books
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One man's quest to prove that bigger isn't better for the planet
Long before the special-effects wizards made Stuart Little into a silver-screen sensation, E.B. White’s diminutive hero held a hallowed spot in a storytelling tradition that ranges from Gulliver’s Travels and “Jack and the Beanstalk” to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. The basic idea: Make the workaday world utterly fantastic by changing the scale. Or, most […]
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How to make your home an eco-friendly haven
Last spring, I met with a real-estate agent and listened while she told me about the kind of house I should buy. A new house, she advised, with all new appliances and the latest innovations in wiring, plumbing, and heating -- maybe even a condo. My horrified expression stopped her mid-sentence. Actually, I explained dreamily, I'm looking for an older home with charm and quirky character. I want big windows, hardwood floors, and a garden.
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A writer and farmer tells it like it is
O, environmental writers. The religious scribes of our day. I love them but I fear them too, because of the way self-righteousness can rear up like some suddenly animated pond scum in a Stephen King movie and cover the picnic, the teenagers, everything that was ever fun and alive and moving around. Wait, it’s not […]
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Sherry Bosse reviews Consuming Desires by Roger Rosenblatt
In Walden, Henry David Thoreau wrote that "to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely." He warned his readers against an increasingly prevalent consumer culture in the United States -- in 1854. Nearly 150 years later, Americans are, on average, working more hours and accruing more debt than ever before in order to achieve some bloated variation of the American dream. Some things never change.
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An excerpt from Seven Wonders: Everyday Things for a Healthier Planet by John C. Ryan
When the Dalai Lama of Tibet met with economist John Kenneth Galbraith, he asked the Harvard professor a simple but penetrating question: "What would the world be like if everyone drove a motor car?" The Tibetan leader probably did not intend it, but his question constitutes a koan, a paradoxical riddle of Zen Buddhist tradition. A koan has no logical answer -- "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" -- but the search for a solution may lead to a flash of enlightenment.
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Facing the Music
Of all the tragic characters in Greek myths, the one who gives me the most shivers is Cassandra. The god Apollo gave her a wonderful gift — the ability to foretell the future — then followed it up with a terrible curse — no one would ever believe her. I can just imagine Cassandra, standing […]
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Hal Brill, Jack A. Brill, and Cliff Feigenbaum on their new book Investing Your Values
Turn on any financial talk show and you will be deluged with advice about how to make more money. You'll learn which kind of IRA is best for you, and hear arguments rage about the pros and cons of no-load mutual funds. This is useful information, but it doesn't go far enough. Given the central, powerful role of money and business in both our society and our personal lives, it is astonishing that so little attention is given to the social, ethical, and spiritual dimensions of money. Even the most caring commentators seem oblivious to the enormous impact our financial decisions have on communities, the earth, and our own peace of mind. We've ignored the fact that our money carries our voice to the world.
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Seven-Plus Wonders of Sustainability
A couple of years ago, while I was doing something else, I heard snatches of a radio program in which Alan Durning, the director of Seattle’s Northwest Environment Watch, talked about the “Seven Sustainable Wonders of the World.” Clever concept, I thought, but afterward I could only remember three of his wonders: The bicycle — […]
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Tom Turner reviews Transforming Electricity by Walt Patterson
Walt Patterson is a physicist by training, an entertaining and lucid writer (he seldom misses a chance at wordplay -- note the title of this book), a fan of jazz and baseball and real ale, and an incisive popularizer of important but complicated matters. And yes, he's my friend. Remind me to tell you some day about several hours we spent years ago in the bookstores on and near Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley, scouring dusty shelves for out-of-print popular books on atomic energy, The Atom Is Your Friend and such.
