We started out organizing these entries by the title of the book we were discussing. But we've realized, that is not going to work. This discussion, the themes and memes covered in these readings, are to intertwined. Just as in our Book Club meetings, in which we refer back to past discussions to enrich the current book, these conversations sort of weave into a larger tapestry of thought. A larger discussion on the place of humans in the natural world.
For me this year, it all started in early March listening to Terry Tempest-Williams presenting at the Wallace Stegner Center of Land, Resources and the Environment's annual symposium. As this year marks the 100th anniversary of Stegner's birth, the symposium was dedicated to Stegner's life and legacy. Terry reflected on Stegner's advice to her and Charles Wilkinson in their work to protect wilderness lands in Southern Utah. Stegner's advice? Be bold! Saving wilderness is protecting the place in which our humanity has a place to breathe. I asked myself: What in my life is worth fighting to save?
The next week, Thomas Friedman was in town. He discussed the "Americum", the measure of people in the world living the "American lifestyle" in terms of consumption. It struck me that it is our moral responsibility as Americans to redefine the "American Dream" so that it can be protected, so that it can expand and more people in this world can live with basic food security, clean water, healthcare, education, justice, and opportunity; but so that the balance of life on this planet can be sustained -- including places of wilderness, I would guess. And in his discussion, and especially in the reading of his book, it was evident that the market has been heavily changed by the lobbying of oil companies and auto manufacturers who have ensured that carbon fuel was cheap, easy to attain, and guzzled up by large "American Made" automobiles.
what is worth protecting? I want people across the world to have the same basics that I have. Am I willing to give up on the intense excess, recalibrate the American dream, so that more people can live with safety, security, and peace? What portion of "the American lifestyle" is worth fighting for, worth saving?
A couple of weeks later, a group of local community members formed a discussion group on the Northwest Earth Institute's "Menu for the Future". Together, all of us women living in Salt Lake City with school-aged children, we have spent the past six weeks exploring issues of the food supply. Corporate agriculture, fossil fuels in the food supply chain, pesticides and additives in our food supply, explotation and effects from pesticide exposure of agriculture workers. All while Michelle Obama is taking heat for choosing organic growing practices on the White House lawn. And what is our largest concern is as mothers is the time and cost of restoring nature -- faith -- in our families' food. We start to ask ourselves, "we've placed such a value on convenience because we are so busy. Why are we so busy?" What is worth protecting?? Isn't the health of our families, and the time we can spend together growing, sourcing, cooking, sharing food worth protecting??
Then Tyrone Hayes comes to Salt Lake to finish up the Nature of Things 2009. He talks about the effects of the agricultural pesticide Atrazine in frog populations. And there it is again: 80 million pounds of Atrazine used in American agriculture each year, corporate reaction to research indicating that Atrazine is causing hormonal change in frog populations living in waters with agricultural run off, documentation that when the company realized that Atrazine was contributing to hormonal changes that stimulated some cancers, they then established a new division to create a pharmaceutical that can reduce the hormonal changes -- rather than removing the Atrazine from the market, they are now selling the pesticide to the agriculture industry and the cancer-treatment pharmeceutal through the healthcare treatment. Tyrone's final call? Get politically active to call for better testing, integrative evaluation of pesticides so that the real story can be told. The future is in your hands. Is that worth fighting for?
It starts to feel that we are living in a society in which the basics have traded out for convience, profit, predictablity.
Wendell Berry: where we are headed....
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