CityBlog Book Club

Have you joined our Facebook group to receive notices of CityClub events in your Facebook inbox? If you have, you received a message yesterday about our upcoming program, "Local? Sustainable? Equitable? Having Your Values and Eating Them Too!" In it, I mentioned the popularity of Michael Pollan's books as an indicator of public interest in this topic.

Turns out, I was right on the mark. David Granatstein, Sustainable Agriculture Specialist at the Washington State University Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources, also recommends Pollan - specifically, In Defense of Food - as a resource for learning more about this topic.

"There is no simple answer to sustainability in our food system," Granatstein says in our pre-event questionnaire. "It took many years for the current system to evolve, and it will take time to evolve to another system that we hope will be more sustainable. Sustainability is a goal, one best judged by hindsight.  We take actions today to improve sustainability based on the best information we have.  But that doesn’t guarantee we will be right, and we must be willing to change our minds."

Granatstein provided for us an article he's written titled "Sustainable Horticulture in Food Production", published in Acta Horticulturae. You can find it at the bottom of this post, downloadable in PDF form!

Other books Granatstein recommends:

Agrarian Dreams by Julie Guthman
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
The New American Farmer by USDA Sustainable Agriculture Network

Try these online resources as well!

Articles on Organic and Sustainale Fruit Production
Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources: Organic Agriculture
Profile of Organic Crops in Washington State – 2008

Granastein offers these as thoughts to chew on (and discuss!) before next Thursday's panel: Can we have a sustainable food system if the culture as a whole is an unsustainable model? Where do “limits” fit in to sustainability and how do they work in a growth oriented economy?

(Click here to sign up!)

In honor of our upcoming program with Susan Hildreth, Seattle's new City Librarian, our unofficial book week continues with a book review contributed by guest blogger and CityClub board member Jennifer Giltrop from the Seattle Public Library. At her very first meeting as a member of our board, Jennifer suggested this book as required reading for the rest of our board members!

Before we get there, however, let's talk book clubs. We may not have an official book club, but we'd love to meet yours. Is your favorite book club interested in coming as a group to our conversation with Susan Hildreth? Grab one or two friends and join us for cookies and coffee on Friday, April 10! Contact Sara Neppl at 206-682-7395 to learn about our special book club rate for this program.

If you are reading this CityClub blog, chances are you’re already engaged in your community.  You care about your community.  You want to help make a better reality for yourself, your family, and future generations.

Whatever your degree of engagement or connection, Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block shares ideas for community building that will inspire you to action.

As our our world becomes more connected and the pace of life picks up speed, knowing your neighbors face-to-face is becoming exception to the rule. Work consumes our lives, which seem increasingly disconnected, and making a meaningful contribution to community can seem impossible.

Nonetheless, Block shows us how. He talks about turning our conversations from problems to the potential for building community.  “Citizens,” Block tells us, “become powerful when they choose to shift the context with which they act in the world.”

Block, a partner in Designed Living, shares ideas to construct a cohesive community.

You will learn:

• Why communities are fragmented and how various sectors work against one another
  
• How to build a community based on inclusion and belonging
  
• How to develop local leadership and grassroots based ideas
  
• What the steps are to transform a society into one based on accountability 

The Seattle Public Library has copies of the book available for check-out. Place a hold now!  I hope this book will inspire you and give you new ways of thinking about community and what we can achieve together.

Friday's panelists at our Cover the Uninsured Week program rattled off a lot of recommendations for books and other resources - and thankfully, we had a volunteer in the audience who was able to catch everything!

Epidemic of Care: A Call for Safer, Better, and More Accountable Health Care by George C. Halvorson and George Isham

Overtreated by Shannon Brownlee

Do Not Resuscitate: Why the Health Insurance Industry is Dying, and How We Must Replace It by John Geyman

Other resources:

The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care
Health Alliance Community Checkup


For those of you who made it to our program: what did you think? Do you have other recommendations for resources: good books, websites?

If you missed it, the video will be up on our website in a few days. Meanwhile, check out our Twitter feed from the program.