Books & Music...

Upon recently hearing Bill McKibben give a talk about some of the concepts behind Deep Economy, it reminded me again why I love his writing so much. Reading Deep Economy is like sitting around the kitchen table at Grandma's while she splashes spices and flavors into her stew pot as effortlessly as she recalls a great story about growing up in rural America--the combination of which will undoubtedly result in a delicious and memorable meal.

McKibben also makes you think about the way you're living--and dares you to change. It's definitely a leafy green read that should be read by the skeptics more so than the choir.

Here's a green nugget from his book, now out in the more economical paperback edition:

Jack and Anne Lazor bought Butterworks Farm in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom in the midseventies, after a stint of working at Old Sturbridge Farm in Massachusetts. There they dressed in colonial costumes and milked cows by hand and talked to the tourists. But, as they eventually figured out, they weren't actors; they were real farmers. Slowly they've developed one of the state's premier dairies: their organic yogurt is nearly a million-dollar business, expanding steadily year after year ... It's great fun to sit in their kitchen eating bacon and eggs while Anne mixes up some salve for the teats of her cows and the Lazors describe their life. The talk's a mix of technical detail ... and rural philosophy. "We have such a 'take' mentality," Jack says. "It's part of our psyche, because we came to this verdant land as Europeans and were able to exploit it for so long."

But here the exploitation feels more like collaboration. We stroll over to his solar barn, where the forty cows in the herd loiter patiently, mulling over the events of the day. "That's Morel, that's Phooey, that's Vetch, that's Clove, that's Jewel ..." The vet wanders in, to report that he's figured out what's wrong with Emily: milk fever, easily treated. ... It's very clam in here, no sound but cud being chewed, and it's warm out of the late-winter wind. Jack, who's a talker, is explaining how Vermont could market itself as "the natural state," and how he's hoping to market masa harina for making tortillas next year, and so forth. I'm sort of listening, and mostly just absorbing the sheer pleasure of the scene—that this place works, that I've been connected to it all winter long, that it will be here, with any luck, for the rest of my life.