Braiding Sweetgrass Video and link to Book Review

Wisdom, gathered for you.

“I am the woman with the basket” Kimmerer declares after an immersive walk into the woods searching for leeks, “and how I fill it is the question that matters.  If we are fully awake, a moral question arises as we extinguish the other lives around us on behalf of our own”(p.179).  In this essay, ‘The Honorable Harvest’, the elders, the Earth, cultures, hunters,  animals, and plants pass their wisdom through a judicious and compassionate writer to woo the reader to become a better version of themselves. 

 Read full review at https://amyloujenkins.com/braiding-sweetgrass-book-review/  

Love, Love 'Lab Girl' by Hope Jahren

Buy 'Lab Girl'

‘Lab Girl,’ by Hope Jahren, Vintage, paperback-2017, 282 pages.     One might imagine that no one really needs an autobiography from a bipolar plant geobiologist: one would be mistaken. Hope Jahren’s memoir begins in her father’s lab and continues with a stoic walk in small town Minnesota. As her foot hits the icy pavement, a world appears. With each step, the town, a loving yet emotionally stifled family, Scandinavian paradigms, her past, and the portent of the future appear in multidimensional authenticity. The world she builds is tangible, funny, and troublesome. She writes about fallen leaves: “These brave trees lay all their earthly treasures on the soil, where moth and rust doth immediately corrupt. They know better than all the saints and martyrs put together exactly how to store next year’s treasure in Heaven, where the heart shall be also.” She shares difficult details about dysfunctional head-banging, rejection, snotty crying, and failures that lead to breakthroughs. She writes of poverty, family, love, victory, and plants. Her stories of plant wonders always do double duty as metaphors for humanity.   Read the full review at the JackWalkerPress blog :Dispatches from AL.   And remember that kids need nature too.  Explore the fun of the Tootalot series from Jack Walker Press. 

Greenies who like poetry

If you'd like to do some unorthodox bird watching, consider reading BJ Best's Birds of Wisconsin . I recently reviewed this poetry collection for the Cambridge Book Review.

New Review for Every Natural Fact

Rosebud Book Review:
Every Natural Fact – “An inspired book on how nature helps us reclaim who we really are.”