Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

Grow Your Food, Know Your Food!

My colleague Emily-Jane found this great blog post about the Obamas starting a vegetable garden at the White House. I was so excited to hear about this, as I've been doing a lot of research lately on similar topics for the St. Johns Farmers' Market. I have to say, I've become a bit obsessed with the idea of growing your own food, supporting small farms and buying locally. The library has a bounty of how-to books on growing vegetables, preparing these delicious wonders, and preserving them for later. We also have books on starting your own farm, raising chickens in your backyard, and other ways to support yourself and your local economy. It's been really hard for me to choose just a few for this post, but here we go.

So now that the Obamas are doing it, maybe vegetable gardening will become all the rage. You want to try your hand in it? Let us give you some help. We have many books on vegetable gardening - from raised beds, to your own small farm. We even have some specific to growing vegetables in the Pacific Northwest. Steve Solomon provides one of the seminal works on growing vegetables in our wet, beautiful Cascade Region in his book, Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades. Though some of his ideas may be considered controversial, this book is unquestionably thorough in its discussion of the unique conditions we find in our region, such as "no sun in the winter, no rain in the summer and nutrients washed out of the soil by a thousand years of endless rain." This book was first published in 1980, and he updates it every few years. We carry the most recent 2007 edition as well as the 2000 edition (which has fewer holds on it). This is a very popular book!

While Solomon believes you need lots of space to do it right, many of us do not have acreage in which to plant rows of crops. But never fear, according to R.J. Ruppenthal in Fresh Food From Small Spaces, almost no space is too small or too dark to raise food! This is an entertaining and practical guide to growing productive vegetable gardens in small spaces including balconies, windowsills and counter tops. It even includes information on raising chickens and beekeeping within the city.

So now that you have your garden planted, with the promise of fresh produce to come, it's time to start thinking about how to prepare delicious meals from your bounty! I wanted something that emphasized using seasonal, local products and I ended up going with chefs Vitaly and Kimberly Paley's Paley's Place Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from the Pacific Northwest. This beautifully photographed cookbook uses locally found ingredients in its recipes, but the meals are influenced by many different cultures. And just as appealing as the scrumptious meals you will create, are his stories of local "farmers, fishers, and foragers" who supply Paley with ingredients and inspiration. We live in a beautiful and fertile region and this book really brings that home in pictures and words.

The New York Times mentioned that Mrs. Obama hoped their new garden would help "educate children about healthful, locally grown fruit and vegetables at a time when obesity and diabetes have become a national concern." Add to that people being hit hard by the economic downturn, worry over large-scale salmonella scares, and our planet's environmental future, and you find more and more folks trying to make good choices for themselves, their families and their communities. I like to think the Pacific Northwest is a leader in the green movement, including sustainable food and farming.  The documentary Good food, produced and directed by Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin, talks about the growing number of small farms in our area, as well as the co-ops, grocery outlets and consumers that support them.

The timing is perfect, go forth, get your hands dirty and reap the benefits of your harvest! Be sure to check out the library's guide to Farmers' Markets for even more fresh, local produce options. Eat well!

Walking at Home and in History

When people start talking about taking radical steps to reduce their personal carbon emissions, or to change their transportation habits to help the environment, it seems like usually they're talking about switching driving for biking. But what about the most environmentally low-impact transportation method of all, walking? Well, a recent article at the Sightline Institute's blog The Daily Score, there's a fascinating article which talks about two recent academic studies exploring the impact walking more can have on carbon dioxide emissions, our national dependence on foreign oil, and of course, our own bodies – as well as another study that looks at how city streetscapes and urban layout affect our ability and interest in walking for transportation. Pretty heady stuff!

Like many of you, dear readers, I live in Portland, where the city has an entire office devoted to facilitating a wide array of transportation options, including walking. They're serious about this – they promote walking for pleasure, but also for more mundane tasks like going to the grocery store and commuting to work. So maybe the Portland area is ahead of the curve when it comes to walking more. But I think you'll find that there's lots of fascinating reading on the topic of walking, even to those of us who are already avid promoters of walking as a part of everyday life. Here are a few suggestions:

First off, let's consider how walking has affected people and communities throughout history. Rebecca Solnit's eloquent Wanderlust: A History of Walking. Solnit considers different kinds of walking-related activities that people engage in (e.g., political marches, religious pilgrimages, and backcountry hikes), and examines depictions and uses of walking in literature, science, and the arts. All in all, the book is a fascinating exploration of why we walk, and how walking has shaped human cultures.

Portland has many hills, and if you're up for it, they make great places to walk. Laura O. Foster's Portland Hill Walks: Twenty Explorations in Parks and Neighborhoods makes a great guide. When I took the Alameda Ridge Loop walk with a friend we were blown away by how many nearly-invisible public stairways we got to walk up and down – seriously, we would never have noticed many of them without Foster's instructions! She provides a fascinating array of neighborhood historical information for each of her recommended walks, as well as practical tips like the location of bathrooms, drinking fountains, and restaurants likely to provide a good lunch. If you like Foster's style, you might want to check out her more recent effort, too: Portland City Walks: Twenty Explorations In and Around Town. Or, you could look at one of the dozen or so other guidebooks of walks around Portland.

Like its title indicates, Car Sick: Solutions for Our Car-addicted Culture is an instruction book for how to reduce traffic congestion, the stress of commuting by car, and air and water pollution by decreasing usage of private cars for transport. Author Lynn Sloman devotes a chapter to "Soft solutions to de-motorize the rush hour" (pages 61-75), which includes creative ideas like the "walking bus" – a group of kids walking to school together, with a pull-trolley to carry their backpacks. The book is more than just practical ideas, though – it's full of success stories from cities around the world meant to inspire individuals and neighborhoods to take baby steps to reduce their car use.

Cars. . . And the Trouble With Them

Cars.  Boy do we Americans love them! Personally, I'm not a big fan of driving. To me, being stuck in traffic is like taking crazy pills and parallel parking makes me break out in a sweat.  But on long stretches of road, say out in Eastern Oregon - with the wind in my hair and my favorite tunes on the radio - well there is definitely an appeal.  But like many things that give us that warm fuzzy feeling, driving isn't very good for us or our planet.  And though folks have been telling us for decades that our addiction to cars and oil would be our undoing, the love affair was too strong.  Now we are starting to get it, and because of this, an entire industry is hurting big time.  In July 2008, Automotive News reported that sales for the first half of 2008 were the worst the U.S. auto industry had seen since 1993.  Sales totaled $7,414,295, down 10.1 percent from 2007.* So, the big tree (Ford, GM and Chrysler) went to Washington asking for help back in November and again on Tuesday, this time offering to sell their corporate jets and take a pay cut from what was millions in 2007 to just $1 a year, if Congress was willing to help out.  How will this all play out?  Will U.S. automakers start to make the fuel-efficient cars we need?  What happens when the oil runs out?  We've got years of these issues ahead of us, and I can't help but wonder what kind of vehicles our children's children will be driving someday.

But in the meantime, there is a lot of great work out there on the auto industry, the environment, and the future of cars.  One excellent example is the book Zoom, written by Iain Carson and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran.  Carson and Vaitheeswaran are both correspondents for The Economist, and they have written this surprisingly enjoyable and ultimately timely book arguing for U.S. energy independence by weaning cars off oil.  Their book is far from the doom and gloom outlook we've been hearing about from the auto industry, instead it's very optimistic about the future of cars.  In fact, they contend it isn't the cars at all that are at fault, it's the oil that's the problem and more drilling is not the answer.  And with the great minds out there in the world, they believe there are many viable, earth-friendly solutions available for our crazy, car-loving culture!

In Auto Mania, Tom McCarthy discusses the history of the automotive industry and specifically the connection between the car, the consumer, and the environment.  McCarthy's book is well researched (with 65 pages of notes!) and looks deep into the seedy underbelly of the auto industry.  He goes into detail about the automobiles immense draw on the earth's natural resources, including the ill-effects on air and water, not to mention the junkyards.  He also talks about the reasons behind the industry's resistance to change and basically about what got us into this mess!  Plus, it's got some fun pictures and photographs.

And there is a fascinating (and honestly, pretty upsetting) documentary titled Who Killed the Electric Car? written and directed by Chris Paine.  To get you interested, here is the tagline from the film, "In 1996, electric cars began to appear on roads all over California. They were quiet and fast, produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline...........Ten years later, these cars were destroyed."  Interested?  Definitely check it out.  Though prepare yourself, I found myself getting pretty angry!

*Article found in the library's ABI/INFORM Trade & Industry database available from anywhere with a valid Multnomah County Library card.  You can read the entire article by clicking here - from outside the library, you will need your library card number and PIN.