And So September Continues

Kitchen time!

Labor Day weekend was busy. Sun, rain, company at home, many holiday-makers in Northport, meals and sleep, lots of books going to new homes, with here and there some quiet time for a dog walk or, lower on Sarah’s priority list, a short grooming session. Reading, too, of course, even if it had to happen at 3 a.m. while the rest of the world slept.

American Stranger, a novel by David Plante, came to me as an ARC from Delphinium Books. While it was enjoyable reading, I have to say I expected more. Nancy’s parents fled the Nazis in Berlin but never speak of those days. She grows up believing that her parents’ furniture came with them from Germany and only learns as an adult that they bought it all in New York. But that is the extent of the revelations from their old life. There is a vague reference to “the president” asking people what they can do for their country but no more politics than that. I understand that the novel had to do with Nancy’s life, not the life of the greater United States. Still, it seems odd that the world around her wouldn’t seep into her thoughts now and then. I would have liked to get out of the bedroom more, I guess.

Pause en route

From fiction I turned to another book on economics and am finding that fascinating and very, very important. I’m trying to think back to my days as an office worker at Western Michigan University and topics covered in the interdisciplinary Environmental Studies course: Did those students perhaps read Herman Daly? The first edition of Steady-State Economics came out in 1977, so it’s entirely possible. I’ll have to ask my friend who was the program advisor, but if I knew the name back then I’d forgotten it.

My introduction or re-introduction, whichever it was, to Herman E. Daly in the 21^st century came, as does much of my environmental/scientific news, by way of Acres USA, a magazine that calls itself “The Voice of Eco-Agriculture.” With their Eco-Update and Industrial Ag Watch news sections, I keep abreast of developments that don’t necessarily make NPR or the top newspapers in the country, but another fantastic feature is the interview in every issue. (I’m trying to get the editorial people to pull a few years’ worth of interviews together into a book. I would be thrilled to have that for sale at Dog Ears!) September’s interviewee was Herman Daly himself, and I was so impressed by what he said in the magazine pages that I tracked down a few of his books.

Daly went from being a professor of economics to senior economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank. He co-founded and was associate editor of the journal Ecological Economics. As emeritus professor from the School of Economics, University of Maryland, he currently serves on the executive board of the Center for the Advancement of Steady State Economy. The essays in Steady-State Economics do not form a quick or easy read, but they are clearly written and understandable to any educated person willing to take the time.

Daly holds his opinions strongly and with good reason. In his preface to the second edition ((1991), he notes the omission of serious consideration for any works of “even remotely ‘Malthusian’” economics, including his own, by the majority of American economists who reject such theories and such works without examination. He quotes Daniel Raymond’s rejection of Malthus, Raymond who wrote simply that “the mind instinctively revolts at the conclusions....” Daly goes on:

It might be said in Mr. Raymond’s defense that one is not obliged to accept an unwanted or counterintuitive conclusion just because one cannot immediately find a logical or factual error in the argument leading to it. One might legitimately say, “I need to think about that.”

The thing is that they didn’t bother to think about it or examine it or consider it, and here Daly is stern:

[T]o refute an argument one must find either a factual error in the premises or a logical error in the reasoning. If after an extended time no such error can be found, then, contrary to Mr. Raymond’s view, one must bow to the conclusion of the argument. If the reader is annoyed with me at this point for unnecessarily reminding everyone about the elementary rules of argumentation, then I am glad. But experience has taught me that many people cannot distinguish an argument from a fulmination and are equally convinced (or unmoved) by either, depending only on whether or not the conclusion fits their established mind set.

(Is anyone else reminded here of the Heath and Heath book I brought forward recently? The well-supported contention in Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard that logic is not enough, that people also need a motive to change their minds and behavior? Well, that is an important insight, but for now I only bookmark it and suggest to those who missed the earlier post to check it out.)

The one big, big, big idea underlying steady-state economics is that “the economy” (an abstraction with no clear real-world referent) is not a closed, man-made system but an open system depending on low-entropy inputs from the natural world. Human beings convert raw material matter-energy into more artifacts and more people -- we reproduce ourselves as well as adding to the world’s “stuff” -- and output waste of all kinds. Some of our waste is recyclable, but even recycling takes time, so that even recyclable waste builds up, while a lot of our waste is nothing nature is equipped to recycle at all. The goal of unending economic growth, therefore, nothing more than a recipe by which we will bury ourselves in waste and ecological disaster.

Why have most economists not seen this?

Because they are too enamored of abstract mathematical models to allow the intrusion of the biosphere into their schemes, too committed to what Daly calls (and I love his dark humor) “crackpot rigor,” “scientistic pretension,” and the “blind aping of the mechanistic methods of physics,” at the same time that they ignore the laws of thermodynamics that would alert them to natural limits.

And because no one wants the bad news. “Growth” is seen as positive for two reasons. First, it’s the basis of power for nations; second, it’s an alternative to sharing. Daly puts it pithily: “It offers the prospect of more for all with sacrifice by none....”

Take the question of American agriculture “feeding the world.”

The drive to increase agricultural productivity leads to the replacement of low-yield species by newly developed high-yield species, which results in greater homogeneity of crops, that is, in a reduction in the diversity of the genetic stock and consequently a greater vulnerability to future pest and disease mutants. The increased vulnerability of the monoculture calls for even more protection by pesticides. [GMO seeds modified to be resistant to pesticides have only accelerated this vicious upward spiral.] In addition, more inputs of fertilizer and fresh-water irrigation are required by “green revolutions,” with resulting problems of water pollution and shortage.
 

It isn’t only farmers whose livelihood depends on soil and sun and rain. Everyone on earth is in the lifeboat together. Look at today’s newspaper. Any day's news!

"National Minstrel"

One of the reason I am so proud to sell so many used books is that these ‘artifacts’ (in Daly’s language) are still fulfilling their purpose as human artifacts, still conveying the ideas of their authors, still useful, not waste. And because I know how long books can live, when properly cared for, I feel good about selling new books, too. Here are a few places where I’ve written about questions of and books about resource use, production, “stuff,” books, etc.:

All Stuff Is Not Equal, Part I

All Stuff Is Not Equal, Part II

I Am Not a Luddite

Copyright 1836

And So, September Arrives

Labor Day weekend is not après-Season time. It’s the last big hurrah of The Season, with cars all over the roads and motel reservations a must, but “of The Season” is not “of the summer.” Autumn has arrived with cool temperatures and the first changing leaves, nighttime blankets on the bed and clothes that don’t want to dry completely on the line, even in full sun. Visitors we still have, and the calendar continues to be crowded with special events – life has not yet slowed down (one begins to wonder if it ever will again) -- yet the feeling of September is definitely here, a feeling difficult to pin down but saturated with memories.

I’ve been saving the posthumous collection of Jim Harrison’s essays, A Really Big Lunch, wanting to stretch the anticipation out as long as I could, but finally the other I succumbed to the pleasure, and pleasure it was indeed. Every page, every line, was so completely Jim’s voice that I felt, as I told my husband, as if Jim and Linda were alive again. I’ve never been to Montana and so never visited them in that home, but the descriptions of the house on French Road, of the U.P. cabin and surrounding woods, the Arizona casita and mountains there on the frontera, and even Paris (though my times in Paris were nothing like Harrison’s in any way!) – all those I pictured clearly while hearing Jim’s voice, my mind full of pictures and talk. And Linda, too. For instance, in one of my favorite essays in the book, “Gramps Le Fou,” writing of himself in the third person, Harrison had this to say:

Only a week ago he had announced to his wife that he intended to spend the rest of his life studying wrens, which he loved for their pretty heads and tubby bodies. “That’s a wonderful idea,” she replied.

I just love it. It made me so happy to hear their voices again!

Much in these essays is taken from memory’s hoard – memories of fishing and hunting, of eating and drinking, spectacular meals and memorable bottles of wine remembered again and again, along with the friends who shared the food and wine and the settings in which all were enjoyed. There are also dogs, of course, and there are dreams, and there is aging, and there is pain, but always acknowledgement that someone who has lived so vividly and so well has no grounds for complaint.

...I have no complaints because when not actually writing I get to be outdoors doing important things like hunting, fishing, bird-watching, roasting a wild piglet, studying the sources of creeks, or driving ornate mandalas around the entire country. By profession I collect memories.

The temptation for me is to go on quoting endlessly from A Really Big Lunch (famously, the title meal was a lunch of 37 courses -- but only, as he repeatedly reminds his readers, 19 wines!), but that would be self-indulgent, not to say selfish. Anyone who already loves Harrison’s work or is discovering it for the first time deserves to find his or her own favorite passages. The photos are wonderful, too.

My favorite - whole family + garden

After finishing, with a deep sigh, the last literary gift I can expect from Jim Harrison, it seemed logical to turn to another Michigan writer, Dan Gerber, who lived in Leland for several years. His novel, A Voice From The River (all words in the title are capitalized on the cover and on the title page), from Clark City Press, is one I must have read before but now seem to be “discovering” as if for the first time. When Dan lived in Leland, his favorite pastime one fierce winter seemed to be driving around in his 4-wheel-drive vehicle with heavy winch and rescuing motorists who had gone off icy roads into ditches. Gerber, like Harrison, is a writer I’ve appreciated most for his poetry, but A Voice From The River, a beautifully written, thoroughly original story, had me captivated today at 4 a.m.

Shorter days, cooler days and nights, the long, lovely, slanting fall sunlight, a different cast of blossoms and colors, and a crowd of memories: all that is September. For myself, I cannot deny the beauty of even the deadly invasive purple loosestrife. I would not plant or transplant it, but is it wrong to recognize its beauty when by happenstance we encounter one another?

August is over. Labor Day is almost upon us. I’ll be here in the bookstore on Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. but have not committed myself one way or the other about Monday. It will depend on how tired we are ... how many people are still in Northport on Sunday evening ... what kind of weather seems to be coming our way... how we feel. In general, once this weekend is past, I’ll be taking a few days off, probably Sunday and Monday on a regular basis and maybe a few more if we can snag a little break....

Whatever you are doing this holiday weekend, whether working or traveling or staying close to home or getting ready to go back to school, do stay safe! And a really big thanks to everyone for reading Books in Northport and for supporting independent bookstores in your hometown and wherever you travel!

Preparing for departure!

Just How Hard IS Change?

Good morning!

I’m coming back today to a book that cheered and energized me last week. In Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, Chip Heath & Dan Heath don’t tell us that change is ever easy, but they do make a convincing case that we can make change easier by approaching it differently.

Here’s how too many of us (yes, me, too), often react, when people aren’t making changes we want them to make:

“How can they be so stupid? And lazy! Can’t they see past their noses? Can’t they use their heads?” Sartre said (or, at least, is said to have said), “Hell is other people,” and who hasn’t felt frustration at the apparent intransigeance of other people? But every single one of us is an other. We meet face to face or online or over the phone: to me, you are the other. To you, I am. And that’s just how it is.

Chip Heath and Dan Heath – and I’m going to call them H&H from now on – cite numerous research studies and tell many true stories in every chapter. They are not simply “brainstorming” or speculating on how change might be made easier. Their tips and recommendations are clear and specific and backed up by results. And whether I want to change myself or someone else or a whole group of people, the basic empirical insights hold. H&H tell us story after story of changes that worked, changes initiated by people with no special authority or power other than an ability to see how to do things a different way.

Do human beings "stubbornly resist" change? Maybe the change they are asked to make isn’t clear to them. “What looks like resistance,” the authors say, “is often a lack of clarity. So provide crystal-clear direction.”

For instance, “Eat a healthier diet” is not specific. – And here I have to interrupt myself to say I don’t at all like the authors’ example, because it has to do with buying and drinking milk with only 1% butterfat rather than whole milk, and I am not at all convinced that whole milk is unhealthy (in fact, it drives me crazy that most of the yogurt in the grocery store case is nonfat!), but that’s not the point. The point is to give clear, specific instructions, and make them easy to follow.

H&H also say, “What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.” All of us depend on routines and habits to get through the day, and if we have to think too much, uncertainty about what to do can be paralyzing. Too many possible choices or an ambiguous situation will make our minds anxious, and when anxious, we revert by default to a familiar path, seeking our comfort zone. If we can’t, studies have shown that operating outside a comfort zone for too long results in deteriorating task performance. The mere experience of applying willpower to not eating a plate of cookies left in the room with them resulted in subjects performing more poorly on a task than other subjects without the antecedent test of will. Self-discipline wears us out. We only have so much energy for it. So we’re better off devising little tricks to keep ourselves in line.

In order to brave a new path, we also need a motive. Emotion is the “elephant,” in the book’s terms, intellect the “rider,” though I’ve avoided that language here. The important point is that to effect change, in ourselves or others, we must appeal not only to the intellect but also to emotion.

Here’s an astonishing revelation from early in the book. Can you believe that of the 24 most commonly used English words for emotion, only six are positive? Our language, and probably our brain itself, is more alert to threats than to happiness, probably for reasons important to survival – but still, that’s what we see all too often in each other, even when it isn’t there. I see not what you’re doing right but what you’re doing wrong, not the good you’ve done but the good you’ve failed to do. And how motivated are you by criticism? Me, not very!

All the logic in the world does not induce people to change without emotional appeal. Argument and reason are good, often necessary, but by themselves insufficient. Okay, what kind of emotional appeal? How about fear? Fear is a strong motivator, H&H acknowledge, but works best in the short term. It doesn’t work all that well for problems requiring incremental change over the long term. Why would that be?

Well, fear is one of those negative emotions.

When you’re angry, your eyes narrow and your fists clench and you get ready for confrontation. When you’re disgusted, your nose wrinkles and you avoid whatever has grossed you out. When you’re afraid, your eyes grow wide and your body tenses up and prepares to flee. On a daily basis, then, negative emotions help us avoid risks and confront problems.

Narrowed eyes, clenched fists, tense body – that’s how we respond when we’re in the grip of a negative emotion. Fight or flight! says the mind. Don't confuse me with more options! But that narrowing effect also works on our thoughts and doesn’t help when what we need is a broader vision, when we need to innovate, and to grow.

The positive emotion of interest broadens what we want to investigate. When we’re interested, we want to get involved, to learn new things, to tackle new experiences. We become more open to new ideas. The positive emotion of pride, experienced when we achieve a personal goal, broadens the kinds of tasks we contemplate for the future, encouraging us to pursue even bigger goals.

Appeals, therefore, to positive emotions – excitement, hope, optimism – motivate people to embrace change.

One tip the authors give is to focus on success, however small, and build on it. They call it “finding the bright spots.” Say your son was failing all his junior high classes but this semester managed to get a B in one of them. Talk to him about that good grade, help him find out what made the difference in that class and how he might be able to extend his success into other subjects. In general, don’t look for problems but for what’s working.

Another is to shrink the change. Don’t ask for a big change all at once. Show people ways they have already, without being aware of changing, taken the first couple of steps, and it's like magic!

He's on his way!

It also helps to provide “environmental tweaks.” These, H&H say, “beat self control every time,” whether it’s my own behavior or someone else’s I want to change. One simple example (we’ve use this in our home) is to use smaller plates on the dinner table. Rearranging furniture is another way to tweak the environment and change the situation. Shaping the environment changes behavior, and it’s easier, more efficient, and more pleasant to shape new behaviors that way than by hectoring and scolding. You don’t even have to talk about it!

I’ve hardly done justice to this book, because I’ve been boiling down to prescriptions what the authors present in exciting stories of change. You just need to read it for yourself. Switch is written largely (not exclusively) from and with a business perspective, but the implications go way beyond. In fact, I can hardly think of a realm where they would not be appropriate.

So, from what I’ve said so far, let me ask what lessons you would draw from the H&H prescriptions when it comes to working for political change? ??? If you’re not feeling optimistic yet, blame it on me and not on the authors, go to the library, and give H&H a reading for yourself. (I’ll order the hardcover for anyone who requests it; unfortunately, the book was never issued in paper. I also have 2-3 used copies winging their the way to me.)

If you buy the book from me and read the whole thing and don’t feel the faintest glimmer of hope, I’ll cheerfully refund your money and take the book back, knowing that it will inspire someone else. What I hope for, really, is a community of energized, hopeful people ready to go at change in a whole new way. Maybe we can help each other? I’d love to travel hopefully into the future! Wouldn't you?

We're Never "Just Saying"

Who knows where this turtle lives?

8/22/17

That is a dangerous subject heading! How can any “always” or “never” statement about human behavior be true? Or, if it’s true, how can it be anything other than trivial? But I’m going out on a limb here, because this is something I’m thinking through for myself as I put my thoughts into words.

Specifically, I’m thinking about Facebook and what I post there and why. To begin with, why post anything at all? Then, why post the things I do? The short answer is that I post for several different reasons, not all reasons applying to every post.

o    To let family and friends know what’s going on my life, how my world looks, and how I feel about it.

o    To gain visibility for my bookstore and for particular books.

o    To acknowledge and share some of the accomplishments and joys of family and friends, authors and other people in the book world.

o    To share news on topics close to my heart.

o    To spread a little sunshine.

o    To ask for friends’ help in thinking through a question or problem.

I’m sure this list is incomplete, but these are some of the reasons that occur to me as I ask myself the question.

Time off!!!

As for reading at this point in a very busy week, I have somehow managed to reach page 316 of a 412-page ARC of a YA novel and am also halfway through a very inspiring nonfiction book. The latter, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (brothers?), is called Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, and, as someone who often finds change difficult in her own life, I am finding this book inspiring and encouraging.

Books, dog, flowers

8/24/17

Okay, this morning I finished both books, the novel and the nonfiction book.

As You Wish, by Chelsea Sedoti, is a YA novel to be released in hardcover in January 2018 ($17.99). The setting is a small town in Nevada (Las Vegas only a day trip away) where each resident, on his or her eighteenth birthday, visits the wishing cave to make a single wish, assured that the wish will come true. There are, however, parameters to the wishing, and many wishers experience heavy pressure from family and friends, as does Eldon, the protagonist of the novel. As the landmark birthday approaches for groups of high school seniors (and all subsequent birthdays are nothing after the eighteenth), they attend a mandatory wishing class to learn the rules and prepare themselves for the big day.

To placate the school principal, who styles himself a psychiatrist and also coaches wishing class, Eldon comes up with a project: he will interview a number of people in town to find out what they wished and how their lives turned out. His own decisions – more than one – ultimately surprised but satisfied me as a reader. The story was engrossing, characters well drawn.

One small matter bothered me off and on through the story, and that has to do with language. I know the words used are familiar to all adolescents and probably used by most, so their use is realistic – and the author does not pepper every page with profanity. Still, I can’t help wondering if it is necessary at all. No doubt this is my age talking.

*  *  *  *  *

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard has me all charged up – excited! – energized! – hopeful! What preconceived ideas to you bring to the possibility of change? Do you think it possible for a person to change, fundamentally, or are character and talents immutable, part of our DNA?

Family visit

8/29/17

This is getting too long. I need to quit, post it, and come back to the Switch book another time. About my subject heading, though: my point was that we never “just” say anything. Even if I don’t have a clearly thought-out reason for an utterance – maybe it just “popped into my head” – I could have kept it to myself. As for the response “Well, it’s true” (to the question of why someone says something), that’s no answer at all, because every time I open my mouth, there are an infinite number of possible truths I might utter.

What I’m getting at specifically here – my reason for writing about this, now – is, as implied near the top of this post, my thinking about why I or my friends or anyone else posts what they do on Facebook, and I’m thinking now especially of the political posts. Do I hope to change someone’s mind? Shine a light in a dark corner? Or am I merely venting frustration, expressing outrage, confident that those who already agree with me will rally to my side? And if they do, what do we, the like-minded group, gain? I ask this because I want us to gain something – and that’s where the Switch book comes in....

More soon, I hope, as we run and bustle and skid toward Labor Day!

From Northport to Marrakech

Weather was perfect on Friday for Music in the Park; the three-man band, a group called Looking Forward, played a Crosby, Stills, and Nash Tribute; and David and I were this week’s sponsors. What memories that music evoked! One particularly happy CSN song, of course, was “Marrakech Express.” Here are the originals doing that number, but the band in Northport did a rousing rendition of their own.

Music in the Park has been a Northport tradition for many years. (I forget how many, but I’m sure someone can remind me.) Lisa Drummond has not been the organizer since the beginning, but she has been an enthusiastic emcee for quite a while now. Even Lisa’s enthusiasm had not, however, prepared me to hear myself and my husband described as “local icons.” Wow! David, the artist, is used to being called an icon, but it’s something new to this little old bookseller. I decided I can live with the label.

Someone who has been with Music in the Park since the very beginning -- every single show -- never missed a single one -- is sound man Kent Holton. Now that is someone I call a local icon! Please, a big round of applause for Kent on sound!

Such a relaxed, colorful evening! My roving camera eye caught all kinds of what I might call “iconic” sights -- those features that are part of every Music in the Park event and have been for years -- starting with the fact that so many of us settle into the shade of the old willows of Marina Park. The willows are monumental but natural, and it wouldn't be Music in the Park without a few kids climbing up to perch on large branches above the crowd.

Local color? New marina buildings are definitely bright in day’s late, slanting light.

Little kids running back and forth across the grass and sometimes stopping to dance a bit in front of the band are a happy sight, and a while later grownups got up to dance, too.

Over nearer the boat launch parking lot, the American flag was mostly still on this mostly windless evening,

while from on top of the gazebo (with the band playing underneath) a dove surveyed the scene below.

Friends circulated, greeting one another, before the music started and during the intermission.

All in all, it was a beautiful, peaceful, happy, completely Northport scene, and we tore ourselves away before it was over only because we needed to get ready for the arrival of more visitors.