point out that past inaction was caused by the earlier stages of denial, anger, and bargaining, nothing will be gained by such recriminations. The path forward requires continuing to make the case not only for the existence of climate change, but also for strategies to combat it.
The final stage, of course, is acceptance. At that point, the country will be prepared to do something serious about climate change. At that point we can have a serious national (and international) conversation about how to respond. Climate change will affect us all, and we need to get to acceptance as soon as possible. In short, climate change will tear at the very fabric of our society. It will compromise our food production and distribution, our water supply, our transportation systems, our health care systems, and much more. The longer we wait to act, the more difficult it will be to do so. All of this means that movement away from simple denial to something closer to acceptance is encouraging. The sooner we get there, the better.
Andrew T. Guzman is Professor of Law and Associate Dean for International and Executive Education at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include Overheated: The Human Cost of Climate Change and How International Law Works, among others.
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The post The five stages of climate change acceptance appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Alice,
on 1/1/2013
A little evergreen tree has died alongside our road and, as we walked by it yesterday, my husband wondered why. All the other trees around it are healthy and it did not look like it had been hit by lightning or damaged by wind or attacked by bugs. The tree is about six feet tall, so it lived several years. We are in the Rocky Mountains and this little guy took root on its own, growing precariously in that place by the road.
Oak Tree. Photo by Glyn Baker. Creative Commons License.
Could we have done something to save it? If we were in the city, would we have babied it and maybe kept it alive? Or would it have died sooner there?
These are the same questions we ponder about why some people get sick, why one disease affects one person more than others, why people who live healthy lives still can’t beat some illnesses, yet people with deplorable habits keep going and going.
It’s the old nature versus nurture argument. Bad genes or bad environment? Or both?
I am sort of over being angry at people who have dodged major illnesses — largely because there aren’t that many of them. Seems like most people I know have something to contend with — debilitating arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s somewhere in their network of family and friends. But when I first got cancer I did look around at people who obviously were not living as healthy as I was and wondered: why me and not them? And then I realized that I had no idea what they were dealing with and I should just stop being so angry and judgmental and get over myself. It was not their fault I got sick.
Still, you have to wonder about this poker game we all play with our health. Some seem to be dealt a good hand to begin with, some make the best of a poor hand, some try but can’t make a straight out of a pair of twos, and some look at their cards and just fold.
I have one friend who never exercises and has a diet full of fat, yet she is in her mid-80s, hale, hearty, and youthful-looking. Another smoked all his life, drank, and never exercised, yet he is pushing 80 and has nothing seriously wrong physically, although I do think he looks back at his life with serious regret. But the big C didn’t get him, nor did any major illness. I wouldn’t swap places with him, though, even if I knew my cancer would return.
I also know a wide variety of cancer patients who approach the disease like the individuals they are — fighters who refuse to let the disease get the upper hand; questioners who search for their own information rather than listening to the docs; accommodators who go along with whatever the doctor says; worriers who can’t get beyond the fact that they might die. Most of us are a mix of these traits, fighting one day, living in worry the next. But we are all built differently, both physically and mentally, so we all react to our disease differently. Nobody is right, nobody is wrong. We’re all just us, being our own little trees fighting our own little battles.
We cannot escape our genes — they make us prone to certain diseases, give us the strength to fight others, and offer a blueprint for either a long or a short life. Still, we can change some of that; the science of epigenetics demonstrates that lifestyle and environmental factors can influence our genetic makeup so that, by improving things such as diet and physical activity and by avoiding unhealthy environmental pollutants including stress, bad air, and chemicals, we can eventually build a healthier DNA.
I was born into a history of cancer. My grandmother and both of my parents had forms of cancer, although none of them had breast cancer. I was the pioneer there. But both parents lived into their 80s and remained in their home until they died, surrounded by their family. So, I might have a tendency toward cancer, but perhaps my genes also mean I will hang around for a couple more decades. And my particular mix of nature and nurture has given me an ability to love, to laugh, to process health information in a way that might make me proactive, and to keep going, assuming all will be well, at least at some level.
Maybe I won’t end up as one of the stronger trees in the forest; maybe I will be the gnarled, crooked one. Maybe disease might slow me, but I feel I am rooted deeply in decent soil — family, friends, community — so I am going to push on, grow how I can, and, in the process, help shade and nurture the other trees around me.
Patricia Prijatel is author of Surviving Triple-Negative Breast Cancer, published by Oxford University Press. She is the E.T. Meredith Distinguished Professor Emerita of Journalism at Drake University. She will do a webcast with the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation on 16 October 2012. Read her previous blog posts on the OUPblog or read her own blog“Positives About Negative.”
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The post Questioning the health of others and ourselves appeared first on OUPblog.
By: ChloeF,
on 12/28/2012
William Wordsworth
The Very Short Introductions are indeed very short, so I had to cut a chapter out of my volume that would have discussed the aftermath or legacy of Romanticism today, two hundred years after Romanticism’s days of glory. In that chapter I would have pointed out the obvious fact that those who still love poetry look at the Romantic era as poetry’s high point in every European country. Think of Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Pushkin, Mickiewicz, Leopardi, Lamartine, Hugo, and Nerval. Those who still love “classical” music fill the concert halls to listen to Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Berlioz, and Wagner; and those who still love traditional painting flock to look at Constable, Turner, Friedrich, and Delacroix. These poets and artists are still “alive”: their works are central to the culture from which millions of people still draw nourishment. I can scarcely imagine how miserable I would feel if I knew I could never again listen to Beethoven or read a poem by Keats.
But more interesting, I think, is the afterlife of the Romantics in more popular culture. Take William Blake, for instance. Almost a century after he died, Charles Parry set Blake’s sixteen-line poem “And did those feet in ancient time / Walk upon England’s mountains green” to a memorable hymn tune. It was first intended for a patriotic rally during World War I, but it was soon taken up by the women’s suffrage movement and the labour movement because of its moving evocation of a once and future Jerusalem in “England’s green and pleasant land.” It is now England’s second national anthem, and is sung in America too: a Connecticut friend of mine always sings “in New England’s green and pleasant land.” It also inspired the title and the music of the 1981 movie Chariots of Fire. Emerson, Lake and Palmer have recorded an acid-rock version of the hymn in Brain Salad Surgery (1973) and Billy Bragg made a more restrained but eloquent one in 1990. In 1948 William Blake “appeared” to Allen Ginsberg in a hallucination, and thus takes much of the credit (or blame) for the Beat poet’s immense poetic works. I often see Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell” as grafitti on walls or as slogans on bumper stickers. When I was an underpaid teaching assistant I joined a picket line carrying a sign I had made: “The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.” Even as a well-broken-in horse of instruction today I still see much truth in that proverb.
A major legacy of Romanticism is the environmental movement. John Muir (1838-1914), the great pioneer of the wilderness preservation movement, and founder of the Sierra Club, combined a Romantic sensibility with an outlook based on the Bible. He absorbed Burns from his native Scotland, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley from England, and Emerson and Thoreau from his adopted America. Thoreau himself, who was close to the Transcendentalist group, which grew in large part out of German and British Romanticism, was the first great nature writer in America; his Walden is still required reading not only in universities but among those who are devoted to conservation and sustainability. Wordsworth himself, of course, deserves some credit for his role in preserving the Lake District; he is sometimes called the grandfather of the National Trust of the UK
It is true that the environmental movement owes much to modern science, and most modern scientists no longer consider Romanticism a useful source of concepts. However it is also true that without something of the Romantic sensibility, especially the feeling of connectedness to nature or rootedness in the earth, it would not be much of a movement. “Organic” metaphors were common among the Romantics, notably the idea that nature is not a mechanism but a living organism and that in an open and imaginative state of mind we can, as Wordsworth put it, “see into the life of things,”. It seems to me that the holistic and ecological outlook owes much to this spirit. Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), famous for his best-selling Sand County Almanac with its “land ethic,” writes of the “biotic community” and the importance of “thinking like a mountain” to understand the complex interrelationships of humans and nature. And what could be more holistic than the “Gaia” theory of James Lovelock (born in 1919), according to which the whole earth acts like one huge organism or ecological unit?
“Romantic” is often a pejorative term, used to dismiss unrealistic, escapist, woolly, or dreamy ideas. But it now seems likely that if we don’t soon become a little more Romantic, the earth will dismiss us.
Michael Ferber is Professor of English and Humanities and English Graduate Director at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of several books including Romanticism: A Very Short Introduction.
The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday!
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Image Credit: A portrait of William Wordsworth from Portrait Gallery of the Perry–Castañeda Library of the University of Texas at Austin [public domain via Wikimedia Commons]
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By: Beth,
on 9/4/2012
Even if you don’t work in a school media center, I’m guessing your life still tends to run on an academic schedule when you work with teens. So welcome to the new school year! Here’s what I think might be interesting, useful, or intriguing to you and your patrons this month.
What are your plans for this upcoming academic year? As always, your questions, comments and suggestions are welcomed and encouraged!
By: Tricia,
on 8/20/2012
When I picked this book up last year I was looking for resources for teaching about food chains and food webs, but Kurlansky goes well beyond this in his determination to describe the causes and effects of overfishing on marine ecosystems.
By: John,
on 3/24/2012
Escalade (by Birdo Studio)
Don’t miss the behind-the-scenes extras and storyboards for this short film about consumption and natural resources at Birdo’s site.
Take Charlotte’s Web, Carl Hiassen’s Hoot, and toss in a dash of The Frog Prince, and what do you get? The charming middle grade novel The Hop (Disney Hyperion 2012) by Sharelle Byars Moranville. The story begins with young Tad the toad: The loamy tunnel had fallen around Tad during the long night of winter and padded him like a brown blanket. But now the earth was stirring. And even three feet down, the young hopper felt it. Maybe it was the footsteps of people in the garden, or the deep, seepy drip of warm rain. Maybe it was the chorus of spring peepers. But Tad’s winter slumber has been troubled by strange dreams, dreams that foretell the potential doom of his home, Toadville-by-Tumbledown. He learns he must kiss the Queen of the Hop in order to save his home and his people. But how can he find this Queen. Tad reminds me a bit of Frodo–humble, fearful of the big wide world, and destined to go on a perilous quest. Enter Taylor, a girl who’s life has been turned upside down by her grandma’s chemotherapy and by the sale of the pond and acreage next to her grandma’s house. Gone are her regular afternoons at grandma’s [...]
By: Karen Cioffi,
on 4/10/2012
Earth Day is approaching and Kathy Stemke is touring her book Trouble on Earth Day. Along with great guest blogging stops, Kathy is offering informative and fun recycling crafts for children on her own site. She’s showing them that helping the earth can be fun! So, please stop by her site at: http://educationtipster.blogspot.com
What is the Meaning and Symbolism of the earth Day Flag?
According to legend, it was created as a combination of the letters e and o, from the words environment and organism. This flag was also based on the Stars and Stripes of the US Flag. Green was substituted in place of blue and red. The colors represent "pure air and green land" and environmental action.
Trouble on Earth Day is available at a discounted price at: http://educationtipster.blogspot.com. It's also available through Amazon, B & N, and other online stores.
Throughout the book tour visitors will be asked to send their best EARTH photo to dancekam1@yahoo.com to be displayed on the last day of the tour. A winner will
By: Mary Lee,
on 4/19/2012
By: Darcy Pattison,
on 5/11/2012
The oldest wild bird in the world, documented with banding, is Wisdom, the Midway Albatross. When the Japanese Tsunami hit on March 11, 2011, her nest was in the path of danger. This is her amazing story of survival of manmade and natural disasters for over 60 years.
At 60+ years old, she’s still laying eggs and hatching chicks. Among the birds of the world, this albatross, its ecology and life are amazing. It’s a story of survival and hope amidst the difficulties of life.
We wish to thank the following photographers for their amazing photos, the basis for much of our artwork. Thank you for making this book possible.
By: Kathy Temean,
on 7/29/2012
Gwen Connolley sent in this “Out of This World” illustration for July. It was created for an article on The Wonderful World of Jet Lag, with an effort to make a difficult situation appear fun (which it usually isn’t) and fantasticly mysterious (which it is). Day and night and sleep and play–in this twisted game of space and time and swirling geographical lines the truly jet-lagged child doesn’t know or care what’s right; it’s all just part of the fun. To see more of my work, please visit www.gwenconnolley.com
WOLFoundation runs an annual competition looking for the best non-technical, English language writing on any subject related to environmental issues.
Entries will be judged by the members of our Advisory Board.
The winning entry will receive a cash prize of $1,500. A further $500 will be awarded to the second placed entry.
The shortlisted entries will be published as a book of collected essays.
Our judging process will reward two main attributes in the submissions received: fresh thinking and a clear, compelling writing style. We are looking for entries that everyone will want to read.
Any and all views are welcome and encouraged. We would like to see entries that address all perspectives – whether for or against any particular stance. Just avoid giving us tired ideas that have been hashed out many times before.
Entries should be written in prose in the English language. You can submit essays or short stories, factual commentary or fiction – whichever way and whichever writing style you choose to communicate your ideas. Just make it compelling.
Everyone is welcome. Any one individual may submit up to three entries.
Essays should be aimed at a general readership and should be non-technical. No footnotes or citations are allowed.
Submissions should be no longer than 2,000 words.
Essays may have been published before provided you have the necessary permissions to re-publish.
Don’t worry. We are mainly after clearly presented ideas not language perfection. If your essay reaches the finalists, we will help with editing the language.
Submissions for the 2012 competition should be submitted by email no later than September 30th, 2012.
Entry to the competition is free of charge.
Copyright for all submissions remain with the authors. In submitting their work, authors grant the Web of Life Foundation an irrevocable license to print, publish, distribute and publicize the submitted work.
http://www.wolfoundation.org/competition/ Good Luck!
Talk tomorrow,
Kathy
We are freshly back from our magical three weeks in France with Rowan (6) and Mira (4 months). One of the highlights of our stay in Paris was a visit to the Jardins des Plantes which is home to the National Museum of Natural History and also the Museum of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy. Walking up the stairs into the Grande Galerie d’Evolution feels like something straight out of Noah’s Ark – it is breath-taking.
The displays in this museum are beautifully conceived – somehow the exhibits manage to evoke the taxidermy museums of old, while combining this with a cutting edge style and a strong conservationist message.
Down an avenue of trees at the other end of the park sits the Museum of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy.
As you can see every available space is taken up with ancient bones. Rowan and I followed the lead of some French kids and sat down in the Museum of Paleontology to do some sketches…
With the memories of these museums strong in our minds, it was so serendipitous that Rowan received this book for his sixth birthday soon after our return home.
Published for the first time in English this year, by Gecko Press, Small and Tall Tales of Extinct Animals was originally a French production by Helene Rajcak and Damien Laverdunt (whose collaboration is celebrated on their gorgeous blog, Les Tigres Gauchers). The scientific advisers on the project were from the Paris National History Museum, and wrote a beautiful and touching foreword to the book:
“Long before setting foot on the Moon, humans evolved on planet Earth – one continent, one ocean, one island at a time. Humans were enthralled by the world around them. To feed their fascination, they collected pictures and momentos of bones, feathers, herbariums, casts and fossils… But natural history museums – that once so proudly displayed the first examples of newly discovered species – now face the unenviable task of exhibiting their remains: the last skeleton, the last skin, the last paw print, the last photograph.”
The book is a collection of 27 of the world’s extinct species, and is a beautiful production. A double-page spread is devoted to each species – the left hand page consists of a cartoon strip, often a retelling of a legend or anecdote associated with the extinction or discovery story. The right-hand page includes a large illustration of the animal or bird, a description of the extinction and some facts, and most fascinatingly to Rowan, a diagram showing its size in relation to a man. The illustration style is naive and the colours and fonts retro and the overall impression is very approachable and appealing.
This is the perfect book for Rowan, whose obsession with David Attenborough documentaries show no sign of abating. But it would no doubt interest many kids from age 6 up – it’s a great example of a picture book pitched perfectly at older kids. Museums and galleries are doing some wonderful publishing collaborations – do you have any favourites at your house?
Gail, very good post. Can i tell you something? This is not about me, nor am i bragging, my name not important here but I am the person who coined the term cli fi a few years and wrote about it on several websites in 2010 and onwards, including articles in Hollywood news sites and book blogs. Google "danny bloom" + CLI Fi and you will see I coined it. nobody in the MSM would give me the time of day, the NYT and NPR would not interview me, but now it' big news due to refent npr story and later christian science monitor article too. Neither article mentioned me or my role or reasons for coining CLI Fi nor the fact the my coinage was not going very far until....Margaret Atwood in Canada tweeted a tweet about "dan bloom's coined a new term for climate sci fi he calls it CLI Fi" google it too and the document of her tweet in on my Youtube account. so, gail, great post on your part here, pro and con, and do interview me, can you, ask me why i coined the term? danbloom At gmail will get you to my door. i am in Taiwan, tufts 1971 grad, age 64, a few more years left before i croak. google POLAR CITY RED to see the cli fi novel I produced as book paacker. in a year we sold 261 copies only. SIGh
Dan, When I was looking for information for this post, I did come across your name and "Polar City Red"'s. Not in reference to coining the term, but googling "climate fiction" or "cli fi" took me to you.
thanks for note. and yes, while i was setting up the book POLAR CITY RED, which was finally written by Jim laighter, not me, i was just the book packager wtihout a fee, haha, just my hobby, but jim wrote t the entire book all payments go to him so far we sold 271 copies in 12 months so go figure. when i was setting up the book idea which has the title i asked Jim to use, i came up with the concept of CLI FI and asked around, Margaret Atwood in Canada told me she loved the term so i stuck with it...when NPR and CSm did stories on this last week or so, neitther reporeter bothered to find out who coined the term or when or why. They did not do their homeworkd. haha. SMILE. but not importaant. the main thing is the TERM is not official. and not everyone likes it and i can live with that...let's see if oit has a long life or short life....wwant to intterview me by email abotu why i came up with the term, i am in Taiwan danbloom At gmail
ps - did you meant to provide a link to Polar City Red "here" of was this pointing to a different book above re ''[*Here* someone uses the term "cli-fi thriller" to describe the same book set 75 years in the future with climate disaster that Grist included in its review column. ]
'' or was that pointing to a grist book?
And one more note, Gail: the NPR and the CSM copycat piece that appeared after the radio show aired, both reporters got CLI FI wrong, since they are not climate activist themselves, nor are they cli fi writers or producers, they are merely good newsroom reporters trying to make a mountain out of a trend so they can write a fun story. But in fact, CLI FI is not what they say it is. Let me say this: cli fi is a subgenre of science fiction, and it can take place in the present, the near future and the distant future and the far distant future and even in the past, yes. It is not limited to the boundaries NPR gives it. That was a shallow piece, done on deadline and just to cover a trend and to boost Nathaniel Rich's novel with a push from his PR agent in NYC. See? That entire story was planted by the PR guy in NYC. CLI FI can take place in past presnt or fugure and cli fi can be dystopiean or apocalyptic, too, if the author wants to go there. Sure. And cli fi can also be pedestrain and not dystopiean at all. Cli fi just means the novel is about climate issues, pro or con, and the issues can be that climate change is NOI happening at all, or that it is happening. So NPR got it wrong and the NPR story made you react so strongly. I liked your post. It was good, But you were reacted to a poorly-reserached, shallow radio piece. THere will be better cli fi pieces soon, WAit. meanwhile, interview me about what i just told you here?