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Infinite Country by Patricia Engel | Thoughts

   Published : 2021   ||    Format : print   ||    Location : Colombia ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆   What was it about the country that kept everyone hostage to its fantasy? The previous month, on its own soil, an American man went to his job at a plant and gunned down fourteen coworkers, and last spring alone there were four different school shootings. A nation at war with itself, yet people still spoke of it as some kind of paradise.. Thoughts : Infinite Country follows two characters - young Talia, who at the beginning of this book, escapes a girl’s reform school in North Colombia so that she can make her previously booked flight to the US. Before she can do that, she needs to travel many miles to reach her father and get her ticket to the rest of her family. As we follow Talia’s treacherous journey south, we learn about how she ended up in the reform school in the first place and why half her family resides in the US. Infinite Country tells the...

Leif Reads Eaarth: 350.org 101


Yesterday, when I posted about this new feature, Leif Reads, that Ash and I were starting, I totally forgot to mention where the logo came from. It wasn't until some of you mentioned that you love penguins and that Leif looks cute that I spanked my head. So let me get that out of the way first. Ash herself drew Leif. Isn't he really cute? And geeky? If you follow Ash's blog, you would have read some of the comics she has created. That girl sure has an amazing talent - both in drawing and doing comics.

Now off to the main topic. This is our first month, first week and first day of this feature. As I mentioned yesterday, the book we are focusing on this month is Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben. Bill's assertion is that the earth as we know it doesn't exist anymore. Instead, it has undergone so many changes over these decades, many of them irreversible, that we may just have to stop thinking of reversing damage or restoring the earth to its old glory and just get on with adjusting to the new one, which he prefers to call Eaarth. The faster, the better for all involved. The changes happening, the drastic climatic conditions, all those failed conferences - they've all been in the news, but the one thing we (or at least I) never really paused to consider is that things may have possibly crossed that invisible line from which there is no return. I still remain optimistic, but I'm not sure how practical it is to be so. That's the gist of the book Eaarth.

So, if we can't go back to normalcy (whatever that is), why bother? That's a question that Eaarth tackles, and something that we want to explore with you. This was the first book by I read by Bill McKibben. And during my conversations with Ash, I found that this environmentalist is actually the founder of 350.org. Don't know what 350.org is? You're not alone - I hadn't heard of it until a few months ago, when I began to get actively (no longer passively) interested in all this. So, if you want to know more about 350.org and who Bill McKibben is, head on over to Ash's blog, because she's doing a post about it today!

Comments

hcmurdoch said…
Sounds like an intriguing book. I think his idea that we have to stop looking backward is so reasonable. We cannot really fix the ruin we have created, but we can do better as we move forward.
Athira / Aths said…
I agree! We always have the mentality that anything can be fixed or not fixed at all. We don't seem to be doing much of either, other than causing more damage. It's hard to make a change with a population of billion people having a billions plans total. But maybe a small collective change at some point can become something bigger.
Athira / Aths said…
I think one of our problems is that we don't learn. Animals have been getting extinct for decades, and we don't start taking action until more animals are on the radar, which is sad really. In a very twisted way, these animals, even the most fearsome ones, depend so heavily on us for their survival. It's so sad and unfair that we have so much power in this world - to make species disappear fast.
Athira / Aths said…
Thank you! I am pretty fascinated with 350.org's work too.