Women’s Health & The Environment: Going Up In Smoke

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Tomorrow I’ll be heading to the heartland for University of Iowa’s Global Forum to talk cookstoves. With people from a variety of backgrounds — anthropology, engineering, economics, gender studies, journalism, non-profits and more — we’ll discuss the troubling persistence of harm from biomass cookstoves used by three billion people around the world. This multidisciplinary approach seems like a good step away from thinking about this as a purely an engineering problem, or an economic problem, or a development problem. It’s all those things and a whole lot of other messy humanness. It’s what I explored in my book, A River Runs Again and this piece for Nature. The event is free and open to the public.

the dancing cobras

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Every writer on assignment ends up accruing tales that don’t fit the purpose — but that are still worth telling. Such is the inspiration behind the new magazine Off Assignment, where “the detour is the story.” I just had the pleasure of writing a piece for their Letter to a Stranger column, inspired by Pico Iyer’s quote: “…And writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.”

Mine tells of a candlelit evening in South Asia and a man with a half-century-old story to tell about when he saw the cobras dance…

Read (and listen to me read) it here.

practice resurrection

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Home growing up and home now means inhabiting the edge dividing land and sea. We go there to eat sandwiches in the cab of the truck, sheltered from the icy wind that lifts the waters of Barnstable Harbor into whitecaps. Beyond the water, the dunes of Sandy Neck glisten white with snow, the Handy shack popping out in dark relief.  Before the first bite is taken, a flash of fur to the right. A fox, tiny, on the hunt, nose to snow, a few steps, another sniff, more steps, her footprints left behind in the layer of snow.

The markings join the other imprints of other creatures that have passed since the snow fell two nights ago, an extended exposure of all we never see.

She shifts to her right. She comes towards us, our truck gracing us a cloak of invisibility. She passes close by, and she’s gone.

It’s always a good time for Wendell Berry’s “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” but seeing her reminds me of it. A good reminder. A necessary refresher. I reread the whole thing, and I’d say you should too, but here’s the last bit:

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie down in the shade. Rest your head

in her lap. Swear allegiance

to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn’t go. Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.

And I am humming “Ouroboros” by Casey Neill and focusing in on the word “practice,” an active word, ongoing, if there ever was one.

#CapeCod #fox #BarnstableHarbor #WendellBerry #poetry #winter #resist #persist

upcoming talks: MIT, BU & Harvard

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Eco Swaraj: Can India’s Model of the Micro Transform Development for the 21st Century?

It’s been a year and half since A River Runs Again was published and my answer to the above question continues to morph. If you’re in the Cambridge, Massachusetts area in the next couple of months, you’ll have a chance to join me as I think out loud about what I found while researching the book over three years and what recent world events make me think now. (You can read a little more on that at the KSJ blog post, here.)

e4Dev student group of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITei)
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
5:30 pm – 6:30 pm
MIT, Building E18, Room 304
50 Ames Street, Cambridge MA
You can find more information and RSVP here. 

Harvard STS Circle
Monday, March 27, 2017
12:15 pm – 2:00 pm
Harvard University, K262, Bowie-Vernon Room, CGIS
1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA
You can find more info and RSVP here. 
(To get a free sandwich, be sure to RSVP by Wednesday at 5:00 pm the week before!)

I’ll be showing lots of photographs and here’s a description of the talk:

In this exploration of life, loss and survival in modern-day India, Subramanian shares findings and photographs from her book, A River Runs Again: India’s Natural World in Crisis from the Barren Cliffs of Rajasthan to the Farmlands of Karnataka. Using the five elements (earth, water, fire, air, and ether) as a framework, she traveled across India to seek out the ordinary people and micro-enterprises determined to guide India into a more sustainable future. Could India be the perfect place to shift from an outdated model of the macro — big dams, industrial agriculture, nuclear power, all developed in the West — to a new model of the micro? Should it choose this path, India could create a sustainable model of development that could be implemented elsewhere, from industrializing China to electrifying sub-Saharan Africa, to drought-stricken America, with its crumbling infrastructure.

Spread the word!

AND….

…I’ll also be joining a great panel hosted by Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy & Union of Concerned Scientists:

Science & Environment: A Journalist’s Perspective
Thursday, February 16, 2017
4:00 pm – 5: 30 pm
The Westin Copley Place Hotel
10 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02116
Panel Discussion followed by cocktail reception and hors d’oeuvres.
This event is free & open-to-all.

Science and policy issues in energy and the environment have become a rich source of material for authors and journalists across the media spectrum.  In particular, both the science of climate change and the reportage on that science have both become heavily politicized, posing unique challenges for journalism.

This panel discussion explores the evolving role of authors and journalists who work in the energy and environment fields.  Each panelist will discuss the evolution of their professional experience and the challenges of writing and reporting in this field, especially in the wake of the 2016 presidential election.

Panelists

Moderator

More info here.

to the Commons & beyond: Women’s March for America

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On Friday, Donald J. Trump was sworn into office as America’s 45th president. Websites were wiped clean of mentions of climate change and the country tumbled officially into the realm of #AlternativeFacts. For journalists, and citizens, the operative word going forward is “vigilance.”

On Saturday, upwards of 1.5 million people took to the streets around the country and world in solidarity with Americans who support human rights, equality, science, access to health care, and real facts (over alternative ones).

The Women’s March on Washington had grown into a national and international tidal wave of action. I was in Boston where the Women’s March for America was anticipating a crowd of about 80,000. On the T ride toward the Boston Commons, an ever-growing wave of women (and men) donning pink pussyhats boarded while more rode bikes across the Longfellow Bridge with protest signs lashed to their baskets, and  it began to seem like there might be more in attendance than expected. Many more. Many many more. As Boston Commons filled and cell phone service crashed, there were speeches by Mayor Marty Walsh, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and the Reverend Mariama White-Hammond.

By the time the crowd was to make its one-mile loop for the march, the only possible movement was a slow-mo shuffle. It took hours for everyone to make their way peacefully through the streets. They chanted “This is what democracy looks like!” and sang out Fiona Apple’s “We don’t want you tiny hands anywhere near my underpants!” I saw a little girl belting out “My body! My choice!” and a lone man with a severe face holding a poster: “Trump. Make America Great Again.” Passerbys ignored him.

By this morning, city officials estimated there were at least 125,000 people. [UPDATE: Make that 175,000.]

Inching through the masses, camera in hand, here’s a selection of photos I took during what felt like an historic day:

[envira-gallery id=”3898″]

sitting down with Noam Chomsky

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Twice a week, someone spectacular walks through the door of the Knight Science Journalism office door. As part of the fellowship, we have these seminars twice a week, and Director Deborah Blum has set up a stellar lineup of scientists, authors, journalists, and scholars to come speak with us about their work. It is, as they say, an honor and a privilege.

Renowned linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky was scheduled to come earlier in the semester and then had to cancel due to a cold. Perhaps it was a blessing. The rescheduled day was November 17th, the week following the election that would upset American politics and set the stage for Donald Trump to be our next president.

We had new questions for our visitor. The fellows pooled our inquiries, and with Lauren Whaley and Iván Carillo overseeing audio-video, I sat down in a chair opposite Professor Chomsky to ask him at least a few of our collective questions.

Learn more and watch the three-minute highlights video or the full 20-minute interview here at Undark.

cloned sheep, cattle-driving maps & the disease of gigantism

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I had grand hopes of frequently blogging while on the Knight Science Journalism fellowship. Alas… With a nod to Harper’s Findings, I was able to manage this instead:

Telomeres, the mysterious ends of chromosomes whose lengths can reveal age, seemed to know that Dolly the cloned sheep, was older than she was. Massachusetts’ city kids thrive in charter schools more than suburban kids. Second Chance, the cloned replica of the beloved gentle Brahman bull Chance, was just like his original, except for that he had a tendency to maul his owners. If you wanted to drive your cattle from Texas to Fort Yuma, California, you would consult the map my great-great grandfather drafted in 1870. Jardin de Lorixa, a comprehensive 14-volume herbal detailing the plants of Bengal in the 18th Century, sat unstudied for over two centuries. After embracing Western models of big development, Jawaharlal Nehru had a belated change of heart, wondering if India was suffering from a “disease of gigantism.” Of the planet’s coastal poor, 27% are Indian.  When a Boston clock maker wanted to make a model of the solar system in 1776, the Grand Orrery, he called on Paul Revere to cast the bronze elements. (But the orrery in this photo was prettier.) #KnightKnowHow @KSJatMIT @SophiaRoosth @JPAL_Global #clone #botany #India @sunilamrith #JamesDelbourgo

A River Runs Again Orion Book Award finalist

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Orion Magazine just announced its annual Book Award finalists and A River Runs Again was on the list! Could I be in better company? I think not. Sy Montgomery’s Soul of an Octopus, Summer Brennan’s The Oyster War, and Helen Macdonald’s wildly acclaimed H is for Hawk.

Thank you, Orion. When I lived in NYC, I used to go to the annual Orion Book Award events at the Cynthia Reeves Gallery way over on the West Side in Chelsea and would fawn over the authors, the chance to meet them and get books signed, but more importantly, to get inspired. Seems that it worked. Just to have made the list is the greatest of honors.

The winner will be announced Monday.

UPDATE: Huge congrats to Sy Montgomery for winning the award!

Santa Monica Green Prize

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I’m delighted to announce that A River Runs Again: India’s Natural World in Crisis, from the Barren Cliffs of Rajasthan to the Farmlands of Karnataka was awarded the Green Prize for Sustainable Literature from the Santa Monica Public Library. Here’s how the library describes the award and a complete list of winners, including Pope Francis:

Screen Shot 2016-09-07 at 8.44.10 AM“The Library established the Green Prize to encourage and commend authors, illustrators, and publishers who produce quality books for adults and young people that make significant contributions to, support the ideas of, and broaden public awareness of sustainability. The City of Santa Monica’s Sustainable City Plan defines sustainability as “meeting current needs – environmental, economic, and social – without compromising the ability of future generations to do the same.” The Green Prize is sponsored by the Santa Monica Public Library and the City of Santa Monica’s Office of Sustainability and the environment.” [Read more…]

100 Years of the National Park Service

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In Cambridge, I reunited with a friend from another place, Ruth Goldstein – who is now teaching at Harvard. In recent years, she’s spent the better part of her time in South America and she’s here to share her findings through wonderful classes about mythology and women and plants and gold. We talked of these things but we also talked of maps and cartography and the way they define space and landscapes. Later, she sent me these words, written in 1924 by Aldo Leopold in an essay entitled “The River of the Mother of God,” which apparently sat in a drawer, a victim of a Yale Review rejection. Aldo wrote:

…wilderness is the one thing we can not build to order. When our ciphers result in slums, we can tear down enough of them to re-establish parks and playgrounds. When they choke traffic, we can tear down enough of them to build highways and subways. But when our ciphers have choked out the last vestige of the Unknown Places, we cannot build new ones.

(Setting aside the hint of razing slums…) this brings us to a moment of appreciation for those who, a century ago, helped establish the National Park Service. I know, I know, these aren’t exactly the Unknown Places they once were, but they are something, and something important. When the Service was founded it held 17 national parks and 21 national monuments in its trust. This year, on the centennial of the Service, there are now more than 400 sites, on more than 84 million acres, protected places of wild beauty and historic significance. Last week, President Obama added one more to the list as he created the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine.

So as I moved back to the city, these public spaces were on my mind. Our first Knight Science Journalism fellowship workshop was an audio class with multimedia journalist and past Knight fellow Ibby Caputo.  I’ve been recording in the field for years, but am still woefully not at ease with production. Usually, I record, I transcribe, I write. Here our goal was two minutes of auditory wonder. Three intense days later, Ibby had indeed whipped us into shape, and we each had a Vox Pop – man on the street – piece to prove it. Here’s mine, complete with rookie mistakes of hot tape and pops, after I went out and about on the MIT campus to hear people’s memories and thoughts on the National Park Service, in the week of its centennial.

 

And now to end with something more polished, “MODERN MAJOR PARK RANGER,” a sing-along collaboration made in partnership with hitRECord, the National Park Service, and the National Park Foundation. Enjoy. Then, go #FindYourPark!