Recently on Sierra Club Radio

Robert Hass, former US Poet Laureate, spoke on this week’s Sierra Club radio episode. When asked by host Orli Cotel about the role of the natural world in his poetry, he remarked that, growing up as a Californian in an era when “all the textbooks were published in Boston and New York,” the natural world as described by, say, Dick and Jane–playing in autumn leaves, and putting on snowshoes–did not capture the weather and landscape that he was familiar with. I was reminded of my realization, after living in Ithaca for a few years, of how much Ithaca seemed so much like the prototypical American town of any number of stories from my childhood. It was perhaps more a realization that Sacramento isn’t any sort of fixture in children’s literature.

The show closes, as it occasionally does, with Annie Somerville of Greens restaurant in San Francisco. In a reversal of the East-coast-centrism that Hass touched on, these segments are invariably Bay-area-centric, as Ms. Somerville invariably speaks about the fresh produce that is in season and available for her restaurant. The Bay area growing season is generally out of sync with the Mid-Atlantic season. Artichokes–this week’s topic–are just now available here, through the miracle of transcontinental shipping, no doubt.

Listening to some other episodes, one of the most fascinating guests to appear recently was UC-Santa Cruz sociologist Andy Szasz, who was given a much-too-short segment in which to discuss Shopping Our Way to Safety, his book with a somewhat counter-intuitive take on green consumerism. He introduces the Inverted Quarantine–instead of creating an isolated space in which to contain, say, a disease, we now find the whole world around us diseased and threatening and buy bottled water and organic products in an effort to isolate ourselves. The consequence of such a building an illusion of our own safety is that we are less involved with efforts to fix the original problems that affect us all. This discussion really should have been longer, because Szasz’s point seems to imply that the whole business of “Green Living Tips“–Jennifer Hattam’s segment on the show–is ultimately counter-productive.

Two governors have recently been on: Charlie Crist of Florida, and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, both because of their respective work on turning away from coal power generation. With Crist, Orli Cotel finally starts asking tough questions. I get the impression that the Sierra Club radio producers are thankful to get high profile guests and consequently lob softball questions and unquestioningly accept claims of greenness from their guests, to avoid offending anyone. On the contrary, I would say that the appearance on Sierra Club radio does more for the guest, by bringing green credibility, than for the show, and that the tough questions should be asked and the credibility earned.

A final recent high-profile guest worth mentioning was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who speaks about his role in the segment is upcoming IMAX film Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk. The segment’s focus on Kennedy’s outdoor adventures–both in the film and those in his life that led him to his current advocation–is, IMNSHO a little tedious. But at one point, in response to a question about the role that his faith plays in his advocacy, Kennedy gives a brilliant and extended monologue about the central role that a wilderness experience plays in several of the world’s more popular religions. From a secular standpoint, I take this to underscore the importance of wilderness and wild places in the well-being of the human condition, along the same lines touched upon by Christopher Alexander in A Pattern Language.¹

Worth listening to, all.

1. Specifically, and for example, the patterns (3) City Country Fingers, (7) The Countryside, (25) Access to Water, (24) Sacred Sites. [↩]