Creation Corner Column, August 2021
Summer Reading Part 2: Seasons of Creation
Imagine It: A Handbook for a Happier Planet. Heather Reisman and Laurie David.
Letters From Animals: To the people who think they're just beasts. Frederic Brremaud, art by Giovanni Rigano. Adapted from wildlife conservationist Allain Bourgrain Dubourg's celebrated book. (Intended for middle-aged readers aged 8-14 or above. It may contain scenes of light intensity. Includes information on how to care for animals in your neighborhood).
Living with Yards: Negotiating Nature and the Habits of Home. Ursula Lang.
Losing Eden: Our Fundamental Need for the Natural World---and Its Ability to Heal Body and Soul. Lucy Jones.
Loving Animals: On Bestiality, Zoophilia and Post-Human Love. Joanna Bourke.
The Lure of the Beach: A Global History. Robert C. Ritchie.
The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy. Michael E. Mann and Tom Toles. 2016.
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the Present. Harriet A. Washington.
Migrations: A Novel. Charlotte McConaghy. climate fiction.
Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism. Mariana Mazzucato.
Moving Water: The Everglades and Big Sugar. Amy Green.
Natural Grace: God and Nature in our Slice of Pennsylvania. Thomas Ask.
The Nature of the Future: Agriculture, Science, and Capitalism in the Antebellum North. Emily Pawley.
Nature Shock: Getting Lost in America. Jon T. Coleman.
The New Climate Activism: NGO Authority and Participation in Climate Change Governance. Jen Iris Allan.
The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet. Michael Mann.
The New Possible: Visions of Our World Beyond Crisis. Varshini Prakash (Sunrise Movement).
On Trails: An Exploration. Robert Moor.
Only God Can Make a Tree: A Meditation. A book of pen and ink drawings. Vol. 1. Peter Grimord.
Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion. Elizabeth L. Cline.
Overview Time lapse. Benjamin Grant & Timothy Dougherty (satellite images of earth over time).
Plagues and Princes: The Great Mortality. Thomas Schultz. Historical Fiction.
Planetary Mine: Territories of Extraction under Late Capitalism. Martin Arboleda.
Planting the World: Joseph Banks and His Collectors: An Adventurous History of Botany. Jordan Goodman.
Pollution is Colonialism. Max Liboiron.
Post Growth: Life After Capitalism. Tim Jackson.
The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. Toby Ord.
The Rights of the Defenseless: Protecting Animals and Children in Gilded Age America. Susan J. Pearson.
Sauntering: Writers Walk Europe. Duncan Minshull, editor.
A Search for Safe Passage (re: wildlife corridors). Frances Figart. Illustrations by Emma DuFort. For youth 7-13.
Second Nature: Scenes from a World Remade. Nathaniel Rich.
Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don't Know about the Ocean. Naomi Oreskes.
Scorched Earth: Environmental Warfare as a Crime Against Humanity and Nature. Emmanuel Kreike. A global history of environmental warfare and the case for why it should be a crime.
Seed to Dust: A Gardener's Story. Marc Hamer.
Smokescreen: Debunking Wildfire Myths to Save Our Forests and Our Climate. Chad T. Hanson.
Snowflake: A Climate Thriller. Arthur Jeon. Fiction.
The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction. David Quammen.
The Spirit of Green: The Economics of Collisions and Contagions in a Crowded World. William Nordhaus.
The State of Diversity in Environmental Organizations. Dorceta E. Taylor. 2014.
Tales of Two Planets: Stories of Climate Change and Inequality in a Divided World. John Freeman.
A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind. Harriet A. Washington.
Theory of the Earth. Thomas Nail.
This Radical Land: A Natural History of American Dissent. Daegan Miller.
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future. Elizabeth Kolbert.
Up to Heaven and Down to Hell: Fracking, Freedom and Community in an American Town. Colin Jerolmack.
Vesper Flights: New and Collected Essays. Helen Macdonald.
Wanderers: A History of Women Walking. Kerri Andrews.
Waste: One Woman's Fight Against America's Dirty Secret. Catherine Coleman Flowers.
The Water Kingdom: A Secret History of China. Philip Ball.
Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World. M.R. O'Connor.
We Are the Land: A History of Native California. Damon B. Akins and William J. Bauer, Jr.
We Are Water Protectors. Carole Lindstrom, author; Michaela Goade, illustrator. Caldecott Medal winner for illustration of a children's picture book, indigenous theme.
What It's Like to Be a Bird: From Flying to Nesting, Eating to Singing---What Birds Are Doing and Why. David Allen Sibley.
Winning a Green New Deal: Why We Must, How We Can. Varshini Prakash. Guido Girgenti, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Bill McKibben, Rev. William Barber II, Joseph Stiglitz, Mary Kay Henry, et al.
World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments. Aimee Nezhukumatathil, with illustrations by Fumi Mini Nakamura.
Eco-theology Titles
See the home page for Lutherans Restoring Creation for "books" and also "google" "ecotheology books" for a variety of titles. A more recent publication is
Celebrating Nature by Faith: Studies in Reformation Theology in an Era of Global Emergency. H. Paul Santmire.
Climate Change Titles
One list can be found at earthday.org for 12-best-books-on-climate-change
Acronyms of Interest
30 x 30 Movement plan would place 30% of U.S. lands and 30% of U.S. waters under federal guidelines protection by 2030, as announced by the Biden administration April 16, 2021 for conservation purposes and to help offset climate change. This mirrors similar international efforts.
RECLAIM is the "Revitalizing the Economy of Coal Communities by Leveraging Local Activities and Investment More) Act to fund reclamation projects and community-led economic development in Appalachia, if passed by Congress.
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Groups
Centre for Science and the Environment, Sunita Narain, director, whose article " Why Climate Matters" appeared in TIME magazine of June 21/28, 2021, in their series of articles on "A New Hope For Health Care."
Climate Litigation Network, Tessa Kahn, co-director ("Save the Planet, One Lawsuit at a Time" article in The Guardian Weekly, August 21, 2020, one in a multiple of articles in its "The Future Starts Here" series).
Lifelong Learning Courses (from Great Courses.com)
The National Geographic Guide to Birding in North America.
The Science of Gardening.
Wonders of the National Parks: A Geology of North America.
The World's Greatest Geological Wonders/36 Spectacular Sites.
COVID Pandemic Title
The Pandemic Century: A History of Global Contagion from the Spanish Flu to Covid-19. Mark Honigsbaum.
Season of Creation in September 2021
September is the Season of Creation in the church liturgical year. So for four Sundays in September, before St. Francis of Assisi Day on October 3, you are invited to join in celebrating with creation, and to re-commit yourselves to a ministry of healing Earth, with Christ and Creation as partners.
Resources:
seasonofcreation.com
seasonofcreation.org
letallcreationpraise.org
lutheransrestroringcreation.org
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Mike Ochs finds common ground between religion and politics in his concern for the environment.
Politically he self-published the first "Greens Bibliography" of the English-language literature on the international Green Party movement (1989), the project for his Master of Liberal Arts in International Studies degree at Lock Haven (PA) University. He also helped plant the seeds for the Green Party of PA at that time, and remains a cyber-activist with it.
For a monthly newsletter of the ecumenical United Churches of Lycoming County (PA), he has written the "Creation Corner Column" since 1997. It became a blog in 2011 at
He received a B.A. degree from Gettysburg College in 1965.
