Background Reading

This is my first blog post EVER . . . and I don't have much (or I have too much) to say, right now. Just wanted to post a link to this great series Grist Magazine currently is running, on Poverty & the Environment. Check out the article on food economics, and Chris Jordan's post-Katrina photographs (www.grist.org).

Also, I'm currently reading Eugene Linden's forensics "thriller" Winds of Change, just out--it's the lowdown on climate change, and a hell of a page turner. Linden wrote one of the best future scenario books out there, The Future in Plain Sight. He's quite good, so I ordered this soon as I read a review in the NY Times.

This climatology is messing with my temporal sense of scale.

It looks like climate change has been good for the brain, over the millenia, bad for civilization. Where poetics comes in I have yet to determine. Linden quotes this lamentation, probably penned after the drought around 2200 BC that felled Akkadian civilization:

The large fields and acres produced no grain
The flooded fields produced no fish
The watered gardens produced no honey and wine
The heavy clouds did not rain
On its plains where grew fine plants
"lamentation reeds" now grow

I wonder what a lamentation reed is. (Derrida suggests poetry is what survives the destruction of the archives . . . ) In any case, the nomads tend to come out ahead . . . Get your sheep and goats, folks. This book will keep you up at night.

JS