For the Love of Books

I have been rethinking how to sell books for a few years now. Like any sell-able product, books too can clash with environmentalism. Thinking of the latest space trip with former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, whose company doesn’t pay taxes, and whose motto seems to be to pollute space and use it as  a rich …

Ecocity 2019

It was with pleasure that I participated in the Ecocity Summit in Vancouver yesterday. From the site: The Ecocity World Summit is the longest-standing international Summit that addresses building cities in balance with nature. It is a biennial event involving over 1,000 delegates from around the world. The first Summit in this series was held …

The Light in August: My Time on Salt Spring Island

Light in August is a 1932 novel by William Faulkner, which took place in Mississippi and examined issues that arose in conflict between those alienated in society and the Puritanical white society. According to Hugh Ruppersburg’s Reading Faulkner: Light in August, Faulkner said of the title: In August in Mississippi there’s a few days somewhere …

Us, the Movie

Last night was date night: vegan pasta at Pasta Pollo and a spontaneous decision to go see the movie Us, which we’d been wanting to see. I was blown away, quite honestly. For one, I admire Jordan Peele’s work, most particularly his movie Get Out. I did not read any spoilers or theorycrafting for Us because …

Parts Unknown

I’ve been avidly watching Anthony Bordain’s Parts Unknown over the summer. It’s on Canada’s Netflix, at least the first eight seasons. I like the show because it really goes into the diverse cultures of places around the world, many of which I’ve never been. It ties together food, politics, culture, and natural environment. I think …

Hauntings

Jeff VanderMeer has a great piece today in Environmental Critiques called “Hauntings in the Anthropocene.” It goes into dealing psychologically, and in fiction, with global warming, which he terms a “hyperobject.” Morton’s central idea of a hyperobject is in a sense a way of using a word as an anchor for something that would be …