Recently in Books and Films Category

I am personally not a big fan of Kindle--even with its use of trees, I believe there's nothing like the feel of a real book in my hands or the gift of one specially chosen for me from a friend. Plus, having a digital device for all our reading material could easily put independent booksellers--the lifeblood and modern-day salon of many communities--out of business. (Here's a letter from a CA indy best bookseller on the subject.)

That said, I was intrigued when I stumbled on EcoBrain.  It sells environmentally-themed books in digital and MP3 audio formats so you can read or listen to them online or with your ipod.  Its goal is to save paper, but also to cheaply publish unknown writers and make little-known ones more accessible.

I have a feeling many of the books offered at EcoBrain aren't even at most bookstores in paperback or hardcover editions.  

And, I'm still a huge fan of swaptree.

At my local independent bookstore the other day I happened on this lovely little illustrated book: Nature's Little Wonders.

It details, quite whimsically for a biology book, all the wonders a bee does in its brief five week life: dancing and pollinating flowers and many, many of the foods we eat (cashews, papaya, or broccoli anyone?) among them.

I'm a lover of bees and recently got my first momentous bee sting, but in in light of Colony Collapse Disorder, this just might be required reading for everybody.

I watched Microcosmos last week, a real-life, magnified look at many a bug's life.  I imagine it'd be a great way to capture a little tyke's attention (I'd put my money on it over Baby Einstein) and it did a wonderful job of both amazing me and making me drowsy before bedtime.

A French documentary from the 70s, it's an hour-plus look at a meadow and what lies inside: mating slugs, a dangling butterfly chrysalis, and laboring ants.  Most suspenseful: warring beetles and insects being pummeled by a rainstorm.  There is indeed so much beneath the surface of things.

Thanks to my friend O who introduced me to this site--The Emancipation Network--and its line of wares made by survivors of or those at high risk of modern-day slavery.  It's a way to support fair trade and the most threatened among us as they build independent lives.

I found myself especially drawn to this necklace made of recycled, rolled strips of magazines by families who survived Ugandan civil war and being trafficked as soldiers or sex workers during the violence.  

And for a global perspective on the 27 million people trapped in this old, ugly institution worldwide, you can read Kevin Bales' Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Get that from an independent bookseller or on swaptree. 

Finally, there's a film on the subject, too: Call + Response that's in some theaters now.

Taking as its subject the 70s real estate boom of Austin, Texas, specifically what affected (the amazing, sacred) Barton Springs, this documentary looks at the unforeseen consequences of developing our lands: both community activism and sometimes very degraded spaces despite it.

It tells the story of what I found to be a sympathetic real estate developer who got rich turning 4,000 acres of earth into subdivisions and then lost everything.  A slow, beautifully soundtracked film, this one asks questions of the true cost of unchecked growth.

It was a favorite at Sundance in 2007, in part I imagine for the thoughtful interviews Robert Redford gives with Barton Springs, a gem of a natural pool he grew up visiting, as his backdrop.

I'm very much anticipating the DVD release of Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai (not sure when that will be yet). She is one of the most brave, visionary, beautiful people on the planet.  The documentary won the Hot Docs audience award last April. 

In the 70s, she started the Greenbelt Movement in Africa, addressing the needs of women there who lacked shade and fuel by planting trees.  Many years, many challenges, and a Nobel Prize later, she and those women have taken their environment into their own hands and planted over 35 million trees.

And before it comes out on DVD, Maathai has a memoir, Unbowed, for your reading pleasure. 

These economic times are a good time to get serious about simplicity.  So many simple, green living practices actually save money, creating more abundance and less fret.

I recently read Simple Prosperity by David Wann, and the time is certainly ripe to take his principles seriously.

Here are some simple scrimping ideas that might pay off in all kinds of ways.

Buy good quality items that will last.

Repair things, from blenders to shoe soles.

Get clothes and furniture at your local thrift stores (I'm currently scouring the racks at mine for a warm winter coat).

Cut your cleaning sponges in half.

Buy in bulk!  Bringing apple sauce jars and cloth bags to a bulk bin saves packaging, major oil and resources, and money.  There, you can buy beans, grains, pastas, baking soda, dried fruit, nuts, oil, agave, sugar, flour, and all manner of things sans plastic, plus savings. Cooking things like beans and whole grains will have health benefits while using less energy during the week for cooking small bits of things.

Make meals at home and carry them with you.  Check out wastefreelunches.org for ideas.

Turn off, unplug, or switch off appliances connected to a power or smartstrip when not in use.

Grow some of your own food, even if it's just an herb garden.

Get books from the library and get the ones you want to own from swaptree (the perfect system for keeping your shelves clutter-free, too).

Use Dr. Bronner's fair trade, natural liquid castile soap for all your soap containers in the house (it works for clothes, too).  You can dilute it and it lasts and lasts. 

Refill your pens.

Change your printing margins and follow other paper and ink saving printing tips.

Turn off lights, take short showers, use CFLs--all the usual resource saving behaviors.

That's all I've got for now--please share any of yours with me!

The oceans are in serious trouble.  From coral reefs disappearing to our favorite scaly friends vanishing, what we can't see can hurt us. According to the article "Fish or Foul" which I read in Utne and is part of the book by Taras Grescoe's Bottomfeeder, through "violent overfishing," we've changed the whole undersea ecosystem. It's notable for what that's added (toxic plankton and way too many jellyfish) as well as for what's missing (big fish we've come to love). 

Trawlers catch anything in their wakes so that our practices are "in effect, clear-cutting the oceans." 

So, what shall we have for dinner?  (First ask your seller or server what it is and where it came from.) 

Here's a list of what should be absolutely off the menu from the article: bluefin tuna, chilean sea bass, Atlantic cod, dogfish, flounder, grouper, Atlantic halibut, monkfish, orange roughy, sharks (see Sharkwater!), skates, Atlantic sole, and tilefish.

What can you eat that's from under the sea? anchovies, Arctic char, Pacific halibut, herring, jellyfish, mackerel, mullet, mussels, oysters, pollock, sablefish, sardines, trout.

As for salmon, shrimp and lobster, they are very complicated indeed.

This morning, I heard a podcast of Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, talking to a group in Los Angeles.  You can hear it for yourself here.

I found the talk fascinating, essentially a rundown of his book, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet.  As an economist, he's looking for ways to boost and sustain growth while combating poverty and doing an about-face to keep people and the planet safe and sustained for years to come.  Some of what he said was incredible, like that the U.S. is spending over a billion dollars a day on military and defense and that meanwhile making wars is the absolute wrong way to achieve peace and prosperity for the new global challenges we face. That money could be put to other, good uses for sure!

The man who has worked for 10 years to get mosquito bednets to people who need them in Africa has 10 great ideas for what the next president should do upon being sworn in--among them, stopping ethanol production, ending the war in Iraq, joining climate talks with other countries and calling for  real climate change action.

When I saw this recent installment in Thich Nhat Hanh's repertoire, I had to pick it up.  Power?  Isn't that what we all want--not fame, wealth, violence, but the power to handle each moment, to act in freedom, and to live peacefully?

Especially helpful for families and business people (or anyone involved in any work with other humans), The Art of Power is a treatise on how to be happy and powerful by taking an unusual route--through meditation, peace, and spiritual practice.  

There is indeed powerful help in there for those of us in the working world on how to deal with our own stress and how to deal with other people.  One of my favorite kernels? His idea of "unitasking."  Yes, the opposite of multi-tasking, Hanh advocates that--what a novel idea!--we do one thing at a time and do it well.  

The book concludes with an excerpt from Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia that is truly inspiring for people in the marketplace.  He makes products people actually need, taking care to do no unnecessary environmental harm in the process.  His focus is on the planet and people way more than profits--his habit of taking off for other countries to rock climb and practice of providing daycare for mom-employees are two testaments to this. 

So, if you get a chance to read it, I highly recommend doing so and then passing it around.

In the 80s, Jaws solidified humans' fear and loathing of finned creatures of the deep.  It turns out though, that you're more likely to be hit by lightning than attacked by a shark and that elephants kill more people every year.  

It also turns out that we're the real predators, killing sharks at an alarming rate and putting the oldest creatures around very close to extinction.

Why should we care?  Because when you mess with the top of the food chain in the ocean, the whole ocean shifts and in turn, the whole world.  

After talking with a local aquarium about shark conservation, I finished my research by watching Sharkwater.  If you get past a few design and writing flaws, it's a really important film that details the how, what, why, and what now of shark fishing.  100 million sharks are killed annually just for their fins. 100 million! This movie will make you want to donate to the Sea Shepherds who, like modern-day principled pirates, monitor illegal fishing, and never, ever eat shark's fin soup again.

If you know all about Colony Collapse Disorder--the plague wiping out commercial bees faster than you can say honey-- and  want to go beyond eating Haagen Dazs Vanilla Honey Bee ice cream in solidarity, you can watch a Nature doc on PBS to get the full scoop.

Other actions you can take to help promote local bees a buzzing?  The National Resources Defense Council has some ideas: plant natives to attract and feed wild bees; don't use pesticides; support local, organic agriculture; and, for a gold star, build or buy your own beehive to draw some honeybees to your backyard.

Bees pollinate a good deal of what we eat, like almonds, raspberries, apples, and oranges, so the more we can do for them, the better off we'll be.

  

more (action)

The first, Blue Vinyl, the story of the filmmaker's parents replacing the siding on their house with vinyl (polyvinyl chloride or PVC) for its durability, cost, and promise to stand the test of time, and the filmmaker subsequently gathering information from all over the world, with a strip of the blue vinyl siding in hand, on why it's not such a good idea in hopes of getting them to replace it.

She visits Lake Charles, Louisiana where a large PVC factory pollutes the air and water and visits with a lawyer there who works on behalf of factory workers who've died of rare cancers associated with PVC and to Europe, where the same thing is happening, and where a scientist first figured out why.  

It's not just Louisiana workers who have to worry though.  Dioxin, a chemical released from PVC is showing up all over the environment and in our own bodies as PVC has been considered a wonder plastic for the last forty years.

As is this filmmaker duo's trademark, they combine irony, serious research, and hilarity with action.  

You can buy a copy of Blue Vinyl to support them.  Or, visit My House is Your House and join the green building, consumer action revolution.

(The Center for Environmental Health and Justice has some great information on PVC and ways to help, too).

The second, more recent film, Everything's Cool, is a must-see if you want to know some history on global warming findings, find out how it's been made into a faux debate and covered up for too long, and what a handful of truth-tellers and everyday activists have and are doing about it

Buy Everything's Cool here.  Or, find out how to get involved.

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more (connection to faraway places)

Werner Herzog's (of Grizzly Man fame) latest documentary, Encounters at the End of the World, is mesmerizing.  As in many of his films, here Herzog finds a wild place with quirky characters, this time traveling to Antarctica to answer questions about why people go there and how what's going on there tells us about world history and the future of our species.

For me, it further convinced me that artists are scientists, scientists, artists, and that they are my favorite kind of people.  Linguists, geologists, philosophers, travelers, glacierologists, and deep sea divers all converge in this most amazing, frozen place where they study, play music, explore, discover new species, figure out the origins of intelligent life, and eat frozen yogurt.

It also reminded and deepened my connection to the creatures and systems that exist so far South and how even though I surely never plan on going anywhere quite so off the beaten path, we are all in this together. For a while longer anyway.

And if it's not playing in a theater near you, I believe it will be airing on the Discovery Channel someday soon.

One of my favorite summertime treats is throwing a handful of fresh spearmint in my teapot, letting it steep a few minutes and enjoying an afternoon of sipping (hot or cool) fresh, tingly tea.

It tastes even better when it comes from your own garden.

In recently buying what looked and smelled like chamomile flowers from my farmers' market, I got to thinking: What else can I grow for my teapot?

Enter Herbal Tea Gardens.  It goes beyond mint and chamomile to help you design healing tea gardens to suit your needs.  Marietta Marcin includes growing and brewing recipes for herbs to help with headaches, colds, arthritis, and a multitude (100 to be exact) of pains (and pleasures!).

If you've seen the excellent documentary, The Future of Food, or are a member of the Organic Consumers Association, then you've heard of Monsanto.

Monsanto is a huge company and the maker of herbicides and the engineer and peddler of genetically modified seeds.  Roundup Ready soybeans are genetically modified to resist the very herbicides Monsanto sprays, those sprays being the kinds of chemicals that are toxic not just to weeds but to you and me and especially farmers.

Now, there's a film on DVD that explores what Monsanto has done, how, and how it's gotten away with it.  There's some pretty shocking stuff in here about what goes wrong when profit is the driving force of agriculture.  And, no it's nut a summer fluff film, but at least it's fodder for changing fall harvests.

And, buy the DVD here.

Earth Cinema Circle is book club meets Netflix, with a conscience.  Every other month, you get a DVD with four films delivered to your door that you can hang onto.  And, rest assured, the packaging is recycled and the shipping is carbon offset.

Its offerings are full of lively little films that you aren't likely to see anywhere else and that will surely broaden your knowledge of what's going on in the world and what you can do about it.

more (real food)

But, luckily movie nights do have something to do with lazy, warm summer evenings. 

In this engaging movie, two best friends from college travel to Iowa where they grow one acre of corn, with the help of Iowa farmers growing a whole load more than that.  It's their story, told inventively, and the story of our food supply.  Without being preachy at all, we get to hear all about what Michael Pollan exposes in The Omnivore's Dilemma, that we're mostly growing a monocrop--corn--that's not even edible but is used for all the "foods" we've filled our supermarkets with--soda and other products that are mostly made from high fructose corn syrup and the like.  Then there's the meat counter where all the cows have been fed, you guessed it, corn, which is terrible for their poor stomachs.

These guys follow the complicated route of corn from its origins in Mexico to our America in the present, showing how we now grow billions of bushels of it industrially in Iowa.  And, they make the whole ride really, really fun.  And, it just might turn you into one of us who scours the ingredients on food labels, trying to figure out what xanthan gum is and proud of ourselves for knowing it's just a fancy name for corn.

Watch an interview from ZapRoot with the guys behind the movie here.

The questions surrounding what to eat abound.  Michael Pollan has definitely shed some light on them and we know that eating local, eating organic, and, if we're going to eat meat and dairy, eating the stuff raised humanely and sustainably makes a huge difference for the world and our own wellness.

Written by a city-dweller turned compassionate farmer who raises and eats meat, The Compassionate Carnivore shares how Catherine Friend makes peace with meat, peace with the world, and peace with herself.

Haiku are lovely little nuggets of poetry, just three lines reflecting on nature and packing a surprise ending.  I like them because they help me slow down and breathe and because they're just so easy to fit into one's reading schedule.

This book--Four Seasons: Japanese Haiku Second Series--is from the '50s has four groups of haiku, each for a season, many written by some of the Japanese masters like Basho and Issa (here you can sign up for on Issa haiku a day in your inbox).  I got my copy at a swap meet during the spring and, as the calendar dictates, I have just started reading through summer (they're filled with loads of frogs and mosquitoes).

The only thing we drink more of than bottled water in this country is bottled soda--a sorry state of affairs.

Elizabeth Royte's Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It is a keen look into the problems with what we're drinking.

To name a few, tap water in most of America is much more highly regulated than bottled water.  On top of that, when you drink from the tap, you don't have any of that plastic leaching into your fluids and into you. And finally, when you drink water from your own pipes, it's not laced with oil.  How so?  Bottled water is flown and trucked from who knows where, using gas to get to you.  And, it's relationship with petroleum is even more intimate than that, as plastic is made of petroleum. We use 15 million barrels a year to make plastic bottles, 8 out of 10 of which never make it t the recycle bin (read more about the uprising against plastic bottles from E-Magazine here).

According to this interview with Royte from KCRW's Good Food, your bottle of water can actually be considered a quarter petroleum given that's how much crude went into it from conception til it touched your lips.  Not so appetizing or sustainable.

If you aren't already toting a SIGG or other reusable bottle, this book will surely help you take the plunge into healthier, eco-friendly water.

more (seasonal fruit)

Here's a book that will help you pick just the perfect one (think orange/red color): How To Pick a Peach.  Here's the best part, in it, Russ Parsons goes beyond peaches to pretty much any produce to help you figure out how to pick, store, and prepare it--the subtitle says it all: The Search for Flavor From Farm to Table.  This is an invaluable guide for the seasonal eater so that your lettuce isn't wilted or your celery limp by the time you're reading to dig in and serve it up. Send to a Friend

more (good reading snippets) 

This is definitely going on my reading list and will probably serve as an excellent reference for years down the road.

more (wildness)

It's really a pretty wonderful summer film as it's exquisite--filmed on the French island, Camargue--and is essentially a riff on the age-old story of a boy and a horse.  In this though, there's a theme of wildness running through it, as well as the options we have when confronted with a beautiful, wild thing--to capture and dominate it or to make peace with it in synergy.

more (dirt under your fingernails)

Jeanne Kelley is a modern gardener indeed whose Los Angeles garden is home to a goat and chickens in addition to other growing things.  

She shares 150 fresh recipes for all of us, even if we don't own chicken coops.

You can listen to an interview with the writer/gardener/cook from KCRW's Good Food here.

The Healer Within is a life-changing book.  It gives the basic principles of Qigong, the thousands year old Chinese art of moving meditation (of which Tai Chi is a form) for a Western audience.  The book shows how with meditation, breathing, movement, and self-massage, you can stay calm, relaxed, and healthy--free of charge.  And, if you do have compromised health, Qi Gong can help you heal yourself.  

It's not magic though it may feel like it when you feel the results.  Instead, Qigong relies on both ancient and current (more scientifically quantifiable) modalities for healing power that's in your own hands.  This practice is sort of like the opposite of fight or flight--it calms your mind and body so that you can feel better and deal better with everything going on.

I've found the most significant changes in my ability to heal headaches by slowing down and using some of Jahnke's breathing techniques to get the qi (life energy) going to the places it's blocked.  

There are human rights and environmental violations, sweatshops, psychologists who specialize in advertising to children to create "the nagging effect" that gets parents to buy products, and shocking undercover marketing techniques.  But among the talking heads like MIT professor, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, and seed activist and physicist Dr. Vandana Shiva, there is the former CEO of Shell speaking for himself and the former head of the world's largest carpet manufacturer who had an epiphany one day about his own responsibility for degrading nature.

It's not a summer no-brainer blockbuster, but it's time and/or money well spent.

A smattering from the good list:

To learn more, you might want to pick up a copy of Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry in which Stacy Malkan uncovers the ugly truth behind beauty care product labels.  

For example, the European Union has banned over 1,000 chemicals from cosmetics.  The U.S., only nine.

Here's another: 70% of personal care products (for men and women) contain phthalates, those big cancer-causing baddies.

"The Migrant Project: Contemporary California Farm Workers" is a traveling exhibit and companion book of photographs by Rick Nahmias.

What's the alternative to all this?  In Southern California, native, drought-tolerant plants are a great bet.  But anywhere and everywhere, the best bet is your very own fruits and veggies.

One fruit tree can provide shade and decadent delights.  One container of tomatoes or blueberries can be a sweet reward, the fruits of your labor.

But what about a whole "lawn" that's edible?  

This article, excerpted from Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, argues that lawns are a sort of social construct dating back to Jefferson's estate at Monticello (despite the farmy garden he had that's hidden from pictures) that burgeoned as suburban living did with affordable houses, subdivisions, outdoor gadgets, and pesticides.

Fritz Haeg's article and book make the case for edible lawns that eliminate all the problems of the 30 million acres of lawns we now tend in the U.S.--diminished ecosystems, pesticides, wasted water, and the like.  On the other hand, when you plant edible things instead, you get to play the dirt, contribute to healthy soil and ecosystems, use water usefully, pay attention, support biodiversity, participate in agriculture, eat locally, share with neighbors, and the list goes on and on.

The book is a compilation of real world edible lawn projects and the accounts of the homeowners who created them.

The Better World Handbook is a compilation of small actions that can turn anyone into an activist, no matter their past level of involvement or day job.  Written by sociologists, it tell you what you can do in different areas of your life--money, transportation, shopping and the like--to make the world a better place in your own way.