Serious?
I noted that it has been awhile since I posted a 'serious' entry. It isn't that I haven't been thinking and reading, investigating and pursuing interesting ideas, it is more that I haven't reached a point where I want to discuss my conclusions, fears and leaps of fancy. Maybe it's the time of year - I'm very busy getting the garden underway and it means that I'm particularly close to the dirt and life, consumption and production. But some of the reading has directly centered on the very process I'm going through, if in a macro treatment of my micro existence.
I may not be tracking my calories or portions in my notebook currently but I have continued to record the books I finish. Since the beginning of the year I have read 14 volumes, usually working on a fiction title and a non-fiction at the same time. The stories have been quite a variety: the three volumes of the Golden Compass series, a Michael Connelly mystery, "Howl's Moving Castle" and its sequel, Mitch Albom's "For One More Day," one paranormal romance and Crichton's "Next." The non-fiction books have all had a certain bent: Michael Pollan's "Omnivore's Dilemma" (which I have mentioned in passing) and "In Defense of Food," "It's a Long Road to a Tomato, the memoir of an organic farmer and Bill McKibben's "Deep Economy." It is one thing to be uplifted and heartened by a book but quite another to then put those inspirations into practice, letting those ideas change your way of living. So I have plans to expand the garden and have set out to change how I deal with food, with consumption and, finally, with how I view progress and how I value certain behaviors. So I'm going to the farmer's market every Saturday and investigating new foods, I'm trying to eat local and spend my money with a conscience. Back in the journal I passed along what I found out about certain food producers; this was just the beginning of the process.
Not all the ideas I have been reading on will be familiar to my usual correspondents; it has been thought-provoking, especially as I worked through the McKibben book (which I finished this morning). It might be easier to write about the entire group of non-fiction books if they were all still here - I loaned Omnivore out to one of my employees - but we'll see what I get time to discuss.
My current books are Lincoln Child's "Deep Storm" and Joan Gussow's "This Organic Life."
I may not be tracking my calories or portions in my notebook currently but I have continued to record the books I finish. Since the beginning of the year I have read 14 volumes, usually working on a fiction title and a non-fiction at the same time. The stories have been quite a variety: the three volumes of the Golden Compass series, a Michael Connelly mystery, "Howl's Moving Castle" and its sequel, Mitch Albom's "For One More Day," one paranormal romance and Crichton's "Next." The non-fiction books have all had a certain bent: Michael Pollan's "Omnivore's Dilemma" (which I have mentioned in passing) and "In Defense of Food," "It's a Long Road to a Tomato, the memoir of an organic farmer and Bill McKibben's "Deep Economy." It is one thing to be uplifted and heartened by a book but quite another to then put those inspirations into practice, letting those ideas change your way of living. So I have plans to expand the garden and have set out to change how I deal with food, with consumption and, finally, with how I view progress and how I value certain behaviors. So I'm going to the farmer's market every Saturday and investigating new foods, I'm trying to eat local and spend my money with a conscience. Back in the journal I passed along what I found out about certain food producers; this was just the beginning of the process.
Not all the ideas I have been reading on will be familiar to my usual correspondents; it has been thought-provoking, especially as I worked through the McKibben book (which I finished this morning). It might be easier to write about the entire group of non-fiction books if they were all still here - I loaned Omnivore out to one of my employees - but we'll see what I get time to discuss.
My current books are Lincoln Child's "Deep Storm" and Joan Gussow's "This Organic Life."