winter reading
CHASING
MOLECULES:
Poisonous Products, Human Health,
and the Promise of Green Chemistry
by Elizabeth Grossman. Island Press, $26.95.
ost of the world
relies on chemistry
to increase food production,
clean our homes, make
containers unbreakable and
render children’s pajamas
infl ammable. But until fairly
recently, we had no idea
how these chemicals were
affecting our bodies and our
environment. Many chemicals
are known to interfere with
physical and environmental
health, yet most have never
been fully tested for safety. Now, we not
only have a much greater understanding
of the impact of common household
products, but we have the technology to
begin designing alternatives.
Portland-based journalist Elizabeth
Grossman has previously authored High
Tech Trash, about hidden toxins in digital
devices, and Watershed, an exposé of dams
across America. Here, Grossman turns
her investigative eye to the revolutionary
science underway to bring the world
safe, functional products that are free of
hazardous materials.
Grossman examines the many
synthetic chemicals people are exposed to
everyday — chemicals used to make sippy
cups, cookware, cosmetics, electronics and
M
sunscreen — and how they travel through air-
and waterways, contaminating ecosystems
around the globe. In balanced, storytelling
language that is based on fact — but never
too technical for non-chemists
— Grossman illuminates
why green chemistry is so
important. She interviews
the founding fathers of green
chemistry, including James
Hutchison, a UO chemistry
professor and recognized
leader in the fi elds of green
chemistry in academics and
materials manufacturing.
The goal of green
chemistry is products that are
“benign by design,” products
that are made from harmless
ingredients and do no harm once in use.
Grossman effectively reveals not only who
is working to make this possible, but why
it must become the new norm. — Vanessa
Salvia
CITADEL OF THE SPIRIT:
A Merging of Past and Present
Oregon Voices and Stories
edited by Matt Love.
Nestucca Spit Press, $30.
ny good love song, amid its many
declarations, contains an accusation.
Citadel of the Spirit is a collection of
writings about Oregon by Oregonians,
past and present. Reprinted newspaper
notices (“Meet on the Summit: A Public
Call to Form a Mountaineering Club by
the Mazamas,” 1894), essays, stories,
A
constitutions, forgotten histories, sports
articles: It’s all Oregon. It’s a love song,
but editor Matt Love includes both the
good news and the bad news.
The good: Oregon’s great!
The bad: The Klu Klux Klan was here.
Human beings are obsessed with place,
the sense, purpose and understanding
of it. Citadel of the Spirit is equal parts
exuberance and questioning: What exactly
is this place we call home?
While many of the pieces are along the
lines of “Well, about a million years ago,
when I was a kid,” pieces like “A Key to
the Rains of Benton County” by Kathleen
Dean Moore are genius. What is the proper
classifi cation for rain that “materializes out
of thin air?” Bug spit. However, if you have
rain that “falls through rain, the way fear
falls through depression,” you’re looking
at either “dirty weather” rain, a downpour
or “Steelhead rain” depending on other
indicators like this: Can you see the rain
against the trees, or are the trees invisible
thanks to all the rain?
Take it in small sips and in years. Skim
it. Open it up at the middle. It’s a love song,
so listen to it when you’re young and also
when you’re old. It will mean different
things. — Katie Wilson
THE FAR CORNER:
Northwestern Views on Land,
Life, and Literature
by John Daniel. Counterpoint, $25.
he Far Corner is an homage
to the Pacifi c Northwest, to the
interconnectedness of nature and our place
in it, to the discovery of self within that
T
place and to the process of writing itself
— how the linkage of ideas, of writing of
self and place and history, breeds personal
discovery just as surely as engaging with
the environment and our natural senses
does.
A collection of personal essays, some
new and some written over the course of
Daniel’s career, The Far Corner explores
the scope and ecology of Oregon’s rivers,
the history of the Blue and Klamath
mountain ranges, our addiction to artifi cial
light, the morality of clearcutting and the
search for solitude, self and communion
with place on a solitaire journey across
Washington’s beaches. It delves into the
history of Ken Kesey, whose acid-trip
adventures inspired Daniel’s own foray
into psychedelic drugs and whose writing
greatly infl uenced him as a young man.
And it speaks of the death of Daniel’s
mother, the desperation and consequences
of his family’s choice to put her through
surgery at the end of her life. It speaks
of “rootlessness” and “rootedness,” and
advocates for both.
This is a book full of wandering,
meandering ideas, stories and histories,
tangents and contradictions, a testament
to the complexity of the author’s personal
experience and the complexity of the
subjects he writes about. Though seemingly
disparate in subject, the essays succeed as a
whole in conveying the interconnectedness,
the wholeness of nature and experience.
The Far Corner is at once personal and
engaging, with language that evokes
power, imagery and personal refl ection. —
Katie Kalk
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EUGENE WEEKLY DECEMBER 10, 2009 21