Author: Crist Inman

The Irony Of Patriotic Fervor

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There is an interview with Jill Lepore discussing this book to the left, which I link to below. It got me thinking about an earlier post I wrote about having read April Morning and The Hessian in my teens and my brief encounter with their author Howard Fast. That post was primarily a thank you to the librarians who got me interested in reading. I knew from the return address on the letter he sent me that Mr. Fast lived on my same street, a five minute walk from my home. I enjoyed that fact because I enjoyed the two of his books that I had read. But I never saw him after the library lecture.

Who I did see frequently, because he drove an easily identifiable red convertible Cadillac, and also lived close by, was Roy Cohn. Yes, that guy. If you know a certain bit of mid-20th Century history, the bit called the Red Scare, you might understand my first glimpse of irony. I had learned that Howard Fast was punished early in his career for his political beliefs. By the time I knew who Roy Cohn was I knew he had something to do with that punishment, directly or indirectly. What I found ironic, as a teenager, was that Howard Fast was influential on my sense of why patriotism exists; and Roy Cohn, a self-proclaimed protector of American values, made me fear patriotism. I always wondered if they knew they lived so close to one another. History does not seem to have recorded anything about that. The interview by Julien Crockett below reminded me of that irony of patriotic fervor I sensed in my teens:

The Hold of the Dead Over the Living: A Conversation with Jill Lepore

“I WROTE THESE essays during a period of terrible, tragic decline in the United States,” historian Jill Lepore writes in the introduction to her new essay collection, The Deadline. Wide-ranging and often provocative, the essays cover the past decade of “political violence, endless vicious culture war, a series of constitutional crises, catastrophic climate change, and a global pandemic.” In short, “a time that felt like a time, felt like history.” Continue reading →

Dragon Fruit, Pineapple & Tropical Mix, Oh My

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It started with the dehydrated Pitaya. I was sent a sample. I did not open it for many days because the last time a food artisan tried making something from this fruit I did not like it. Love the fruit, did not love that attempt at hot sauce. The man who sent me the sample called me to ask how I liked what he sent, and because the sample was sitting right next to me I opened it and tried it. Oh. My.

Then I opened the pineapple. Oh my, again.

And then the mix of mango, pineapple and papaya, the latter of which is difficult to dehydrate without making tough to chew. Again, oh my.

So now all three are in our packaging, and going in the Authentica shops today.

Tipped Bus, Photo Found, Auspicious Start

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Authentica’s opening at Hacienda El Viejo over the last couple weeks has been more auspicious than the interrupted bus ride pictured here. That said, we all seem to have kept our sense of humor intact, and maybe learned something about resiliency. It has come in handy over the 25 years since then.

Authentica, Nicoya Peninsula

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Traveling by car from Monteverde to Palo Verde National Park should take about 90 minutes

The Nicoya Peninsula is one of the Blue Zones we have mentioned previously. For our family there is a memorable connection to the wetlands area where we are opening a shop this month, just as there was in Tamarindo. In 1998 we had a dozen family members visiting and organized a small bus to transport us to Arenal, Monteverde, and onward to the Palo Verde National Park. Continue reading →

Alternative Aviation Fuel

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Planes account for roughly two per cent of the world’s CO2 emissions—if all the world’s aircraft got together to form a country, they’d emit more than the vast majority of actual nations. Photograph by Kevin Dietsch / Getty

I have had precisely one direct experience with otherwise elusive alternative aviation fuel. It was during my first of multiple work trips to Paraguay. The fuel was made from sugarcane, and while I am still here to write about it, the experience was among the most harrowing of my lifetime. I only have time and space here to mention that I spent an unexpected night in the Chaco. I highly recommend visiting the Chaco, but I do not highly recommend traveling with experimental fuel. That said, read on:

Looking for a Greener Way to Fly

The Treasury Department is about to announce tax credits for sustainable aviation fuel, which raises the question: What fuels are actually “sustainable”?

Sometime in the next few weeks, the Department of the Treasury is expected to decide who—or, really, what—will qualify for a new set of tax credits. Continue reading →

Authentica, More Fun In More Places

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Milo & Seth Inman, December 1996

27 years ago our family was in Tamarindo, Costa Rica for a long weekend. We stayed at a lovely beachfront hotel. Tamarindo was a very small town at the time, attracting surfers who were escaping more crowded beaches in places like California and enjoying the excellent waves on this part of the coastline. This hotel set the vibe for the town, at least as we experienced it. Tourism has grown 4-fold in the decades since that visit, and still the beaches of Tamarindo offer a ratio of surfers to great waves that make it an ideal destination. Not only for skilled surfers but for those looking to learn. The town has grown, and at various points since that family outing I was concerned about how sustainable that growth was. I am now convinced it is on the right track.

Seth in the pool at Hotel Capitan Suizo, the edge of Milo’s towel in the upper right of the frame. The pool is one of the most beautiful in Costa Rica, and overlooks the Pacific ocean.

So much so that next week we are opening our fourth Authentica shop. In Tamarindo. At that hotel. We will finally be introducing our take on and old game –a product that I have been developing with one of our woodworking partners for the entire time since our first Authentica shops opened four years ago. And we will offer other new products that are particular to the Guanacaste region, and the Nicoya peninsula in particular. More fun.

New York Noise

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A particularly loud intersection on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The neighborhood is home to at least one of the noise cameras the city is testing. Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York Times

When we lived in India we used to post frequently on this topic, but it has been a while. Happy to see (thanks to Erin Nolan and the New York Times) that another onetime hometown of ours is taking up the issue:

New York City, not exactly known for its peace and quiet, is expanding its use of technology to fine the drivers of loud cars and motorcycles.

New York City is known for its noise. A cacophony of sounds bombards residents every time they step outside — screeching subway cars, jackhammers drilling away, late-night revelers leaving bars and clubs. Continue reading →

Rubber-Induced Destruction

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Satellite images of Cambodian forest in 2000 (left) and, after being cleared, in 2015 (right). Forests were replaced by a grid of rubber plantations, as well as croplands. Source: NASA

If you have never seen ecosystem destruction firsthand, count yourself lucky. I witnessed, during visits over several years, as 1,000 acres of primary forest ecosystem was destroyed to make way for a rubber plantation. It was horrifying. And I am further horrified to read how what I witnessed was only a small part of a much bigger rubber-induced destruction (thanks as always to Fred Pearce):

Rubber resin collected from a tree near Lubuk Beringin, Indonesia. TRI SAPUTRO / CIFOR

How Mounting Demand for Rubber Is Driving Tropical Forest Loss

The growing market for rubber is a major, but largely overlooked, cause of tropical deforestation, new analysis shows. Most of the rubber goes to produce tires, more than 2 billion a year, and experts warn the transition to electric vehicles could accelerate rubber use.

The elephants are gone. The trees are logged out. The Beng Per Wildlife Sanctuary in central Cambodia is largely destroyed, after being handed over by the government to a politically well-connected local plantation company to grow rubber. Continue reading →

Ezra Klein’s Book List

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Courtesy Of Ifixit/Via Reuters

Ezra Klein has been part of my media diet for about as long as I have been posting in these pages.

He occasionally writes opinions that are the best thing I have read in a while, and this book list is among them:

This is another end-of-the-year book list, but with a twist. These are the best books I read about 2023. They are, for the most part, voices from other years helping me make sense of our own. In a world where information keeps speeding up and thinning out, books slow time down, thickening the moment in which we live.

I spent much of the year reporting on artificial intelligence. And my thoughts returned, again and again, to “God, Human, Animal, Machine,” by Meghan O’Gieblyn. Continue reading →

Coffee Grinder Matters

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Illustration: Dana Davis; Photos: Michael Hession

We do not normally offer product promotion nor seek endorsements other than for products we personally love enough to dedicate our lives to making them and selling them. Lesley Stockton is in the business of helping others make smart purchase decisions and does so with this same sense of personal devotion. I share one example today because this is the grinder I use, and I feel the same way about it:

The Baratza Encore Transformed My Morning Coffee (and Turned Me Into a Lowkey Barista)

I cannot overstate how much the Baratza Encore burr grinder improved my morning routine.
I strike a weird balance between investing heavily in my home coffee setup while not taking coffee culture too seriously. Like, I love a well-balanced cup in the morning, but I’m not about to weigh my beans on a scale to get the perfect coffee-to-water ratio. Of the $1,000-ish worth of coffee gear in my kitchen, though, my Baratza Encore burr grinder is the one thing I cannot live without.

 

Coming In From The Cold, Bloomfield’s Back

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The chicken for two (left) and the green toast (right), among other dishes from Sailor’s understated menu. Photographs by Eric Helgas for The New Yorker

Any time we have shared food stories related to our own work, it has been about the ingredients, the cultural origins of the item, and such. I have shared my own history with the restaurant business, which included no seamy side (that I knew of). Helen Rosner, a gifted food writer whose work we have linked to frequently, reviews a restaurant I hope to visit, and does something equally important.

She acknowledges the seamy side in this chef’s experience (only one cameo reference to this chef previously in our pages), points to the culprits who escaped comfortably–we can only hope that their removal has at least made the restaurant industry safer–and moves on to tell how the talent of April Bloomfield is now deployed. With the liveliest photo ever to accompany a review, Helen Rosner has my full attention:

A customer eating brandade.

A bite of the brandade.

April Bloomfield’s Quietly Triumphant Return

Sailor, in Fort Greene, is a destination restaurant dressed up as a neighborhood spot—which is maybe the best kind of restaurant there is.

One of my many rules of restaurant-going is: if you see an unsexy vegetable given pride of place on a menu, order it. We pretty much know what to expect when a kitchen touts its Brussels sprouts—dollars to doughnuts, they’ll show up crispy and maple-syruped—or carrots (roasted, goat cheese), or beets (roasted, goat cheese, nuts), but when a chef refuses to play the hits, and instead goes for the produce-aisle deep cuts, something exciting is likely afoot. Continue reading →

Rhodope, Bulgaria & Rodopi, Greece

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I first heard of this ecosystem nearly a decade ago, not realizing then that it spreads into northeastern Greece. We are in this ecosystem currently, on the Greek side, and yesterday visited the Rodopi Mountain Range National Park. In the photo above you can see Milo, in a location not far from that national park, with one of his favorite types of organism. I thought to revisit the Rewilding Europe website just now, and am happy to link again to their work:

Rhodope Mountains is the most important breeding area for griffon vultures in Bulgaria. The whole region is also a stronghold  for wolf and jackal.

The Rhodope mountains hold a captivating array of of flora and fauna and is a stronghold of vultures in south-eastern Europe. It’s the only breeding spot in Bulgaria for griffon vultures and an important site for the globally threatened Egyptian vulture on the Balkan Peninsula. Additionally, rare cinereous vultures can be spotted soaring above. Among the dozens of other raptor species Eastern imperial eagle, Saker falcon, Levant sparrowhawk, Peregrine falcon and several other eagles can be mentioned.

The whole region is also a stronghold within Bulgaria for wolf and jackal. In recent years, brown bears have begun naturally recolonizing the Rhodopes, and the possibility of bear-watching is emerging in the landscape, particularly in the western part of the mountains.

Because of its location at the crossroads between the European and Asian continent, the impact of the Mediterranean, its pristine landscapes and the variety of habitats here in combination with the relatively small human disturbance, the Rhodope Mountains have a huge variety in species and habitats, and have become one of the bird watching hotspots in Europe.

 

Really, Rishi?

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image: reuters

As a non-Brit, I spared the world my opinion on the own-goalness of Brexit, and the follow-up own-goal of electing Boris Johnson. Not my circus, not my monkey. But as a speaker of the English language, among other reasons, I have always cared about and paid attention to the civic affairs of the UK more than I do those of many other countries. I was reflexively optimistic with the baton passing to Rishi Sunak. He could not possibly be as terrible as his two immediate predecessors, right? In some ways right, but in the way that matters most to the entire world, shame on him. The Economist weighs in heavily, as does the New Yorker’s correspondent in the UK, the great Sam Knight:

Photograph by Justin Tallis / Getty

Rishi Sunak’s Self-Serving Climate Retreat

The British Prime Minister has rolled back the country’s policies on reducing emissions. To what end?

Since Rishi Sunak became Britain’s Prime Minister, almost a year ago, in the middle of a national financial breakdown, his premiership has been defined by trying to make things go away. Continue reading →

Jill Lepore On Walter Isaacson’s Latest Biography

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Among topics I would not have shared here previously, Elon Musk. But this is by one of our best biographers, and he has earned the benefit of our doubt. A review by one of our best historians captures my concerns about the system that Musk represents. By extension it raises questions about the biographer’s approach. So, I share:

How Elon Musk Went from Superhero to Supervillain

Walter Isaacson’s new biography depicts a man who wields more power than almost any other person on the planet but seems estranged from humanity itself.

In 2021, Elon Musk became the world’s richest man (no woman came close), and Time named him Person of the Year: “This is the man who aspires to save our planet and get us a new one to inhabit: clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman, cad; a madcap hybrid of Thomas Edison, P. T. Barnum, Andrew Carnegie and Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan, the brooding, blue-skinned man-god who invents electric cars and moves to Mars.” Continue reading →

The Coming Wave, Reviewed

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The primary author of this book is one of the pioneers of AI, so what he has to say about it as a dilemma is relevant. From a recent conversation he had with Sam Harris my takeaway was that while I do not have much agency in the dilemma, it is better for me to understand it than ignore it. Containment is not, apparently, an option. So what can I do? In this book review, a quicker version of the same message, and the only option may be to ponder it:

The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman review – a tech tsunami

The co-founder of DeepMind issues a terrifying warning about AI and synthetic biology – but how seriously should we take it?

On 22 February 1946, George Kennan, an American diplomat stationed in Moscow, dictated a 5,000-word cable to Washington. In this famous telegram, Kennan warned that the Soviet Union’s commitment to communism meant that it was inherently expansionist, and urged the US government to resist any attempts by the Soviets to increase their influence. This strategy quickly became known as “containment” – and defined American foreign policy for the next 40 years. Continue reading →

Insect Respect

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Agronomist Caterina Luppa watches black soldier flies reproduce at Bugslife, a firm in Perugia, Italy, that is turning fly larvae into animal feed. LUIGI AVANTAGGIATO

We have featured this subject a few times over the years, especially once we started showcasing one such product. I acknowledge I am still not a total convert to an insect-centric diet, but every story like this draws me in, however slowly:

Edible Insects: In Europe, a Growing Push for Bug-Based Food

Marco Meneguz, an entomologist with BEF Biosystems in Casalnoceto, monitors black soldier flies as they mate. During mating, “the males gather in a courtship ritual characterized by fights and competitive displays,” he says. The blue light helps the flies see each other better. LUIGI AVANTAGGIATO

To rein in emissions, the E.U. is looking to insects as an alternate source of protein for livestock and people and is easing regulations and subsidizing makers of insect-derived food. In a photo essay, Luigi Avantaggiato explores the emerging bug food industry in northern Italy.

The European Union recognizes it has a meat problem. The bloc has no easy way to curb the climate impact of its livestock, which eat soybeans grown on deforested lands and belch heat-trapping gas. According to one estimate, Europe’s farm animals have a bigger carbon footprint than its cars.

Trent Barber, a technician at BEF Biosystems, vacuums up 200 pounds of fly larvae that are plump after two weeks of feeding on food scraps. The remaining food waste, now rich in excrement, will be sold as compost to farms. LUIGI AVANTAGGIATO

In this photo essay, Luigi Avantaggiato explores an unusual solution to this dilemma that is now gaining traction — feeding insects to livestock and, potentially, people. The European Commission says that insects could replace soy-based animal feed, helping to slow deforestation, or even supply an alternate source of protein for humans. Studies show that insects can furnish the same amount of protein as livestock while using as little as 10 percent of the land and producing as little as 1 percent of the emissions. Continue reading →

Migratory Birds Across The Americas

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I rarely read comments from other readers on articles, but for some reason I did on this one; they are almost as interesting as the article itself:

For Migrating Birds, It’s the Flight of Their Lives

America’s birds are in trouble. Since 1970, nearly 3 billion birds have vanished from the skies over North America. Continue reading →

Archeologists + Cartographers = Dipylon

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If you click on the image above you will experience through a short video what can happen when technically skilled map-makers, using GIS, combine forces with scholars of antiquity. Better yet, go straight to the software they have created. In advance of travel commemorating 40 years since two of us met, my daily omnivorous media diet brought me to Dipylon, via a profile by Nick Romeo, which I highly recommend (to better understand the origins and workings of Dipylon) whether or not you are planning to visit Athens:

Illustration by Eleni Kalorkoti

The Hidden Archeologists of Athens

By collecting long-forgotten archeological data, a new project reveals the researchers who toiled unrecognized.

In Don DeLillo’s 1982 novel “The Names,” an American businessman living in Athens can’t quite bring himself to visit its most iconic monument. “For a long time I stayed away from the Acropolis,” he says. Continue reading →

Braiding Sweetgrass

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My daily news scanning, reading and listening diet are fairly omnivorous, but I am constantly reminded of how much I miss. This sounds like a book I should have read in 2015 when it was first published, but instead I only heard about it this morning. Listening to the author talk about it, I learned that she lives where I lived when I was a boy, in a region where my family history is partly rooted; the same region where I spent seven years to get to an idea that has guided my work ever since; where both our sons and our grand daughter were born. Which is to say, as she talks about nature in that conversation, I know that particular nature. Which is to say, I will find this book.

 

Bee Surprised, Again

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Bees have long been held to be prophetic—messengers to another realm. Photographs by Alice Zoo for The New Yorker

When reading a couple of days ago that there could be such thing as too many beekeepers, the surprise was sufficient to make me go back through all earlier posts to see if I was merely forgetting having read this before. There were no previous mentions of too many, and if anything it was reasonable to assume from all my readings on colony collapse disorder that more beekeepers might be part of the solution. And now this article is full of more surprises, including the most fundamental question: Is Beekeeping Wrong?

Gareth John, a natural beekeeper, tending a hive.

Parasites and pesticides have brought chaos to bee colonies throughout the world. Natural beekeepers want to transform our relationship to the hive.

On a hot, pollen-dazed morning this summer, I stopped by the house of Gareth John, a retired agricultural ecologist, who lives on a quiet lane above a river in Oxfordshire, to take a look at his bees. In British beekeeping circles, John, who has a white beard and a sprightly, didactic manner, is well known as a “natural beekeeper,” although he acknowledged right off the bat that this was a problematic term. “It’s an oxymoron, right?” he said. John cares for perhaps half a million bees, but he does not think of himself as keeping anything. “I wouldn’t call myself a dog-keeper,” he said. “But I have a dog.” Continue reading →