I was thrilled to come across this book written by a fellow Calgarian that received some high praise from critics. The premise of the book is simple - spurred by the birth of his daughter Chris Turner looked around and saw a world careening out of control. Global warming, pollution, destruction of natural resources, excessive consumption and faulty economics drive our consumerist engine, and there is no shortage of problems to look at and wonder when this train ride will come to a wreck. But dozens of books have been written about the staggering problems facing our world and future as a species, but quite few offer real suggestions as to what we can do about it. Chris Turner went on a whirlwind tour around the globe looking for existing, often very local solutions to a truly sustainable future that work splendidly and point the way to a more hopeful future.

Off the bat I’ve got to say that I am not a proponent of anthropogenic climate change. i.e. I do not feel that man-made global warming is our biggest problem, nor do I condemn CO2 as the largest pollutant in our atmosphere. This book is largely structured around this very premise, and the undertone wonders how is it that any rational human can continue to deny the movement largely started by Al Gore et al. Now that several years have passed, and Al Gore’s faulty research and blatantly incorrect hockey-stick graph has been soundly denounced even by the most ardent global warming proponents, not to mention his energy hogging lifestyle, it is clear that he himself, is probably not a good advocate for the cause.

I personally tend to think that plants breathe CO2, that any volcano eruption as well as our oceans dwarf our CO2 output, that the largest drivers of climate are the sun and the oceans and our orbit, things so vast that we cannot even understand their effects, never mind control them, that the planet is typically a much more tropical place and in fact we are geologically speaking in the middle of a short warm pocket that happens to be in the middle of an ice age, and most important of all – that carbon sequestering is a huge money making scam that will make some people very rich, while doing very little to impact our climate. I also fear that the debate whether pro or con is stealing all the spotlight while ignoring the ridiculous pollution issues plaguing our planet.  But what I do understand is that whether we agree on global warming specifically or not, we can both be appalled at the damage to our planet wrought by our species, and overwhelmed with the negative press and dialogue that seems to lead us no closer to real solutions.

The book itself is a manic romp around the world skipping from Denmark to Thailand and even yes, Okotoks. His writing style is a unique mix reminiscent of Gladwell and Pollan, both of whom are referenced, except for on speed. Interspersed with commentary on popular culture, pop psychology and history lessons the book is best digested in small increments lest it simply overwhelm your brain. Since he is local, some of his stories revolve not too far from home, a wind farm nearby, a green community in a small town only a twenty minute drive from my house, even our very own downtown Calgary. To me this was obviously exceptionally interesting since I can add my own observations to the mix.

I found it rather worrying that all the examples of a new way of living that he profiles  – a fully self sustaining home in Thailand built using local renewable resources, that costs about as much as a ‘conventional’ style dwelling, a small Danish island where the villagers fully bought into wind farms and barely have any need for oil, a community of Earthship dwellers proudly living in a rather hostile climate with all the creature comforts of the average urban home but with almost none of the energy requirements, E+Co which pioneer a genius partnership to turn waste ponds into energy, and amazing real estate developments which allow people to live and thrive in their communities, not simply exist, – are so few and far between taken in the larger context. They are small pockets of wonderful enterprise, human ingenuity and revolutionary principles on display, but they are quite rare when looked at globally.  And frankly we’ve always had great people doing amazing things. All the pioneers above use existing technology in innovative ways, they are not inventing anything as such, but until they reach a ‘tipping point’ a la Gladwell, they will always remain an oasis of sanity with hardly an impact on the global scene.

Calgary is a prime example. The book ends with the author looking over the city and noting how things could be different. How the large empty concrete tracts can be re-imagined as green spaces and truly livable mixed use neighborhoods, how flat sloping roofs seem made for solar panels (in a city with over 300 days of sunshine per year), how urban sprawl can be curbed once and for all and many other wonderful ideas. But since this book was written I can’t say any of those changes have materialized. I’ve yet to see a solar panel on any roof whatsoever, our neighborhood that was once on the edge of the city has been surpassed by further development, mixed use neighborhoods are still things that are developed by far more progressive planners than ours, urban agriculture has not exploded, we do have recycling but strictly as downcycling, and sadly, Seaside Florida, one of the communities lauded in the book is currently drowning in oil from a terrible man made disaster.

I also haven’t seen any of those flexible solar panels that were going to drastically decrease prices in the markets, and in fact I haven’t heard any follow up on that story since it was hyped a few years ago. A shamefully quick google search turns up flexible panels that cost several times more per watt that a generic one does. Okotoks’ award winning Drake Landing community has not been followed by any more, despite its cachet.

Chris travels the world looking for examples of a new sustainable economy. Places where the change is people driven, whether it’s machete wielding villagers peeling bamboo for their micro-hydroelectric dam, or a community investing in wind farms without government mandates, oversight or involvement really. In contrast there seem to be pitifully few solutions to be found around our very own urban yards. Since we don’t have to choose whether to spend money on kerosene or purchase a small solar panel, we don’t have the immediacy of looking for a solution as we continue to live in our urban houses constructed with toxic materials and heat them with coal and gas.

Speaking with a local solar installer generates an estimate that to convert a typical house to be entirely off-grid would cost in the realm of $25,000 – a figure hardly affordable and yes, it would take a very long time to pay for itself. Unless you built a passive solar heated home which costs about the same as a conventional house, but you would likely never get the permits to build one. Sure we recycle, but we all know that at best it’s postponing the trip to the landfill by a reuse or two, and at worst – well, how much does it cost (literally and carbon-wise)  to ship our recyclables to Asia where they can be processed/landfilled as prices dictate?

Perhaps it’s my propensity for cynicism and gloom that leads me to read this book, and ask what’s changed since it was published? Or the recent environmental catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf is too vivid and underscores the plight of the planet too much. But where many reviewers see hope in this book, I still see a planet heading for disaster simply because I, the reader, still feel powerless to help stop the train. Unless the residents of this fine city start getting together and implementing our own solutions we will continue to have small pockets of hope around a very sick planet.

Not only that, but as he cleverly points out change has to be FUN and beneficial – no one wants to do things out of desperation out of coming doom and gloom. A great example is cell phone technology and internet – the technology is so convenient and so seemingly necessary that hundreds of homemade solutions sprung up to bypass entirely the slow governmental machine that would have taken decades to deliver the service. What we need is someone to bring a sense of fun, cachet, unbelievable convenience and necessity at an affordable price point to renewable technologies. When that happens, consumers will drive the engine of change faster than you can blink.  So to me it’s a brilliantly written book that offers the possibility of hope, but note hope as such.

If you’ve made it this far, through the very long book review, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this interesting and vital topic: what do you think of climate change, our path as a species, what we can do to actually change rather than greenwash our lives? Do we have hope?

I’ve finally kicked the crud that threatened my life and limb and sleep for over two weeks. It is seriously the longest cold I’ve ever had. It threatened to morph into a sinus infection, and teetered on the edge of bronchitis for a few days as it crawled down my throat, but I think my immune system is finally getting the hang of it.  At least the weather  had the decency to suck while I suffered, and I didn’t have to watch glorious sunshine and blue whit-ish skies overhead. (Seriously, I don’t recall the last time the sky had the deep blue of my childhood. It’s permanently whitish now – maybe there’s something to all the chemtrails theories out there?)

Moving on. While being sick I took good care of myself, mainly by not exerting myself in any fashion. It’s not lazy when you have an excuse. I didn’t exercise, I didn’t cook much, I certainly did not strain myself with an overabundance of yardwork and even housework for that matter. What I did do a fair bit of, between sleeping in a medicated haze and dragging my poor self to work is read. Reading is easy, fun and can put you to sleep or wake you up, depending on the genre.

Not wanting to tax myself with serious works of non-fiction and fiction requiring a dictionary, I stuck mainly to the fantasy genre, seeing as it’s light, readable and candy for the brain in general. Which leads me to ask, isn’t it funny when life proves you wrong by leading you to enjoy stuff you’ve professed to hate? Happens to me all the time, and my carefully thought out stances against say, Twitter and fantasy literature have done a predictable 180 in the last few months. I am very reluctant to ever say NEVER now, seeing as it’s a gauntlet throwing challenge to the universe to prove me wrong.

I can’t remember when it started, but I know the book that made me fall – Moon Called by Patricia Briggs. I have a vague idea of how it must have happened – a person who reads an average of four books per week must spend a certain amount of time researching what to read next, so I do a fair bit of surfing, reading Amazon reviews and blogs and hope to find the rare gem of a reviewer whose opinions match my own.  If I’m lucky, a review of a book I already love will contain a recommendation of a similarly loved book which will likely make its way into my Amazon basket within a few weeks.

I started Moon Called not having a clue what to expect, and found myself reasonably entertained by the story, and NOT PISSED OFF at the writing. I know this sounds like faint praise, but very often the ‘speaking voice’ of the author will turn me off the story faster than cheap plot lines and cheesy dialogue. It was not a great book, something like a 3.5/5 in my mind, but seeing as I read like it’s going out of style, I went ahead and ordered the next two books. Each one was just as good if not a bit better than the first, and suddenly I found myself waiting for the latest book to come out, and browsing similar genres, and then it just spiraled out of control, and now I have something like FORTY fantasy/urban fantasy/whatever genre books added to my collection.

I’ve checked out the classics a la Laurell K. Hamilton (not my fave), and new arrivals like (somebody suggest someone, I’m drawing a blank), and there’s still a whole universe out there to explore. One series that quickly rose to the top of the LIKE pile is Ilona Andrews’ Magic Bites series. Yep, the covers are one small step above romance novels’ art work, and they’re kind of small, and soft cover only, but they are wonderful stories with great characters, fantastic dialogue, and solid if not great plot lines. And they are addictive in that way that all the famed series are. (And yes, I blew through Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series also.)

If um, any of my readers are into the genres, please feel free to chime in with your favorite series. Actually any series of books  – because it’s super satisfying to have a long story to read, and revisit favorite characters. And I’ll just vigorously start saying NEVER to a healthy diet, and exercise, and a full eight hours of sleep, and traveling around the world, and…

Readers with an eye on European politics will recognize Ali as the Somali-born    member of the Dutch parliament who faced death threats after collaborating on a film about domestic violence against Muslim women with controversial director Theo van Gogh (who was himself assassinated). Even before then, her attacks on Islamic culture as “brutal, bigoted, [and] fixated on controlling women” had generated much controversy. In this suspenseful account of her life and her internal struggle with her Muslim faith, she discusses how these views were shaped by her experiences amid the political chaos of Somalia and other African nations, where she was subjected to genital mutilation and later forced into an unwanted marriage. While in transit to her husband in Canada, she decided to seek asylum in the Netherlands, where she marveled at the polite policemen and government bureaucrats. Ali is up-front about having lied about her background in order to obtain her citizenship, which led to further controversy in early 2006, when an immigration official sought to deport her and triggered the collapse of the Dutch coalition government. Apart from feelings of guilt over van Gogh’s death, her voice is forceful and unbowed—like Irshad Manji, she delivers a powerful feminist critique of Islam informed by a genuine understanding of the religion. 8-page photo insert.

From Publishers Weekly

This weekend I finished digesting the controversial autobiographical novel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the recommendation of a friend, and what a novel it was. Very well written, it chronicles the life of Ayaan from the streets of Somalia to her arrival in the Netherlands, and her journey of renouncing religion in favor of atheism. She speaks very passionately about the oppression of one half of the world’s women for religious reasons, then proceeds to warn the west about the dangers newly arrived immigrants pose.  Actually this book covers a multitude of issues, way too numerous to dissect in one post – whether Islam is truly a religion of peace, whether any religion can shed its bloody history of war and oppression, whether westerners have any idea of the value of the freedoms we have, and how vigilant we must be to guard them. It’s a fascinating saga of a book that never gets too dull or pedantic but wraps up all the issues and historical context in a profound personal story.

Ayaan doesn’t pull back punches though, and some of them are aimed at the western world, that she feels is too lenient and permissive towards immigrants. She feels that hiding under political correctness and tolerance is a reluctance to protect not only the foundations of liberty of the west, but a disservice to the women and girls that continue to be persecuted by unintegrated community members of the newly arrived. She points out the statistics of the girls killed by family members, the genital mutilations performed on kitchen tables, the women’s shelters overflowing with beaten wives, the crime rate spikes in predominantly immigrant neighborhoods, and the drain on resources they represent if they choose not to learn the language and participate in the economy funded by the safety net of the world that sheltered them. Referring mainly to Holland, she says that with political correctness and tolerance and fear of being called racist, the country funds ethnic schools where the children are done a disservice with a cherry picked education, heavy on religion and light on history and science, and promote harmful segregation in the name of cultural sensitivity. They are heavy topics to discuss and yet the books doesn’t get heavy with proselytizing and reads easily.

There’s lots of food for thought here, and as an immigrant I can see both sides of the issue. On one hand you have indisputable statistics that support many of Ayaan’s assertions. You don’t have to look far in Calgary to find that the crime rates are higher as a rule in the quadrant of the city where many of the newly arrived cluster. The gang problem that’s spiked dramatically in the last few years is predominantly a product of the oriental culture and our latest murder trial was of a mother who killed her daughter for her overly westernized ways.  To deny the negative impact of immigration from vastly different cultures is dishonest. But on the other hand I see a severe failing of the country to prepare immigrants for life here and perhaps even help them succeed. When predominantly young families arrive in Canada, the culture shock is often severe, I know it was for us. Despite Canada’s self-claim as a polite and friendly country it is often rather cold or uncaring towards immigrants. Sure there’s a genuinely nice culture in small towns, but that’s not where the jobs are, so newcomers end up immersed in cosmopolitan and jaded cities. Not helped by the language barrier, the people are actually not that easy to get to know with our busy lifestyles that often don’t allow us to know our own neighbors, never mind befriend someone new. We often lament that we don’t even have time to see the friends we have, let alone make time for new ones. We often wait for new people to get more ‘westernized’ before we allow them into our circle, making polite small talk at work, but not really breaking down any cultural barriers.

So what are people to do? They do what comes naturally. They find other immigrants from their country, and sigh in relief. Often lonely and homesick, having left all their friends and many family members they understandably feel comforted at meeting someone, anyone who understands, has been there and speaks the language. Quite often the informal ‘training’ they get from their friends is invaluable and not found in any guidebook. Newly arrived people don’t need to know how Canada’s parliament system works right away, they need to know how to purchase bus fare and navigate the city.  Where to buy groceries and how to enroll your child in school. What work options are available and where to take English courses. This, and a myriad of other basic things, skills and tips are not found in any guide for newcomers and make culture shock more severe than it needs to be. Many people get overwhelmed with all the information flying at them with mach speed and you end up with older generations that have lived in Canada for twenty plus years and still don’t speak English.  But the biggest way we fail immigrants is by failing to truly streamline their re-accreditization in their chosen profession. That’s how we end up with the most educated cab drivers. I cannot count how many people have degrees that are sitting there unused while they do menial work because they have to start from scratch and get re-certified, negating the years of effort it took to get the degree in the first place. These are people who are in the prime of their earning years who cannot afford to go back to school for four, six or eight years as they have a family to support, so their degrees get shelved as they find ways and means to support them. In the meantime, politicians bleat about nurse and doctor shortages as well as every other employee shortage you can think of, yet can’t find the time to streamline the process of getting qualifications recognized.  This is a criminal waste of talent and ensures that many immigrant families’ earning power is low longer, contributing to both the burden on social services and delaying their productive integration into our society.

Whew. This is just one of the many tangents this book can take you on, so needless to say it’s an excellent and important read.  I now leave you with a picture that is much more tranquil than the rant I just went on. Feel free to agree or disagree below. Or just pet a cat.

So without further ado, the winner as per my baffled co-worker pulling a number out of a hat is…. TA-TA-DUM…

Water Roots!!!

Congratulations, your prize will be e-mailed shortly, and a huge thanks to all the readers out there!

I’ve already endorsed my main gardening resource by my man Ed Smith, and it’s a wonderful beginner’s book. However, just yesterday I received, opened and fell in love with another wee gem unusually titled Gardening When it Counts – growing food in hard times by Steve Solomon. I’ve heard lots of great things about this book from many a reputable source, but since it wasn’t available on Amazon (whom I single handedly keep in business some months, I swear), I’ve never tracked it down to check it out.  But the curiosity persisted, and one day some weeks ago I found another site that carries it, and ordered a copy.

I started reading right away since I have a garden to plant and all, and was immediately smitten. Written in a conversationally informative tone, the author promises to be the ‘gardening grandfather you never had.’ Once upon a time Steve Solomon ran a seed supply company and learned a great deal about growing vegetables. To run a good, meaning honest and ethical, seed supply company one needed to learn a great deal about seeds, where they come from, what their quality is, and plant many trials to see how the plants actually perform. Will they germinate at an acceptable or excellent rate? Will the vegetables grown be useful, properly formed and productive? Do they resist insects or diseases if grown organically? Are they well suited for the local climate? All these things can only be determined by growing many plants from seed and trying many different techniques while doing so.

The book teems with useful and informative bits – the stores of how your local garden centre may NOT be the best place to buy either plants OR seeds, was enthralling.  The expose of the seed business and why the pretty packets may be full of crap seeds entertained me thoroughly. How few tools you really need and how to select them eased my worries that I don’t know what a hoe is or how to use one. How vegetables use the nutrients in the soil and their root systems would typically be a boring subject, but this book makes it interesting, applicable and useful.  The gold mines for me were two: The complete organic fertilizer (COF) – a mix of soil amendments that work on any soil at all and will provide a complete nutritional supplement to veggies, all mixed by you from common sources and guaranteed to make your garden the best ever. And a complete (pretty current) list of reputable seed companies that actually do their own trials, set high standards, and stand behind the quality of their product. These he recommends as the companies to serve the bulk of your garden needs and they are split by geographic region, including many Canadian companies.  Many surprises in that section alone.

Other great things (that this book is chock-full of) include great techniques for starting seeds (which the author actually doesn’t recommend for most veggies), building beds and hills, techniques for using tools, making compost and irrigating intelligently. Every page of this unassuming book was an unexpected gold mine of information and I learned a phenomenal amount of actually useful, tried and tested information. He encourages his readers to grow the bulk of their vegetables, shows how easily this can be done on a 3,500 sq foot plot with minimal irrigation, and provides a ton of useful advice. Like the tile promises, if I only had one book and had to feed a family, I would feel safe and secure that this is it.