What’s your Roman Empire? Something bookish that lives rent free in your brain and is your go to conversation starter.

Why has it stuck with you?

How do we feel about streak tracking?? Personally I feel so stressed about it between clinical rotations, classes, home responsibilities…I almost feel guilty at the end of my day for not reading 😅 For me it just adds pressure I don’t enjoy to reading, but I know it helps other people stay motivated. Is it just me or…?

Initially, this all comes across as very clinical and distant, but there is certainly something appealing about doing things this way versus what one goes through to date/get laid (safely!) in 2026. 😂

Alright friends, you know the drill… what complaints (big or small) do we have this week that we need to get off our chest?!💭

This anecdote that she uses to introduce some of the main themes of the book has always stuck out to me, because of how true it rang back then when this was published (my copy says 2013), and how it still to some degree rings true now:

Nearly every one of the two hundred students said confidently that humans and nature are a bad mix. These were third-year students who had selected a career in environmental protection, so the response was, in a way, not very surprising. They were well schooled in the mechanics of climate change, toxins in the land and water, and the crisis of habitat loss. Later in the survey, they were asked to rate their knowledge of positive interactions between people and land. The median response was “none.”

I was stunned. How is it possible that in twenty years of education they cannot think of any beneficial relationships between people and the environment? Perhaps the negative examples they see every day—brownfields, factory farms, suburban sprawl—truncated their ability to see some good between humans and the earth. As the land becomes impoverished, so too does the scope of their vision. When we talked about this after class, I realized that they could not even imagine what beneficial relations between their species and others might look like. How can we begin to move toward ecological and cultural sustainability if we cannot even imagine what the path feels like? If we can’t imagine the generosity of geese? These students were not raised on the story of Skywoman.

I think this is why narratives and traditions that show there is another way (such as those she will present in the rest of the book) are so, so powerful. The fatalistic, humans are an enemy of nature philosophy is so counterintuitive to the culture and mindset changes that we want to drive through modern environmentalism.

And the thing is that we have made progress—so much progress. The Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987, and it has since stopped the runaway destruction of the ozone layer. In America, the major rivers generally aren’t filled with toxic sewage anymore. Impenetrable layers of smog don’t exist the same way they did pre-air pollution regulation. Renewable energy technologies have skyrocketed in efficiency and cost effectiveness; coal plants have become more expensive than solar power. And that’s just off the top of my head.

We have so much to learn, just from the past. We know that when peoples and countries and governments work together, we can bring about real change, and we have the hard data to prove it. The successes of our history are very much possible to replicate, and furthermore, each attempt will refine the science and technology and policy-making and community building. This is not an impossible feat; it was a hell of a fight, but genuine progress has been achieved within 1-2 generations. And meanwhile, we have also seen real culture shifts around how people think of their role in the environment. I think that’s so important to remember. It needs to be part of the narrative as much as all the doom and gloom; both are equally important, because the hope and culture shifts are what give us a future.

(Tangentially, I had a professor who taught an introductory environmental science course on the specific mechanics and science of climate change—radiative forcing and all of that—and I will never forget how often she told us that we have the technology, we have the science and know-how and knowledge to meet climate goals. It’s the political fight that is an uphill battle, always. We could do it, we have enough innovation potential to accomplish it, but it’s the billionaires and lobbyists and oil corporations that keep it from happening. And changing that is going to require changing our relationship with the natural world, as she elaborates on in the book)

One line, from any book, whether it’s categorized as a romance novel or not, that stuck with you as the epitome of romance. I’m so curious to see what everyone says!