Lose weight, save money, and save the polar bears at the same time? When you live the Wildly Affordable Organic way, it is possible! Join the movement to change the way you eat—and keep the change.
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...and, to start off on the right thought ...
How to get along with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love—such questions arise in most people’s lives. They are all versions of a bigger question: How do you live?
How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, by Sarah Bakewell
Winner of the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography
Turns out to be one of the best books I've read in a long time. Ms. Bakewell, formerly a curator of early-printed books and currently a writer and writing teacher in London, has combined a tour through Montaigne's views on just about everything with the details of his actual, physical life.
It's important to note right off that the book and Montaigne – as the title indicates – make no attempt to proselytize how one should live. Montaigne made certain to reassure everyone that he had no answers to the big questions. In fact, while he might glimpse a fleeting truth, he staunchly maintained his belief in its ephemeral nature and in his own inability to get to the root of anything.
Bakewell places Montaigne's individual thoughts and concerns within the turmoil of his larger civic and political life in 16th-century France. The religious wars, political unrest, wealth disparity, health crises, and a fluid knowledge and artistic panoply suggest the present 21st century, but Montaigne’s response to these external pressures is unusual for any era. Mostly, he holds firm to his Stoic philosophic roots, refuses to take a stand on anything (even for action or inaction), and makes it look deceptively easy to straddle the balance beam of moderation in all things. Not for him the armed fortress, for instance; even during plague years and times when desperate bands of outlaws roamed the countryside, Montaigne kept his gates open and the welcome mat out.
The book is delightful – humorous, learned, whimsical, questioning. Of all the titles of the 20 chapters that propose answers to the question of how to live, my favorite turned out to be: “Do a Good Job but Not Too Good” {paraphrase title is mine}. Montaigne believed that it was to no one's advantage – and, particularly, to his own – to exhaust himself in his career. Rather, he tried to do a good job but, perhaps, a purposefully mediocre job. He then had energy for the other parts of his life, and he insured that it was unlikely he would be sought for more difficult work. A refreshing counterpoint to the current ethos.
Wildly Affordable Organic, by Linda Watson
Lose weight, save money, and save the polar bears at the same time? When you live the Wildly Affordable Organic way, it is possible! Join the movement to change the way you eat—and keep the change.
Current assumptions are that it's impossible to eat healthily without a middle-class income. But, in 2007 Watson took the Food Stamp Challenge: Eat healthy meals on no more than $1 a meal per person.
After experimentation and learning what worked and what didn't, she raised her 'allowance' and shopped for organic and sustainably raised ingredients at chain supermarkets, the farmer's market, and Whole Foods. “Even this 'yuppie' diet was less than two dollars a meal.” The Wildly Affordable Organic Plan was born.
On $5 a day (using the organic option) or less (using the healthy but supermarket shopping option), Watson proves that you can actually eat well and enjoyably. OK, ‘yummily’. Her recipes are really good – and, extra plus points; they don't need a thousand ingredients to make them tasty.
I particularly loved two things about this book: First, the strategies. Watson not only presents daily, weekly, and monthly menus by season to take advantage of farmers' markets and supermarket specials; but, she also describes very clearly how to save money and time during each stage of the process – from bundling your cooking tasks and planning meals ahead of time to making extras to freeze (and, how to most efficiently divide up and package your cooked bounty). This is extremely useful knowledge for: working families, retirees (or anyone on a limited budget), and for people like me who want to be more efficient but lack some of that genetic material. This book is a Plan. If you follow it, you really will succeed. Can't often say that.
Second, Watson is obviously a person who lives to eat as opposed to someone who could care less what their food tastes like or how it looks on the plate or even how it smells as it simmers away on the stove, in the oven, in the slow cooker. There is dessert!! The meals are healthy enough so that good desserts are part of the plan (I've already made the Feel-Good Peach Cobbler and the Chocolate Pudding: YUM.)
This is a great book.
Field Notes on Science & Nature, Ed. By Michael R. Canfield, Foreword by E.O. Wilson
“The lion pride, consisting of three maned males, seven females, four large cubs, and six small cubs, finally stirs itself after hours of indolence. It is shortly after midnight, and a moon suffuses the Serengeti plains with silver so bright that the lions cast shadows.” (Opening words to George B. Schaller's chapter, “The Pleasure of Observing.”)
In twelve chapters, eminent naturalists describe their personal observational methods, tools, and strategies for documenting their field work. Along with anecdotes like the one with which Schaller begins his discussion, each scientist shares photos of actual notebook pages, photos, drawings, and computer printouts.
I didn't expect this book to be so much fun. The writing is excellent; each speaker's voice is unique and accessible. Their adventures – whether in exotic locations like the Serengeti or a more plebeian (perhaps) Montana – are fascinating. Expertise ranges from anthropology to ornithology to entomology to … scientific illustration. While there are valiant arguments and instructionas for keeping good records, there are also corresponding admissions from almost every author of how extraordinarily difficult that is to do, and delightful examples from their personal experiences of what not to do.
Most important Not-To-Do: don’t believe you’ll remember it later. That description of how the ear tufts on the head of the caracal [cat] move in patterns associated with the animal’s communicatory behaviors? If you don’t note it in the field, while it’s happening, and preferably accompany those notes with even rough sketches; when you need to find that information later, you will be very unlikely to recall it.
Not only do field notes provide the basis for scientific papers, grant reports and proposals, and archival content; the necessity for close observation required by putting pen or pencil to paper often sparks questions and new lines of thinking.
As Michael Canfield of Harvard University notes in the book's introduction, “Although the content of field notes has incredible value, the act of recording field notes has benefits that are less apparent and often under-estimated. Darwin's field notes, for instance, proved indispensable for the information they contained, but did they also force him to reconsider previously formed ideas?” The answer, for most of the book's contributors, is a resounding 'yes.' The process is at least as important as the product.
And, finally, another passage that I found amusing, enlightening, thought-provoking: this time, from Jonathan Kingdon's (Oxford University authority on African mammals and scientific illustration) chapter “In the Eye of the Beholder,” a passionate argument for the importance of sketching to aid informed thought.
“Among Africa's most ancient mammals, the Afrotheres (which include aardvarks, elephants, sea-cows, and tree hyraxes), are many species of golden moles. At first glance, or in a photograph, golden moles look like animated turds in spite of the pretty metallic fur that gives them their name.Closer inspection reveals a leathery spade-shaped snout at the front end and tiny clawed feet that row them along without being able to life their bellies off the ground... More penetrating study reveals a seamless convergence between 'probing' and the forms that have evolved to serve probing or digging behavior....that simple sketch summarizes in a way that descriptions cannot how the behavior of probing and digging has selected for what we can only very inadequately describe as a 'streamlined' skull and body shape.”
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