Feldman's Faves: August 21, 2023

GOOD MORNING EVERYONE

If you haven’t had a chance to see it, I strongly recommend The Barbie Movie. My expectations walking in were not super high, but I really enjoyed it (and no, I didn’t cry, that was allergies). I think Greta Gurwig did an excellent job in finding an extremely entertaining way to convey a very important message. I come from a family of strong women and this movie really hit home. BTW, my money is on America Ferreira to win this year’s Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. I am taking bets now…

Given the summer we are having (i.e., the hottest July on record), I thought I would focus this week’s theme on the importance of trees.

THE OVERSTORY By Richard Powers – I often look to Gates Notes for book ideas. Bill Gates is a voracious reader with wide ranging interests that I find enlightening. One of his most highly recommended books is the Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Overstory, which is an epic tale involving NINE main characters. This book is extremely long and the build-up for meeting each character and how they get linked is quite a journey. The one common denominator for each of the characters is how their lives are impacted by trees – a romantic plot line involving a growing family, art project involving annual pictures of the same tree over multiple generations, a fall from a tree that leads to paralysis are all part of this story. As Bill Gates notes, “I grew up (and still live) in a place known for its beautiful forests. Almost everywhere you look here in Washington state—at least in the western part of it—you can find massive fir trees and towering red cedars. When you spend most of your life here, it’s tempting to take them for granted. But what would happen if one day you woke up and they were gone? In The Overstory by Richard Powers, Mimi Ma arrives at her office one morning to find that the woods she can see from her desk have been cut down. Powers describes the moment the “outrage floods into her, the sneakiness of man, a sense of injustice larger than her whole life, the old loss that will never, ever be answered.” This reaction starts her on a path to become a radical activist willing to throw her entire life away to protect trees. Mimi is just one of the nine characters that Powers follows in The Overstory, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Each character has some kind of connection to trees, including a Vietnam veteran who gets a job planting seedlings and an artist whose family has been photographing the same chestnut tree for a century. I thought the most interesting was Olivia Vandergriff, a college student who becomes a tree sitter named Maidenhair after being nearly electrocuted to death. A good friend thought I might enjoy reading about all the different stories, and he was right. This isn’t a book where everything gets tied up with a bow. Some of the characters meet up with each other, and others have totally separate stories. In the end, it’s not clear whether you’re supposed to see their actions as morally right or just kind of crazy. (You don’t even find out whether one of the main characters lives or dies.) I didn’t mind the lack of clarity, but some other people might. If you are in the mood for something that stimulates your thinking instead of providing answers, though, you’ll love The Overstory. It’s very well-written and takes twists you wouldn’t expect. The book made me want to learn more about trees. You don’t need any special knowledge to follow the story, but it left me super curious about the subject. There’s a certain elegance to how trees fit into their ecosystems. It’s amazing that they live for so long—the oldest tree in the world is over 4,800 years old!—despite being stationary. Powers is interested in the damage humans can do to something that has otherwise withstood hundreds of years of change. It’s a fascinating idea for a book, although I don’t subscribe to his idea that the world started off in this positive state and has been going downhill since we came along. I think the relationship between people and nature is a bit more complicated than The Overstory suggests. (I wrote more about this in my review of Under a White Sky.) The novel has a pretty negative view of humanity. That didn’t make me enjoy it any less. On the contrary, I loved following Powers’ characters as they became more and more passionate about their love for trees. There was something pure about the way they set aside their individual needs for a greater cause, even as several of them make choices that I strongly disagreed with—including the decision to commit acts of ecoterrorism. Near the end of the book, Powers writes that “the most wondrous products of four billion years of life need help.” The Overstory may not have convinced me to move to a remote forest so I can live in a canopy, but it did make me think differently about my relationship with the trees right outside my window.” There is no doubt that the author has a point of view that is quite strong (trees good/humans bad) that could benefit from a bit more nuanced thinking – that said, reading this book did give me a renewed appreciation for the importance of trees and forests in our lives and the importance of us all doing our part to ensure they remain in place long after we are all gone. Here is a good review from The Atlantic - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/richard-powers-the-overstory/559106/

Ted Talks Daily - The tree-growing movement restoring Africa's vital landscapes | Wanjira Mathai - Forest restoration is a global movement and one step people are taking to combat climate change. This tactic alone is not nearly sufficient to solve the problem but it certainly helps. In this PODCAST we get a snapshot as to how forest restoration is taking place in Africa and shows a blueprint for what we can be doing here at home. Here is an excerpt from the PODCAST itself, “2023 Audacious Project grantee Wanjira Mathai is at the forefront of re-greening the planet. Through the forest restoration initiative Restore Local, she's working to help both Africa's people and its landscapes flourish. Learn more about how her team invests in local restoration projects across the continent -- including a tree-growing movement that aims to revitalize 100 million hectares of African land by 2030. (This ambitious idea is a part of the Audacious Project, TED's initiative to inspire and fund global change.)”: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/ted-talks-daily/id160904630?i=1000621912240

Thank you for your ongoing engagement and participation.

And remember to stay safe, stay healthy and to docket daily.

Jon