Renee Lertzman

We want our world to support: to hold, carry, contain. We yearn for the resting place, the release into another: tree, ocean, meadow, rock, fog. Arms. Sand bars. Waters. We look upward and outward, for reassurance, respite; you are here, the stars like tiny pinpricks in our vast knowledge of nothing; you are here, and it is okay, the crunch of leaves under our feet, the scent of a jasmine opening in the evening cool, glowing luminous as tiny moons. We reach and touch, search and etch, tiny movements and designs, webbing and netting ourselves into this world. And yet, the world skims our desires, or at least plays with it, like a trickster, or more sinisterly, a magician teasing and taunting, flashing silk scarves and tufts of white fur, roses. For you are here, we are here. And the flower, the jasmine, the rock and the river, invite and rebuff. We want to disappear into this watery, rocky, sandy, verdant place — to feel the moist leaves on our fingertips, sink toes into the damp soil, the chill of water sending our heart beating. We want the envelop of heat: You are here. Instead, we sit at tables, the fork clinks on the plate, and I see my reflection in the glass. The clouds cover the skies full of pinpricks, reminders of our place, however incomprehending and dumb, locators and coordinates sparking over our heads. We lose ourselves, in the mixed up flights and migrations, in the stone and rock, the ground granite smoothed. But we are here, the tea cup says, the clang of the cafe; the silent walking, the ground, always the ground. I am reaching, I am tracing your veins, under the skin. Is this a map? Are we here?

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I was trawling the web in search of a good chocolate chip recipe (they really are mostly the same) when I came across a piece about Alice Waters in the New York Times. (Okay, I was looking for a really good recipe.) The article is great - but the real gem is the video on how to “work a farmers market” Alice Waters style (my favorite bit is when she’s checking out the peppers - I miss fresh, just picked peppers!) I watched all several minutes in rapture; certainly one of the nicest things I’ve seen in a while (at least for me; sorry to say British farmers’ markets sort of lacks some of the jouissance, although I’m grateful for them all the same). This is just pure, simple life affirming stuff. God I miss American farmer’s markets; New York and Berkeley and Portland, all blow everyone out of the water.

Also, a point of personal trivia: I was once hired to work for the now-obsolete Alice Waters.com website, published by Time/Warner, which involved doing an inventory of every farmer’s market in the United States! I had to call every farmer’s market organizer in the States and confirm dates, times, and so on. It was a lovely website, with recipes and columns; too bad it folded.

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I am very pleased to have been invited to speak at the forthcoming Communicate Now conference, in Bristol later this year. This event is organized by the Bristol Natural History Consortium, an innovative collaboration of leading UK national environmental groups and agencies. I am also happy to hear the conference format is designed for more dialog and interactivity, less presentations, which is hopefully a new model for conferences. How many of us attend conferences, only to wonder afterwards who else was in the room?

Also on a related environmental communications note, Green Awards has asked me to contribute a few blogs in lead up to their event in November. You can learn more about the Green Awards here.

post-script… I just received a call for papers for the upcoming ASLE conference. It seems that indeed there is a new model for conferences… well done! Why haven’t we been doing this before; don’t all conferences need to be run “to make it count”?
MAKE IT COUNT: ASLE RESPONDS TO THE CLIMATE CRISIS
At ASLE’s last biennial conference at Wofford College in 2007, Bill
McKibben said that if we were going to travel to a conference in a
time of climate crisis, we should “make it count.” We have taken this
call to heart and made a number of changes to this year’s conference
in order to justify the costs of our collective resource use as best
we can. In addition to creating as “green” a conference as possible in
terms of our ecological footprint, we have attempted to create an
intellectual and creative space where things can happen *that would
not happen otherwise.* In particular, we have adapted the schedule to
include more time for conversation, dialogue, and discussion in the
hope that these exchanges will help to inspire creativity and
innovation. These adaptions include new breakfast discussions, longer
lunches, longer concurrent sessions, more time between sessions,
informal discussions for attendees with special interests, a new
presentation format, and several large concurrent discussion sessions
for everyone at the end of the conference. More info here.

Incidentally ASLE have been producing probably the best environmental/ecologically-themed gatherings and conferences for decades; particularly the interdisciplinary events hosted at University of Nevada-Reno. I highly recommend attending!

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I’ve been staying in a friend of a friend’s cottage at an organic gardens/manor estate near Brecon called Penpont. It’s another world here; a network of gardens, lanes, farmland, sheep, horses, the river Usk and the creek, all surrounded by the lush green countryside of the Brecon Beacons. Unfortunately for me, it’s been raining since I arrived, and is cold, to boot. How incredible to be bundled up in base layers, wearing my wool jacket inside, in the middle of July! Wait, is it really July? I’m having a flashback. I don’t think winter ended here after all.

I came here to share the space with one lovely ginger cat and lots of spiders to get some work done, and make progress on my ‘data analysis’ as it’s called. I am finding the encounter with interview transcripts challenging; my temptation is to write it all up into an engaging little story, but research mandates are different. I must attempt to parse, analyze, create a system. I look forward to when this part of the work is done, and I can return back to the readings, the mess of trying to make sense with the generous aid of other thoughtful and insightful thinkers.

Also, this website will be revamped soon; more essays, more though pieces.

Stay tuned! And let me know if you would like a copy of my piece in the June issue of The Ecologist, on The Myth of Apathy.

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It was quite by accident that I happened on Artes Mundi 3, an international art award organized here in Wales. How incredible to consider an assembly of some of the world’s more celebrated artists, all engaging in social, political and now environmental themes (not that these can be separated), here in Cardiff! I had to pinch myself repeatedly to remind myself it was real.

It turns out that this year, Artes Mundi organized a two-day conference dedicated to climate change and art, featuring presentations and talks primarily by selected short-listed artists whose work engages the environment/nature/disaster in some form. Because I am on a listserv for arts in Cardiff, I caught a message sent not long before about the event, and then forgot about it until the day before. (The fact this event was poorly publicized is important and I will return to this in a moment.) I rushed over to UWIC in Llandaff, tramping across Llandaff fields, coming out through a small gate opening on to the A48, and was soon quite literally in another world.

If I could describe my mood at this event, it may be something like “happy as a clam”, although the sense was more like being submerged in rich oxygen after months on Mount Everest. The level of discussion and discourse was very high, serious, thoughtful and provocative. The presenters and artists all came from such hugely varied backgrounds, geographies and perspectives, so the event had a “hum” to it, a sort of sense of a concert of ideas and imaginative work.  The first presenter was a scientist from Cardiff University studying biodiversity and climate change, and works on the ‘front line’ in Borneo struggling to stem the tide of encroaching development that is decimating orangutan and elephant populations. He presented a very Al Gore-like series of graphs, charts and numbers for the first half, and then swiftly plunged us into the world of disappearing creatures and the enormous corruption leading to palm tree farms (for palm oil). Initially dulled by the first half, I was catapulted into raw affective response - anger, fear, sadness, frustration, the contours of one’s sense of powerlessness in the face of such travesties. This is what learning about species extinctions does. It moves me to such a place that is beyond language, and even beyond thought: it’s a visceral sense of wrongness and transgression. (Note for a future study: the experience of species loss. I can almost see it on the horizon…)
Right after the science professor, Australian artist Susan Norrie presented her video work, featuring themes of ecological/natural catastrophe and disaster. Haunting, ghostlike, hypnotic, Norrie seemed to be coming from the other end of the ‘affective’ spectrum. She spoke softly and emotionally; it seemed her mind was directly engaged with her heart, a sort of highly informed, intelligent stream-of-consciousness. The contrast was striking from the previous talk, and not least because he ran out of Q&A time, whereas Norrie received a full Q&A period. I realized this was an event that - even if unconsciously - was prioritizing the arts, and had inadvertently shifted the scientist down a notch or so.

Feeling a bit defensive on his behalf, I mentioned his work in response to a following talk by a ‘coach’ from Schumacher College about the way artists can move between the ‘three horizons’ or something like this. (The notion that artists can uniquely move between big picture, negotiators and fringe, unlike most of us.) While I enjoyed the talk, I felt this was missing out on the fact that the professor has to move among spheres of influence and action all the time; as he told me, he often has to deal in the more unsavoury aspects of politicking and working with officials in order to get his work done. Moreover, as a scientist dealing with highly affective, emotional material (the demise of orangutans seems quite intense), he must negotiate emotionally all of the time; that is, there is ‘work’ taking place that can enable him to do his job. So arguably, some scientists, depending on their positions, can also move throughout the three horizons. (Frankly I found the concept of three horizons conceptually clever and interesting but ultimately reductive.)

The highlight for me was discovering the work of Scottish artists Dalziel + Scullion, a couple based in Dundee whose work is inspired, imaginative and broad; conceptually thoughtful and exquisitely executed. They presented some of their work, which is primarily lens-based, and their desire to help rekindle or evoke sensations of empathy. I loved it.

Overall I felt stimulated and inspired by the event; it felt quite literally like oxygen, which had the effect of also making me feel quite sad when it ended. I just don’t have the opportunity to be exposed to much cutting edge thought since moving here, I am very sorry to say. (This is also largely due to my circumstances which are actually very fortunate, that is to be focusing entirely on my PhD and my own work.) I also felt frustrated that this was so poorly publicized, because my sense is that this topic is of such importance - how the arts can and do engage with the topic of climate change and political/social issues more broadly - that they cannot afford to be insular. My lasting sense was that this is a reflection of how arts communities can be self-referential; not deliberately, perhaps (I’m not a cynic or paranoid) but rather out of habit and tradition. I do hope this can start to change.

And on a related note, I have just had my interview with the founder of Cape Farewell, David Buckland, published in a new environmental communications journal: you can check it out here. I’m terribly excited about their work!

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I have just put in a free-range chicken in the oven to roast.

While I was preparing this lovely chicken from Devon, picked up at the local butchers in Pontcanna (very nice people), I was, as per usual, reflecting on this creature, and the fact I was getting ready to eat it. I thought (to it, but more likely to myself), I hope you had a good life, thanks - those sorts of vague thoughts directed to what was once running around, and now on my bench (counter). As I rinsed and handled the chicken, rubbing olive oil into it and gathering up my herbs and lemons, I couldn’t help but be struck by the very strange, perplexing relationship we have with food and animals.

I had just read George Mombiot’s column in today’s Guardian. He was writing about how our consumption of meat, and the rate and quantity of it, is really the issue when it comes to facing our food shortages and fuel issues. (He had some interesting facts about how much grain needs to be grown to fill up a SUV tank with bio-fuel. Guess you never thought of that!) His main point was that we need to cut down on meat, but that for himself he could never be vegan because he lost two stone, was faint and basically couldn’t function. He also made a joking comment about the pallor of the vegans who approach him after his talks. This really made me think, on a number of levels. I envied my friend Steven for his commitment to not eat meat, because frankly I’d rather not eat meat unless I feel I need to. And the problem is that I do. I also thought about the way food people (chefs, etc) talk about and treat animals as purely products for our consumption. There is a peculiar disconnect in the source of the food itself; you would never see Nigel Slater or Jamie Oliver shed a tear, or even acknowledge the painful awareness of the taking of life. (Although we did see Hugh cry in his intensive chicken farm.) It’s like a disavowal has taken place. I thought about the guy in the butcher shop who was sawing away at a leg of lamb for his customer, and how he relates to animals as meat, being surrounded by carcasses each day. I thought about Hugh at River Cottage and how he both respects and enjoys eating his animals (which seems pretty close to a ‘middle way’ if you don’t include more indigenous practices of incorporating hunting and prayer).

I wish I didn’t crave meat the way I do, at particular times of the month and seasons (when it is cold I really do want ‘warming’ food such as lamb, or when I literally dream about having a hamburger). But when I see the lamb or cows or chicken or whatever, I hate the idea of eating them. I really, really do. Does this mean I shouldn’t do it?

I guess I tend towards the moderate path, as many others seem to be. That is, being mindful about where the meat comes from, in terms of welfare, quality and so on. But being mindful is perhaps the key term here. Thinking before I eat meat, do I really need this? (My friend Steven would say, on no uncertain terms, no you do not.) Not taking meat for granted, and remembering it was a creature with its own life before ending up in my kitchen, or on my table. But what does this really mean? Is it enough to give thanks, send a prayer, or just practice mindfulness when it comes to eating creatures?

I’m really not sure where I will end up on this one. I love my roast chicken, a good slow roasted lamb, and poached salmon with herbs. It feels good for my body and it tastes really nice. Not all the time, but on occasions. But I wonder if the day may come, where my heart and values align with my body, and I say ‘no’ to eating something that once was alive and running (or swimming) around. I think it’s natural for humans to eat meat, but on the other hand, is it natural to continue doing so?

Food is cultural, social, biological. This is probably why it’s the current ‘hot topic’ in universities around the world. It’s incredibly complicated, that takes us to the heart really of our biological-social-emotional selves.

Better go, it’s time to take the chicken out of the oven!

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I was sitting at my desk last evening, and saw three guys wearing black jackets with the letters RSPB on the back knock on the door across the street. Not surprisingly, the door shut rather quickly. Seeing them progress, I knew it was only moments until we’d have the expected knock, and I wondered what I’d do.

I knew I didn’t have much money to contribute, although I admire this venerated organization a great deal and have thought of joining in the past. I saw a five pound note laying on the table and assuming I could just hand it to them, and be done with it. So before they turned up, and even knocked, I had decided what sort of action I wanted to do. I was not a ‘hard sell’.

Turn up they did, armed with a battered laminated sheet with images of ecological devastation, and rushed verbage about the state of the environment, future generations and so on. I said I was well familiar with the organization’s work and asked what they wanted. Their first request was for a weekly donation that was beyond what I could afford, so a sort of negotiation ensued. I agreed on a few pounds a month, but to make this happen they all had to come into my house, sit down and go through an excruciatingly protracted process of getting my financial details. Mixed in was a banter of the kind I have come to loath from salesmen; the requisite ‘where are you from’ and joking about the States, the ‘I’ve been to Florida’ comment (sorry but it does happen all the time), and questions about what I’m doing here, what I think of Wales and so forth. It all makes me uncomfortable when I’ve got three strange blokes in my lounge, I’m about to make dinner, and the trainee taking my information is from Poland and seems mildly dyslexic. (His one utterance was on seeing my last name: “Is that German?” which did not put me at ease.)

This all left me thinking about this interaction, what it was about, and what was problematic about it. First off, is going to someone’s door and suddenly talking about the state of the environment and pushing images of devastation into their hands. I do not feel this is effective and an organization such as the RSPB should know better. The dissonance or incommensurate relationship between seeing such images and donating a few pounds a week or a month is too great for most people to get their heads around. I strongly suspect many people - who are not converted like myself - really question how much their money helps or makes a difference. This is a valid concern.

In addition to the cognitive discrepancy between a few pounds and the perilous state of our ecology and bird populations (remember this is the RSPB), is the tactic itself. Do you want the first impression of the RSPB to be about doom and gloom, or about celebrating nature, birds, biological diversity, flowers and other important ecological phenomena that are severely threatened by our way of life? Do you want people to think of this as a positive way of contributing, or a way of trying to stem a seemingly strong tide of devastation? These are really important questions their communications team need to ask themselves.

I am aware these were low-paid folks working for a company that does canvasing for charity organizations. But I really question their effectiveness, both in terms of getting support for the RSPB and for the overall impression people get about environmental groups. It seems to reinforce a stereotype (supported by my interviews in Wisconsin) that for the already converted, you are making it easier to donate (as it was for myself; I was decided before they arrived). For those who are not sure or not fond of giving to charities, this is a waste of energy and potentially even more damaging. Stirring up feelings of anxiety, fear and anger about ecological devastation and loss of something as important as birds and wildlife is irresponsible unless you are skilled and prepared to see it through, and connect people with a sense of agency. Giving a few pounds is not going to wash for a lot of people, even if it is needed.

I hope the RSPB and other groups start to radically rethink their fundraising tactics, and realize that overwhelming people at their door will only work for a small percentage. For the most part, it only contributes to the numbness and denial that we are trying so hard to work against.

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I just learned yesterday that Val Plumwood, Australian environmental philosopher, writer and activist, died recently of a stroke at age 68. I had the fortune of spending some time with Val when I was in North Carolina, when she happened to have a short teaching post at North Carolina State University. I somehow managed to find out she was in town, go and meet her, drive around Raleigh (taking her to my favorite coffeehouse, can’t remember its name), attempted an interview and generally had a good visit. (The interview didn’t come together, due to my inexperience and not being organized enough.) Val had a huge impact on my thinking, particular in relation to deep ecology. In her book Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, she laid out in the clearest terms the ideological mechanisms of colonization, and what it means to subsume the other. In other words, her work was the clearest articulation of intersubjectivity I had yet to come across. Lucidly and with precision, she outlined what it means to actually relate and experience others on their own terms. And as dualism is often a key theme in any sort of environmental philosophical discussion, I found her chapter on dualism and the logic of colonisation to be an excellent introduction to these ideas.

Interesting, the same day I learned of Val Plumwood’s death, I stumbled upon an eco-criticism reader, Writing the Environment, edited by two British scholars. In the opening essay, Richard Kerridge, writes of the surreal quality of how the public responded to the Chernobyl accident, and reflects on this through discussing the issues of representation and narrative (making meaning), and the failure of representation that can make ecological crises and problems so elusive, ineffable and ultimately ignored. The problem, it seems, is the way in which environmental issues are continually circulating in our public imagination, and are felt to be either very local or somewhere else, far away. And even when they are very local, oftentimes it’s entirely unclear to people (other than the ‘activist) what can be done to stem, or reverse the effects that are staring us in the face.

On this same day, I turned on BBC 24, and happened to see a horribly distressing news report about the deluge of plastics that wash up on a tiny island in the Pacific, threatening the existence of a Albatross population. This population has thrived for thousands of years; and in fifty years, our use of plastics threatens their very existence. They are eating bits of plastic, mistaking it for squid; a cigarette lighter bears a striking resemblance to squid, apparently. They swallow all sorts of plastic debris. Something is clearly wrong here. Frankly, it’s horrific.

But where are we to go with this sense of disgust, horror and anger? The move is shift: disgust, sadness, numbness. What can we - or I - do in the face of a literal deluge of humanity’s waste, the tide of plastics, entering our ecosystems?

This question is what drives me, and many others who are trying to understand the strange and complicated situation we find ourselves in. It’s a situation that defies simplistic explanations, such as ‘greed’ or ’short sightedness’. Rather it has to do with what engines industry and capital, what drives us to use and discard, and what it means to the human brain when we cannot see the effects of our actions. I suspect there are neurological gaps which seem to make it incredibly hard to see, respond and act, because most of the time we cannot see it, unless it’s on the news, or it’s literally in our bodies as illnesses. But even then, it is often not enough to spark action; we explain away respiratory illnesses and all sorts of indicators with surprising ease.

I then turned to Val Plumwood’s more recent book, Environmental Culture: The ecological crisis of reason. Typically, she recounts in a familiar litany the horrors of ecological damage (particular painful for those who have a sense of connection, attachment or empathy with the natural world and its creatures), and the strange lack of response. She uses the story of the Titanic as the emblematic trope of how humans respond in the face of danger. As the ice floes appear, we are turning up the engine and going below deck for a good night’s sleep. Plumwood writes,

The crisis or failure in which we stand is conventionally said to be a crisis of ecology, which suggests a crisis or failing of nature. In reality, the ‘ecological’ crisis is a crisis or failing of reason and culture, a crisis of monological forms of both that are unable to adapt themselves to the earth and to the limits of other kinds of life. Postmodernists write of a ‘crisis of reason’, but their over-culturalised sensibilities have trivialised the rational crisis and identified it with a critical crisis. The ecological crisis of reason involves a quite practical, concrete and material set of crises on multiple fronts, and one of its most important expressions is the ecological crisis.

Plumwood then ties in her earlier analysis of hegemonic reason; ‘the roots of these systems of mastery lie buried in antiquity, even if their historical projects of subduing and colonising nature have come to full flower only in modernity.’ What we have then is a profound misfit:

The ecological crisis is the crisis of a cultural ‘mind’ that cannot acknowledge and adapt itself properly to its material ‘body’, the embodied and ecological support base it draws on in the long-denied countersphere of ‘nature’. Given this lack of fit, hegemonic rationality is in conflict with ecological rationality and survival.

Others have addressed this denial of embodiment and the illusion of the individual (denial of our dependences), such as Teresa Brennan (Foundational Fantasy of the west), who Plumwood mentions. So if we take this on-board, we do find ourselves occupying a provide split or divide in terms of what propels our Western way of life (soon to become global), and the life supports and community of non-human others we share the planet with. It’s deeply disturbing.

Val’s work provided us with a rare lucidity and analysis that is missing from many discussions around the roots of our ecological predicaments. As environmentally concerned people, we are all trying to figure out what is going on, and what can be done to mitigate humanity’s rampant destruction of our finite and fragile ecologies. We all want to know why and how this can be happening; what is it in our histories, our stories, our meanings, our bodies, our minds and imagination, our blood, that enables us to destroy life without much thought. What happens to us in the process? What does it mean to be an ecologically concerned person? How can we be effective? I think Val’s work can be a crucial contribution to these questions, and I hope her work is read and discussed and considered in the coming years.

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We are on the cusp of spring, although you may not know it by gazing at the sky today. A thick haze of white-gray looms above, a maddening barrier between us and the clear, bright brilliant blue sky. I try to warm myself with tea, lamps and toast, but to be honest, it’s all getting rather old. I’m ready to burn my merino layers which I’ve lived in now for 6 months.

it’s time to revamp this space, too. since my return from Green Bay, I’ve been transcribing and getting gradually back into the ideas that have led me to live in this cold place (hint: it has to do with my phd). these ideas have to do with the ways in which we navigate and negotiate the various ecological problems we find ourselves facing. It also has to do with the imagination and the ways in which we seek to represent - and hence communicate and make meaningful - these terrors. Arts have a large role to play.

more to come soon…

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 I have now been in Green Bay, Wisconsin for almost one week. I landed in Chicago, bussed to Madison, had an extended recover there for three nights (enjoying the local cafe Lazy Jane’s, the best breakfast and coffee I’ve had in ages, and perfect atmosphere), and then made my way to Green Bay. I was greeted by my host, Janice, who lives in a leafy, pre and post-war suburb called Allouez, only minutes walk down to the Fox River Trail, a five mile path leading from Astor Historic Neighborhood down to De Pere. Janice has a guest room I’m staying in, a very cozy space with desk, internet access, and impressively, an original Eames reading chair from the 1950s. There is even a cat here, Vito.

I’m getting up to speed on the locale and the context I find myself in. This has been aided by the event held last night by The Wisconsin Way,  a ‘public dialogue’ about the relation of property taxes, state and governmental funding, and the perceived crisis the state faces. I was able to hear two hours of comments made by various individuals — mainly white, middle-class men between ages of 40-70 — after viewing a video produced to present the issues on the table. I was a bit distracted by the glaring lack of diversity present at the event, held in the stunning Meyer Theater, as I knew that Green Bay has sizable Hmong, black and Hispanic populations. But I was mainly distracted by the strange absence of the mention of environment and natural resources during the video and for the first half of the comments. It seemed peculiar to say the least, to have a public dialogue about the future of Wisconsin, and issues of quality of life, employment and retention of younger generations, and ‘competitiveness in the 21st century’ without mention of the need for healthy and clean resources, alternative energy systems, and infrastructures to support a changing industrial context. However, after one person slipped in the phrase ‘ecologically unfriendly practices’ into his comments, they flowed - culminating in what was the most lucid, sane and compelling comments of a retired policeman, who clearly needs to run for office. (It turns out he has, and possibly will again, despite the shocking financial implications of running a campaign.) He posited that if Wisconsin wants to be competitive and forward thinking, it must start to think in terms of what it has that can be leveraged in the face of future needs: e.g. lots of wind, water, and open space (um… maybe wind power?!). The lucidity of his comments made the majority of the input seem, at best, regressive and provincial (one other person made this observation).

Overall, a fascinating evening, with a glimpse into what is on people’s minds — the anxieties, values and preoccupations. Fortunately, I will be attending a class starting tomorrow (am I blessed?) on “How Water and Energy Helped Shape Wisconsin History”, where local historian Paul Wozniak will discuss with older residents memories, associations and experiences relating to Green Bay and its water-ways.

So far, very interesting. Oh and it’s Halloween! The decorations are out in full-force…

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