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Can the love reserved for family and friends be extended to a
place? In her latest book, acclaimed author Kathleen Dean Moore
reflects on how deeply the environment is entrenched in the human
spirit, despite the notion that nature and humans are somehow
separate. Moore's essays, deeply felt and often funny, make
connections in what can appear to be a disconnected world. Written
in parable form, her stories of family and friends -- of wilderness
excursions with her husband and children, camping trips with
students, blowing up a dam, her daughter's arrest for protesting
the war in Iraq -- affirm an impulse of caring that belies the
abstract division of humans from nature, of the sacred from the
mundane. Underlying these wonderfully engaging stories is the
author's belief in a new ecological ethic of care, one that expands
the idea of community to include the environment, and embraces the
land as family.
For the first time in history, an international human-rights court
has weighed the evidence that fracking and climate change
systematically violate human rights. Bearing Witness presents the
searing eyewitness testimony and ground-breaking legal arguments
that persuaded the court that fracking and resulting climate
warming breach both substantive and procedural rights guaranteed by
international law, that governments are complicit in these
rights-violations, and that the practice of fracking should be
banned.
In these twenty elegant essays, a philosopher and amateur
naturalist meanders along the rivers and streams of the american
West-and muses on love, loss, aging, motherhood, happiness, the art
of poking around, and other important matters. "A smart,
compassionate, and wise meditation on living in place" (Terry
Tempest Williams).
Viola Cordova was the first Native American woman to receive a PhD
in philosophy. Even as she became an expert on canonical works of
traditional Western philosophy, she devoted herself to defining a
Native American philosophy. Although she died prematurely of a
brain aneurysm before she could complete her life's work, some of
her colleagues have organized her pioneering contributions into
this provocative book. In three parts, Cordova sets out a complete
Native American philosophy. First she explains her own
understanding of the nature of reality itself--the origins of the
world, the relation of matter and spirit, the nature of time, and
the roles of culture and language in understanding all of these.
She then turns to our role as residents of the Earth, arguing that
we become human as we deepen our relation to our people and to our
places, and as we understand the responsibilities that grow from
those relationships. In the final section, she calls for a new
reverence in a world where there is no distinction between the
sacred and the mundane. Cordova clearly contrasts Native American
beliefs with the traditions of the Enlightenment and Christianized
Europeans (what she calls "Euroman" philosophy). By doing so, she
leads her readers into a deeper understanding of both traditions
and encourages us to question any view that claims a singular
truth. From these essays--which are lucid, insightful, frequently
funny, and occasionally angry--we receive a powerful new vision of
how we can live with respect, reciprocity, and joy.
Winner, WILLA Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction, 2008 How do
women experience the vast, arid, rugged land of the American
Southwest? The Story Circle Network, a national organization
dedicated to helping women write about their lives, posed this
question, and nearly three hundred women responded with original
pieces of writing that told true and meaningful stories of their
personal experiences of the land. From this deep reservoir of
writing-as well as from previously published work by writers
including Joy Harjo, Denise Chavez, Diane Ackerman, Naomi Shihab
Nye, Leslie Marmon Silko, Gloria Anzaldua, Terry Tempest Williams,
and Barbara Kingsolver-the editors of this book have drawn nearly a
hundred pieces that witness both to the ever-changing,
ever-mysterious life of the natural world and to the vivid,
creative, evolving lives of women interacting with it. Through
prose, poetry, creative nonfiction, and memoir, the women in this
anthology explore both the outer landscape of the Southwest and
their own inner landscapes as women living on the land-the
congruence of where they are and who they are. The editors have
grouped the writings around eight evocative themes: The way we live
on the land Our journeys through the land Nature in cities Nature
at risk Nature that sustains us Our memories of the land Our
kinship with the animal world What we leave on the land when we are
gone From the Gulf Coast of Texas to the Pacific Coast of
California, and from the southern borderlands to the Great Plains
and the Rocky Mountains, these intimate portraits of women's lives
on the land powerfully demonstrate that nature writing is no longer
the exclusive domain of men, that women bring unique and
transformative perspectives to this genre.
Kathleen Dean Moore begins with a review of the history of thought and practice on the subject of legal pardons, illustrated with a rich and fascinating variety of historical cases. She then addresses many crucial issues surrounding acts of clemency, including what justifies pardoning power, who should be pardoned, and the definition of an unforgivable crime. She carefully analyses the moral justification of pardons, discussing how to distinguish between justifiable, even morally obligatory, cases and unjustifiable abuses of clemency power.
Humans have faced urgent crises over the past two years, and in the
midst of those we still have the threat of climate change and other
big, systemic problems facing our world. In this time of chaos and
crisis, how do activists find the strength to carry on? In answer
to this question, environmental philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore has
assembled a collection of short essays that offer courage, hope,
and even some laughter to the people who have for years been
working for environmental sanity and social justice. Earth's weary
lovers, as Moore calls them, are tired, perplexed, and battered
from all directions. Their hearts have so often been broken; it's
hard to go on, but it is morally impossible to quit. To these weary
activists, Moore brings encouragement to join or keep on with the
struggle-not entertaining distractions, but deep and honest reasons
to remember that the struggle matters, now and in the future.
Moore's essays are matched with drawings by Canadian artist Bob
Haverluck; together, they invite readers to take heart. Taking
heart is not hope exactly, but maybe it's courage. Not reassurance,
but reason to persevere. Not the promise of good results-it does
not depend on winning odds-but a call to integrity. Not strength,
but stubbornness, which might be just as good. Not solutions to the
planetary crisis, but some modest advice for the inevitable crisis
of the heart. Not good cheer entirely, but a chance to grin, and
gladness to be part of this strange and necessary work for the
endangered Earth.
Shortlisted for the ASLE Environmental Creative Writing Book Award,
this is a breathtaking first novel set on the Alaska coast, written
by a critically acclaimed naturalist and climate activist Do we
belong to the Earth or does the Earth belong to us? The question
raised by Chief Seathl almost two centuries ago continues to be the
defining quandary of the wet, wild rainforests along the shores of
the Pacific Northwest. It seethes below the tides of the fictional
town of Good River Harbor, a little village pressed against the
mountains-homeland to bears, whales, and a few weather-worn
families. In Piano Tide, the debut novel by award-winning
naturalist, philosopher, activist and author Kathleen Dean Moore,
we are introduced to town father Axel Hagerman, who has made a
killing in this remote Alaskan harbor by selling off the spruce,
the cedar, the herring and halibut. But when he decides to export
the water from a salmon stream, he runs head-long into young Nora
Montgomery, just arrived on the ferry with her piano and her dog.
Nora has burned her bridges in the lower 48, and she aims to
disappear into this new homeland, with her piano as her anchor. But
when Axel's next business proposition, a bear pit, turns lethal,
Nora has to act. The clash, when it comes, is a spectacular and
transformative act of resistance.
Naturalist and philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore meditates on
connection and separation in these twenty-one elegant, probing
essays. Using the metaphor of holdfasts--the structures that attach
seaweed to rocks with a grip strong enough to withstand winter
gales--she examines our connections to our own bedrock.
"When people lock themselves in their houses at night and seal
the windows shut to keep out storms, it is possible to forget,
sometimes for years and years, that human beings are part of the
natural world," she writes. "Holdfast "passionately reclaims an
awareness of the natural world, exploring the sense of belonging
fostered by the communal howls of wolves; the inevitability of
losing children to their own lives; the fear of bears and love of
storms; the sublimity of life and longing in the creatures of the
sea; her agonizing decision when facing her father's bone-deep
pain. As Moore travels philosophically and geographically--from
Oregon's shores to Alaska's islands--she leaves no doubt of her
virtuosity and range.
The new afterword is an important statement on the new
responsibilities of nature writers as the world faces the
consequences of climate change.
As it erupted in 1980, Mount St. Helens captured the attention of
the region, nation, and the world, and it continues to fascinate us
today a constant reminder that we live in a volcanic landscape. In
lucid prose and poetry by some of America's leading writers and
ecologists, In the Blast Zone explores this story of destruction
and renewal in all its human, geological, and ecological
dimensions. Most popular accounts of the momentous eruption have
focused on the devastation it caused. More recent scientific work
on Mount St. Helens tells a story of unexpectedly rapid and varied
ecological and geological change. In the Blast Zone is the first
book to present a cross-pollination of literary and scientific
perspectives on the mountain's history of cataclysm and renewal.
Most of the contributors to this volume camped together on Mount
St. Helens for four days in 2005 the 25th anniversary of the
eruption hiking, learning the ecology, and sharing ideas. They
asked the question: What can this radically altered landscape tell
us about nature and how to live our lives? In the Blast Zone
collects some of their answers. While introducing fascinating
ecological and geological insights, it also tells compelling
stories about how science informs our lives and our relationship to
nature. These writings will startle readers with new recognition of
the matchless gift Mount St. Helens makes to our region and the
world: the gifts of beauty, of scientific illumination, of hope.
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