I thought it was an astonishing book.  Glen put it up there with The Weather Makers as one of the great all time environmental works.  And I agree.  Mitchell has done for the oceans what Pollan has done for local food.

Sea Sick is gripping.  It made me think about nature in ways I had not yet discovered.  Physics and chemistry dictate biology, for instance.  And the oceans are way bigger, and perhaps more important than our atmosphere.

One of the things I loved about it was that Mitchell seems an unlikely participant in the book.  She is researching the oceans, yet she is terrified of going under water.  She comes across as someone who is not an accomplished swimmer, who constantly finds herself strapping on a mask and snorkel to get the story.

She doesn’t appear to love sailing—but she has to endure it to get to the reef that her next chapter focuses upon.  She doesn’t seem to have a deep love of boats, but finds herself sweltering “down below” on research vessels.  She doesn’t even seem to enjoy hiking, yet she finds her way into the mountains in Spain to touch base with the fossil record.

Her reluctance is endearing.  She comes across as a scientist.  Someone who has to suffer through adventure after adventure to get the facts.

And the facts are terrifying.  For those of us who occasionally sail, or surf, or appreciate the ocean by cueing up a Jimmy Buffet song, this book is like a dope slap to the face.

I read a lot of “Energy and Society” books.  In keeping with my policy that “life is too short to review a bad book,” very few of them get mentioned here.  But for Sea Sick I have to make an exception.

It left me thinking differently about science, and about climate change, and about the nature of hope itself.  Mitchell discovers hope off the Dry Tortugas at a depth no human has previously seen.

She converts what most people think of as a quick sail from Key West to see the turtles into a life altering experience.  And she does that throughout the book.  I loved it.

I’ll check Sea Sick into the company library tomorrow, but anyone who wants to read it will need to have it back by October 21^st.  That’s when Glen is coming down, to help us cut the ribbon on Solar Double Cropping.  I know he will want his copy back…

Tami and I rounded up the children and headed to Paris to spend a couple of weeks on the left bank–and to escape North Carolina’s oppressive heat.  I didn’t have a chance to get to town to line up books, so I was stuck with her choices.

And what a good choice Closing the Food Gap was.

Mark Winne is an activist.  An aging hippy with an unchanged world view which calls for transformation.  He appears to have been on the end of a hoe, or creating a new board of directors, or talking to people in government about food issues for the past few decades.

This book is his story.  And it is riveting.  Winne is one part journalist, one part activist, one part academic, and one part regular guy all at the same time.

It is first person journalism, without a doubt, yet he manages to pull it off without the self aggrandizement of which I am so often accused.  I preferred his many personal stories over the papers he cites, but I am a sucker for storytelling.

I can’t say Closing the Food Gap is a hopeful book.  Winne’s ability to cut through the labyrinth of everything from food stamp programs to farmer’s markets to urban agriculture is truly amazing, and could only come from someone who has survived many years in the evolving food activist scene.  But it does not leave the reader believing “everything is going to be OK.”

There is no “happy chapter.”  Just hard nosed reporting on poverty, and privilege, and a system that repeatedly puts the needs of the hungry at the back of the line.

I thought it was a great book.  And I think it is a “must read” for all of us who are involved in re-engineering our food shed.

I should add that I am bumping into Winne late.  Closing the Food Gap was published by Beacon Press in 2008.  His new book, also with Beacon Press, Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart-Cookin’ Mamas; Fighting Back in the Age of Industrial Agriculture came out in 2010.

To say I am behind in my reading would be an understatement…

We took the family to Manhattan for the book launch.  It was a fabulous party on the thirteenth floor of a Fifth Avenue office building.  From Green Team’s rooftop deck, the Empire State Building appears to be right next door.

Fabulous people.  Fabulous location. Fabulous ideas bandied about at the party.  And I trundled off with a copy of the book.

When I cracked it open the next morning, in the lobby of our luxury hotel, I did so with vast suspicions.  I think I am naturally pre-disposed to distrust the advertising industry.  I’m wary of nepotism, and I am skeptical of self-publication.  Hell, I’m even suspicious of New York.

All of which is to say I entered this book prepared for the worst.

And I was delighted to be wrong.

Part chronicle, part memoir, part history lesson, The Rise of the Awakening Consumer tells the story of a resilient little advertising firm that has been working for the benefit of the species for a couple of decades.  It’s an anthology, with many voices, spanning the years of societal change.  From founder Hugh’s account of getting booed off stage for a biodiversity pitch in Indianapolis, to later becoming a surrogate for Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, the book is laced with marvelous essays along the way.

The book is like a conscience for a small business.  Partner Hank celebrates when the deli Green Team was boycotting went out of business.  At the same time  partner Jimmie mourned the loss of  the deli jobs in the neighborhood.

I loved it.

Throughout it all are the eternal contradictions of the Awakening Consumer.  SUV owners who refuse to buy fuel at Exxon.  Coffee cup carriers who buy water from Fiji to get them through the day.

It was hard for me not to think of authors of books on sustainability who fly all over the planet to get their message out.  My next speaking gig is in Oxford, England, I think.  I’m guessing the crew at Green Team would forgive me.  Or at least understand.

This book left me thinking differently about the world in general.

It was organized by Trends, and Rules.  My essay was included in the trend:  The Inmates Have Taken Over the Asylum.  Their rule was “Keep an Open Mind.”

I’m thinking that someday my work will be elevated to a higher position.  But for now, I’ll take it.  They might be on to something.

Last night we had a spill inside the biodiesel plant where I work.  It was a God awful mess.  I spent the better part of my day on the end of a giant squeegee.  It was hard not to laugh at the dichotomy of my life.  One day I am hanging with the New York intellectuals.  The next I am pushing goo into a pit.

The nice thing about repetitive, mind numbing manual labor is that you get to contemplate things like The Rise of the Awakening Consumer.

It’s a great book.

Industrial Evolution is a story of survival. It is about how the small group of committed entrepreneurs introduced in Small is Possible managed to keep their dream alive and thriving through the economic recession, emerging with a model of what a sustainable local economy might look like in a post carbon future. Compulsively readable and seasoned with light humor, this grassroots account demonstrates that ecological stewardship and enterprise at an appropriate scale can lay the foundation for abundance.

Industrial Evolution skips the doom and gloom and is all about solutions. By showing that it is possible to take the big out of industry, this book motivates people to work together in a meaningful way. Filled with inspirational tales of success, failure, perseverance, and real world experiences that anyone can relate to, Industrial Evolution is a must-read for activists, organizers, politicians, and anyone who cares about resilient communities.

It started when one of his staffers invited me to join him on his New York City radio show, Media Squat.  That’s simple enough.  At the time the PLENTY was awash with media coverage and we were all getting interviewed a lot.  I said what I always do when it comes to telling our stories.  And that is:  “Happy to.”

And I also said I wanted a copy of Life Inc. for the library, and I was told, “No problem.”

I did the interview and forgot about it, until one day months later when I was shoveling out my email stall and I realized I had never received a copy of the book.  I was disappointed to hear, “Sorry, we ran out of review copies.”

And so I forgot about it again.

Until one day at Chatham Marketplace when the Rushkoff staffer’s Mom bumped into me at the till and said, “I have something for you.”  I was in a hurry, she was going to be awhile checking out, I didn’t really have time for this interaction, so she handed me her car keys and said, “it’s in the back seat.”

I couldn’t resist the notion of opening someone else’s car, so I dashed out to the parking lot, and there was a hard bound copy of Life Inc., a little worse for wear after obviously spending some time on the humid back dash.

I was delighted, tossed it on the ever growing “to be shelved pile” in the  library, and forgot about it.

Until I received an email from Rushkoff asking me to contribute to his paperback edition-due at the end of February.  Happy to.  Gulp.  My own manuscript for Industrial Evolution is also due, and I am behind, and I have no business taking on other writing projects at this point in time.

I dashed  off a piece on our project, grabbed my unread copy of Life Inc., and gave it a read over nine days of sailing in the Virgin Islands.  Normally I can’t read on a sailboat.  Normally it makes me seasick.  But I couldn’t stop reading Life Inc.

It’s a riveting history of corporatism laced with keen insights into media, money, time, and the relationship between people and products.  I was fascinated.  It turns out Ruskoff has written ten books, won a ton of awards and is a towering New York intellectual.

What worried me as I read on was his ability to clearly outline the gloom and doom of the human condition.  And I became leery of the “Happy Chapter” to come.  After all, the subtitle is “How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back.”  I kept waiting for the “take it back” part.  I’m a fan of David Korten-another anti-corporatist like Rushkoff-but I tend to dispense with the whole genre because I don’t know what else to do-other than form corporations to do what needs to be done.  After all, on our project we have a “C” corporation which is a co-operative, an “LLC” corporation which is supposed to make money even though it never has, a “501(c)3″ corporation, and a handful of other corporations ranging from “sole proprietorships” to “partnerships.”  As one who has spent his entire life incorporating, I don’t really know how to change the world without doing so.

As I approached the end of Life Inc., the opportunity for the big solution chapter grew less and less, and I was terribly worried that a great read was going to leave me heartbroken-like so many “Energy and Society” books do.

And I was shocked to see in the last chapter that Rushkoff’s solution is basically us.  He talks about trading CSA shares for web development, and implementing local currency, and reclaiming vacant lots for food production.  I was stunned. I need to re-write what I sent him for his paperback edition.

It was wild.  He didn’t mention our project by name, but as I write this I realize the whole book was about us.  Just as we have been turning our backs on the “virtual” economy, the one Michael Shuman refers to as “TINA,” and redoubling our efforts at meeting our needs with local commerce and community, Rushkoff was writing a book about it.

It was remarkable.  I feel like I’m giving away the ending.  Life Inc. is a keeper.  A must read.

I will  get the book into the library by the 18th.

In their efforts to “protect American consumers,” the FTC wants me to tell my readers that I sometimes get free books.  At Piedmont Biofuels we run a lending library for the whole project and beyond.  The focus of our library is books on energy and society.

That’s what I like to read, and that’s the kinda stuff I write about.

My brother Glen likes to believe that most of the books in our library have been borrowed from him, and not returned.  And my brother Jim does a mountain of book reviews.

The reality is that some of our books have been purchased, some have been borrowed, and some have been sent to us by publishers as “review copies.”

Here is my rule:  Life is too short for a bad review.  So I only review books I like.  That means that when I read a “free” book and I am not able to endorse it, I merely put it in the library with no review.

Sometimes I write blurbs for other authors.  That entails reading the manuscript before the book is in print, and offering a one line comment that might help them sell the book.  In exchange for writing a blurb, I often get a copy of the book for free when it appears on bookstore shelves.

We’ve always tried to stay “legal” at Piedmont Biofuels, where I work.  That means complying with local building inspectors, fire marshals, state environmental regulators (for both air and water), and with federal regulators like the EPA and the IRS, to say nothing of our compliance with the National Biodiesel Board.

Hopefully this entry will make me good with the FTC…

He started it, and handed it back, with the comment, “Too much Thoreau for me.”

I thought that was odd.  As a Thoreau fan.  But I know he reads a lot, so I figured he was right.

But then my wife Tami read it, and started quoting from it, and then I had to fly to Toronto, and I needed a book, so I snatched it from Tami’s bedside pile.

The subtitle of Less is More is  “embracing simplicity for a healthy planet, a caring economy and lasting happiness.”  It is a collection of essays edited by Cecile Andrews and Wanda Urbanska (New Society Publishers 2009).

And it is fantastic.  Forget Thoreau.  Forget the hubris in the subtitle.  Forget about the fact that Urbanska is a self-styled television star.

It is a series of hard-hitting essays by a diverse collection of writers that wraps its arms around everything from simplicity to climate change to economic metrics to happiness.  I approached each chapter (each new writer) with skepticism and a willingness to put the book down, and I found myself delighted time after time.

I’m not a religious person, so it is easy for me to approach a chapter by Reverend Canon Sally Bingham entitled “Religion and the Earth” with my guard up, but like most of the other writers in Less is More, she won me over with terrific writing and ideas.

Religion, it seems, is one thing that has sustained for a couple of thousand years.

This is a book by contemporary philosophers, and academics, and practitioners of a new way of being, and as such it is pure delight.

Cecile Andrews chapter, The Circle of Simplicity was a highlight for me.  She goes from a guest observing her shopping list of “bread and water” to the construction of community in a few short pages.  It was marvelous.

I’m thinking the notion of “Less is More” came from a Browning poem, and has since been seized by architects and artists and writers of all sorts.

I’m not sure how the phrase applies to our growing library, exactly, since new arrivals are coming at a rate faster than they can be read or shelved, but this is a book that anyone would be glad to have on their shelf.

My first attempt came after a Fourth of July weekend on Kilby Island, off the coast of North Carolina.  My daughter Jess received a new camera, and filmed everything from badminton to magazine reading on the couch.  2 hours of footage was reduced to this:

My second attempt was in Lion’s Head, Ontario, visiting my brother Glen on the edge of Georgian Bay.  One of the cool things I did when I was there was publish an entry in his Wind Blog that stirred up a sea of discussion that is still swirling about.  Less controversial is the movie I putzed around with while I was there.

It is a fascinating book.  In many ways it is a counter point to Thomas Friedman.   I’m a big Friedman fan.  His last book;  Hot, Flat and Crowded was a manifesto for what America needs to be doing right now.

And I am with him.

But The Power of Place puts Friedman into a new perspective.

De Blij is a geographer.  And a demographer.  And an academic. One of his points is that the world is only getting “flatter” for a tiny percentage of the population.

De Blij borrows heavily from Buckminster Fuller’s “Spaceship Earth,” and breaks down the planet’s inhabitants into “Locals,” “mobals,” and “globals.” The overwhelming percentage of people die in the same country they were born in.  He calls them “locals.”

I married a “local” girl.  That makes me an authority on the subject.  If I were a character in Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man, I would be the guy with “my foot caught in the door.”

De Blij would score me as a “mobal.”  That is, someone who crosses a national boundary in search of a better life.  A risk taker.  A place changer.  He is kind to “mobals.”  It is a much kinder term than “dirty immigrant.”

My poor daughter does not qualify as a debutante because I am an immigrant to this country.

Got it.

I am currently flirting with New Society on writing a third book.  The potential title is Industrial Evolution, and the notion of “place” is inescapable.

One of the topics I will need to cover is Chatham County’s response to our project.  As a place, Pittsboro has been forced to respond to our undertakings–many of which have never been encountered before.

Chatham County is funny.  The Internet is supposed to have offered us a flattened world.  But in Chatham it has been used to build and defend parochial views. Our online presence is characterized by armchair quarterbacks and lovers of the status quo who like to spit poison on anything new or different.

De Blij would nod in agreement.  “Flattening” doesn’t just happen. Most of the world remains as round as it ever was.  I was intrigued by the book.  I thought it was tight, well written, and certainly worth reading.  It will be in the library on Monday.  New additions to the library include: A Nation of Farmers by Sharon Astyk and Aaron Newton, The Solar Century by Jeremy Legett and Common Wealth by Jeffrey Sachs.

His path to Small is Possible came via the PLENTY, which is our newly revitalized local currency.  In the chapter “Financing Ourselves,” I accidentally did two things.  First, I wrote about our locally owned Capital Bank.  Local readers became enamored with the idea of banking locally and started opening accounts there.  They got a copy of the book to find out what their new customers were talking about. The founder of the bank bought some copies. I accompanied him to his wife’s book club at Mrs Lacy’s Tea Room in Sanford, North Carolina.  For a moment there I was the darling of Capital Bank.

Secondly Small is Possible was picked up by BJ Lawson, who was running for Congress.  In “Financing Ourselves” I told the story of the PLENTY–which was a currency I had supported and used for many years. Monetary theory is a hobby of BJ’s.  One day at lunch a group of us kicked around the idea of breathing fresh life into the PLENTY organization.  It was one of those idle conversations where one person says “I could do the website,” and another says I could do “this” and my suggestion was that I might be able to “get a bank.”

We did all of those things, the new PLENTY was launched and it turns out “Local Bank Accepts Local Currency” became international news.

It started with a misquote in USA Today which said, “We are a wiped out little town.” That led to a local burst of media, followed by the national guys. I headed off to Democracy Now. Next thing we knew our mayor was on FOX news, and Melissa was on the BBC, and CNN trucks were rumbling through our little town.  Then came the Russians, and the Polish TV crews.  Then Inside Edition.  It’s been nuts.

I confess to being at a deep disadvantage on the TV front.  Having not owned one for 18 years I have never seen many of these shows.

One of my favorite sidebars to this story is that of Janine Saunders.  She was raised at Blue Heron Farm–which is an intentional community in Pittsboro–written about in the chapter “Housing Ourselves.” Janine moved to New York, hired on as an assistant with Rushkoff, and was given the task of getting me on the show.  I love it.  Rushkoff has thought deeply about currency and capitalism, and I am thinking it might have come as a surprise to Janine that in order to get “the story,” from Manhattan she would need to start back in her home town of 2500 souls…