Birchbark Blog

Throbbing Fangs, Tattoos, Unbearable Relief

Sun, 05 May 2013 01:57:00 GMT

I keep trying to read new books, but the last few sentences of The Son, by Phillip Meyer (see earlier post) keep haunting me. Fortunately I've got Vampires in the Lemon Grove, Karen Russell's book of short stories. I keep going back to my favorite stories and now have read them several times. They are mysteriously satisfying, better with each reading. The New Veterans is one of my favorites -- a down to earth woman delivers healing body work to a veteran. His tattoo, a portrait of a terrible moment in time is an unfixed world into which she enters. The title story, told by an ancient and lonely vampire who looks like an Italian grandfather, is a melancholy love story, a suspense narrative, and a meditation on absurdity and time. Russell's writing is always deliciously physical -- when the vampires sink their fangs into the wonderful lemons of Sorrento the mournful throbbing of their fangs subsides enough to quiet their spirits. When I read that paragraph my teeth hurt. The vampire falls off the wagon -- into miserable lemon rampage, then worse. And his graceful bat wife . . . but you'll have to read it yourself.

Perhaps the most powerfully visceral of these stories is Reeling for the Empire. Young Japanese women are lured away from their families and changed into silkworms -- their bodies continually bloating with thread, relief found only by having the thread drawn out. Unbearable slavish appetites, unbearable enslaved relief -- what I love about Russell's work is her deadpan delivery of the most outrageously imaginative psychological truth. Her humor is brilliant, her language strangely sweet, the most fantastic of her characters utterly believable.

Reeling for the Empire pretty much describes a writer's life except instead of mulberry leaves I'm eating my healthy standby snack -- baby carrots and Ranch dressing. Actually, the mulberry leaves sound better . . .

Yours,

Louise

Texamachismo: The Son and The Boy Kings of Texas

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Sometimes a busy woman has a ecstatic but sinking feeling as she reads the first chapter of a book -- a sort of Can't Quit You Baby knowledge -- no matter what the cost to others in the household I will be reading this wonderful book for the duration. I will be lost in the book, stay up late for this book, pick it up first thing in the morning, let my own work go or be late for work. Such is the power of certain books. The Son, by Philipp Meyer got me right away and then nearly lost me with a rape and pillage scene of violence so viscerally brutal I tried to push away the book -- but then picked it up again and was hooked.

Comanches, who later have a complex utterly authentic, even funny, starring role in this book, raid a settler family early on and kidnap two brothers. One survives. Eli McCoullough goes on to deliver one of the most absorbing, fully realized, captivity narratives I've ever read. Meyer is a tough minded, hard working, graceful writer. Much as John Tanner recounts in the narrative of his captivity, Eli becomes fully immersed, a Comanche, which was the point of captivity. He becomes part of his new family and defends it ferociously. His story, researched with obsessive zest and crackling with furious attention to detail, drives this book. This is a family history told through diaries, WPA recordings, and omniscient observation. Jeanne Anne McCullough's merciless femininity is thoroughly satisfying. Peter McCullough's diaries tell a wrenching story of murderous white neighbors and the massacre of the Garcias, girls and men. The violence is equally shared among the various cast members as the family history charges along, taking no prisoners.

I read over and over the pages of workmanlike description that give this book such admirable depth -- "A fancy or unusually good bow was worth two or three horses. They were all about a yard in length . . . and backed with the spine sinews from a deer or buffalo . . . if times were good -- if our warriors were not being killed and their equipment not being lost on raids -- the bowyers would take their time and their bows would be the stuff of legend. Arrows were no different. It could take half a day to make one just right." Through Eli's compelling character, Meyer is able to narrate what we know will happen -- the last years of Comanche power, the horror of smallpox, the fact that Indians helped hunt each other down -- solidarity did not reach past tribal boundaries. Adventure, history, cruelty, love -- it is all here and Meyer has the passionate discipline to tell it this big but never sprawling, ambitious, well crafted novel.

As long as we're in Texas, I just finished The Boy Kings of Texas, by Domingo Martinez. Again, once I was in this book it was goodbye family, I am reading. Domingo narrates his vivid, moving memoir with rueful wit and surprisingly, given the many betrayals in this family, no spite. Some hatred, okay. But no spite. Oh the familiar craziness of it all. The callings out, the vicious fights, the family brutalities, the helpless and overwhelming love of drunken men expressing drunken love. There is a reason that English has colonized the words macho, macha, and machismo -- there isn't anything quite like it anywhere except on reservations and urban Indian worlds where an insult can drive family members to such rage they will gladly kill for honor. (Okay -- I'll have to think this through more thoroughly) Reading through this tempestuous struggle of a life I rooted for Domingo. I feared he would not get out. I thought he'd always live in Brownsville prey to raging uncles, a devilish Grandma, and yeasty Budweiser. I worried about this even though I'd just met Domingo. We were at Concordia College, in Minnesota. We talked with classes and were jointly interviewed. He was very well dressed, but not for Minnesota. I wanted to put a parka on him but he looked too nice -- his jacket matched his gloves and his gloves matched each other. (I only buy black gloves and socks so I don't have to really match accessories anymore.) I recommend this book to everybody who has known the heart of a little boy shucked clean during the rapid onslaught of beer-fueled manhood. And just to mention again -- this book is frequently very funny.

May I also mention Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles. A terrific novel about a WOMAN. And as I'm running out of space Maki has grabbed Vampires in the Lemon Grove, by Karen Russell in a bid to review it in his column -- the dog.

Yours for books,

Louise

Birthday Post & Daylight Savings Recommended Reading

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 21:29:00 GMT

First the birthday post: It was like getting an invitation from the most popular girl in the fifth grade, only it was Philip Roth. So I went to his birthday (wonderful) party. I had promised to wear my Indian clothes, so I did. My daughter had given me a resplendent outfit bought during her recent trip to New Delhi. Asked to speak, I toasted Philip and gave him a nickname -- stating positively that I am NOT a sacred person, and could only give a secular Ojibwe nickname. He was 80 years old that day and surrounded by thrilled, loving people, including the very great Edna O'Brien.

Her latest collection of stories, Saints and Sinners, has within it a story that I reread every few months. That story is titled Old Wounds.

The worse the news gets regarding publishing, the better the books are -- I don't get it. You'd think writers would be fleeing the profession. Instead, I've had an avalanche of tremendous new nonfiction: Katherine Boo's magnificent "Behind the Beautiful Forevers", Gretel Ehrlich's harrowing account of the aftermath of the Japanese tsunami, "Facing the Wave, A Journey in the Wake or the Tsunami", and classic Tom King. "The Inconvenient Indian." Biting, mordant, enlightening -- yet somehow addictive reading. Tom has taken on a difficult subject: us. He's made it the kind of book you reach for when, you know, you want a good book. Also there is "Westhope, Life as a Former Farm Boy", by Dean Hulse. He's from North Dakota and he feels the same way I do about industrialized farming. And now I'm reading "The Boy Kings of Texas" by Domingo Martinez and trying not to laugh and cry at the same time because it makes it hard to eat chocolate.

Wait, I've got to go. There's so much light out. Daylight! More time to read. "The Absolutist," by John Boyne. I have two other books to tell you about but they aren't published yet. Watch for "The Son" by outrageously talented Phillip Meyer and "Children of the Days", by scorchingly brilliant Eduardo Galeano. More about these two books -- to come.

Louise

Happy Winter

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT

I had simply been too nice, for too long, as this is Minnesota. So I read the Patrick Melrose Novels, by Edward St. Aubyn, practically weeping with relief. Vicarious cruelty, sordid little lusts, an epic search to score heroin while carrying a parent's ashes, it has helped enormously.

Patrick, on his parents vodka fueled marriage: "Perhaps, on the contrary, it was her money that had cheapened him. He had stopped his medical practice soon after their marriage. At the beginning, there had been talk of using some of her money to start a home for alcoholics. In a sense they had succeeded."

The four novellas contain abuse, incest, indelicacies, vicious cuts at the person of Princess Margaret, hilarious descriptions of clothing, party swag, and the venal behavior of the British upper class. There is also bewildered tenderness and a narrator who staggers toward something that resembles hope.

Birchbark Books is going to Washington D.C. via train to take part in the Feb 17th 350.org action on curbing the fossil fuel industry. We'll let you know how that goes, how the train goes, what we see and what we are reading.

I might take the St. Aubyn and read it all again. Or the new Karen Russell book, short stories including one about a Vampire in a Lemon Grove -- I just glimpsed an intriguing review --

Yours for books,

Louise

(View Louise's Facebook Page for more thoughts about the climate action in DC)

Back to Real

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 06:00:00 GMT

So that was a great night in New York City but home again is better, sweeter, and as everyone says "weirdly warm." And oh, did we talk about Hurricane Sandy? Tomorrow is will be 50 degrees and this is December in Minnesota. When people speak of these warm days there is an uneasy smile, a half-laugh, "guess there's an upside to global warming", or an almost wistful, "we should get out and enjoy this before the cold hits." In the back of our minds, these thoughts: How long before it just doesn't get cold here anymore? How long before, as NASA climatologist James Hanson predicts, the southern half of the United States becomes uninhabitable? How long before the corn scorches in Iowa? How long before Lake Superior's waters warm? Before they recede ten, fifteen, twenty feet? How long before we lose nearly half the Arctic?

Oh, that was last summer when we lost the Arctic.

Back in the real we'd like to link everyone to 350.org. Bill McKibben brought 350.org's Do The Math tour to Minnesota a couple of nights ago. I was there. Ted Mann hall was packed and the event was long sold out. There were many people, but . . .

When you were small and just falling asleep, did you ever have the sense that your boundaries blurred, that you were huge, vast, big as the earth? Bigger? A sudden sense of growing wildly beyond all possibility? I wish that was the way I felt the other night. Instead, I had the sense that this problem was that huge. I looked around at the people and we were so few, just a handful among the billions, and we were all perfectly ordinary.

Not only that, but annoying too. Honestly? I hate the way I am sometimes, but some speakers (NOT McKibben) annoyed the hell out of me. They were right, but my heart sank. It was a little like being at a giant AA meeting where you know you're sick and doomed and, worst of all, you are in a place where you're going to hear a whole lot of platitudes. And then, horrifyingly, those platitudes will turn out to be true. And even worse -- in order to live with any decency at all, you're going to have to admit them into your own dark, anti-social, Minnesota-nice resistant, heart.

It is true. All of us ordinary, annoying, scared, crazily hopeful people are called upon to fight, together, the greatest fight in human history. I know that sounds like a B movie trailer -- but like I said . . . true is true. The fight is simple: to keep a planet we can live on. The most important thing I took away was this: none of us really want to use fossil fuels. Given an alternative, hey, who wouldn't choose clean burning energy? But the fossil fuel industry -- giant and complex -- has blocked alternative energy. The fossil fuel industry, all of the oil companies -- Chevron, Exxon, BP, Shell, etc., have decided that immediate profit is more important than a world.

We have to stop them.

When Bill called upon us all to pressure our colleges and universities (not to mention any wealthy persons you know) to divest, to stop investing in fossil fuels, it was like a light went on. It worked for apartheid. Let's apply the pressure. If there isn't yet a group working to divest your college, form one, join one, write letters. Join 350.org. Find out how. Let's take EVERYBODY'S money out of fossil fuels.

We were out of time twenty years ago -- but hey -- check out Germany. Check out China. They are going green anyway and we are behind the curve, just where big oil wants us.

This is supposed to be a book blog -- and so here is the book part: I want there to be a world where we ourselves, our children, our grandchildren and on and on, can lie back on a cool summer night, the windows open, myriad sighing crickets and unknown little bugs singing, a lamp, okay a solar lamp, casting a pool of radiance -- in which we are reading together.

Yours truly, Book People,

Louise

Join the movement at 350.org.
Read Bill McKibben's key article on climate change: Global Warming's Terrifying New Math
Purchase Bill McKibben's book Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

National Book Awards

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 04:52:00 GMT

New York City post Sandy. Disheveled streets but lots of movement. The beautiful and fabled Cipriani! And seriously, a red carpet. With photographers. All the other fiction finalists are better looking than me, and they are guys. Third nomination for the National Book Award -- and I know exactly what to do when my book doesn't win. I will turn to my editor, shrug. Then we say in unison, "we wuz robbed." But this time after a few days of downing Tums and with erratic sleep, I hear the title of my own book called and my head drops on the table -- good thing the plate was gone. I remember galloping up to hug Lorrie Moore (chair of the fiction judges). Once I start hugging her I don't want to let go, as then I will have to say something. I am not good at preparing speeches -- my words always get away from me. All I remembered was that I would try and start the speech in Ojibwemowin because if I did that I was fairly sure I'd get some magnanimous spirit to help me with the rest of it. Besides, I had promised my daughter Persia that I would use the Ojibwe language as often as possible -- she is working so hard to become an Ojibwe immersion school teacher.

Back to those good looking guys, the other finalists. Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King, Junot Diaz, This is How You Lose Her, Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Half-time Walk, and Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds. I read each book and each time I finished reading I thought "this is the one, this one is better." They are all books that should have won this prize. But I was in a magic realm of chivalry. First, Junot Diaz approached me before the whole shebang and said that he wanted me to win this -- he was utterly charming and completely in earnest. Besides, he loves one of my favorite writers, Michael Martone. I have already met the only person who really belongs on the red carpet -- carelessly gorgeous terrific writer and editor of The Believer, Vendela Vida, married to Dave Eggers. When I met her I didn't realize that she was married to him, I was trying not to stare at her profile. She mentioned that Dave was taking care of the kids while she was out working -- hey, I found out, that Dave, taking care of the kids. Once I knew, had to like him. As it turns out, he, too, is okay with being in good company and looks like he just wants to go home. Likewise, the other painfully handsome dudes -- Kevin Powers and Ben Fountain. They make a point of saying they are glad for me, removing awkwardness. Ben's sweetly handsome son (why are they all so nice looking?) finds me to shake hands. In fact, it feels like nobody actually won this thing and I go home with a 5 lb piece of bronze feeling just the same as when a finalist.

But once home, it starts -- as I get out of the airport cab and drag my little bag up to the house my agile wide-eyed fourth grade niece throws herself along the sidewalk, a blaze of red hoodie and brown hair. She collides with me, up in my arms, a hug. Then she yells at me, you won, you won, and we got ice cream! Hey, both of their parents are pediatricians. Ice cream is big. Ice cream all around and a 10 lb piece of bronze in my carry on. Guess it did happen. More -- stay tuned.

Congratulations, Louise! Winner of the 2012 National Book Award in Fiction for The Round House

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 06:00:00 GMT

We at Birchbark Books could not be more excited for and proud of beloved bookstore owner, Louise Erdrich. Louise received the award with her usual grace and style, speaking initially in Ojibwe as "a shout out for all the native people watching" and saying she wanted to receive the honor in "recognition of the grace and endurance of native women.”

You can view Louise's acceptance speech here.

Click here to purchase your own signed copy of The Round House.

Click here to view a list of recent media appearances by Louise and reviews of The Round House.

Check out (and like!) the new official Louise Erdrich Facebook Page, where you will find exclusive content from Louise's personal collection of photos, notebooks, and more!

Check out (and like!) the Birchbark Books Facebook Page for all the latest news from your favorite independent bookstore.

The Round House (and Book Tour)

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Dear Book People,

The last post on this blog was misleading, I realize that.

In the publishing world my next book is The Round House, which will be published October 2.

In world of my head the next book is Python's Kiss, which won't be published any time soon and isn't even written.

The Round House is a book that answers one complex question -- must a boy kill to save his mother? I suppose that is one way of looking at the story. Here is another way: I had to write this book when I began to learn how difficult it is to prosecute rape cases on reservations, and how often the only way to obtain justice is to turn to "wild justice" or revenge. I had to write this book when I learned that 1 of 3 Native women will experience rape. Most men who rape Native women are non-Indian. Almost every one of them will go free. I had to write this book because these things are true. But I didn't know how I would write this book until I began thinking the way a 13 year old boy would think, until I began hearing his voice and seeing the world the way he did.

Then for several years, secretly at times, openly with my family, everything I thought and did had to do with being Joe.

I am going on a book tour -- the schedule is available here. Book tours are odd in that, as a writer, I'm grateful to be sent on one. And as an introverted human being I am always scared -- afraid to leave my family, afraid to loose my connection to the next book, afraid of flying, afraid of meeting so many strangers.

At least with this book I can talk about something meaningful, though terrible, and hope that I can make some small difference.

Yours,

Louise

Click here to view a list of interviews with Louise and reviews of The Round House

Nero: A Preview

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 05:00:00 GMT

A preview of Louise's next book (after The Round House)

with graphic story illustrations by her daughter Aza Erdrich.

Nero first appeared as a story in The New Yorker (May 7, 2012)

Bookiness

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Dear Book People,

There is writing books, and then there is booking it around the country to talk about your books. I'll be doing the latter soon enough. But right now while my mind is clear and I am still at home, I thought it best to set down the reasons I wrote three books -- it seems odd that they are all appearing in the next three months. That is something of a publishing fluke, and doesn't mean I'm industrious in the least.

The first book that will appear is Chickadee, which is for young readers. This book is part of the Birchbark House series. Omakayas has grown up and her twin sons are the main characters. Do they get into trouble? Who would bother writing about children unless they got into trouble -- had life and death adventures, ate dead mice, fell into a snake nest, were kidnapped, nearly perished of longing, stole horses and were nearly sucked dry by vicious hordes of mosquitoes? That is what the book is about.

When I reread The Antelope Wife four years ago, I realized that I had to rewrite this book. It was about something else entirely, and actually had a plot. I didn't want to abandon the book because it won the World Fantasy Award. I treasure that award. So I kept the pieces of the book that fit together with several new pieces that I wrote -- and I kept the same title even though now every other book is about some professional male's or some animal's wife or daughter. I am unabashedly satisfied with this book now. Rewriting it was like have a 20,000 piece jigsaw puzzle in the wrong box -- from the cover, you think you are building a mountain scene. But working along your picture turns into a raucous carnival.

And then there is The Round House.

I can't talk about The Round House, or why I wrote it, quite yet. It is still too personal. After I start jaunting around reading from it here and there, it will lose that quality and belong to its readers. But right now this book is still stuck inside of me where it began -- or maybe Joe is, the narrator, a thirteen year old boy forced to save his mother.

Happy Dog Days,

Louise

Chi Miigwech -- Big Thank You

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:09:00 GMT

Dear Store Supporters,

A huge thank you to all of you. When we sent out invitations to come to a benefit for the bookstore, replies flooded in. Some of you donated even though you could not attend the festive event--just smacking a check on the counter and leaving Susan with a tear in her pretty brown eye. Many, many of you made a point of buying stacks of books. The response was so sudden that I got a call from our ever-courageous bookkeeper Diane. She had been about to do the usual grueling little dance -- decide which bills to pay, which bills to beg off -- when she looked at our account. Double take! What happiness!

I'd like to publish an online list of Friends of Birchbark Books, names only, if there is no objection. If anybody doesn't want their name on the list, please raise hand. I have sent out mail and email thank yous, a few have come back -- so those of you who weren't personally thanked by me please receive my warmest thanks. Your generosity startled me, and moved me. After over ten years of running the bookstore it feels good, no, it feels terrific, to know we aren't alone!

A personal word regarding our new next door neighbor, Don Saunders of In Season. First the food. Don thinks like an artist about his menus, but is one of those rare unpretentious chefs. Please try his restaurant In Season -- it is lively, has wild wall art, and is friendly place. The food is based on utterly fresh local ingredients and prepared by a Minnesotan with a touch of genius.

Okay, but plenty of people were hoping for something like the Kenwood Cafe, and are worried about an upscale joint upscaling a beloved location where people could hang out. But the special forces that aligned to make the Kenwood Cafe cannot be duplicated. And I think we have a winner moving in next door. The Kenwood (or whatever it will be called) will be an all day place, with breakfasts, brunch-lunch, snack time, and then grown up dinner time. And Don is sensitive about not pricing the food out of reach. The other day I met him as he came around to gather mail. What he said should reassure and excite everybody.

A local resident had visited In Season and said if Don served breakfast he would be there every day. Don's face lighted up and then went a little dreamy. He said, "I'd like to make that man the best pancake he's ever tasted."

That pancake dangles at the end of the next few dark months of construction like a fluffy golden little sun . . .

Please come visit us and enjoy Susan's Amazing Morning Coffee. I am now hooked and have a cup at my elbow at this very moment.

So long, book lovers, and Thank You again

Louise

Romantic Getaway

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:47:00 GMT

Yes, the intimate and eclectric, intellectually challenging, emotionally limitless small independent bookstore is the new and favorite romantic getaway! We also provide a sort of single's club service -- compatible strangers easily meet when contemplating the same book. Conversation starts so naturally. And what is more pleasurable than browsing through books with a beloved friend or partner, opening the book, pointing out a passage, comparing favorites? Each to his or her own, I say, regarding electronic reading devices, but two people reading real books together is romantic. Two people gazing at their devices together, unable to lick the pages, is just sad.

I just read Blue Flower, by Penelope Fitzgerald -- romantic. Dune and Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert -- romantic for the old school geek. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami -- romantic for any sort of geek. A Farewell to Arms, Wuthering Heights, Portrait of a Lady -- romantically filled with deception and loss. My friend Keith's top ten romantic novels are: Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles. The Lover by Marguerite Duras.

Calling for more romantic (literary) nominations -- especially in the contemporary and Native books category -- I am hoping that some of you will respond --

Free chocolates at Birchbark Books during Valentine's Day week, and a table of romantic books to share.

Hearts,

Louise

100 Per Cent Friends

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 04:15:00 GMT

Dear Friends,

I remember the ravishing day that we opened the new door between our little bookstore and Kenwood Cafe. Since that day, we have had a true partnership. I'd like to thank Catherine and Jeff for cooking special theme meals for our book club, for lending their hearts to causes and showing movies like H2Oil, for caring about writers, supporting art, and for bringing us the puppy dog tail (a gloriously rich cinnamony dough topped with devilish cream-sweet frosting).

A place like the Kenwood Cafe becomes so quickly a given, a community treasure, that everyone loses sight of the fact that its existence is based on dollars. Kenwood Cafe is closing, probably for good. We will miss everyone who worked there as friends; we will miss you in a larger sense as a real place in this great big boxy franchised world.

In that light, thank you customers, visitors, patrons. This year we noticed how many of you chose to buy books from us, or gifts, and to support our always tenuous existence. Everyone who worked through the holiday season was touched in some way by the decisions you made to support us. Truly, we felt the love!

We are hoping that your generosity will help us make it through those lean days when there's no latte and not a puppy dog tail to be had next door.

Thanks again, chi miigwech

We wouldn't be here without you.

Louise

Why The Tar Sands?

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 05:00:00 GMT

Dear Bookish Ones,

Why would our inoffensive little bookstore, loving as we do to please our friends and customers, suddenly decide to show a move that will break your heart?

H2Oil, the movie that we will be screening on October 27 and 28, at next door Kenwood Cafe, is honestly so upsetting that it is hard not to cry when you watch the trailer. Why would we ask you to see such a film? Why would we become so compelled by this particular issue, when all we've ever done before is recommend books?

Why so crucial, why this urgency? Simple. There is nothing more important -- right now, right here.

The Tar Sands operation in Canada produces three to four times more carbon that regular oil extraction. Bill McKibben has called it a carbon bomb. Climatologists have termed the operation "game over" for our climate. The boreal forest is basically scraped away in this method of strip-oil-mining -- removing the lungs of the earth. As you watch the movie, you will understand the tragic impact of this project on Native people and communities. Billions of gallons of fresh water are used to steam the tar out of the sand, and the Keystone XL pipeline, a huge plan enlarging drastically on pipelines already built, could spill into our largest fossil water aquifer, which lies beneath South Dakota. Even now, living where we do, we are using 80% Tar Sands oil.

Wildly profitable oil companies don't want you to know this: the future belongs to those countries who conserve their fresh water and develop clean energies.

At this moment, President Obama could just say no. He could stand up for our future -- stand up to big oil. He could keep his promise to heal the planet and reduce our dependence on oil in favor of clean energy. Obama could stop the Keystone XL pipeline, and send a powerful message to the world. He is expected to make his decision in mere weeks.

That is why it is so important to show H2Oil, to see this film, to tell your friends, and to pull up Bill McKibben's website 350.org and find out what is happening, and why, on November 6 -- it will be a historical day for the climate.

I don't have any books to talk about tonight. Friends, our existence is a narrow miracle. Can it really be that we'll make earth, this green joy, into a place where we cannot survive?

Louise

H2Oil Trailer

Bill McKibben and 350.org
Encircle the White House and Stop the Tar Sands on November 6!

Connect with people working on this issue:

Indigenous Environmental Network
Website: www.ienearth.org
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Indigenous-Environmental-Network/186264980641
Twitter: twitter.com/IENearth

Tar Sands Action (National)
Website: tarsandsaction.org
Facebook: facebook.com/tarsandsaction
Twitter: twitter.com/tarsandsaction

Tar Sands Action (Minnesota)
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Twin-Cities-Tar-Sands-Action/275481812467416

350.org (National)
Website: 350.org
Facebook: facebook.com/350.org
Twitter: twitter.com/350

MN350 (Minnesota)
Website: MN350.org
Facebook: facebook.com/MN350
Twitter: twitter.com/MN_350

Windows of Clarity

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 05:00:00 GMT

Addicts of all types who eventually enter recovery know the phrase "window of clarity". Through the haze of drugs or booze, people have a poignant stroke of thought. People realize their addiction is deadly; it is collapsing their personal world. So, too, a cheap energy addict (like me) knows these moments. Every so often, I look at some object in my hand and see the unrecoverable petroleum that actually produced it. I drive 1-94 to see my parents and remember only 130 years ago this journey was harrowing, it took a month by ox cart or more in some seasons. Before that, people walked and working dogs dragged along their portable houses. In that window of clarity my car, all of our cars, which we take for granted, are magic carpets.

One such moment of clarity occurred this summer in Belcourt, North Dakota, on my home reservation where I went with my mother. I bought an apple in the grocery store. It was labeled Holland. The apple wasn't really from Holland, but it might as well have been. This apple appeared near the central Canadian Border in June -- it came from somewhere very, very far away. There are few places so remote that they do not get shipments of pesticide (petroleum) laced produce, fertilized (petroleum), harvested (petroleum) and shipped (petroleum) from a place equally mysterious and remote. The apple in my hand might as well have been tossed to the Turtle Mountains by a genie -- one created of a fabulously powerful substance accompanied by a deadly curse.

At our last bookstore meeting we talked as a group about what would make our work at Birchbark Books more meaningful. One of us said it would be great to enlarge our mission to include transitional thinking about how to strengthen local economies. The word "transitional" clicked with me. My windows of clarity, interspersed with bouts of magical thinking, included dread. Nobody likes to linger too long in a moment of clarity about climate change because it always ends in dread. Year by year I've tried to recycle, reduce, reuse. Still, the dread. And the word Collapse is enough to stop most thought. But the word Transition somehow pulled me out. Transition is not about dread, survivalist fear, a life of paranoia, hoarding guns and money and vacuum packed plastic barrels of grain. It is about producing our own energy and food, but in a joyous and meaningful way.

My mother's family gardened and canned and hunted all the food they ate only a generation ago, right there in the Turtle Mountains. My mother and father could still survive from their garden and orchard if they had too, even though they give most of what they grow away.

The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience by Rob Hopkins, is a great place to start reading. I recommend it as a positive beginning -- I have worked my way backward into Lester R. Brown's World On The Edge, and John Michael Greer's The Wealth of Nature, and Original Instructions, edited by Melissa K. Nelson, all excellent. As soon as I read The Transition Handbook, however, I realized that in Minneapolis we have the makings of a great transition city. Here are signs:

One year ago our bookstore faced a sheet of asphalt. Kenwood School was paved to the foundation. Last year that asphalt (petroleum) was torn out and replaced with a garden as miraculous as that apple in the Turtle Mountains. It was planted by (genies) the parents of schoolchildren, tended by the children (naturally produced) as well as more (eternal motion machines) parents, teachers, and now is being harvested. At the start of school barbeque, parents took home produce, marveling at the freshness, exchanging recipes. One boy looked at the top of a carrot showing in the dirt and asked, shyly, "can I pull it out?" He did, and walked away brushing his face dreamily with the soft carrot leaves. "I never knew they had tops" he murmured.

A moment of clarity for that boy, maybe, and for me a reason to enlarge our bookstore's offerings to include a section on Green Thinking, Urban Homesteading, Climate Change, The Commons, Indigenous Gardening -- all of the topics that I'd love to deny but can't. If we look over the sides of our magic carpets, we'll realize we're floating on thin air. If it's all the same, I'd rather coast down or "power down" than drop. But that requires living in that clarity, more reading, and taking action.

Thanks to all of our supporters who keep Birchbark Books going here on 21st Street. Watch for Diane Wilson reading from Beloved Child. She not only writes beautifully, but she is the director of Dream of Wild Health, an Indigenous gardening project and an original partner of Birchbark Books.

Louise