The Grim Reader—Climate Change Books

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I’ve been reading about climate change. I’ve been reading so much about climate change I’m starting to call myself The Grim Reader. And of course, no one wants to talk about it. Or they do, but they don’t know how. So I’m starting a new thing. A book club for one. The Grim Reader. Come along with me. Comment. Maybe it will not be a book club for one after all.

Like most people, I’d like to leave behind a world that is recognizable for those who come after me. I have an adult daughter. I’d like her to live in some degree of security and comfort after I’m gone. And if she has children, I’d like their world to be safe, secure, and somewhat recognizable. And if that’s what I want, it’s time to get serious. If we keep going the way we are going, those simple wishes will not come true. Not for me, not for any of us. We hit the 2 degree mark last week—twice. That is, we were 2 degrees over our pre-industrial average. It’s what “they” have been telling us for years absolutely can’t happen. And it happened.

Meanwhile COP28 is being held this week in a petro-authoritarian state and was being called a failure before it even started. *Sigh*. I expect there to be a lot of sighing in The Grim Reader. But there is hope.

There are a spate of books about hope and climate change. All the behavioural psych research says we have to have hope. Why act if there is no hope? I am personally of a more existential bent. I believe we can face hard truths (for example, each and every one of us is going to die) and still find meaning, joy, and purpose in our lives. This is why I want to start The Grim Reader with Andrew Boyd’s, I Want A Better Catastrophe.

Boyd isn’t sugar coating anything. The premise of IWABC is that climate catastrophe is here. It’s baked in now. We’re in it. Welcome to the future. In his words, “We’re fucked.” But stay with me. He wonders, if we’re fucked (which we are), are we totally fucked or mostly fucked or a just little bit fucked. It matters. Because we want to find a better catastrophe.

A better catastrophe is still possible, although the window is closing by the second. There is hope here. But it’s realistic hope. It’s the kind of hope that doesn’t exist purely as a result of denial. It’s the kind of hope I can get behind. It’s a “roll up your sleeves” kind of hope.

In describing his own journey as an activist, Boyd talks to so many others about theirs. There is dark humour, which is something I really need. Maybe that is what inspired me to call this new part of my website The Grim Reader. 

IWABC is almost a compendium of everything everyone has ever said or thought about global warming/climate change/climate catastrophe. You can read it straight through or pick out pieces here and there.

There is even a little section on the right thing to call global warming/climate change/climate catastrophe. My own preference is climate catastrophe, but I think it turns people off. Too doomy. I’m currently throwing the term “climate insecurity” against the wall to see if it sticks. Because isn’t security what we all want? (Tangent Alert: If you think about security too, you might also want to listen to this year’s Massey Lectures by Astra Taylor.)

I also appreciate that after 352 pages, Boyd offers even more resources to turn to under the title “Stuff You Can (Still) Do.” It’s inspirational. You can reach the same information through his exceptional website, BetterCatastrophe.com.

If you do nothing else, check out his incredible flow chart. It’s a thing of beauty and a wonder of communication. It may change you. It changed me.

If you’ve read it, if you want to read it, if you have questions, please comment. I’d like not to be in The Grim Reader bookclub by myself.

(I review the occasional book on Goodreads, and IWABC is one of them. Some repetition, but also some other thoughts.)

Gardening and Writing

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Sometimes, gardening is better for me than writing. Both gardening and writing are creative, but gardening has a messiness and physicality that writing lacks. That’s what I need right now.

It’s mid-October and my garden is still producing. Red and green leaf lettuce, romaine, arugula, Swiss chard, kale, beets and a few cucumbers that are trying really hard to become something bigger. The lacinato kale has been growing all year and currently looks like it belongs in a Dr. Seuss illustration. I’ve harvested the last of the cherry tomatoes and a few matinas that are ripening on the counter. I’m busy roasting them and with the help of my little freezer, I will be able to enjoy them through the winter when store-bought tomatoes are always a disappointment.

Cherry Tomatoes

Lacinato Kale

My carrots have always failed. I’m going to try again next year. Why not? The garden is an ongoing experiment. I’m not trying anything exotic. But the joy I get seeing a ripe strawberry and getting to it before the raccoons can’t be beat. I make decisions with the plants. I have to observe closely. The tomatoes have “told” me where they want to be next year. They don’t want to be clumped together. They want to be scattered throughout the beds where they can get more sun. I’ve jotted their wishes down in my garden notes for the spring.

Garlic goes in this week. Russian red. I grew it last year and it came up beautifully. It’s mild and delicious and when I see my garlic braid hanging by the back door, I feel a sense of accomplishment.

Gardening whispers to me: grow.

First Person: My Life in Blog Posts

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I’m fixing up my website with the help of my friend and website wizard, Lou Morin. As part of this overwhelming (to me) task, I’ve had reason to dig into my blog. Wow. There’s a lot of stuff there. And it’s pretty random. But that’s the way it is. To slightly misquote Walt Whitman, we all contain multitudes.

I’ve decided to categorize a whole bunch of random as “First Person.” First Person posts are wee ideas I’m noodling around, minor ramblings, occasional rants but also full blown essays. I’ve been writing about feminism forever, That won’t stop. And I notice that I write a lot about grief, recovery and finding joy. These are all good topics. There’s everything from Helen Reddy to George Orwell in there. I wrote some especially good stuff with a lot more detail pre-concussion. It makes me wonder if I should concentrate on essays for a while.

There will still be events and book info and posts about writing, but I hope to start posting more regularly in the First Person category. I don’t have a schedule and write when I’m inspired (and often, when irked).

If you’d like to follow along, please subscribe. The link is on my home page. When I figure out how, I’ll add it here too.

Travelling in Troubling Times

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Fires near Kelowna BC. Photo Credit: The Canadian Press.

British Columbia, the province in which I live, has just issued fire-zone travel bans in response to unprecedented wildfires. Evacuations are underway. Non-emergency vehicles are not needed on the roads while people try to escape to somewhere else.

I wonder: how long will any of us be travelling anymore?

I am disinclined to fly anywhere anymore. At least not for pleasure. (But seriously, the pleasure of flying ended a long time ago. Cramped, uncomfortable seats, intolerable security lines, unexplained delays, and so much more have made flying an experience to get through rather than one to enjoy.) For me, the end of masking made flying dangerous to my health. It’s a grand opportunity to catch SARS-CoV-2. A recent study found over 80% of US flights had Omicron RNA in the wastewater, and the number of people coughing or otherwise visibly ill on the two flights I have taken since the start of the pandemic easily convinced me that flying is a bad idea for me unless absolutely necessary.

I took those two flights wearing a respirator and carrying a personal air purifier.

Me, waiting for a flight in November 2022. Funny/Not funny story. I was in the Air Canada Lounge and this woman not 15 feet away from me was having her snack and complaining to her friend that she didn’t even know why she was eating because she couldn’t taste anything. She said, ”Isn’t that weird?” No. Not so much weird as it is SARS-C0V-2. I moved to the other side of the lounge, where, likely, someone else had it too.

By 2019 standards, I looked ridiculous. By pandemic standards, I look just fine, at least to me. (Although I also look disastrously tired in this photo. It had been a long and difficult trip. And I can tell you, people stared.)

But what has really landed me in my own personal no-fly zone is the climate crisis. One of the half dozen or so truly impactful things I can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to stop flying, or at least stop flying except when absolutely necessary.

What constitutes absolutely necessary? For me, the two air travel trips I have taken since the start of the pandemic were to prevent looming family crises. The thing is, we’ve come of age at a time when it is typical to live far away from family, and I do. Air travel made it possible to live like this and still be involved. Sometimes, I will have to travel by air if we want to be in touch on vital family matters. For me, I have decided this is necessary.

If I’m going, if I’m going to burn up all that carbon, I’ll make the absolute most of it. I combined the first trip with a book tour. To be clear, I would not have taken the book tour to Toronto if there also hadn’t been important family matters to attend to.

A vacation with air travel is a whole other thing. I can’t justify it anymore.

This summer, my partner and I drove our hybrid vehicle on our vacation as we camped and visited friends. Nothing is perfect, you know? Driving is better than flying. But it’s not great. There’s no holier than thou going on here. (One of my new favourite expressions is ”granolier than thou.”) I am by no means the person who lives an exemplary life. Like all of us, I’m struggling to learn how to live in our new pandemicene era. I’m just sharing one of my own personal decisions, a judgement I made for myself—not for others.

It’s a privilege to travel in so many ways, one which I acknowledge and am grateful to have had. I am giving up a privilege. I’m not giving up clean water. But it’s also not like giving up turnips, which I do not like. That would be easy to do. I’m giving up possibility. I’m giving up something with positive associations. It’s been a long journey to first recognize and then deal with the new negative associations. And the airline industry hasn’t helped. I would get daily offers from Air Canada and Aeroplan in my inbox. I finally unsubscribed.

And what about driving? Some of the areas of BC that we travelled through by car this summer are now, just a few weeks later, ablaze. Our road trip did not help. I’m grappling with that. Earlier this summer, I read a news story about planes full of tourists continuing to land in Greece even though the country was in a state of emergency because of wildfires. A sister of a friend is flying to Maui in September. It just feels bad to me. It feels bad for me. It is not something I would do. Again, I make that judgement for myself. I’m not saying no one should ever go to Maui or Greece again. They depend on tourism. Or at least they have until now.

Now it seems they need their resources for themselves. Last November, we drove through the region where Lytton is, and there were signs asking people not to visit. Of course, we did not go there. I get it. No one needs a bunch of lookie-loos. People need to grieve, to regroup, to kick the ashes. And they don’t need me trying to buy a sandwich while they do it.

So, for now, rather than travelling in troubling times, I’ll be staying close to home. I’ll be revelling in the joys of the here and now, in the small pleasures of my glorious neighbourhood. That’s not anything to be upset about.

 

The Next Book

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A box full of notes about ”Alice,” my (maybe) next book.

People ask me about my next book, and I appreciate their faith that there will be one. Such optimism! Even referring to Patterson House as my first novel is optimistic. But with recent news that appears to be pointing at the demise of the publisher of PH, I wonder.

I love writing. I love interacting with readers. I love giving readings. I love being in the company of other writers. And I love books—libraries, book stores, my own bookshelves, perusing the shelves of others! The smell of a book when I open it. It’s all great.

I do not like the business of books, particularly that awful time when I have a book complete and I am seeking a publisher. The book business is hard and getting harder.

For a long time, I searched for an agent. An agent would be helpful for me, especially given my brain injury. I need someone to handle the business of my writing. That part of the work holds me back. Agents are hard to come by. I had three close calls when I was shopping Patterson House, all with variously heartbreaking endings. So close.

Now, like so many others, I go it alone. But that’s not really true either. I have a group of incredible writing friends that I rely on for feedback, for business advice, for commiseration, for shared joy at success. I’m grateful to all of them.

Will there be a next book? Probably. I have a project I’m into that I refer to as ”Alice.” I can’t think about publication. That feels like too much right now. If a book is written and no one reads it, does it still count? I think so.

Single Family Dwelling

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Overheard— “Yeah, this old lady lived there forever. Her garden was incredible. Like, you would stop on the sidewalk to look at it. Then she died. There was some sort of problem with the house. I don’t know. But these crack-heads moved in and it took, like, fifteen years to get them out. By then, the garden was ruined.”

I wonder— Did her garden offer a respite, a brief solace, a minute of uncomplicated pleasure, to anyone? Did someone notice the daffodils peek up from the soil in the spring, stare deep into the heart of a rhododendron, or watch a bee gather pollen? Did the scent of lilac help someone sleep? Did anyone look out to the yard through that cracked bedroom window, see a bud or a bloom or a leaf and wonder, if only for a second, how am I connected to all of this life?