July 2017 Creation Corner Column: Books and other media, events, quotes, links
The Age of Spiritual Machines. Ray Kurzweil.
The Art of Loading Brush (forthcoming). Wendell Berry.
Chesapeake Country. Eugene L. Meyer (author), Lucian Niemeyer (photographer).
Creating An Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation. Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams.
Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene. Clive Hamilton.
Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing Out of Catastrophe. Antony Loewenstein.
Dronescapes: The New Aerial Photography from Dronestragram. Ayperi Karabuda Ecer, editor.
Earth Eats: Real Food, Green Living. Annie Corrigan with Daniel Orr.
Ecology or Catastrophe: The Life of Murray Bookchin. Janet Biehl.
Energy Without Conscience: Oil, Climate Change, and Complicity. David McDermott Hughes.
The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World---And Us. Richard O. Prum.
Gifford Pinchot: Selected Writings. Edited by Char Miller
Global Environmental Politics. Kate O'Neill and Stacy D. VanDeveer, Editors.
Henry David Thoreau: A Life. Laura Dassow Walls.
The Hour of the Land. Terry Tempest Williams.
Ice Blink: Navigating Northern Environmental History. Edited by Stephen Bocking and Brad Martin.
Is Birdsong Music?: Outback Encounters with an Australian Songbird. Hollis Taylor.
Land! The Case for an Agrarian Economy (John Crowe Ransom). Edited by Jason Peters.
Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World. Mike Davis.
Living Through the End of Nature: The Future of American Environmentalism. Paul Wapner.
The New Agrarian Mind. Allan C. Carlson.
Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness. Peter Godfrey Smith.
Patterns in Nature: Why the Natural World Looks the Way it Does. Philip Ball.
Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim America's Native Culture. Chip Colwell.
Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life. Adam Greenfield.
Read,
Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories From Turtle Island. Edited by Sophie
McCall, Deanna Reder, David Gaertner, and Gabrielle L'Hirondelle Hall.
Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten Our Future. Donald R. Prothero.
Rising Tides: Climate Refugees in the Twenty-First Century. John R. Wennersten and Denise Robbins.
Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction, 2nd edition. Edited by Gary B. Ferngren.
Selling Local: Why Local Food Movements Matter. Jennifer Meta Robinson and James Robert Farmer.
Song of Increase: Listening to the Wisdom of Honeybees for Kinder Beekeeping and a Better World. Jacqueline Freeman.
Sustainable Food Systems: The Role of the City. Robert Biel (free PDF Download).
Tales of an Ecotourist: What Travel to Wild Places Can Teach Us about Climate Change. Mike Gunter, Jr.
Thank You Fossil Fuels & Good Night: The Twenty-First Century's Energy Transition. Gregory Meehan.
Thoreau and the Language of Trees. Richard Higgins.
The Transhumanist Wager. Zoltan Istvan
Watershed Discipleship: Reinhabiting Bioregional Faith and Practice. Ched Myers, ed.; foreword by Denise M. Nadeau.
When the Hills Are Gone: Frac Sand Mining and the Struggle for Community (forthcoming). Thomas Pearson.
Why Birds Sing. David Rothenberg.
Wilderness Forever: Howard Zahniser and the Path to the Wilderness Act. Mark Harvey.
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Books on the theme of The Brave New World of Gene Editing:
A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution. Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg.
DNA Is Not Destiny: The Remarkable, Completely Misunderstood Relationship Between You and Your Genes. Steven J. Heine.
The Gene Machine: How Genetic Technologies Are Changing the Way We Have Kids---and the Kids We Have. Bonnie Rochman.
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Books by the same author:
David Helvarg:
50 Ways to Save the Ocean
Blue Frontier: Dispatches from America's Ocean Wilderness
The Golden Shore: California's Love Affair with the Sea
The Ocean and Coastal Conservation Guide: The Blue Movement Directory
Rescue Warriors: The U.S. Coast Guard, America's Forgotten Heroes
Saved the Seas: Hope, Heartbreak and Wonder in the Blue World
Other Media:
Blue Frontier, and ocean conservation and policy group at www.bluefront.org .
Celebrating Wendell Berry in Music two-volume audio cd
Vol. 1, disc one: In Song and Shade (poetry readings by Wendell Berry; choral music/art songs composed by Andrew Mayfield.
Vol. 1, disc two: On Wendell's Farm (Berry poetry and Eric Bibb music)
Vol. 2, All the Earth Shall Sing (18 tracks of poetry readings and music)
Chasing Coral. Documentary appearing on Netflix.
Christians and the Environment. An eBook from Sojourners. www.sojo.net also available at amazon.com .
Surf Your Watershed site by entering your zip code at www.epa.gov/surf
Events:
The 28th Annual Energy Fair: Clean Energy + Sustainable Living. St. Paul, MN Sept. 9-10, 2017.
www.TheEnergyFair.org .
Fate
of the Earth Lecture Series, Oct. 11, 2017, Elizabeth Kolbert speaker
(author of The Sixth Extinction), NYC. Prior event, lecture by Bill
McKibben, can be seen www.fateoftheearth.org .
Quotations:
More Americans now work in solar power than in all of America's coal
mines, oil fields, and gas extraction operations combined." Harvey
Wasserman; he wrote Solartopia!: Our Green-Powered Earth, edits www.nukefree.org and his "Green Power & Wellness" radio show is at prn.fm.
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"Global warming is the biggest thing humans have ever done." Bill McKibben of http://www.350.org .
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"Neither liberals nor conservatives have stood up to the ravaging of farmland by the industrial economy." Wendell Berry.
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"In
order to achieve the sort of limitlessness of the living world that we
have begun to call 'sustainability,' strict limits must be observed."
Wendell Berry.
Wendell Berry's rewording of the Golden Rule: "Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you."
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Read
Think
Do
Repeat
....advice from The Christian Century magazine (subtitle is "Thinking Critically, Living Faithfully")
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The Works of Mercy The Works of War
Feed the Hungry Destroy Crops and Land
Give Drink to the Thirsty Seize Food Supplies
Clothe the Naked Destroy Homes and Villages
Visit the Sick Scatter Families
Shelter the Homeless Contaminate Water
To Visit the Prisoners Imprison Dissenters
To Bury the Dead Inflict Wounds and Burns
Pray for the Living and the Dead Kill the Living
....calligraphy graphic from The Catholic Worker monthly newspaper
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Religion
that is pure and faultless (undefiled, genuine, acceptable) in the
sight of God the Father means to care for orphans and widows in their
distress, and to keep oneself from being polluted (unstained, unspotted)
by the world. James 1:27
Note for discussion:
If we might use a modern understanding of pollution in this regard, we
might very well begin with where we live: in our built environment and
the pollution that ensues from within such.
For a recent summary of indoor air quality, derived from a summit between The Atlantic Magazine and the Dyson Corporation, see
Of course
if we consider the admonition as "refusing to let the world corrupt us",
"remain uncorrupted by this world", or to "keep one's soul without
defilement from the world", such an interpretation would lead us into a
different discussion, beyond the scope intended here.
