My World Is Changing

I've been hearing about Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods for a while now, and I finally got around to buying it this summer when we were in Arkansas. But it wasn't until I committed to go to a book discussion about it for work that i finally got around to reading it. I cracked the book yesterday and I'm almost finished - unheard of for me and non-fiction, which usually takes me weeks to finish - and now I can't stop talking about it. This book broke something open in me, and now I'm so emotional about it, I'm a mess, which is sort of a problem since I have to speak about it rationally tomorrow. Anyway to organize my thoughts, this is why I like it:

1. Louv could have gone a completely different way with the tone of this book, when I first started reading, I immediately bristled wondering if I was going to feel like a miserable parent for not taking Nora backwoods camping at the age of two. But he didn't. Yes, he clearly does stuff like this with his kids, but really what he's advocating is for parents to ensure that kids get out of the house and into a natural setting everyday. This could mean trips to the park, but it can also mean growing a seed in a dixie cup or watching the birds land on the railing. In one of the best passages of the book, Louv reassures us that making the reconnection is possible, that it doesn't have to be a giant task, and he gives us permission to have fun and to learn things too:

" But before I take you on this hike, let me say something about the pressures that parents endure. Simply put, many of us must overcome the belief that something isn't worth doing with our kids unless we do it right. If getting our kids out into nature is a search for perfection, or is one more chore, then the belief in perfection and the chore defeats the joy. It's a good thing to learn more about nature in order to share this knowledge with children; it's even better if the adult and child learn about nature together. And it's a lot more fun."

2. He makes a really strong case for our need for Nature for a. mental health b. cognitive learning c. physical health d. the creative process. Our disconnect from nature is really messing us up on all four of these fronts and ruining the earth for everything else on top of it. Really that's it in a nutshell, but this book is so much more.

3. This book should be required reading for parents, educators and policy makers for Chapter 8 - the section on ADHD and the benefits of being in nature to combat it- alone. If you don't read any other part of this book, read that chapter, it is incredibly powerful.

4. He puts the responsibility for making our re-connection to nature on a multiple shoulders (well actually everyone) but he doesn't hang parents or teachers out to dry by saying its all their fault or that they are the ones who can fix this. He takes on universities, environmental groups, government, corporations,educators, parents and everyday folks and gives extremely sound advice about how to make this work. i.e.: this book doesn't just tell you there's this huge society wide problem that is destroying us, but it also gives ideas on how to fix it and points to places where folks are doing it right. Louv also cites lots of research to back up his claims but he also tells us where no one is doing any research, or not enough research, or the research is faulty to support his arguments to encourage more work to be done.

5. This book is readable. It doesn't overwhelm you with statistics (although there are plenty), it doesn't feel like you are being lectured, it's well set up and most of all it is extremely interesting, not just for parents and not just for educators and not just for green folks (although I am all three of those).

So, please check the book out. You can borrow it from me or buy your own copy or go to the library. Whatever it takes. If you want the readers condensed version check out the link to the Orion magazine article he wrote (it's where you will go if you click on his name above). Maybe you won't have the epiphany-revealing, earth-shattering, emotional reaction to it that I have, but maybe you'll like it anyway and maybe it will convince you to go take a walk in the woods. I hope so.

It's that Season

It's that time of year again, the leaves are turning and football is back in season. Not that football, the other one - what we call soccer here. Okay, soccer is always in season someplace, somewhere, but our house is now in full frenzy over the EPL, which is somewhat more frenzied than MLS season or the US women's season, and oh yeah, it is even more frenzied since there's this thing called the World Cup next year and everyone is trying to qualify for it. This means that for the next months I've been asked to avoid driving on streets named Arsenal and Manchester and we are supposed to wear lots of navy blue and white (with just a pinstripe of yellow), unless we're supporting Ireland, and then it's that flag, and all of our weekends have giant two hour holes in them. However, when we are not gazing across the pond at our teams over there, I thought I'd give you a heads up on a team right here in STL and a great player that is actually related to me. My cousin's son, Sito has been named a finalist in ESPN's National Soccer player of the Week! He's one of three boys (young men) chosen from across the country and here's his write up, in case you don't want to follow the link:

Sito Sasieta, Chaminade (St. Louis, Mo.): Sasieta, considered the top midfield prospect in the St. Louis area, assisted on both goals as Chaminade edged FAB 50-ranked Peoria Notre Dame (Peoria, Ill.) 2-1. Sasieta, a senior who has committed to St. Louis University, has one goal and five assists through three matches.

Yay Sito! Congratulations!

More On the Subject

Lately, I've been obsessed with this amazing website that reviews and snarks on romances. Unlike other snark-y romance sites, these girls are actual fans and they also are academics - making it for me, the perfect website. It's also helping me come to terms with my love for romances as well as helping sort through the dreck for some really great authors (Tree, you've got to read Loretta Chase). Among their many services they have a feature to help people identify romances they've read and lost. This appeals to my secret librarian side - yet another reason to love this site. However, this amazing summary floored even me, who seeks out the absurd in the world of romance:

"I was hoping you and your army of smart and bitchy readers could help me identify a romance novel I read when I was ten or so (in 98 or 99) and kept digging through my friends’ mothers’ romance novel collections during sleepovers.

The novel’s set in Regency England, I think. The heroine lives in Bath and spends her days lamenting the fact that all the men are foppish dandies and she can’t find one who won’t hide his mantitty with frills and lace. And then one day she puts on a dress in a shop and it magically transports her to Ancient Rome. There, she meets a fearsome guy named Magnus somethingorother who promptly makes her his slave. He does stuff like making her put on boobie-revealing tunics during his dinner parties and so on. Obviously she falls in love with him. But then one day she is magically transported back to Bath. She’s very confused about whether her months in Rome were real or just an opium-den-induced hallucination… But then she digs up some plaque or other that she and Magnus had buried together and she knows it was all real.

Thanks in advance!"

First of all, her summary skills are to be applauded. Having read several response papers that Jason was grading, not to mention various grant proposals, and other requests of this nature, I give the writer big props on 1. telling us what we need to know to make the i.d., but not giving us a long, involved play by play of the book 2. painting a sufficiently enticing plot for those of us who haven't read it to be curious about it, and 3. giving us enough snark to make me want to help her/meet her. 4. her use of "mantitties" and "boobies" in so short a paragraph to underscore the absurdity that is sure to be found in this romance.

Secondly, I am now incredibly interested in getting my hands on the book itself. The description sets up three rarities: 1. although the heroine is Regency English (possibly the most common period of historical romance), the setting is Ancient Rome, this is unusual - Italy is sometimes used as a setting (one of the genre's more exotic ones) but it is always from Renaissance forward and the plot then must have opera singers and/or courtesans. 2. This time-travel takes the heroine from a setting in the past, to even further into the past. Most time-travel romances, start in the present and send the heroine back into the past, or if they really want to shake things up they send the hero from the past into the present (or in the case of Janet Chapman's Highlander series - a whole passel of heroes), further, time-travel romances, when not set in the Scottish highlands, are set in England. Not unusual, is the change in location, time-travel in romances always seems to also include a geographical jump as well -see my note below. 3. If the memory of the person enquiring is correct, the heroine appears to return to her own time, without her man - ok, this is completely unheard of.

Fortunately, about a dozen readers knew exactly which book this was, since I didn't. For those of you interested it's Enlsaved by Virginia Henley.