Tips

This week I finished: The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Elliot, by Russel Kirk: I learned of this book from the Conservatism 101 course I wrote about in last week's selective media post. I read the book partly to learn, partly to see what of conservative values, history, and philosophy might resonate with sustainability. It turns out plenty. I read some online but mostly listened to twenty hours of its recording. It was hard to read. Kirk's writing is erudite, not simple. At first I read and reread, listened and re-listened, but after a while I had to get the overall gist since I'd never finish at that pace. I got annoyed at the complexity of the writing, but figure I'll reread or re-listen to…

This week I finished: You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life, by Jen Sincero: You'll hear in an upcoming podcast conversation with a Nobel Peace Prize holder, Erika Frank, that she and I riffed on our complementary ways of living more joyfully sustainable. I commented that she reminded me of a book I see in bookstores a lot but haven't read, You Are a Badass. You'll hear when I post the recording how badass she is. I read that she enjoyed the comment. How could I not then read the book? Not many books over a decade old still get prominent placement in bookstores. It covers a lot of major lessons I've learned in exiting a…

This week I finished: The Wise Men Know What Wicked Things Are Written on the Sky, by Russell Kirk: Before diving into the twenty hours of Kirk's The Conservative Mind, the library had this shorter book. I've since started The Conservative Mind, learning his views about Edmund Burke, John Adams, and the development of conservatism in America. This book is a collection of essays with a conservative view of education, character, hierarchy, and more. Following on Hayek, Friedman, and other conservative luminaries, I'm learning more depth about a view I haven't studied much but have seen around me my whole life. Many pieces and videos by and about Bruce K. Alexander: I linked to all the pieces and videos in yesterday's post, Read about and…

Looking at their behavior, I think most Americans know how to help Vladimir Putin because they look like they're doing everything they can to help him. How help Putin: Fly Buy gas and oil Buy stuff shipped from far away Heat your home so you can wear shorts in the winter Cool your home so you can wear sweaters in the summer How many of these things have you done since Putin invaded Ukraine? I'm sure he's grateful for the financial support so many of us have given him.

I finished this week: Carmaggeddon, by Daniel Knowles: I bought a cheap used car after getting my first license at 15 years old. The experience led me to never own a car again. I knew that choice would force many later life decisions The summer after high school, when I was 16, a friend and I rode our bikes from Philadelphia to Bar Harbor, Maine and back. A couple years later I started volunteering for bike advocacy. I think I know a fair amount about cars and how designing cities, nations, and cultures prioritizing them (and planes) over other forms of transportation undermines community, health, resilience, and so on. I could have sworn I've read this book before. It comprehensively covers what I've learned over…

This week I finished: Life, by Keith Richards: I'd meant to read this book since seeing it on shelves a few years ago. Bruce Springsteen's memoir prompted me. As with Springsteen, Richards' experience after connecting with the guitar resonated with me most---discovering the art, the craft, self-expression, awareness, connecting with other musicians listening to their recordings, meeting other musicians in person, and so on. I don't think I'm flattering myself to say I'm connecting with them as artists developing something nobody has seen before but knowing that the world will love it, that they crave it. My book Leadership Step by Step identifies leadership as a performance art where we express ourselves to evoke emotion in our audiences and to change them in ways they…

This week I finished: Born to Run, by Bruce Springsteen: Growing up in Philadelphia, across the river from New Jersey, Bruce was always big. I loved this book, which I listened to, Bruce himself reading it. The first third recounted his doing what it took. He struggled to buy his first guitar for $18. He slept on floors, figured out how to play. He played what gigs he could. He had a vision of greatness. He didn't need other people's permission. I doubt anyone else imagined anything he envisioned. He didn't just work blindly. He looked inside himself. He wouldn't accept halfway. Given my situation of nearly everyone othering me ("a phenomenon in which some individuals or groups are defined and labeled as not fitting…

This week I couldn't use the computer much so read more than usual, including two long books and one hard-to-read one. I finished: The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, by Richard Rothstein: I confess I recorded my podcast episode with Richard before reading the book, initially motivated by my mom's sharing (on her and my podcast episodes) about growing up in a mostly black ghetto that had been a working class neighborhood before we moved there. She talked about redlining and how government policy grew and sometimes created racial differences in wealth and income. Richard's book comprehensively and definitively covers the issue. It's infuriating in many ways: How does American culture and our educational system not make this…

This week was overcast and rainy nearly every day. I barely caught rays so had to ration electric power, meaning a lot of reading and listening to books on my phone, which uses less power. I'm writing this post fast since it's raining again and barely have power left. I finished this week: Superabundance by Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley for the Cato Institute: I knew the premise of the book from all the interviews with the authors I watched. I enjoyed reading it, despite its shortcomings. It tried to prove a hypothesis but never considered alternative hypotheses that it didn't disprove. I hope to bring the authors to the podcast to learn more about them and their intent. I enjoyed their research in history…

This week I finished: The Social Life of Forests, by Ferris Jabr, about Suzanne Simard: This six-thousand-word New York Times article asks: "Trees appear to communicate and cooperate through subterranean networks of fungi. What are they sharing with one another?" and profiles a scientist at the forefront of studying forests. I came to it following up reading The Overstory, since one of its characters is based on Simard. Here's an interesting, tragic finding: "Although forests now cover 80 percent of the Northeast, for example, less than 1 percent of its old-growth forest remains intact." The article is like a primer on some recent research and on the super-organisms of forests that include trees and fungus. I've watched a couple videos of her, listened to her…

This week I finished: Take the Lead, by Sasha DiGiulian: The author is one of the premier climbers today. The book describes her journey from childhood to winning too many competitions to count and being the first to climb many faces around the world, along with the fame that comes with it. My nephew loves climbing and she went to college where I did (Columbia), so when her team sent me a copy of the book, I was interested. She shares what it takes to find what you're made of. You know me, though. During college, she flew around the world nearly every weekend and didn't slow down after. The book's dedication included, "And to Mother Nature for her inspiration. May we protect her for…

This week I read and watched: The Overstory, by Richard Powers: People recommended this long novel for a while, saying I'd like it for being about nature. I didn't find it boring, but didn't get it either for the most part. I found the language distracting. I prefer the grammar and syntax not to call attention to itself, away from the meaning. I don't find ecoterrorism appealing. The author did his research on nature. I appreciated the book calling attention to trees' importance and our taking them for granted. I started seeing how forests can have intelligence, even if different than ours. Could they have consciousness? I also appreciated the different feeling the book gave for time. Melancholia, directed by Lars von Trier, starring Kirsten…

This week I finished: Drug Dealer, MD, by Anna Lembke: She wrote this book before Dopamine Nation, which I finished last week. You know someone likes a book when after finishing it he reads the author's previous book the next week. Drug Dealer, MD wasn't as personal as Dopamine Nation, but described the growth of addiction well. She described the systemic forces driving doctors, insurance companies, government, medical associations, patients, and more. She traces the underlying forces to capitalism without being partisan. She didn't trace the forces that drove capitalism, so think she could have gone deeper to understand why people think they're helping when they're hurting. She talks about living in a world of abundance and technology, but only a few times addressed that…

This week I listened to: The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson: People have been suggesting I read this book for a while. It's not exactly a novel. Robinson uses the book to teach about monetary theory and possible climate outcomes. I can see why people suggest it to me. He has thought through where humanity could go in more detail and more comprehensively than most people. I agree with a lot of possibilities, though he supports geoengineering more than I do. Several scientific and engineering feats he presents, my research has shown impossible, like beaming energy down from space. I like how he handled talking about population, how people can't stop themselves from viewing any talk about population as hating life or…

I finished this week: Bonhoeffer (2003), Directed by Martin Doblmeier: Wow, I knew of him before, and 90 minutes can only cover so much, but this documentary showed the challenge of living by your values in a corrupt system. While safe in the U.S. during the war, he chose to return to Germany to continue acting. He struggled with his conscience. He led others. The documentary also shows some of society slipping into complicity and acceptance, how appealing those things are when everyone around you is doing it. Seeing the crowds loving Nazism, you see how easily millions of people can lie to themselves. This video is free online. I recommend it highly if you would like a role model for achieving inner peace in…

This week I watched and read: Elinor Ostrom videos: Nobel Prize in Economics Lecture 2012 Hayek Lecture on Market Failure and Government Big Think Interview Ostrom won the Economics Prize that isn't really a Nobel Prize, but has the Nobel name attached to it. It's still prestigious. Her research showed how the situation described as "The Tragedy of the Commons" doesn't result in the problems people think. It does create some incentives to overgraze and pollute, but it doesn't stop there. Communities have found ways to manage commons for hundreds of thousands of years. I confess that after learning the concept of the Tragedy of the Commons in college, maybe graduate school, I'm embarrassed now not to have noticed some obvious things that would make…

This week I finished: The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, by Eric Foner: Another great book by another great writer about Lincoln. This one focuses on his views and actions on slavery, which evolved over his life, especially during the Civil War. Wikipedia wrote "The Fiery Trial won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for History, the Bancroft Prize, and the Lincoln Prize. The New York Times Book Review listed The Fiery Trial as one of its 100 Notable Books of 2010, writing, 'Foner tackles what would seem an obvious topic, Lincoln and slavery, and sheds new light on it.'" My Life on the Road, by Gloria Steinem: I saw her speak twice this year, once at Cooper Union the other at an event for…