Tuesday night I attended an author presintation and book signing by David Wann, the author of Simple Prosperity. It was an enlightening time and I came home refreshed and rejuvinated. I woke up Troy and we talked for hours about the direction our family has chosen to take.

Simple Prosperity takes a look at current social anthropology from both a society and an individual point of view. The way he welds the two together, weaving back and forth between the two, hammers home how we are neither separate from our neighbors, nor defined by societal expectations.

Values such as health, relationships with people, connection with nature, satisfying work, a sense of purpose, abundance of personal time, and freedom of expression are the real wealth, far more valuable than money and mountains of manufactured stuff.
- Simple Prosperity Excerpt

Last night David Wann talked a lot about cultural expectations. It was nice for someone to speak about being immune to those expectations, to be willing to appear foolish, all the while traveling in your own direction. This really hit a nerve. At times I feel a bit crazy for not owning a TV set, or a home. Troy and I always seem to be doing things a different way, but we don’t feel that our value system is that different than others. Family, health, shelter, stability.

David Wann’s book illustrates a new way of life that can deliver twice the satisfaction for half the resources. Check it out, and let me know if you enjoy it. I would love to get together a coffee group one evening to discuss this book a little more.

What to Eat, by Marion Nestle! Awesome, awesome book. Marion also wrote “Food Politics” and you can find her website here. This book travels aisle by aisle through the supermarket telling you how bad (and how good) everything is. It’s a huge book! It spans produce, meat, dairy, fish, cereal, baby food, oil, you name it. Troy and I both read this book. It’s the nitty gritty truth on why organics are better and why cereal boxes are allowed to call their cereal “Heart Healthy”. The politics behind the supermarket, including why all the items you need are always so far from the front door, was hard to hear. We are all numbers, how much crap can they sell us??? That’s the game. Troy and I have become much wiser shoppers and we now like to point out the advertising ploys. However, reading this book has made it pretty impossible for us to step into a Safeway or Kind Soopers, we get very frustrated (once you know their game, you don’t want to play it anymore). This book and this book alone was the deciding factor for Troy and I to revamp our eating habits. We now realize that we can vote with our dollar when it comes to purchasing our food…we like that!

The new book by Al Gore. I read this while up at the cabin and I was totally floored. This is one of the most beautiful, poignant, and important books that I have read. It has spurred me to action. We as a world need to make some changes in the way that we lead our daily lives if we have even the slightest hope of handing a sustainable world to our children. Global Warming is a reality, we are in the midst of it. The most compelling part of the book to me was the photos that he had of what certain cities would look like if our oceans raised by 20 feet. It’s devastating, 120 million people would be displaced. There is a movie that Al created to go with his book which I would love to see (if I could ever get away to see a movie). Next time you are at the bookstore, pick up this book and at the very least leaf through it, if you are compelled…buy it. It’s worth it.

I just finished an awesome book: Not Buying It by Judith Levine. Judith gave up consuming for one year to explore current American consumerism. She joined a Voluntary Simplicity Group (she was by far the most voluntarily simplistic of them all) and grappled with her desire for clothing, Q-tips, and going to the movies. This book is in no way a how-to book, it’s a self exploration book, and I couldn’t put it down. Here are some of the quotes that stimulated my brain:

“On average, someone living in a developed nation consumes twice as much grain, twice as much fish, three times as much meat, nine times as much paper, and eleven times as much gasoline as someone living in a developing nation.”

“Americans make up just 4.5% of the world’s population, but we use 24% of it’s resources, and emit 23% of the greenhouse gases that are dissolving the ozone layer.”

“In 1998 and American used 1,023 kilograms of oil or its equivalent and ate 122 kilos of meat. In the same year, his Bangladeshi cousin burned a thimbleful of fuel - 7.3 kilos - and ate a mouthful, 3.4 kilos, of meat.”

“The average North American household tosses four pounds of stuff daily.”

My favorite quote in the book (she is quoting Douglas B. Holt, a professor of advertising at the University of Illinois):
“In the postmodern marketplace “the ‘good life’ is not a matter of having a well-defined list of status goods,” he writes. “Instead, it is an open-ended project of self-creation. The idea is to circulate continually through new experiences, things, and meanings, to play with different identities by consuming the goods and services associated with those identities.”"

That HIT HOME! What comes to mind for me: rock climbing, camping, mountaineering, backpacking, running, hiking, sewing, scrapbooking, knitting, swimming, ice climbing, the list goes on.

And finally a little clip of her concluding remarks:
“If I am a consumer first and last, all I can do to better the world is consume more responsibly - ‘buy green,’ invest in socially responsible businesses, and buy less. The other choice I have is to reject consumer as my sole role and reclaim my other public identity: citizen.”

In the style of “Not Buying It” I did actually purchase the book. I know it seems contradictory. But, in my defense, I did check to see if they had it at the library and they didn’t. I would, however, like to pass it along to someone else to read (Amy??), possibly in hopes that someone else will read it, and highlight the sections they enjoyed, write a few blirbs in it and return it for me to gain additional insight. Any takers??

I got a great new book for Annabelle. It will be quite some time before she gets it but I thought it was so cute I couldn’t let it get away. It’s called Nature’s Yucky and it teaches kidos about some of the gross things that animals do and why they do them. I especially like the page that talks about how Turtles breathe out of their butt! Ha ha ha ha! I was rolling on the floor. Anyways, I thought it was a great educational book that plays to kids fascination with all things gross!

I recently finished reading “The Climb” by Anatoli Booukreev and G. Weston DeWalt. It was written in response to “Into Thin Air” by John Krakauer about the 1996 Everest expedition where 8 people died, including the famous guides Rob Hall and Scott Fisher. John Krakauer was quite critical of Anatoli in his book and it was nice to read another point of view. It was so heartbreaking to read about the strength and heroism of Anatoli, yet to know in the back of my mind that he perished in an avalanche on Annapurna on Christmas day a year and a half after the infamous Everest tragedy.

One paragraph in the book really caught my eye. Anatoli was talking about what a strong client base the Mountain Madness team had and he described Charlotte Fox:

“Charlotte Fox, thirty-nine, and Aspen resident … was a highly qualified find for the Mountain Madness expedition. She had summited two 8,000ers [meters] in her climbing career and had climbed all fifty-four of the 14,000-foot peaks in Colorado. Unassuming and secure, she was a team player, and Fisher regarded her as a true asset, somebody who could perform with a minimum of maintenance. She knew how to take care of herself in the mountains.”

This struck me because this could easily be my resume by the time I am 39, or even earlier. I identified with her (BTW she lived, but it was close) and it sort of hit home that I have considerable experience in the mountains. Troy always says that I am too modest about my climbing history, that he has to brag for me (and he’s not much of a bragger, well not really much of a talker either). Reading this book brought out a flood of feelings in me about my own mountaineering experiences, especially my trip to Peru in 2001 with my dad. I am slowly coming to realize that I have done (and continue to do) some amazing things in my life. My love for the outdoors (fostered by my parents) is so strong. I am so lucky that my parents felt the need to foster and fund my outdoor trips growing up, they have such a sense of adventure and I am glad I inherited it! I had a conversation with Annabelle while on a hike last week about what I hoped I could pass down to her. I hope that my love of the outdoors will rub off on her and that she will find as much solace, and reward in the outdoors as I have.

I highly recommend “The Climb” to anyone who has read “Into Thin Air”. It’s the other, less draumatic/theatrical version. And most likely, much more accurate, being that Krakauer was “being rescued” and Anatoli was “doing the rescuing”.