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Book Club
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Saturday, 26 September 2009 13:41 |
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By Sherry Strother
It is always a pleasure to attend an event at the Center for the Environment at Catawba College, and Thursday night, August 20 was no exception. The evening was a dinner and book signing to celebrate the publication of Less is More. The book is edited by Wanda Urbanska and Cicile Andrews. Wanda lives in Mt. Airy with her son Henry. In addition to authoring a number of books, she is the host of the PBS series Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska. Cicile makes her home in Seattle, Wa. A long-time educator, she is the author of several books, including The Circle of Simplicity and Slow is Beautiful.
Dr. John Wear, director of the Center, penned one of the 29 essays in the book, which is a collection of thoughtful essays written by leading thinkers and philosophers of the Simplicity and Sustainability movements. Both Urbanska and Wear signed books for grateful attendees.
The dinner was a celebration as well – a lovely feast to honor our local foods and products. The Bread Riot’s own Maria Thompson solicited and co-ordinated the donations from local growers and merchants, including Mike and Erica Miller, The Breadbasket, and Hartsell Farms. Matt Trexler of Creative Gourmet Catering organized a wonderful menu created from the offerings. From hors d’oeuvres to dessert, it was all delicious!
Many thanks to everyone in our community who contributed to making this enjoyable evening possible! |
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Last Updated on Saturday, 26 September 2009 13:42 |
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Saturday, 26 September 2009 13:39 |
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By Sherri Stilwell
The Sustainability Book Group met Tuesday, September 1 (our regular meeting date is the first Tuesday of the month at 6 p.m.), to discuss Farewell, My Subaru by Doug Fine. An adventure journalist by trade, the author knows he is addicted to the creature comforts of the American life. And he doesn’t want to give up his comforts, he aims to simply change how he powers them—reduce his carbon footprint, power with the sun not fossil fuels. He leaves his home in New York City in 2005, moves to the wilds of southwestern New Mexico and buys property he names the Funky Butte Ranch. In order to show that ‘a regular American’ can still live life to the fullest, he sacrifices his beloved Subaru Legacy, purchases 2 baby goats on Craigslist, plants a garden and begins to wean himself off Wal-Mart.
Our discussion really came down to these core ideas: drive less, eat local, reduce, reuse, renew and recycle. But Doug Fine gives his readers 5 things to do: 1. Vote for sustainable candidates. Make carbon reduction a priority. (We talked about what this means and what questions to ask of our candidates. Party affiliation may not always provide the answers.) 2. Think every day about the carbon miles you rack up in your diet. The average tomato travels 1,500 miles from the field to the table. 3. Drive on something other than fossil fuels to help create a market for biofuels. 4. Fight sprawl in your community. 5. Stay atop new carbon-reducing technologies. (Attend the offerings at the Center for the Environment).
He closes with one more suggestion that our book groups considers at every meeting—work together to spread the gospel of sustainable living.
Our next meeting is Tuesday, October 6, at 6 p.m. The assigned readings are from American Earth, a book of environmental essays edited by Bill McKibben. Specifically, we’re reading “How Flowers Changed the World” by Loren Eiseley and “Wrath of Grapes Boycott Speech” by Cesar Chavez. |
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Thursday, 13 August 2009 11:57 |
Sustainability Book Club Reads Greasy Rider
Bread Riot’s own book club meets monthly to discuss books that relate in some way to the concept of “sustainability”, leading to conversations about economics, agriculture, environment, personal lifestyle and local issues.
In August, members of the book club met at Doug and Beth Kearney’s house, passed around chips, salsa, bread and hummus, fresh cherry tomatoes, and cracked open Greg Melville’s Greasy Rider: Two Dudes, One Fry-Oil-Powered Car, and a Cross-Country Search for a Greener Future. Melville is a Burlington, Vermont, journalist who, with friend Iggy, embarked on a trip across the country in an old diesel Mercedes converted to burn vegetable oil. The self-imposed challenge was to determine if they could make the trip fueled only by the used and discarded vegetable oil available in the alleys behind Mexican and Chinese restaurants across the country.
They did. But the effort was so difficult, with so much time agonizing over where they might find oil and its dubious quality, a reader would doubt whether veggie oil-fueled cars would ever be anything other than a quirky hobby for aging (and aspiring) hippies with lots of time on their hands, in spite of benefits to the environment in decreased pollution and petroleum use. And, frankly, no one in the book made a claim to the contrary.
However, as a construct for the author to hang an entertaining investigation into alternative energy, it worked. As Greg and Iggy crossed the country, they assigned themselves “errands” which would be investigated at trip’s end. In a chapter entitled, “The Windbag Beneath My Wings,” the author reports on his trip to Al Gore’s 11,000 square-foot home in Tennessee. It was night when Melville arrived at the home of the global warming guru and found that it was lit up throughout, even though there was no human activity to note. The house and property uses the energy of seventeen average American residences. A Gore spokesman noted that Mr. Gore buys carbon offsets, which the author describes as “an environmental ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card for rich people.”
Book club members appreciated both Melville’s commitment to workable environmental solutions and his clear-eyed and non-doctrinaire approach to wind, solar, geothermal and biofuels. He gave credit to Wal*mart’s green efforts in reducing packaging and energy use in its stores and trucking fleets, but suggested that the “green stores” were, so far, largely a marketing gimmick.
Summing up his own learnings from his veggie-oiled travels, Melville says we need to accept that while various alternative energies make increasing economic sense, to make a real difference, individuals will need to change the way we do things, even accepting the occasional inconvenience. He says “self-sacrifice was once a hallmark of American virtue. Now those who practice it are ridiculed or even scorned.” What we need, he says, is a big vision for a new world, so that everyday Americans will again want to make personal changes in lifestyle for the common good.
The Sustainability Book Club meets first Mondays at 6:00 p.m. at the homes of members. September’s book is Doug Fine’s Farewell, My Subaru, a memoir of the author’s sometimes ill-fated effort to turn his New Mexico ranch into a green oasis.
If you want more information about the book club, e-mail Elaney Hasselman at :
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Monday, 14 July 2008 15:35 |
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We’ve been meeting since September of 2007. We meet every month, on the first Tuesday of the month, at 6pm, at the homes of various members, and everyone contributes a dish or drink, preferably local and/or organic.
We have focused on local food, organic, global economy issues, and agricultural issues. We select books that will give us ideas on how we can be better to the earth, how we can make wiser choices, etc. It’s a sustainability / social responsibility / local community book club that hopes to educate this area on how we can all leave a better and lighter footprint on this earth. So far, we have read:
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Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous year of Eating Locally by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon
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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
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The New Village Green by Stephen Morris
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The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry
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The Geography of Nowhere by Howard Kuentzler
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A Year without "Made in China": One Family's True Life In The Global Economy by Sara Bengiorni
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Deep Economy by Bill McKibben
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Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey by Jane Goodall
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Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken
We have considered reading a huge list of books, including:
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In Defense of Food and Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan
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Deep Economy by Bill McKibben
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Harvest for Hope by Jane Goodall
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The Future of Life by EO Wilson
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Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough
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Alas Babylon by Pat Frank
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Silent Spring
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Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods by Paul Nabhan's 2002 memoir
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This Organic Life by Joan Dye Gussow, Columbia University nutritionist, her 2001 memoir
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Organic Inc.: Natural Foods and How They Grew by Samuel Fromartz
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The Future of Nature: Writing on Human Ecology from Orion Magazine, selected and introduced by Barry Lopez
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The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
If you are interested in joining, please email
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Last Updated on Thursday, 13 August 2009 11:57 |
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