PREVIOUS BOOK DISCUSSIONS
At Richmond Free Library – they have several copies of the book in preparation.
Only those who love trees should cut them, writes forester Ethan Tapper.In How to Love a Forest, he asks what it means to live in a time in which ecosystems are in retreat and extinctions rattle the bones of the earth. How do we respond to the harmful legacies of the past? How do we use our species’ incredible power to heal rather than to harm?
Tapper walks us through the fragile and resilient community that is a forest. He introduces us to wolf trees and spring ephemerals, and to the mysterious creatures of the rhizosphere and the necrosphere. He helps us reimagine what forests are and what it means to care for them. This world, Tapper writes, is degraded by people who do too much and by those who do nothing. As the ecosystems that sustain all life struggle, we straddle two worlds: a status quo that treats them as commodities and opposing claims that the only true expression of love for the natural world is to leave it alone.
Proffering a more complex vision, Tapper argues that the actions we must take to protect ecosystems are often counterintuitive, uncomfortable, even heartbreaking. With striking prose, he shows how bittersweet acts–like loving deer and hunting them, loving trees and felling them–can be expressions of compassion. Tapper weaves a new land ethic for the modern world, reminding us that what is simple is rarely true, and what is necessary is rarely easy.
Ethan Tapper (until recently Chittenden County’s Forester) gives a very personal account of how he became a forester, and then purchased and worked to restore the health of a parcel of forested land in Bolton. He learned, and we learn from him, how humans lived for hundreds of years in equilibrium with forests that supported them. Then huge changes occurred when European settlers arrived and unsustainably exploited American forests by clear-cutting for the value of the lumber, and to create pastures for sheep and cattle.
Tapper’s accounts of coming to understand the history of his land and his personal battles to overcome an initial sense of despair is very informative, and ultimately encouraging.
At the same time, he is realistic in describing the challenges faced by the natural world in the face of human relentless exploitation of its resources, and how we should address them.
Wednesday, May 22, 7:00 pm, will be of “Playing God in the Meadow: How I Learned to Admire My Weeds – by Martha Leb Molnar.
Come to the discussion of the book Playing God in the Meadow on Wednesday, Nov. 13 from 6:30 – 8:00 pm at the Richmond Free Library Community Room. The Library and Richmond Climate Action Committee are the co-sponsors. Refreshments are provided. The library has multiple copies of the book. Read on to find out about this great book!
After decades of fantasizing and saving, Martha Leb Molnar and her husband had found their parcel of land. Determined to turn an overgrown and unproductive Vermont apple orchard into a thriving and beautiful landscape, they decided to restore this patch of land to a pristine meadow and build a safe haven for their family and nearby wildlife.
Once they cleared the gnarled and dying trees away, Molnar was forced to wage war on the invasive species that had sprung up around the property. Propelled by the heated debates surrounding non-native species and her own complicated family history and migration, she was driven to research the Vermont landscape, turning to scientific literature, experts in botany and environmental science, and locals who have long tended the land in search of answers. At turns funny, thoughtful, and conversational, Playing God in the Meadow follows this big city transplant as she learns to make peace with rural life and an evolving landscape that she cannot entirely control.
Wednesday, May 22, 7:00 pm,“The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth” – by Elizabeth Rush.
The author travels to the Thwaites ‘Doomsday’ Glacier. An astonishing, vital book about Antarctica, climate change, and motherhood from the author of Rising, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.
In 2019, fifty-seven scientists and crew set out onboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer. Their destination: Thwaites Glacier. Their goal: to learn as much as possible about this mysterious place, never before visited by humans, and believed to be both rapidly deteriorating and capable of making a catastrophic impact on global sea-level rise.
The author is a climate reporter for Rolling Stone.
This book has a lot of useful information, practical steps we need to take to protect the most vulnerable from extreme heat.
The Heat Will Kill You First is about the extreme ways in which our planet is already changing. It is about why spring is coming a few weeks earlier and fall is coming a few weeks later and the impact that will have on everything from our food supply to disease outbreaks. It is about what will happen to our lives and our communities when typical summer days in Chicago or Boston go from 90° F to 110°F. A heatwave, Goodell explains, is a predatory event—one that culls out the most vulnerable people. But that is changing. As heatwaves become more intense and more common, they will become more democratic. As an award-winning journalist who has been at the forefront of environmental journalism for decades, Goodell’s new book may be his most provocative yet, explaining how extreme heat will dramatically change the world as we know it.
Books are available to borrow from the library. Please join us for conversation on February 21 at 4 pm in the Community Room. Website (library): here
Nov 2023 Book:
The Nutmeg’s Curse by Amitav Ghosh
Discussion Questions here
In this ambitious successor to The Great Derangement, acclaimed writer Amitav Ghosh finds the origins of our contemporary climate crisis in Western colonialism’s violent exploitation of human life and the natural environment.
The Nutmeg’s Curse frames climate change and the Anthropocene as the culmination of a history that begins with the discovery of the New World and of the sea route to the Indian Ocean. Ghosh makes the case that the political dynamics of climate change today are rooted in the centuries-old geopolitical order that was constructed by Western colonialism. This argument is set within a broader narrative about human entanglements with botanical matter—spices, tea, sugarcane, opium, and fossil fuels—and the continuities that bind human history with these earthly materials. Ghosh also writes explicitly against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests, and international immigration debates, among other pressing issues, framing these ongoing crises in a new way by showing how the colonialist extractive mindset is directly connected to the deep inequality we see around us today.
May 2023 Book:
Wednesday, May 24, 7:00 pm Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
In this bestselling collection of essays, Indigenous scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer shows how other living beings—plants, berries, salamanders—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten to hear their voices. Described by readers as “gentle, simple, tactile, beautiful, even sacred,” this book opens our eyes as to how acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world can awaken a wider ecological consciousness.
Books (and an audiobook) are available to borrow from the library. Please join us for conversation (and cookies) on May 24 at 7 pm in the Community Room.
Library Information here.
February 2023 Book:
In collaboration with the Richmond Free Library, the discussion book this February is We Are the Weather, by Jonathan Safran Foer. Several copies are available at the Richmond library. It is a great read and we hope you will join the discussion on Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023 at 4 pm at the Richmond Free Library.
We Are the Weather explores the central global dilemma of our time in a surprising, deeply personal, and urgent new way.
The task of saving the planet will involve a great reckoning with ourselves―with our all-too-human reluctance to sacrifice immediate comfort for the sake of the future. We have, he reveals, turned our planet into a farm for growing animal products, and the consequences are catastrophic. Only collective action will save our home and way of life. And it all starts with what we eat―and don’t eat―for breakfast.
November 2022 Book:
In collaboration with the Richmond Free Library, we hosted discussion of Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. Described as “a masterpiece of the imagination,” the “cli-fi” novel speaks of how climate change will affect us all. In it, Robinson paints a picture of the world’s nations cooperating to address the climate crisis, succeeding in greatly lowering carbon emissions, and creating a livable future.
Copies of the book are currently available to borrow from the Richmond Library. All are welcome to join the discussion at the library on Wednesday, November 9, 2022 at 4 pm.