Last night I hosted my book club at my home. I've been with this bookclub for 10 years or so. I think that is a goodly amount of time for a book club to be together.There are 9 of us--down from 11 due to a couple moving away. Our format is host provides dinner and makes assignments for others to bring appetizer, wine, bread, salad, dessert etc.
Our weather was insufferably hot and we had plenty of tomatoes. So my entree was chicken breasts with Caribbean Jerk seasoning atop a salad of mixed greens, carrots, cucumbers marinated artichokes and lots of fresh-off-the-vine tomatoes. I also provided dessert--a German Blueberry Cake, which is really a blueberry tart, served with vanilla ice cream. If you love blueberries, there is no better way to showcase this fruit than this recipe. Plus it is easy. If you are interested in the recipe, I've placed it at the bottom of this post. -
Our book selection last night was Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. If I could have just one wish for our modern society it would be this: That each person would read this book.
Jared is the author of Guns Germs and Steel. One of the things that he does admirably is systematize complex concepts to provide framework for accessing complex concepts. In fact, his models are so elegantly constructed they provide a comfortable and understandable framework that allows the reader to easily access and intersect with the information that he presents.
In reading Collapse I felt like I was awakened from a deep slumber. I'd write for the the five things that he used in this book to evaluate different how different places/societies (Easter Island, Japan, Rwanda, Iceland, Greenland , New Guinea, etc.) negotiated (successfully or not) their environments, but alas, we did the EPA cleanup to ready for our guests. I have no idea where my book was. I guess if the model were so simple and elegant, I'd remember it, but that really is too much to ask of my poor memory.
As JD lays out each "place" he describes in detail the culture and history to build the context of the environmental disaster that unfolds. In some instances, Iceland for example, the disaster was recognized and movements toward remediation
I'll write more about this book when I have it in front of me. That each of my Book Club friends (and we are all very different in ages, perspectives, gender) were similarly moved was notable. The book simply chronicles, with facts, the effect of humans on the environment. There is no conjecture about global warming. In fact, there were more dire and connected consequences (incontrovertibly so) than global warming to these civilizations--and that is the beauty of the book in my view. One doesn't have to engage the red-herring argument about whether humans cause global warming. Rather, JD lays out in painstaking detail what happens when humans deforest, overfarm, overgraze in one discrete place after another. Those resulting consequences range from horrible to hopeful. And understanding and reflecting upon these consequences is worth our time. And most important is that from our understanding and reflection we act.
Accordingly, for the book's power to create this understanding and reflection as an impetus to act, I wish for each of us to read this book.
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German Blueberry Cake (which is really a tart). This is from the Eastern Junior League Cookbook, edited by Ann Seranne. I bought 4of these cook books from Costco. They were packaged together as the Eastern, Western, Southern and Midwestern--such a collection of wonderful recipes.)
Crust:
1 stick of butter (softened)
pinch of salt
1.5 cups of flour (all purpose)
1/2 cup of
sugar
Mix together to form a crumb. I do it the lazy way in the
food processor so it takes less than a minute. Reserve .75 cup of the
crumb for the topping. Press the balance into a tart pan with a
removable bottom.
Filling:
4 cups of blueberries
3 TBS of
tapioca flour (or regular flour)
1 TB of fresh lemon juice,
1/2 cup
sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp of cinnamon.
Mix together and let sit for 15 minutes.
Preheat oven to 425F. Spoon berries into crust. Cook for 20 minutes,
then put on top the reserve crumb and cook for another 20-25 minutes
until the crumb is golden brown. I always serve it slightly warm with
ice cream. It's super easy and more delicious than you can imagine.
Our weather was insufferably hot and we had plenty of tomatoes. So my entree was chicken breasts with Caribbean Jerk seasoning atop a salad of mixed greens, carrots, cucumbers marinated artichokes and lots of fresh-off-the-vine tomatoes. I also provided dessert--a German Blueberry Cake, which is really a blueberry tart, served with vanilla ice cream. If you love blueberries, there is no better way to showcase this fruit than this recipe. Plus it is easy. If you are interested in the recipe, I've placed it at the bottom of this post. -
Our book selection last night was Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. If I could have just one wish for our modern society it would be this: That each person would read this book.
Jared is the author of Guns Germs and Steel. One of the things that he does admirably is systematize complex concepts to provide framework for accessing complex concepts. In fact, his models are so elegantly constructed they provide a comfortable and understandable framework that allows the reader to easily access and intersect with the information that he presents.
In reading Collapse I felt like I was awakened from a deep slumber. I'd write for the the five things that he used in this book to evaluate different how different places/societies (Easter Island, Japan, Rwanda, Iceland, Greenland , New Guinea, etc.) negotiated (successfully or not) their environments, but alas, we did the EPA cleanup to ready for our guests. I have no idea where my book was. I guess if the model were so simple and elegant, I'd remember it, but that really is too much to ask of my poor memory.
As JD lays out each "place" he describes in detail the culture and history to build the context of the environmental disaster that unfolds. In some instances, Iceland for example, the disaster was recognized and movements toward remediation
I'll write more about this book when I have it in front of me. That each of my Book Club friends (and we are all very different in ages, perspectives, gender) were similarly moved was notable. The book simply chronicles, with facts, the effect of humans on the environment. There is no conjecture about global warming. In fact, there were more dire and connected consequences (incontrovertibly so) than global warming to these civilizations--and that is the beauty of the book in my view. One doesn't have to engage the red-herring argument about whether humans cause global warming. Rather, JD lays out in painstaking detail what happens when humans deforest, overfarm, overgraze in one discrete place after another. Those resulting consequences range from horrible to hopeful. And understanding and reflecting upon these consequences is worth our time. And most important is that from our understanding and reflection we act.
Accordingly, for the book's power to create this understanding and reflection as an impetus to act, I wish for each of us to read this book.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
German Blueberry Cake (which is really a tart). This is from the Eastern Junior League Cookbook, edited by Ann Seranne. I bought 4of these cook books from Costco. They were packaged together as the Eastern, Western, Southern and Midwestern--such a collection of wonderful recipes.)
Crust:
1 stick of butter (softened)
pinch of salt
1.5 cups of flour (all purpose)
1/2 cup of
sugar
Mix together to form a crumb. I do it the lazy way in the
food processor so it takes less than a minute. Reserve .75 cup of the
crumb for the topping. Press the balance into a tart pan with a
removable bottom.
Filling:
4 cups of blueberries
3 TBS of
tapioca flour (or regular flour)
1 TB of fresh lemon juice,
1/2 cup
sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp of cinnamon.
Mix together and let sit for 15 minutes.
Preheat oven to 425F. Spoon berries into crust. Cook for 20 minutes,
then put on top the reserve crumb and cook for another 20-25 minutes
until the crumb is golden brown. I always serve it slightly warm with
ice cream. It's super easy and more delicious than you can imagine.
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2 comments:
Dessert aside, what you would like to see soon is a probe lower with the internals improving (divergences!)and that will probably be the ST floor. That would set up a tradeable bounce. Intermediate term, I still believe the 4 year low is lurking out there somewhere.
Monday will be interesting.
M
Jarad's "Collapse" is good, but a little thin on the larger New World Civilizations doings. A very good book on that subject is "1491" by Charles C. Mann. IMO it convincingly shows that Jarad oversimplifies what is going on in pre-Columbian times. Some of what was transpiring was very odd by the standards of Western European market economy development.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2ejn3f
Part of the problem with Jarad's book is that he primarily focuses on small economically fragile "societies" that might be prone to a collapse of some sort even without a reversal in their environment.
However, with that caveat, I do like Jarad's books - I just don't take them to be nearly the last word on the subject.
As an aside - Jarad's: "Guns, Germs and Steel" probably could be called "How the Europeans conquered the World because they were the only ones on the Eurasian Continent that were poor enough to want it". After all the Chinese, Indians, Turks, and Arabs also had Guns, Germs, and Steel and for much of the period were much stronger: it did not become real uneven until the regular adoption of steam shipping. A good book on how uneven was the European colonial efforts can be found in Jeremy Black's "War and the World".
http://preview.tinyurl.com/ytpo2l
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