This week I finished:

This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption Are Ruining the American West, by podcast guest Christopher Ketcham: I consider Chris one of the top journalists on our environmental symptoms for many reasons. The top two are his taking on essential topics few others do, especially growth and limits to it, and writing about them knowledgeably and effectively.

In This Land he reveals the tragic horror story of corruption, extraction, and depletion of the US west. Chapter after chapter hits like a gut punch of how our taxes are paying for the opposite of what we’d expect. When you think it can’t get more dire, the next chapter reveals a whole other dimension of corruption.

Corruption feels like the most nightmarish part. People and industries that present themselves as quintessentially self-supporting, free, and individualistic wallow in socialist welfare they would describe as debilitating if supplied to anyone else. It’s sickening. My point isn’t to say they are hypocritical or imperfect. We’re all hypocritical about some things and imperfect. My point is the effect: pollution, depletion, and needless, pointless death and killing.

I read, watched, and listened to Chris speak about the book on online videos. People call him extreme, or othering words like it. I see him as holding and expressing strong opinion, but he’s clear about it. He’s not trying to sneak anything past anyone. On the contrary, he’s illuminating what others are trying to sneak past us. I don’t like convincing, cajoling, and coercing. Chris isn’t doing any of them. He’s sharing what he sees and his views on them.

I recommend This Land and would recommend it no less if I didn’t know Chris. It fits with Cadillac Desert and The Last Worst Time.

Yi Yi, directed by Edward Yang: I rewatched this movie that I first watched a few years ago. At the time I was dating a woman who loved movies and it led to friction between us because any drama or movie related to family, love, life transitions, cities, modernity, or a few other themes, I would say “I didn’t like it as much as Yi Yi.”

I struggle to describe this movie because it’s not about anything dramatic. It shows a few weeks in the lives of the members of a family in Taipei. They aren’t unusual. They go through a wedding, birth, funeral, and experience love, loss, shame, joy, discovery, and other things we all do.

Yet everything about this movie excels. The direction, script, acting, cinematography, and everything. It’s about a specific time and place, yet applies universally to anyone at any time.

It says something I always knew to be true, yet had never seen or heard expressed before. Without seeing it, I wouldn’t be able to believe such a work of art and expression could exist.

It’s one of my favorite movies. Seeing it this time, I knew more of what to expect. I enjoyed seeing details and richness I hadn’t seen before. I expect I’ll discover new aspects with each rewatching.

• ← “They blame me for their guilt”
• Disposable means imperialist. So does polluting. →