Robin Wall Kimmerer

The Weekly Wrap: June 15-21

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The Weekly Wrap: June 15-21

Long and Short Reads

One of the joys of summer is losing oneself in a big, fat, long book. Of course, the one condition is that it must be well-written.

I’ll be candid with you that one of my challenges as a reviewer is taking on long books to review. One of my goals (compulsions?) is to post reviews daily, Monday through Friday. In order to do that, most of the books I read need to be under 300 pages.

In addition to enjoying them, one of the reasons I mix in shorter mysteries like those of Georges Simenon is that they afford me the space to read longer works. I can finish these in a few days and most books in a week. Then there are some books that I just devour. Anything by William Kent Krueger is like that for me.

Then there are the longer ones. Right now I am working my way through a theological book, Kingdom Through Covenant that comes in at over 800 pages. It will take me three weeks to finish.

I usually have five books going at a time. Only one can be long. For the rest of summer, I will read two more long books. One is Ron Chernow’s Mark Twain and the other is Abraham Verghese Cutting for Stone. I enjoyed The Covenant of Water immensely, and some friends tell me this one is even better. I have a sense that if I read nothing else this summer, these two would make for immensely rich reading.

Five Articles Worth Reading

If you have not read anything by ecologist and Indigenous writer Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Blue Line Medicine” is a great place to sample her writing. This pull quote from the article caught my attention: “If we value the medicine the land offers us so generously, we must become medicine for the land.”

Claire McCardell is probably not a household name for many of us. But she believed women’s fashions could be “practical, comfortable, stylish and affordable. And have pockets.” Kate Bollick reviews CLAIRE MCCARDELL: The Designer Who Set Women Free by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson in “The Design Genius Who Gave American Women Pockets.”

James Joyces Ulysses and Marcel Proust’s in Search of Lost Time are two long works I will probably not read in the remainder of my lifetime. But what about a review of a new book on the first biographer of James Joyce? I think I can handle that. The article is “Yes I Will Read Ulysses Yes” appearing in The Atlantic.

Did you know that semicolon usage was once more common than it is today? Sara Hashemi explains why in “Could the Semicolon Die Out? Recent Analysis Finds a Decline in Its Usage in British Literature and Confusion Among U.K. Students.”

Finally, most of us already know that reading can be therapeutic. Now, bibliotherapy has been approved in Canada to treat depression and anxiety. “A book prescription for mental health?” confirms what we’ve known all along.

Quote of the Week

Philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal was born on June 19, 1623. This quote by him received quite a bit of comment:

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

Perhaps coming on the heels of the news of the religious views of the alleged murderer of a Minnesota state politician and her husband and the non-fatal shooting of two others, this quote struck home. My only observation, echoing a follower, was that Pascal wrote before atheist communism (and fascism). I believe these may also be defined as religious, and sadly have accounted for far more deaths than the traditional religions. But it points to our capacity for self-deception, that we are capable of using the noblest justifications for the most unspeakable evils.

Miscellaneous Musings

Jeff Deutsch, in In Praise of Good Bookstores speaks of the importance of bookstores as places to browse. That’s certainly one of the things I love as well. But some online friends observed the opportunities to electronically browse books, including the chance to read free excerpts before buying. I’m still not sure the two experiences are alike, but I recognize for some in “book deserts” or otherwise not able to get to bookstores, this is a viable alternative.

I celebrated Juneteenth, our national celebration of Black Emancipation, by starting in on Walter Strickland II’s Swing Low: A History of Black Christianity in the United States. I was surprised to learn that some of those brought to America were already Christians, presenting a question of whether Christians should be enslaved. Sadly, the justification was to define Blacks as an inferior race of humans, the origin both of race theories and racism.

I do believe that a key motivation of why we acquire more books than we can read is our hunger to know. Our bookshelves reflect our aspirations. It is dangerous to ask if this can get out of hand. “Hoarding” is a dirty word among bibliophiles. But I wonder if there is a healthy acceptance of our limits (and the limits of our shelf space!) that is the mark of a healthy mind and emotional life.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday. William Kent Krueger, Trickster’s Point

Tuesday. John D. Roth, Footsteps of Faith: A Global Anabaptist Devotional

Wednesday. Jeff Deutsch, In Praise of Good Bookstores

Thursday. Agatha Christie, Curtain

Friday. Steven Felix-Jager, The Problem and Promise of Freedom

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for June 15-21!

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page

Review: The Serviceberry

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Cover image of "The Serviceberry" by Robin Wall Kimmerer

The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer, illustrations by John Burgoyne. Scribner (ISBN: 9781668072240) 2024.

Summary: A day of picking serviceberries leads to an extended reflection on natural abundance, reciprocity, and gratitude.

An invitation to pick serviceberries results in an extended meditation by Robin Wall Kimmerer on “abundance and reciprocity in the natural world,” in the words of her subtitle. She marvels at the abundant clusters of berries, rapidly filling her pail. This is sheer gift, both to her and the birds filling their bellies” with berries. All one can do is give thanks for this gift, and share the abundance. As she does so, she considers the web of reciprocity the berries represent. Bushes nourished by fallen leaves, birds nourished by berries. Birds spreading their seeds, spreading the bushes to new locations. Kimmerer recalls how the berries are part of the traditional Potawatomi food economy.

It’s an economy unlike the market economy that dominates most of our economic transactions. Instead, Kimmerer reflects on the gift economy her serviceberry experience represents. Specifically, it reminds her of the source of the gift and how that implies care both for the source and for the gift itself. And she considers how commoditization of gifts promotes accumulation rather than sharing, scarcity rather than abundance.

I was struck by how contrary to our individualism are the gift economies she describes. Instead of accumulating paper currency or its equivalent, the currency of gift economies is gratitude and connection. The prosperity of each is shared in the anticipation of enjoying the generosity of others. One charts, not the flow of money, but relationships. Kimmerer points to the potlatches of Pacific Northwest people as a well-known example of gift economy.

She reflects on ways gift economies function in our mixed economies. These range from free garden produce stands to Little Free Libraries (and their larger tax-supported counterparts). They include public parks and lands that we all enjoy. The latter part of the book then considers the ethic of honorable harvest in gift economies, versus the unchecked extractive nature of our commodity economies. Through a question posed by a fellow tribal member, she queries, “If the economy requires people to consume more resources than the earth can replenish, just to keep the whole thing from collapsing, isn’t it time for a new economy?”

Kimmerer is not an economist but an ecologist. But what she observes from her ecology and the wisdom of indigenous peoples, makes a case for economists to begin thinking about that new economy. What is most notable for me however is that Kimmerer’s ecology and her gift economy are full of gratitude, generosity, joy, connectedness, and wholeness. It is not an ethic of fear, guilt, or burden, or survival of the economically fittest. There is a goodness about what she describes that is perhaps the most powerful argument for devoting ourselves to learn the gift economy. G’chi megwech, Robin Wall Kimmerer!

The Weekly Wrap: December 1-7

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On Giving Books as Gifts

Giving books to a bibliophile can be a fraught enterprise. Ask my family! We have such particular tastes and we read so much! The book gifter runs the risk of buying something we’ve read, or buying something that is not of interest.

The latter is not as much of a danger. Many of us like to stretch and get out of our ruts. My son often seems to find books like this. But this takes knowing your reader and maybe researching what they’ve read. Fortunately apps like Goodreads make this easier. Some create Amazon wish lists. If you want to buy me a book, search my blog to see if I’ve read it. Along the way, you will learn a lot about the kinds of books I’ve read and liked.

Take heart. In every genre, there are so many good choices. Again, my son is good at this. He knows I like baseball books and try to read at least one a year. This year, he found a great book on the World Champion 1948 Indians team. As one who suffered through many years of losing seasons and dashed hopes, it was a delight to read about the year it all came together. He knows I like crime fiction, and he introduced me to the works of Giles Blunt–a real find.

So the pro tip is to do your homework. If you are going to dash out at the last minute, a gift card to your bibliophile friend’s favorite store might be a better choice. And it is always fun to go book shopping when you are spending someone else’s money. With that, I’ll leave you to your holiday shopping!

Five Articles Worth Reading

The New York Times ‘By The Book” interviews are often fascinating glimpses into author’s lives, including what they are reading. I devoured Braiding Sweetgrass and so was delighted to come across an interview with Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Robin Wall Kimmerer Is Learning From ‘Rest as Resistance’“. She made this comment about her new book, The Serviceberry, that put it on my buy list: “It’s an invitation to question the values that underpin our current exploitative relation to the living world. Why do we tolerate an economy that actively destroys what we love?”

Speaking of writers talking about the books they are reading, The Millions runs a compilation of contributions by writers and others that posted this week: A Year in Reading: 2024. This is one I always look forward to.

In “Shakespeare the Suicide?” Larry Lockridge considers the evidence that Shakespeare might have taken his own life. Suicide figures in many of works. Perhaps he decided “not to be.”

Simone Weil was a philosopher, activist, and person of deep faith whose writing and life pose demanding questions of those who read her. In “Whose Weil?,” Jack Hanson discusses the ways modern commentators try to make her more “palatable.”

Finally, Phil Christman, a professor at the University of Michigan, poses the question. “Does Teaching Literature and Writing Have a Future?” Particularly, he considers the closure of English programs and the rise of AI and raises important questions about what a university is for.

Quote of the Week

Joan Didion, born on December 5, 1934, made this trenchant observation:

“You have to pick the places you don’t walk away from.”

I think she is right. These watershed moments define who we are.

Miscellaneous Musings

While reading Quentin J. Schultze’s You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out!, in which he draws life lessons from the movie A Christmas Story, I re-watched this classic, filmed in Cleveland while we lived there. There’s a lot of wisdom in that movie and it reminded me of Christmases of my youth (and a few schoolyard bullies).

And while I’m on the subject of Cleveland, one of the great bookstores on Cleveland’s East Side is Loganberry Books. They are celebrating their thirtieth anniversary TODAY! I’m thrilled that this indie has survived and thrived by serving the bookloving community of Cleveland. Congratulations and Happy Anniversary!

This week also brought news of a new bookstore in Columbus, Clintonville Books, located in the neighborhood of the same name. If you know Columbus, you know that Clintonville is a bookstore kind of place. Can’t wait to visit! I doubt I’ll be around to celebrate their thirtieth anniversary, but I hope they enjoy a good long run in Clintonville.

Next Week’s Reviews

Here’s what I expect to be reviewing next week. I may also do a special post on my “Best of the Year” books.

Monday: Stuart Murray, The New Anabaptists

Tuesday: Stuart M. Kaminsky, Lieberman’s Day

Wednesday: Matthew Desmond, Poverty, By America

Thursday: Quentin J. Schultze, You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out!

Friday: Jason Landsel, Richard Mommsen, and Sankha Banerjee, By Fire: The Jakob Hutter Story

Well, that’s The Weekly Wrap for December 1-7, 2024!

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page.

Review: Braiding Sweetgrass

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Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013.

Summary: A collection of essays centered around the culture of sweetgrass, combining indigenous wisdom and scientific knowledge.

Robin Wall Kimmerer is an environmental biologist teaching in the SUNY system. She is also an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She has dedicated her career to the integration of scientific understanding of the environment with indigenous wisdom. The book is organized around the different aspects of sweetgrass culture: planting, tending, picking, braiding, and burning sweetgrass. The braiding of sweetgrass is a metaphor for the weaving of science and indigenous wisdom in understanding the gifts of the earth and how we give back–how humans and all living things sustain each other.

Listening to other living things, indeed all the elements of the earth and reciprocity are two themes that run through the quietly eloquent essays organized around these five aspects of sweetgrass culture. In “The Gift of Strawberries,” wild strawberries come as a gift, an early harvest, but gratitude and reciprocity involve clearing land for runners to establish new plants, resulting in an even greater gift of strawberries. Likewise with sweetgrass, which comes as a gift. One receives only what is needed, leaving half, which we learns results in sweetgrass flourishing more than if left alone. Usually some gift is left, perhaps a sprinkling of tobacco leaves. And these gifts in turn are braided, given to friends, and burned in ceremony. She reflects on the Thanksgiving address and the giving of thanks to all the living things from the Earth and the waters to the trees. In an essay titled “The Honorable Harvest” she brings together so much of this wisdom in a kind of credo:

Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.
Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life.
Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
Never take the first. Never take the last.
Take only what you need.
Take only that which is given.
Never take more than half. Leave some for others.
Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.
Share.
Give thanks for what you have been given.
Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.
Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.
                                                    --Kimmerer, p. 183.

She writes of becoming indigenous to a place, one with its wisdom. This reminds me of the writings of Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson who pay attention to what the land is saying and farm in harmony with what they learn.

One of the most enjoyable essays was her narrative of taking students for what she calls “shopping” in a cattail marsh–“Wal-marsh.” Materials for clothes and sleeping mats, rhizomes with carbs, stalks of pith for vegetables–even toilet paper! They learn both about the biology of a cattail marsh, and lessons about the tremendous gifts bestowed upon us. We say “thanks,” we care, and yet the earth gives us so much greater abundance.

There is so much that is attractive in what one finds her, and I think much we might all learn from this indigenous wisdom. Where I respectfully part as a Christian is with her “language of animacy,” really a form of animism that assumes a spirit or soul not only in all living things but even rock, water, cloud, and fire. What I respect is the attentive care and mindful use of all things–what I think implied in the “tending and keeping of the garden” in the early chapters of Genesis, or the knowledge of place we see in Berry and Jackson.

I am also impressed with the ways this professor integrates indigenous wisdom and science in her research and work with students. I wonder how many from other faith traditions make the effort to braid the wisdom of their faith with their research. Whether we accept everything about indigenous religion or not, I believe there is much that can be learned, and crucial wisdom in the American context for the care and renewal of the land we often have pillaged. Kimmerer has shared a gift from her own people. Will we receive it and listen and say “thank you” and share what we can in response? What could be braided together?