DEIRDRE FULTON

Personally speaking

DEIRDRE FULTON — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 03:15:45 GMT

Abortion and Life tells whole truths
For decades, feminists have rallied behind the phrase “the personal is political,” meant to remind us that our personal lives are intrinsically affected by politics.

"I had an abortion: A Portland woman’s story," by Anonymous

"Where they stand: McCain and Obama on repro rights," by Deirdre Fulton

For decades, feminists have rallied behind the phrase “the personal is political,” meant to remind us that our personal lives (including our reproductive choices) are intrinsically affected by politics. Yet even while they remind society that public acts can penetrate private spheres, many members of the pro-choice movement still shy away from telling personal abortion stories, finding it more comfortable to talk about reproductive rights as intangible concepts rather than concrete situations.

This keeps the pro-choice cause stagnant, and struggling to be relevant to a wider audience. It also hurts women who have had abortions. Jennifer Baumgardner’s new book, Abortion and Life (Akashic Books) is one step toward shifting that paradigm, first by acknowledging that many people (feminists included) are still “afraid to discuss abortion in polite company,” and then by underscoring the importance of storytelling.

Part of the lingering stigma attached to abortion is based on anti-choice rhetoric and scare tactics. But just as insidious is the pro-choice movement’s reluctance to delve into the emotional nuance that comes with terminating an unplanned pregnancy. For example, it’s largely unacceptable for a pro-choice woman to be ambivalent about her own abortion (she would seem too vulnerable). Nor is it considered appropriate for a woman to express an excess of relief, or an outright absence of emotion, about the event (too callous). It’s as though women’s experiences of abortion have been passed through a filter for years, with only “on-message” stories allowed to reach the public. The results: a society that still considers abortion a clandestine act; a diverse group of women who feel both isolated and lumped together; and a movement that feels quite impersonal and manufactured, focused single-mindedly on a concept rather than a reality.

Enter Baumgardner’s “pro-voice” strategy, which started taking shape in 2004. That year, as a throwback to second-wave feminist efforts in the 1970s “to put a face on this diverse issue,” she made the first batch of T-shirts that read: “I had an abortion.” The T-shirts, distributed first at an abortion-rights march in Washington DC and then nationwide through Planned Parenthood, were wildly popular (and controversial) — more than she’d ever expected them to be — and indicated an untapped desire among women to destigmatize the abortion experience.

Pick what you eat

DEIRDRE FULTON — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:09:56 GMT

Fans of organic food: Stop talking, start weeding
In just a few hours, go beyond the agri-tourism of picking berries or apples, and actually learn something about the land.

When I arrived at Rippling Waters Organic Farm in Standish around 8 am last Wednesday, several young women in their 20s were clustered around their farm manager, Julee. They were going over the morning’s tasks, which involved weeding Field D, removing juicy, leaf-devouring caterpillars from tomato plants, harvesting chard, and bagging produce for a Portland food pantry.

“Who wants to do hornworms?” Julee asked, referencing the caterpillars. This is not a particularly popular chore, it seems. I said I’d do it.

So began one of my days volunteering at a local farm, a surprisingly easy gig to set up, and one that increasing numbers of young people, both in New England and nationwide, are pursuing with varying intensity (see further down, “Levels of Commitment”).

Many of this generation’s locavores have read the requisite Michael Pollan tomes, developed relationships with their favorite farmers’ market vendors, and maybe even taught themselves some elementary food-preservation techniques — to keep yummy veggies year-round rather than having to buy produce out of season from some far-off place. What comes next, in the quest for sustainable-food street cred?

For some, it’s working on a farm, planting seeds, cultivating what grows, and pulling ripe produce straight from the ground. How better for this generation’s sustainable-food junkies to put their pitchforks where their principles are, than to actually learn (by doing) on small organic farms?

Of course, we recognize that not everyone who’s interested in sustainable agriculture is willing to don overalls for the long haul, or to buy a farm and become a full-time farmer. That’s why we’re sharing this well-buried secret: With just a few hours, you can go beyond the agri-tourism of picking berries or apples for personal gustatory enjoyment, and actually learn something about the land. Organic farms are so chronically understaffed that there’s always room for an extra set of hands, especially during these late-summer weeks, when harvesting is at its peak. In most cases, all it takes is a phone call and some free time to set up a volunteer gig. (To that end, we’ve included the names and contact info for some New England farms that welcome volunteers.)

Though you might go home with a few surplus tidbits, the bulk of the food a volunteer harvests ends up in someone else’s belly. But the increased understanding, however superficial, of what it takes to put that food on our plates? That stays in the harvester’s brain with as much tenacity as the dirt under her fingernails.

Scarred for life

DEIRDRE FULTON — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:26:07 GMT

Writing through the pain of self-harm
There’s evidence that blogging is not merely comforting, but healthy.

The first time Kate cut herself, as a young teenager, she sliced a Swiss Army knife into her hand. For the next 13 years, she used pieces of pens, razor blades, and any other sharp implement that would pierce her skin. She cut her arms, legs, hips, stomach, and shoulders. Whatever the instrument, wherever the scar, Kate considered the act of cutting to be like a best friend. After all, “it allowed me to escape my emotional pain and feel physical pain,” she says. And when you’re an unhappy youth with fighting parents, a broken back that keeps you from playing basketball, and lots of bottled-up anger and frustration, escape is extremely appealing.

No matter what stereotypes you may harbor about people who harm themselves, Kate forces you to discard them. The 27-year-old Portlander, who looks like an athletic version of Kirsten Dunst, is spunky, fit, and smart. She’s well-educated, with a master’s degree in zoology from the University of New Hampshire, and has a bucketful of friends. She’s a surfer chick, for heaven’s sake.

But for the bulk of her young adult life, she has injured herself repeatedly — and twice badly enough to go to the hospital — all because to cut “is so much easier than it is to feel.” When her girlfriend cheated on her, it was easier to carve a gash into her leg (a cut that required 45 stitches) than to deal with the betrayal. When she felt self-hatred, it was simpler to slash into her shoulder with an Exacto knife than to share her pain with her friends (this cut, too, landed her in the hospital). During high school, when she was cutting herself almost every day, her injuries “gave me something else to focus on” than her parents’ “horrible relationship.” Cutting gave Kate a feeling of letting go of her emotional pain — as though her unhappiness flowed out with her blood, almost as medieval doctors believed leeching removed “bad blood” from the body.

Now, Kate will share her story, and, she hopes, provide a forum for others to share theirs, at MemoirsOfACutter.blogspot.com. In the just-launched blog, she has posted photos of her self-injury scars (some of which accompany this article), and has already begun explaining why, and when, she started cutting herself; in future posts, she’ll go into detail about dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), the psychological method that helps self-harmers address their emotional reactions to distressing situations, and will share both her recent slip-ups (“when I’m drinking I’m more likely to cut,” she admits) and personal triumphs (Kate hasn’t cut herself since October 2007).

Small presses

DEIRDRE FULTON — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:48:10 GMT

Big ideas, and a match made in heaven
Rose Metal Press focuses on unique, non-traditional literary forms such as flash fiction, prose poetry, or novels-in-verse.

"Who reads short shorts?" by Deirdre Fulton

A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness is the latest offering from Rose Metal Press, an independent Boston-based publishing house launched in 2006. The press focuses on unique, non-traditional literary forms such as flash fiction, prose poetry, or novels-in-verse, and its founders — Kathleen Rooney, 28, and Abby Beckel, 29, who met when they both attended grad school at Emerson College — see much promise in the fusion of small presses and innovative writing. Rooney and Beckel run the press from afar, since both of them have day jobs in other cities (Chicago and DC, respectively). So we e-mail–interviewed the pair — here’s an edited transcript; find their full thoughts on publishing, literary links, and the start of Rose Metal Press at thephoenix.com/blogs/wordup.

RMP has been around for about two years. What have been the biggest challenges so far? What are you most proud of?
KR The biggest challenges are probably two-pronged and not that unusual to anyone who runs an independent press: that we could always use more money (who couldn’t?) and more time (since we both work nine-to-five day jobs). One of the things I’m most proud of is our authors, who in addition to being talented producers of the kind of work we like to see in print, are also consistently nice, thoughtful, fun, and hard-working, and very much team players.

AB I’m also proud of the way our books look and of our designers and cover artists for helping us present the work in interesting ways that reflect the innovativeness of the writing.

What makes short shorts or flash fiction special?
KR Short shorts — they have the economy of a poem, and often the linguistic and syntactic richness, but so too do they incorporate the elements of narrative and prose fiction — are intelligible to a wide readership because of these similarities to other forms, but they also have their own distinct character, in much the same way that a sonnet or a haiku has a distinct character.

It's easy staying green

DEIRDRE FULTON — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:37:33 GMT

New England offers a variety of eco-friendly lodging options
This summer, don't leave home without your environmentalism.

This summer, don't leave home without your environmentalism — when planning a vacation, make reservations at one of New England's eco-friendly lodging establishments, where you can enjoy the natural beauty of the region while doing your small part to ensure that it stays this lovely for quite some time.

When it comes to going green, our hotels, motels, inns, and B&Bs increasingly have more to offer than just the thriving ecosystems around them. Some focus on providing a truly local experience, serving fresh, locally procured meals at their house-run dining rooms (and thereby cutting the carbon emissions that would come from shipping food over long distances). Others home in on energy efficiency, using compact-fluorescent light bulbs, Energy Star–certified appliances, or solar power. Still others have unique eco-friendly promotions that make sense given their location or target customer base. Simple changes can make surprising impacts — for example, many hotels now use off-white linens to eliminate the need for chlorine bleach, which can pollute water systems when it swirls down the drain.

In making these changes, the hospitality industry is supported not just by the ever-growing public interest in all things environmental, but also by several government- and corporate-run programs that encourage the lodging industry to reduce its carbon footprint. Several New England states — Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont — have formal green-certification processes that encourage hotels and inns to take certain steps toward sustainability. Connecticut is on its way to implementing such a program. And in Massachusetts, the state tourism agency, the hospitality trade association, and the Boston Green Tourism initiative have teamed up to green up the Bay State's accommodations.

So what does all this mean for us, the simple lodgers, those who would have our vacations and save the Earth too? For the most part, we don't even notice the changes, and if we do, the eco-ambiance translates into nicer accommodations, better meals, and a cleaner conscience. Even better, eco-friendly adjustments don't necessarily translate into summer-campy accommodations (although those are certainly available, if that's your thing). Green lodging choices range from basic to luxurious — they're just a day trip away, but that saving-the-Earth feeling you get will make you want to stay longer.

Connecticut
— 5 Energy Star establishments
— The Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection is working to implement a program like Maine’s

Turn and face the strange

DEIRDRE FULTON — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:25:13 GMT

What would you do to find the perfect mate?
On Delia’s Web site, overly fast typist “Dptanimal” writes: “THE PERFECT WOMAM —– THE ONE YOU ARE IN LOVE WITH !!!”

MULTIPLE CHOICE: Is this the face of love?

We all change for love. Phone-lovers fall for phone-phobes, and one person adjusts (or not) accordingly. A theater geek gets with a sports nut and suddenly starts memorizing stats (and liking it). Romance makes us try new things, from new foods to new ways of interacting with others. And that’s fine, says Delia W. Oman (an anagram for “ideal woman,” and so probably not her real name), a mysterious performance artist who lives somewhere in the United States (we think), and who is in the middle of an online conceptual art installation she calls the Perfect Woman Project.

But when does it go too far?

With her project, Delia wants to explore the lengths to which people will go to find the perfect mate, or to mold themselves into the ideal partner. It’s a multi-step, many-month commitment for her, and one that will intimately involve at least one other person — someone who, at the moment, doesn’t know it yet.

Since last fall, she has solicited and accepted Perfect Woman submissions and descriptions at her Web site, perfectwomanproject.com. Starting on February 14, Web site visitors (regardless of whether or not they’ve offered a description themselves) have one week to vote to choose the best of those submissions. Then, Delia will have three months to transform herself — both physically and mentally, and according to the utopian parameters she’s been given — into said Perfect Woman. In this stage, the project will be mostly self-exploration, as Delia learns just how much she is willing to change for art.

In May, she will fly the creator of the winning submission to meet her, wherever that is, and the couple will go on five dates, all suggested by Web site visitors (and all expenses paid by the Perfect Woman, which does, indeed, make her kind of great). The dates will be filmed, and broadcast live online. Only then will the project be complete.

“Through your participations, you are in charge of her fate,” the Perfect Woman webmistress says on her site.

How is any of this different from me developing an affinity for Smashing Pumpkins, or you learning more about Henry James? Well, for one thing, Delia’s not really looking for love. In fact, her project was conceived in part to examine the notion that people need to be paired.

Scared green

DEIRDRE FULTON — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 16:18:31 GMT

Devra Davis’s cancer book
Even when we’re aware of some level of health risk involved in our mundane daily activities, we tend to ignore it.

SKEPTIC’S SCREED: Davis argues that when it comes to carcinogens, we’re endangered by an unreasonable burden of proof.

The Secret History of the War on Cancer | By Devra Davis | Basic Books | 528 pages | $27.95

Even when we’re aware of some level of health risk involved in our mundane daily activities, we tend to ignore it. Whether it’s household cleansers or cellphones, we assume the things we use are safe — notwithstanding all the hints to the contrary. We know we’re supposed to avoid radiation and not have too many X-rays, but we walk around all day with radiation-emitting mobiles plastered to our heads. We’ve been told there are studies that demonstrate cellphones are safe. But epidemiologist Devra Davis would, at the very least, have us be skeptical.

Davis is skeptical of lots of things. Early in The Secret History of the War on Cancer, she asks: “Look around and it seems that cancer has become the price of modern life. How did this happen?” She’s not shy about passing out blame — from those who caused to those who cured. She has evidence that links cancer researchers to the tobacco industry and shows that many scientists knew about the risks of asbestos, benzene, and other chemicals long before their dangers were publicized. She also asserts that, for years, both mammograms and Pap smears were improperly administered. And who knew that Donald Rumsfeld had a hand in bringing aspartame to the market?

Some of this information is, however, presented in a long-winded, over-personalized way that limits its impact. It’s not that Davis, who heads the Center on Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (and whose parents died of cancer), isn’t qualified. And her main points are sound, especially her assertion that scientists face a daunting burden of proof — imposed primarily by industry lawyers — when they’re asked to establish that a substance is a carcinogen. This, she says, hinders us from identifying environmental pollutants that may exist in our workplaces, our beauty products, and yes, our personal communication devices. What we don’t know may be hurting us, and despite the dearth of information, Davis wants us to green up our communities, just in case.

Comics for Christ

DEIRDRE FULTON — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 18:14:51 GMT

Evangelicals are speaking in bubbles — and fighting God’s war on pop culture
Young Laurel Templeton spends her summer vacation “kidnapped by five cyborg flies and shrunk down to insect size so [she can] travel back in time with them to save the world from an evil spider.” You know, typical stuff.

Panel from The Manga Bible

Young Laurel Templeton spends her summer vacation “kidnapped by five cyborg flies and shrunk down to insect size so [she can] travel back in time with them to save the world from an evil spider.” You know, typical stuff.

A manga comic character and the star of the new TimeFlyz series, Laurel may be just an average girl, but she has a centuries-old, ancient-Hebrew-speaking friend with whom she can’t communicate, and a Nobel Prize–winning father who has been kidnapped by a deranged arachnid named Darchon. By the end of Pyramid Peril, the first installment of her story, she’s vowed to assist the cyborg flies in defeating Darchon and rescuing her father.

“They say, ‘From those to whom much is given, much is expected,’ ” Laurel realizes toward the end of TimeFlyz, Volume One. Although she thinks it’s a line from one of her little brother’s poems, that axiom is actually from the Bible — Luke, 12:48.

Yup, Bible verses are now being tossed around nonchalantly in a comic book. Laurel’s character is the most recent attempt by Zondervan — the Christian division of HarperCollins, which, with sales topping $1 billion this past year, is one of the biggest publishing houses in the world — to get . . . er, hip to what today’s kids are digging.

As opposed to other series in Zondervan’s new Z Graphic Novel line, introduced in August, there’s nothing explicitly religious about TimeFlyz; it’s just good, clean, moral fun — material that Christian bookstores can feel comfortable putting on their shelves, and that Christian parents can feel satisfied purchasing.

And yet the TimeFlyz series is being drawn in the popular Japanese manga style, a style that even a Zondervan-issued FAQ describes as one that “tend[s] to celebrate violence and sexual misbehavior.” That may seem a bit counterintuitive for a religious graphic novel, given the anti-pop-culture emphasis that pervades much of the Christian movement. After all, there’s not much about secular pop culture that can get by the Christian value-meter.

Take James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, who says of the Harry Potter phenomenon: “We have spoken out strongly against all of the Harry Potter products.” The Focus on the Family Web site goes on to say that “Magical characters — witches, wizards, ghosts, goblins, werewolves, poltergeists, and so on — fill the Harry Potter stories, and given the trend toward witchcraft and New Age ideology in the larger culture, it’s difficult to ignore the effects such stories [albeit imaginary] might have on young, impressionable minds.”

Prudish publication makes its debut

DEIRDRE FULTON — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 19:32:23 GMT

Return to modesty
You won’t see any bikinis in Eliza’s swimsuit spread, just one-pieces and a few belly-covering tankinis.

ELIZA: Modestly fashioned, modestly sized.

Last month, I gave my biceps a break, skipped the 840-page fall issue of Vogue, and instead perused a more modestly sized — and modestly fashioned — new mag, Eliza, which hit the stands with its debut issue this summer.

A casual reader may see the rail-thin model on the cover (who also happens to be Eliza’s editor, Summer Bellessa), in combination with inane feature articles such as “Get Your Yoga Om,” and think this is just another Cosmo knock-off. But it’s more than that — it’s Bellessa’s answer to today’s female fashion choices, which this member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints perceives as provocative, skimpy, and tacky. One senses that the Utah-based Eliza crowd feels the same way about modern female behavior in general.

“Your interaction with fashion tells a story about you,” Eliza tells us. “It’s not a tale of fickle trends or pretending to be someone else. It’s not about uncomfortable dresses and impossible heels. It’s not about titillating styles and risqué behavior ... It’s about expressing yourself, not exposing yourself.”

You won’t see any bikinis in Eliza’s swimsuit spread, just one-pieces and a few belly-covering tankinis. No cleavage shows up in the “Layers in the Sun” photo spread. And in the special “modest wedding” section, long-sleeved gowns replace trendy strapless versions.

Truth be told, lots of the clothes are hot — I’d happily don most of the dresses and swimsuits featured in the magazine, and feel quite fashionable doing so, in a decidedly vintage-hippie-chic way. But there’s something irksome about modesty that’s dictated from a detached source — something that feels uncomfortably condescending and conservative.

That discomfort is only compounded by articles such as: “Guys Guide: Top Nine Guy Movies You Should Know About” (since when is Ghostbusters a guy movie?!), or “We’ve Got Issues: Child Bride or Old Maid? Is There a Right Age to Get Married?” — both of which feel distinctly old-fashioned, as if I’ve time-traveled back to the ’50s.

It’s not surprising that Eliza’s second issue, coming out this fall, will feature an interview with Wendy Shalit, author of 2000’s Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue and this year’s Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It’s Not Bad to Be Good, and webmistress behind www.modestyzone.net, “an informal community of young women who don’t have a voice in the mainstream media.” Shalit is a lightning rod in her own right, a champion of the school that accuses modern women of confusing promiscuity and crassness with sexual liberation and feminism.

Environmentally yours

DEIRDRE FULTON — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:38:56 GMT

Two new takes on global warming
Environmental interest groups, Shellenberger and Nordhaus claimed, simply don’t dream big enough to address the multifaceted monster that is global warming.

ECO-VILLAIN? Lomborg’s revisionist approach
to saving the planet will be a cold shower for
overexerted greenies.

A little more than two years ago, upstart policy wonks Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus foretold “the death of environmentalism” in an incendiary eponymous essay. The green movement’s inability to significantly raise fuel-efficiency standards for American automobiles, to devise a workable plan to address carbon emissions, or to propel clean energy toward economic viability were signs of the movement’s imminent, imperative, and fatal collapse, they said. Environmental interest groups, Shellenberger and Nordhaus claimed, simply don’t dream big enough to address the multifaceted monster that is global warming.

Not surprisingly, their assertions engendered diverse responses, including one from Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope, who wrote in a long and angry rebuttal:
. . . by mingling the issue of the need for deeper and more effective global warming strategies with an ill-thought out assault on environmentalism, Shellenberger and Nordhaus are likely to create defensiveness, not receptivity; resistance, not movement; back-lash, not progress.

In Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, Shellenberger and Nordhaus continue to criticize a negative and narrowly defined environmental movement. They also present a positive alternative: post-environmentalism, a green philosophy that replaces the “politics of limits” with eco-focused economic development that “unleashes human activity.” It is a compelling vision.

Break Through “is an argument against the politics of essentialism and for a politics of pragmatism,” the authors write toward the end of their book. In this case, the politics of essentialism is narrow-mindedness: the environmental movement’s failure to address the “sociocultural context” that lies beneath most ecological problems, to conceive of humanity as part of nature, rather than as an infringement upon it, and to inspire a movement that is bigger than its individual dilemmas.

Consider their example of Brazil, where Shellenberger and Nordhaus accuse environmentalists of losing sight of, well, the forest for the trees: Instead of grappling with the macroeconomic forces driving the forest’s destruction — and articulating a national vision that speaks to the aspirations of the Brazilian people — environmentalists . . . have spent fifteen years . . . reinforcing the sense that protecting the Amazon should be done for environmental reasons.

Imitation and flattery

DEIRDRE FULTON — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 21:02:51 GMT

Nation building
If the replica Green Monster, Citgo sign, and Coke bottles at the Sea Dogs’ Hadlock Field don’t sufficiently feed your Red Sox fever, don’t fret.

It’s a woman’s right to choose

DEIRDRE FULTON — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 22:31:40 GMT

Five new methods of birth control explained
Sorry guys, this one’s for the girls.

"Patchy problems." By Deirdre Fulton.
"The boys and the bees." By Deirdre Fulton.

Sorry guys, this one’s for the girls.

Or, maybe not. After all, despite the fact that the male birth control pill is still a researcher’s dream (see sidebar, “The Boys and the Bees”), birth control is (or should be) the province of both sexes. There just happens to be a slight imbalance, financially and physiologically: guys have to think about condoms; girls have to weigh many more options, ones that require trips to the doctor, prescriptions, and occasionally, the insertion of foreign objects into our bodies (no pun intended; grow up).

Sex — and attempts to avoid its natural consequences — have been around for rather a while now. In the 20th century, the innovations were both chemical and physical — the intra-uterine device (IUD), the birth-control pill, the diaphragm, the made-famous-by-Seinfeld sponge. Some of these proved popular (the Pill), others caused controversy (the IUD), others faded into oblivion (have you ever met a diaphragm user?). There were flares of innovation along the way, such as the six-rod Norplant implant in the 1990s, or the contraceptive patch, introduced earlier this decade. A lot of improvements were limited to fine-tuning the chemical cocktail that makes up prescription-issue pills, to improve effectiveness and reduce negative side effects for women with different tolerances for hormones involved in the reproductive cycle.

Good eatin’

DEIRDRE FULTON — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:32:07 GMT

Barbara Kingsolver grows her own
In 2005, author Barbara Kingsolver moved her family from Tucson to a farm in Virginia to embark on a year-long experiment of returning to nature.

FREE-RANGE: Kingsolver combines exposé, personal testimonial, and how-to.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life | By Barbara Kingsolver, With Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver | Harper Collins | 384 pages | $26.95

In 2005, author Barbara Kingsolver moved her family from Tucson to a farm in Virginia to embark on a year-long experiment of returning to nature. Through an entire cycle of seasons, the family would grow their own food; what Kingsolver, her husband, and their two daughters couldn’t grow, they’d obtain from local sources — food grown “so close to home . . . that we’d know the person who grew it.” (They allowed themselves a few exceptions, such as coffee, olive oil, and dried fruit.) Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is the story of that year.

It’s also the tale of America’s food culture, or lack thereof. Instead of valuing foods as they come into season, and enjoying each month for what it might bring to our plates, we’ve developed what Kingsolver calls a “supermarket culture,” in which out-of-season fruits and vegetables are — unnaturally — available year-round. We suffer for it, she says, when we eat tomatoes in winter “that taste like slightly sour water with a mealy texture.” Think of AVM (as enviro-blogs are calling it) as a mix of Eric Schlosser’s true-story-of-Happy-Meals, Fast Food Nation (only not as preachy), Morgan Spurlock’s eat-at-McDonald’s-for-a-month Supersize Me (except less sensationalistic), and any Martha Stewart magazine (but not as annoying). In other words, a combination of exposé, personal testimonial, and how-to. As she moves chronologically through the year, Kingsolver uses the micro stories of her farm to introduce such macro issues as raising livestock and buying local. This approach renders her sweeping experiment more bite-sized and manageable.

Throughout, husband Steven — a biology professor — provides sidebars on everything from national farm politics to fair trade, and older daughter Camille — who leaves halfway through the experiment for Duke University — offers a 19-year-old’s perspective as well as enticing recipes. And Kingsolver’s vignettes about eight-year-old Lucy’s egg-selling business are charming.

Sure, the author can come off as smug — would it be possible to accomplish all that she did without feeling self-satisfied? But she adds enough straightforward storytelling and amusing anecdotes (turkey matchmaking!?) to ensure that the book isn’t as sanctimonious as many I-did-it accounts can be. Her description of just-picked asparagus made me want to forgo the vegetable for 10 months so I can appreciate the fresh version when it’s in season. Her treatise on canning tomatoes was so inspirational, I stopped reading the book to purchase a home-canning kit. And her discussion of free-range livestock versus the horrors of concentrated animal-feeding operations offers one of the more sensible defenses of — and most balanced approaches to — carnivorism.

NAScar-bon neutral?

DEIRDRE FULTON — Wed, 30 May 2007 16:07:49 GMT

Motor sports make an improbable environmentalist example
Anyone trying to get their minds around the complicated puzzles of greenhouse gases and global warming can learn a thing or two by watching how motor sports are adapting to the growing pressure to become eco-friendly.

START YOUR ENGINES: Beech Ridge Motor Speeway is going for the green.

You may think the trees that ring the track at Beech Ridge Motor Speedway are an improbable background for a sports car race.

After all, leafy trees and clean air are not necessarily what come to mind when you think about race tracks. Cheering fans, maybe. Revving motors that sound like gravel going through a blender, sure. An ice-cold foamer, of course (if you’re legal!). But not hippies and tree-hugging. And yet Andy Cusack, the chief of our local speedway in Scarborough who orchestrated the planting of trees, grass, and flowers on the grounds, may be an unwitting trendsetter in the burgeoning movement in motor sports to go green.

Got any lingering doubts that environmentalism is becoming increasingly mainstream? If so, turn for proof to the wildly popular — and populist — sport of car racing. An improbable role model, you might say (and you’d be right). But anyone trying to get their minds around the complicated puzzles of greenhouse gases and global warming can learn a thing or two by watching how motor sports are adapting to the growing pressure to become eco-friendly.

It’s true that when worldwide carbon emissions hover around six billion tons a year, even the highest estimates of car-racing’s contribution to that are negligible (an inexact science puts those estimates anywhere between a couple hundred thousand tons to two million tons). But small amounts everywhere are what add up to a quickly dwindling supply of fossil fuels, and an increasingly damaged atmosphere.

Still, earnest entreaties don’t stand much of a chance in this arena. As the environmentally-friendly trend goes from 0 to 60 nationwide this racing season, racing fans and promoters alike may find themselves lured by practical incentives.

Zero to 160,000 (pounds)
Regardless of whether or not it’s deserved, racing’s bad environmental reputation is understandable. Unlike other professional sports, the entire sport revolves around an action that produces harmful emissions: driving a car.

Let’s start with NASCAR — after all, it’s is the second most-watched sport in America, after football. NASCAR race cars, like many of the ones driven at Beech Ridge, get between two and five miles per gallon of gasoline, and the average big NASCAR weekend, like those held at the New Hampshire International Speedway, guzzles up to 8000 gallons.

One gallon of gas equals 20 pounds of carbon dioxide, so that’s about 160,000 pounds of CO2 every weekend, 10 months of the year.

The song remains the same

DEIRDRE FULTON — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 23:22:03 GMT

Did last weekend’s march on Washington mark a new surge in street activism or the waning of an old-school protest style?
At one point early on in last weekend’s anti-war rally in Washington, DC, a speaker instructed the crowd, which was facing en masse toward the Capitol Building, to turn around and look in the other direction — toward the White House, the State Department, the Justice Department, and the Pentagon — and then to turn back around. Slideshow: Images from the January 27th march on Washington, DC. Photos by Matthew Craig

DEMONSTRATED BRILLIANCE: A scene from the January 27 march on Washington, protesting George Bush’s efforts to send more troops to Iraq.

At one point early on in last weekend’s anti-war rally in Washington, DC, a speaker instructed the crowd, which was facing en masse toward the Capitol Building, to turn around and look in the other direction — toward the White House, the State Department, the Justice Department, and the Pentagon — and then to turn back around. The purpose of the exercise was to remind the energized multitude that Saturday’s message was directed not at the occupants of those other buildings, but at a very specific audience: the newly elected Democratic Congress.

For the first time since before the war began on March 19, 2003, many who stood on the Mall holding signs and chanting slogans felt confident that they would be heard, not by the president, but by Congress. “For me, it all boiled over when the president announced that we were going to have a troop surge, after the election clearly showed that was not what America wants,” said Carol Castleberry, a 54-year-old who came from Tampa to join the demonstration.

A recent Newsweek poll supports Castleberry’s view. It shows that 64 percent of Americans believe that Congress isn’t doing enough to challenge the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq. Not to mention the fact that the president’s own approval ratings are at an all-time low (not just for him, but for presidential-approval ratings overall) of 30 percent. What’s more, one in five Republicans said they wished Bush’s presidency was over. One of those is Tampa native Todd Peterson, also 54, who held a sign that read: ANOTHER REPUBLICAN AGAINST THE WAR. Peterson, who voted for Bush in 2004, was “all for going in,” at the beginning of the Iraq War. But now, he doesn’t “think we’re doing anything positive on the diplomatic front. You can’t have a lasting peace without that.”

Saturday’s event was the first major public demonstration since the November 2006 election, and many of those in attendance hoped it would mark a turning point in the history of the war in Iraq. “I think the things we did against Vietnam made a difference, and I think we can do it again, if we get more people,” said 68-year-old Karen Fitzpatrick, who attended the famous November 1969 March on Washington, which drew 600,000 protestors. “I think this is the beginning of a new momentum.”

James’s Gate free-form pasta

DEIRDRE FULTON — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 18:01:04 GMT

Free to be delicious
The entrée, which arrives in a sizeable bowl, is one long sheet of pasta that’s wrapped around, and surrounded by, various veggies, spices, and sauce.

Beaches are good for the soul

DEIRDRE FULTON — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 19:50:05 GMT

Whether you want to relax or act up, there’s a New England beach just for you
A day at the beach offers the ultimate sensual experience, and it’s not just because everyone shows up half-naked. Summer Guide 2006: Cheap thrills from Bar Harbor to New Haven.

Beaches for every mood.

A day at the beach offers the ultimate sensual experience, and it’s not just because everyone shows up half-naked. It’s also because of the feel of hot sand between your toes and sea air cooling your wet shoulders; the sounds of children shouting, gulls screeching, waves crashing; the taste of salt water mingled with that coconut sun-block smell; and gazing out at the sea’s blue-gray horizon amid a flotilla of rainbow-hued umbrellas.

As with bodies and snowflakes, no two beaches are alike — and that’s good news for those of us who hanker for external stimulation on some days, introspection on others. Whether we’re on the beach or in the bedroom, our sensuality depends on our mood.

On extraverted days, we want our fun handed to us, loud and rambunctious and overflowing with sights, smells, and sounds. We want to slurp fast-melting ice cream before trying our luck at noisy arcade games. We want to swing our legs from wooden boardwalks, giggling with friends. We want it all there in front of us, where we can pick and choose and scoop up our pleasures by the armful.

For such experiences, Maine’s Old Orchard Beach gives us everything we desire. The beach is an old-school throwback to our parents’ days on Coney Island, complete with fast food and gift shops, carnival games, a wooden pier that stretches 500 feet over the Atlantic Ocean, and seven miles of prime beach-towel real estate. The Amtrak-accessible playground offers free concerts on Monday and Tuesday nights, and free fireworks every Thursday.

Or try Hampton Beach, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary this year. New Hampshire may have only 18 miles of seacoast, but it capitalizes on its short shoreline with Hampton, where there are weekly fireworks displays on Wednesdays, as well as nightly concerts, a sand-sculpting competition starting June 16 (in which contestants will use 300 tons of imported sand), a Hampton Beach Idol contest, and a seafood festival that marks the end of the summer season in September.

Easton’s Beach, in Newport, Rhode Island, also has an amusement-park vibe (there’s a carousel!) that translates into a good old-fashioned romp of a day. And of course, carnival games or not, a trip from Point Judith, Rhode Island, to Block Island offers day-trippers everything from beaches and bike trails to breathtaking views — and occasionally rowdy crowds to boot.

Natural selections

DEIRDRE FULTON — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 20:07:37 GMT

New England's nude beaches
If your goal is to feel the sea air and salt water against every centimeter of your bare skin, your pickings are rather slim in New England, where nude beaches are few and far between. Summer Guide 2006: Cheap thrills from Bar Harbor to New Haven.

Sand dollars

DEIRDRE FULTON — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 20:06:18 GMT

Hit the beach on the cheap
Here are some tips for making sure beach days don’t leave you broke. Summer Guide 2006: Cheap thrills from Bar Harbor to New Haven.

The weather whisperer

DEIRDRE FULTON — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 17:29:13 GMT

Tim Flannery: the man who might make people actually care about global warming
"Some time in this century, the day will arrive when the human inﬂuence on the climate will overwhelm all natural factors.”

Tim Flannery

"Some time in this century, the day will arrive when the human inﬂuence on the climate will overwhelm all natural factors.” So writes the Australian scientist and conservationist in The Weathermakers (Atlantic Monthly Press). The book weaves a detailed, accessible, and convincing argument for how human activity is causing global temperatures to rise. Flannery does more than tell us that climate change is happening: he shows us where, why, and for how long it has been occurring. In other words, he makes an urgent case — one that has created waves among policymakers and politicians alike. In an e-mail interview with the Phoenix, the former Harvard University professor shares what made him start to pay attention — and why the rest of us should too.

Deirdre Fulton: You used to be skeptical about global warming. What changed?
Tim Flannery: I changed my mind because I ﬁnally made time to read the scientiﬁc literature on the topic. Before that, I had read around the issue, but never fully immersed myself in it. I fear that [those who remain skeptical today are] either biased by alliance to an industry or ideology, ignorant of the latest science, or afraid of facing the truth.

DF: How would you assess the Bush administration’s actions on global warming?
TF: The worst in the world, with the possible exception of Australia.

DF: Your book offers many concrete examples of how climate change is already affecting our world. Can you mention some of the most compelling?
TF: The melting of the Arctic ice cap is occurring at the rate of eight percent per decade, and the Alaskan and Canadian tundra are warming swiftly. Already Inuit villages are being abandoned and polar-bear populations are coming under stress. If you want to see some of the worst impacts of climate change to date, ask an Inuit.

DF: What examples of climate change have you witnessed personally?
TF: I live in Australia and have spent most of my scientiﬁc life working in New Guinea. There I’ve seen glaciers retract from the highest mountains, alpine grasslands be taken over by forest, and forest ﬁres destroy pristine rain forest. All of this has occurred as a result of global warming and our changing climate.

DF: Where could we be in 50 years, if nothing changes?
TF: Within 50 years we could see a destabilization of Earth’s climate system. This means that everything — from the incidence of storms, to sea level, to rainfall and heat waves — could change.