Tips

I finished this week: Poverty, By America, by Matthew Desmond: I'd been recommended to read this book. It's recent and the library had a long waiting list so I ended up reading his earlier book Evicted. His view of poverty overlaps a lot with my views of the environment. If you want to help the Amazon, don't fly there. People there aren't causing the problem. The problem is in boardrooms in rich countries, where decisions are made to plunder and allow polluting. Still, people keep flying to the Amazon to protect it. My Octopus Teacher, starring Craig Foster: The reviews missed what I considered the most important part of this movie. They talked about the beautiful cinematography and his relationship with the octopus. They were…

Why have I not posted about finishing any readings for three weeks? Because the book on Frederick Douglass is 800 pages, or 36 hours by audio. It's worth it. It's a masterpiece about a person who would inspire at any time in history, and now more than ever. This week I finished: Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, by David W. Blight: Podcast guest David Blight won the Pulitzer prize for this book. From the Pulitzer Prize page: "The definitive, dramatic biography of the most important African American of the nineteenth century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era." The book covers his life comprehensively from his being enslaved,…

I read and wrote this week: The Scorpion's Sting by James Oakes: I visited Jim in his office to share my developing thoughts on a constitutional amendment on sustainability and he gave me a copy of this book, as I've loved the four or so I've already read. I suspect after my book comes out, I'll share how much southern slaveholders and their culture foreshadow people who pollute and deplete today, along with that part of our culture. We benefit from reading his works and learning the challenges of making slavery illegal. I didn't realize what a challenge the Emancipation Proclamation was. Despite being an executive order, the U.S. had precedent of three wars in which one side freed slaves of the other, then had…

I read and watched this week: The Story of B by Daniel Quinn: I read Quinn's preceding book, Ishmael, but I think before all my sustainability leadership work. I was thrown by the talking gorilla and the book didn't register with me. Two people recommended Story of B to me, so I listened to it. One recommended it because sharing ideas from my upcoming book reminded her of it. Quinn's views and mine overlap a lot. I don't see the point of making this book a novel, since the story isn't compelling. Quinn's monologues are, though. I'd recommend just reading those parts. Still, he doesn't explain what motivated the cultural shift he calls totalitarian agriculture. I couldn't have either, until listening to What Is Politics?,…

This week I read to and watched: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond: An incredible book that won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction among other awards. Desmond lived among poor people getting evicted left and right in Milwaukee as well as landlords evicting them. He lived with them enough for them to open up. Eviction has grown as a practice in the past few decades. It disrupts more than you think in the lives and communities of everyone remotely connected. It destroys families, health, safety, community, and more. The lives of the characters overlap with poverty, theft, drugs, murder, joblessness, rape, lack of schooling, lack of healthcare, racism, sexism, and more. The book reads beautifully, though I found it…

This week I listened to and watched: Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, by Sarah H. Bradford: This 1869 book is in the public domain, so I listened to the Librivox recording. The more I learn of Harriet Tubman, the more I find her inspirational and relevant to sustainability. We need role models of people who had incentive to lay low but acted. As a former slave, she would have been safer laying low. Instead she went back into slave territory over a dozen times, saving seventy people. She worked with the Underground Railroad, which collectively saved about a hundred thousand. During the Civil War, she used the skills and experience from saving slaves as a spy and scout for the Union Army. She…

This week I read: Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything, by BJ Fogg: Regular readers know I'm more than a decade into a few big habits that started small, including posting here daily and now twice-daily calisthenics including nearly a quarter million burpees. I also haven't flown or filled a load of garbage since before the pandemic. Fogg's book systematized what I learned through experience. He starts with a model that makes sense, then describes how to use it with many examples and insights I've found that few others who haven't created sidchas realized. He clarifies that developing habits is a set of skills and that habits improve your life so the more you create them, the more you can create and the…

This week I watched: 13th, directed by Ava Duvernay: The Thirteenth Amendment and abolitionism are fundamental to my work on sustainability leadership. A future guest on the podcast recommended this movie by the director of Selma to learn more about what the amendment missed. The movie clarifies that prison is more connected to slavery than I think most people would have expected, though less about work and free labor than maintaining social division and economic imperialism. It addresses racism but less about class and barely the larger sexism. The film addresses that black men are imprisoned most but not that rates of imprisonment between blacks and whites are smaller than between males and females. It doesn't have to cover everything, so not to take away…

This week I read, listened to, and watched: Common Sense, by Thomas Paine: As long as I've been reading Locke, Common Sense made sense too. I enjoyed the digs at George III and its at times casual style. I had to remind myself he was rebelling against the most powerful nation in the world, taking personal risk. It's easy for me to take for granted the U.S. government and democracy and forget how radical and new it was when it formed. As far as I know, nothing like it existed before at that scale. Europeans had been exploring what structure a government could have, but mostly in theory. Then people put it into practice. Who would have guessed it would work this long and become…

This week I read and watched: The Conservative as Environmentalist: From Goldwater and the Early Reagan to the 21st Century, by Daniel A. Farber: Farber is a professor of law and Director of the Environmental Law Program the UC Berkeley Law School. He published the document in 2017. It's fascinating, covering support for environmental protections, ideology, and cases of bold activism from Barry Goldwater Ronald Reagan Richard Nixon William F. Buckley Milton Friedman George H. W. Bush Newt Gingrich I was glad to see one podcast guest mentioned, Bob Inglis, and another person mentioned on at least one episode, I've emailed and spoken with, Jerry Taylor. It begins: Today, it may seem more natural to associate conservatism with opposition to environmental regulation. Just how far…

This week I read and watched: The Great Dance, directed by Craig and Damon Foster: I re-watched this documentary helped open my eyes and mind to the sophistication and complexity of people and cultures we call indigenous. I grew up to see them as stuck in the Stone Age and to fear the possibility of regressing to be like them if we don't keep progressing. Learning some anthropology from The Dawn of Everything and Tribe starting lifting my ignorance, as did learning to use less power from the grid, which, however small, was experiential. This movie showed things reading books can't convey. It was made by the team behind My Octopus Teacher from 20 years earlier, described as "A story of three San (Bushman) hunters…

This week I read Pro-slavery thought in the old South, by William Sumner Jenkins: You and I live in an economic system that hurts and kills people near and far, now and in the future, for our wants and needs. We feel we are good people, yet we do things we believe are wrong; we buy fast fashion, fly, drive SUVs, and so on. To maintain our positive self-perceptions and sleep comfortably at night, we rationalize and justify. Anyone not benefiting from the system would identify our rationalizations and justifications as self-serving bunk, but we do benefit. How do we sound to impartial observers not benefiting from our behavior? We sound like slaveholders did. This book from 1935 quotes many slaveholders' rationalizations and justifications. The…

I read and watched this week: The Sorrow and the Pity, by Marcel Ophuls: I started watching this four-and-a-half hour documentary months ago. I'd been meaning to watch it for years, as I think it's regarded as one of the great movies of all time. It interviews French, British, and Germans who lived in a French city under Nazi occupation, about 1940 to 1944, or worked with them. It doesn't fall into easy cliches. The people are human, including the German and the French fascist. The French were more divided than I expected. Some admired Petain. Some fought for the resistance. Others resisted in different ways. Some supported communism; others detested it and hoped Hitler would defeat that element in Europe. The German still wore…

This week I read and watched: The Death of Ivan Ilyich, by Leo Tolstoy: I loved the movie Ikiru, which I watched a month or two ago. It was was inspired by this novella. The friend who recommended Ikiru also recommended this book. It's one of the best I've read. It's thoughtful, funny with biting satire, and a joy to read or listen to. It's also in the public domain so you can download it from many free sites (listed at the bottom of the Wikipedia page). I wonder if I'll get to War and Peace soon. What are you living for? What are you giving in your relationships and being returned? Who cares for you? Who doesn't? What systems are you living it? Do…

I read this week: The Fate Of Empires And Search For Survival, by Sir John Glubb: I started this book expecting irrelevance. The preface describes the author as a British veteran of World War One. The book is twenty-five pages, talking about imperialism. What could he know? I figured, of course he's viewing the world as an imperialist, likely racist and unsophisticated. Early on, he lists some empires and how long they lasted. I thought, "this list isn't remotely scientific and is no basis for analysis." He calls Native Americans savages. I figured I'd skim it to get it over with. Then the descriptions foretell remarkably what has happened in the fifty years since publication, remarkably prescient and on schedule. It isn't hard to translate…

Among what I read and watched this week: The Life You Can Save, by Peter Singer: I confess I hadn't read the book before recording our podcast episode (not yet edited, but will update when posted), but I wrote about his drowning child analogy recently. This book blew me away. I expected dry philosophy I would argue against, but found it compelling. I will donate more to charity with enthusiasm. I highly recommend this book. (I'm still not a fan of the Effective Altruism movement.) World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler: I ask a lot of people if they can imagine a world where no one pollutes. Nearly no one can, despite nearly all of our ancestors doing so. Recording a podcast episode…

Among what I read and watched this week: John Perkins The Secret History of the American Empire: The Truth About Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and How to Change the World: John was a podcast guest after his most recent book, Touching the Jaguar. Then a mutual friend mentioned his name. I decided to email him and before I did decided to browse The Secret History. I couldn't stop. I was equally engaged by the writing and mortified by the global situation he described. Regular readers know how much I've been reading about empire, including Heart of Darkness and King Leopold's Ghost, after focusing on abolition, slavery, and colonialism. I didn't mean to stumble on Secret History, but it fit. It's very relevant to sustainability, as…

I read and watched this week: Atomic Habits by James Clear: I had done my burpee-based calisthenics, blog posting, cold showers, and other habits sometimes for nearly a decade without missing a day when the book came out so took a while to read it. I consider myself skilled at starting and keeping up habits. I found the book engaging. I don't think I learned much about starting and keeping habits, but recommend it. Living, directed by Oliver Hermanus, screenplay by Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, adapted from Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru: I watched Ikuru last week or two and kept thinking about it, liking it more the more I thought of it. I heard last year someone remade it, taking place in England. It's hard to…

I read and watched this week: Ikiru by Akira Kurosawa: A movie-buff friend recommended the movie. It's almost 2.5 hours long so it took me a few nights to watch it. It's from 1952. I didn't know what to expect. At first I didn't think much of it. Then for the next few nights I kept thinking about it: little details that fit together, things characters said, how it connected to my life and life in general, and so on. It kept growing on me. I read and watch many reviews, commentaries, and interpretations. They mostly focused on the main questions of what life is about, what gives it meaning, getting stuck in bureaucracy, and its main themes. They're important, but the closing scene and…

I read and watched this week: King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild, a podcast guest: I'd meant to read Adam's book since I loved Bury the Chains and learned this book was bigger. Recently reading Heart of Darkness led to me King Leopold's Ghost. Both books talked about imperialism, colonialism, and slavery in the Congo. Conrad's book was fiction you have to interpret. Adam's spells it out in plain language hitting you in the gut. I considered the most poignant sentence in the book where he illustrated the value of ivory by saying it was for them then like plastic to us today, meaning plastic today is like ivory then. Driving all the brutality and…

I read and watched this week: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness: Regular readers know my interest in understanding imperialism, colonialism, and slavery to understand our situation with the environment. Somehow I made it over five decades before reading Heart of Darkness, or listening to it since it's in the public domain, so I downloaded a free version from Librivox. My first time through, I felt it overly descriptive and wondered why people cared so much about it. I kept thinking of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now. The second time, I picked up the detail and layering. Wow! I expect I'll read it many times, picking up more each time. It illustrates imperialism, colonialism, and slavery alright. It's brutal. I recommend it. The Land magazine's A…