If the World Were a Village

By sarajean on 7/17/10 1:35am
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A very clever, very sobering story has been circulating the Internet for a few years now. Known as “If the World were a Village of 100 People,” it depicts the world in accurate proportions regarding distribution in terms of religion, economic status, sex, Internet access, electric access, and much more information. Startlingly, only 5 out of the 100 people would control the majority of the wealth—and all five would be from the United States. All of the breakdowns can be read here.

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The Story of Stuff

By sarajean on 6/14/10 2:38am
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I recently wrote about Annie Leonard’s amazing twenty-minute film The Story of Stuff. If you’ve watched this very important, free film, you may want to learn how to take action, or to teach others about the story and what really happens to our products. You might also simply want to know more about the story. Where do all of Leonard’s statistics and other information come from? How exactly does pollution happen? What are other externalized costs, and how do they work?

To answer these and many more questions, Leonard has published The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health—and a Vision for Change.

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Philip Whalen - "Plums, Metaphysics, an Investigation, a Visit, and a Short Funeral Ode" (Video)

By cobwebsandstrange on 6/5/10 6:23pm
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Phillip Whalen is associated with all those Beat writers from the first half of the twentieth century. Pretty frequently he goes in on verse dedicated to the physical world surrounding him. And he likes plums.

Change the World for Ten Bucks, by we are what we do

By ecoscott on 3/6/10 11:07am
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we are what we do.we are what we do.

I scanned my bookshelf for something to read this morning (it’s a beautiful day out and I wanted to steal an hour or two under a tree in the park, you know?) and I just wasn’t feeling like heavy reading. So I looked at the thin books. Change the World for Ten Bucks caught my eye. It was a Christmas present that I haven’t looked at in 2 months.

On the cover (see above) are three smiling people, vaguely implying a really, really nice protest movement at a barbecue down the street, with the tagline: Small Actions x Lots of People = Big Change.

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Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn

By ecoscott on 2/15/10 3:30pm
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Ishmael by Daniel QuinnIshmael by Daniel Quinn

Ishmael will change how you view the world.

Or, if you’ve already shifted your view of the world, this may be the kind of book you give to a friend or family member when you get exasperated trying to explain the why’s and what-not’s of your world-view.

I’m being obtuse. Ishmael is about the story Western culture tells about how the world came to be the way it is. The book is structured primarily as a conversation between the narrator and a teacher in a modern-day type of Socratic dialogue. There is also a plot, but it’s a bit flimsy and very much secondary to the philosophical track of the conversation itself. To that end, the teacher is a gorilla- and this gorilla communicates with the narrator through telepathic conversation.

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Barbara Kingsolver, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle"

By erika on 12/26/09 3:57pm
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I was given a copy of this book by a complete stranger with whom I had happened to strike up a conversation.  She handed it to me against my weak protestations, saying that in exchange for receiving the book, all she asked was that I pass it along to someone else once I had finished with it.  She also promised that it would change my life.  One of those two things came to pass; I'll let you guess which one.


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Eating to Save the Earth

By sarajean on 11/9/09 9:22am
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One of the best environmental book buys I’ve ever bought is Eating to Save the Earth: Food Choices for a Healthy Planet. Linda Riebel and Ken Jacobsen’s book may look tiny—it’s a thin guide just under 100 pages—but it’s jam packed with facts, figures, tips and just about everything you need to eat a healthy diet that’s good for the planet.

Part One discusses your purchasing power as a citizen. It covers everything from where to buy earth-friendly foods to food labels, organic foods to processed, frozen, packaged, and canned foods. It also gives facts about different kinds of foods—from coffees and drinks to fruits and veggies to dairy, fish, meat, and more. Each chapter has so much information you may want to re-read sections twice.

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