ColumnRecent Twittersphere flare-ups featuring Rashida Jones and Sinéad O’Conner “slut-shaming” pop-culture irritant Miley Cyrus and others for their fleshy outbursts drew swift backlash from some members of the feminist community and bitter online battles among women. What’s a man to make of all this?

Growing up in a liberal family in the ‘70s got me thinking. I cheered as Billie Jean King thrashed Bobby Riggs on the tennis court, watched in awe as millions jammed Washington to protest anti-women legislation and celebrated the Roe v. Wade triumph. I loved my mother that much more for proudly wearing her ERA bracelet (serendipitous though it was, as those also happened to be her initials) and followed her example when it came to developing my worldview regarding women and politics. All told, my support for feminism was indelibly engrained as far back as I can remember.

As an undergraduate, I read Andrea Dworkin and Betty Friedan, marched in “take back the night” campaigns and volunteered as a campus escort. It wasn’t front and center in my life, but I did my best to keep my testosterone in check in my relationships and outlook, and play by the rules as I saw them regarding the movement and its tenets, and their implications for my thinking and lifestyle.

To be clear, while I called myself a feminist (and still do), I look back with no illusions that my insensitivities didn’t lead to plenty of bad behaviors. I was guilty of my share of objectification (still am), and my ignorance and lack of empathy reared their heads on too many occasions. Yet, by and large, I embraced (accepted, I should say) the vilification of such shortcomings. I even tried to understand how someone could see my penis as a weapon.

Of course, it wasn’t always easy staying oriented in this sociopolitical context. One example of weird crossfire was in my studies. I was a lit guy, more or less, and clearly remember the icy stare of the prof who refused to read my thesis on Kerouac because the writer was a “pig.” Another one threw (as in slammed) a copy of Homer’s Odyssey to the floor during class, saying the work was “full of male crap” and that the canon was “rigged.” As the editor of a campus literary magazine, I witnessed and was dragged into numerous battles between the sexes—and I didn’t dare publish any of my own erotica as I was sure my take was poisoned by my pen (or sword, as it were).

Most of this kind of thing was anecdotal to my experience, not pervasive, and all told I manned up and surfed the Second Wave as best I could, learning life lessons along the way. But as the end of the century drew nearer, things began to change. The Feminist Sex Wars heated up, Madonna showed up as the anti-virgin and Chrissie Hynde began shooting her mouth off. The feminist tent grew bigger and the women I knew were no longer playing by the hard and fast rules I grew up with, as liberation took on a new, more inclusive and individualized sensibility. Relations between the sexes were suddenly less clear and, just as my fathers before me must have struggled to keep pace with change, I found myself tripping and bumbling and trying to understand, rethink and act accordingly.

The questions came fast: What, exactly, did all these changes mean and what, exactly, was becoming “okay” in this shifting paradigm? Could I flip on the porn? Did I dare admit that I secretly thought objectification was at times underrated? And why is that chick hitting on me? Does her T-shirt really say that? Did she just say that?! Part of me, of course, was delighted by this turn of events. Another part, seasoned in old-school sexual politics, had no idea what to do. Understandable, I guess, when seeing the world through the eyes of what is or isn’t politically correct.

To the “it’s a not about you” voices out there, fair enough, but I should say that it’s not just the fact that I’m a guy that made me attempt to see this evolution through my own lens. It’s human nature to ask what does this mean to me, particularly when it’s not about you and in many ways empathy cannot be part of the equation. Besides, I had women friends and lovers, and processing how those relationships were affected by such changes was at the very least polite, and at best simply the right thing to do.

This is now…

Today, Third-Wave Feminism has come of age (with a fourth purportedly taking shape), and it’s largely credited with invigorating and in many ways saving the movement. In terms of sexual expression, the footprint is everywhere—from the Suicide Girls to Yes Means Yes, there are countless articulations of the sex-positive moment. Just the other week, in fact, a woman friend and I were discussing how the word cunt is being happily retrieved for delightful usage by many of its owners. On the (more) popular front, we have Miley Cyrus merrily swinging along on her wrecking ball (spoiler: bad art alert), and Rihanna crooning, “come here rude boy/boy can you get it up?”

Not everyone is of the same mind though, as evidenced by recent online flames when Rashida Jones and Sinéad O’Conner weighed in negatively on Miley et al. Watching the slut-shaming and “what is feminism?” debate erupt, I thought about how much the world has changed since I was young—and about all those old struggles on the okay vs. not okay front. To her credit, Jones, addressing the issue in a Glamour article, asked men to weigh in: “Men: WHERE ARE YOU??? Please talk to us about how all this makes you feel. You are 49 percent of the population; don’t sit around and let women beat one another up while you intermittently and guiltily enjoy the show. Speak up! We care what you think!”

So okay, Rashida, here it goes:

Looking back, many of the questions I used to ask myself about how to react to women (and female expression) were off the mark. The fact of the matter is that too often we see the world and our fellow inhabitants through a social or political lens, leaving out one critical fact—people are people first, and men, women and the trans community are each a subset of that. Forget the relationship with the movement—we’re at our best when we treat humans with humanity, not when we try to define, limit and sometimes even understand others.

What does this mean? Well, call it trial and error, but I’ve come to realize that my most successful relationships—and best behaviors—happen when I drop the perceived definitions and flailing, biased judgments. Not to diminish my own, personal politics (to which I remain deeply committed), but what was most important about how I was raised was not how to be a feminist, but rather why to be feminist. Compassion and respect come first, said and modeled my mother. It’s not about gender—and being politically correct isn’t the core issue. The real question we must ask ourselves is, are we humane? To my boys (now interesting and respectable men), my mantra was always “be nice to everyone you meet and watch out for cars.” Be kind and be safe. That’s really all you need to know—at least that’s where it’s best to begin.

So, Rashida, what do I think? Well, my penchant for naked aside, I think Miley pretty much sucks. (Let’s just say her work is not to my taste.) Rihanna’s talent is, in a word, overwhelming (and Chris Brown is a criminal), and you, Rashida, are a brilliant actress. Sinead? Two things: that voice changed me back in the day and, sorry, but she turned me on something fierce. As for how each of you influence our culture—and younger women in particular—I’ll just say keep doing what you think is best. Your audiences (and perhaps their parents) can take it from there.

In the end it’s on us men to check ourselves, not on women to censor how they express themselves. I recently saw a powerful photograph of an attractive topless woman at a protest event with this scrawled across her naked breasts: “It’s still not okay to rape me.” I admit that I lingered over the image for a few extra seconds for prurient reasons, but what truly resonated for me is the truth of those words. And how, person-to-person feminism aside, and no matter what we believe about anything else in this world, she’s right. And that’s all we really need to know—or at least that’s where it’s best to begin.

Scott Adelson is EcoSalon’s Senior Editor of HyperKulture, a monthly column that explores opening cultural doors to initiate personal change. He is also the author of InPRINT, which reviews and discusses books, new and old. You can reach him at scott at adelson dot org and follow him @scottadelson on Twitter.

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InPrint: On the Road, Again – Revisiting Jack Kerouac

Images: PNG etc (top) and PeterTea

The post Yes Means Yes Means What? – Miley, Rihanna and Me: HyperKulture appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnRead a book. Sustain your mind.

In yet another new chapter of “What’s Going on Upstairs,” it seems that scientists have had a virtual breakthrough in figuring out what fiction does to our brains. Recent studies show that reading about a made-up event can trigger the same neuro-bells and whistles as does taking part in an actual event. That is to say, when we read, “See Spot run,” we in some ways experience Spot running. With this in mind, given that it’s Earth Month, let us consider how certain stories can make us feel as if we’re soaring through the air, splashing in the sea or, for the more grounded among us, happily playing in the dirt.

But first, let’s agree with our friends in the lab (no deniers here). There’s no doubt that certain words and well-crafted sentences can have a similar effect on our minds as does the smell of fresh-baked bread, taking us to a time and place far beyond where we are when the reading experience occurs. And that’s the point, right? We often read books to escape our current experience and trade it in for another. Moreover, in many of the best novels, place functions as a character in and of itself, complete with attributes that go beyond backdrop to both embody and tease all five senses; whether it be Paris or Pi’s pontoon, the venue of a novel informs how we “feel” about a story and allows us to “go along” with the action.

So let’s celebrate novels that take us outside – tales that get our tails off the couch, out of the library and up from our lounge chair (yes, a beach read implies that you’re outside, but you know what we mean) and take us someplace else—namely, someplace without a roof. Enclosed please find deserts, jungles and mountains, oceans and rivers, blue skies and lush valleys…

1. Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather (1927)

A natural and majestic silence pervades Willa Cather’s story of Bishop Jean Marie Latour and Josh Vaillant’s humble mid-19th century journey from the Midwest to a newly established Catholic diocese in New Mexico Territory. From the onset, as the two travel first to the Gulf of Mexico before heading out into the Native American frontier, Death Comes for the Archbishop captures a feeling that is pristine, nascent and dry – a pure presentation of the American West on the eve of conquest. Reading the novel, you get a deep sense of (mis?)guided faith as you witness the two men’s plodding entrance into a new and largely undisturbed world. Every village, mesa, path and stone along the way is offered up for examination and contemplation. In contrast to later, typical Western novels where the outward thrust is violent and clumsily unobservant, Cather allows us to clearly see the trail upon which our nation was to tread.

2. The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac (1958)

Dash, gallop and hop-skip from San Francisco to the Sierra Nevada with Ray Smith (Kerouac) and Japhy Ryder (based on the author’s friend, Zen Buddhist and Beat poet Gary Snyder) as they whoop and hike their way out of city life in a search of transcendence. Booted and ruck-sacked, these are perhaps Kerouac’s most “holy” characters. The plot of The Dharma Bums rises up, almost panting, as Kerouac’s signature freestyle prose is ideal for delivering the air and sounds of those epiphanies that only happen in nature. Even at rest, you’re there with them to catch your breath: “The yard was full of tomato plants about to ripen, and mint, mint, everything smelling of mint, and one fine old tree that I loved to sit under on those cool perfect starry California October nights unmatched anywhere in the world.”

3. Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach (1970)

“It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea.” This is the poetic and unforgettable opening to this beautiful tale of rebellion, self-seeking and joyous aerial defiance. Jonathan Livingston Seagull flies both with and against the wind, and has touched millions of readers in that unforgettable, “I remember exactly where and when I read it” way. Richard Bach’s simple tale of the young hero bird is perhaps the closest you’ll ever to come to flying without leaving the ground. Each time he ascends from the confines of the earth, he takes us along with him to feel the assistance and challenge of every breeze and gust that affects his every… single… feather.

4. The Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean Auel (1980)

Twenty-thousand years fail to distance us from the rich natural textures and challenges described by Jean Auel in her story of a chance coming together of a Cro-Magnon girl and a tribe of Neanderthals. You can almost smell the dank caves, primal mud and lush forests of the prehistoric landscape that hosts Ayla and her adoptive clan, as they navigate the edge of the era’s Ice Age. The first of the author’s Earth’s Children series, The Clan of the Cave Bear was based, according to Auel, on a great deal of research, with resulting language that allows us to trust (some have said too much so) the story’s historical backdrop and crawl into the cave of prehistory to enjoy a page-turning plot that, given the success of the series’ ensuing novels, may likely leave you craving more.

5. Water Music, T.C. Boyle (1982)

The first novel of the always funny and insanely observant T. Coraghessan Boyle, Water Music is an historical and satirical examination of two sadly misguided, yet somehow majestic and even glorious tragic heroes—conman Ned Rise and the great adventurer Mungo Park. Taking place largely in Imperial British West Africa, the novel’s lavish language and plot are as twisted as its main characters who come together in the late-1770s/early-1800s in a quest to find fame and fortune—and the source of the Niger River. Tapping into the imagination of discovery, the relationship between the reader and the novel’s landscape—notably the river itself—is cemented early on and lasts through to the (fabulously) bitter end. Guaranteed you’ll find yourself more than once wiping the sweat off your brow in heat of the African day.

6. Galápagos, Kurt Vonnegut (1985)

Back to the sea. That’s where our “big brains” have gotten us in this ghostly accounted, post-apocalyptic tale of the last humans (among them Mick Jagger and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis) and the evolutionary de-evolution that follows our gravest mistakes. What have we become? Wiser perhaps, but mercifully less brainy, the new humans of Galápagos are flippered creatures who hunt with their snouts, and are generally less capable than their ancestors who were, needless to say, occupied with ill-advised tasks like bomb making and facilitating global warming. Like all great Vonnegut tomes, we’re treated here to his rare form of fanciful pessimism, which in some weird way rings optimistic. A maestro of simplicity and irony, the author’s language transports us ethically and emotionally in terms of our relationship with our natural world.

7. Ishmael, Daniel Quinn (1992)

With the natural world embodied in the form of a giant Gorilla/Socratic instructor, Ishmael is Daniel Quinn’s philosophical manifesto as much as it is a novel. The story retells history through a stunningly fresh and clear lens that exposes, point-by point, the illusion of human greatness and superiority as a fantastic and cataclysmic lie. Zeroing directly in on the Bible and the great stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, the book’s teacher unfurls for the narrator new explanations and interpretations of events and roles that allow him (and us) to rethink humanity’s relationship with the environment. While this story doesn’t so much take us outside, per se, it offers a new view of who we are here on this earth and our role in sustaining what is not ours.

8. Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer (1996)

A biography that reads like a mystery (sorry for foray out of fiction here, but you can file this one under “you cannot make this stuff up”), the great chronicler Jon Krakauer invites us to join him in his effort to understand the life of Christopher McCandless. Later made into a truly great movie (in 2007), Into the Wild takes us along on the 24-year-old’s life walkabout, which culminated in his disappearing into the Alaskan wilderness with a 10-pound bag of rice. The journey is one of self-actualization attained by pushing, poking and prodding the natural world a in way that calls upon the painful alchemy of exposure and danger. Somehow this cautionary tale both beckons and warns, presenting the dichotomy of risk and reward in a way that leaves us breathless and wondering what self-discovery is worth.

9. Last Night in Twisted River, John Irving (2009)

Probably too often (and sloppily) referred to as the American Charles Dickens (and a more symbolic and postmodern writer than he would like to admit), John Irving is known for plot brilliance and character development nonpareil. His powerful talents, when turned upon the natural world and how we negotiate it – namely here, New Hampshire’s Androscoggin River and the logging professionals who work on its shores and in its waters – are a literary force to be reckoned with. Last Night in Twisted River’s time on and along the water drives the story forward with Irving’s characteristic power and engagement. While there, we are inside the camps, towns and forests of the Northeast for the plot-developing twists and turns of the author’s 12th and perhaps most natural world-oriented novel.

10. State of Wonder, Ann Patchett (2011)

Reading this story of a Minnesota physician who chases her past and future up the Amazon River, one cannot help but think of the great Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (if you haven’t read it, think Apocalypse Now without the napalm). Indeed, we feel in our guts the upriver suction that possesses Marina Singh as she searches for answers surrounding the fever-caused death of a colleague who succumbed while searching for a mysterious and brilliant pharmaceutical specialist who has disappeared into her “research.” Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder is a page-turner (the plot flows as deliberately as the river itself), and you’re sure to feel the heat and bugs and hot rain as you see “civilization drop away again and again” into a jungle that breathes a single color: “The sky, the water, the bark of the trees: everything that wasn’t green became green.”

Editor’s note: News & Culture contributor Scott Adelson’s biweekly feature, InPRINT, reviews and discusses books new and old, as well as examines issues in publishing.

ALSO CHECK OUT:

InPrint: Gatsby, Paradise and the 1% – F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Pre-Occupation

InPrint: Not for Kids Only – 10 Young Adult Novels You Need to Read

InPrint: On the Road, Again – Revisiting Jack Kerouac

InPrint: Les Histoires De Paris & Two Novel Additions

Top image: Zach Welty

The post InPRINT: 10 Novels That Make You Want to Play Outside appeared first on EcoSalon.

The top stories of the week at EcoSalon.

In a week in which the world said goodbye to the incredible Marie Colvin, we look at ten remarkable stories penned by female journalists.

An astounding amount of American money is being spent on foreign conflicts. What else could be done with it? These 11 world-changing causes would be a great start.

Original thinking is hard, so if you’re feeling in need of inspiration, check out these 40 best quotes on innovation.

Female-founded, women-run businesses are on the rise. Check out these 8 remarkable companies run by women.

Finally, when it comes to blazing a trail, who better than Jack Kerouac? Scott Adelson takes a personal look at the legacy of one of America’s most famous literary journeys.

The post The Friday 5: Trailblazing Edition appeared first on EcoSalon.

Column(Re)read a book. Sustain your mind.

I first read On the Road when I was 20. It was, as they say, the right time. I had just returned from yet another leave of absence (“leaves of presence,” I would later call them) from my East Coast university. That year, I had managed to cover ground cross-country to San Francisco, north to the Arctic working tugs, back to the lower 48, overseas to Europe, and finally to Africa, where I headed up the Nile as far as my body could stand it. Now here I was, happily weathered and back in Boston, way wined up and sitting across a barroom table from my favorite (and at the moment incredulous) professor: “Are you f***ing kidding me?” he slurred. “You never read Jack?!” “Yeah, yeah, I get it,” I moaned. “Kerouac. The Beat God. [Jazz hands.] Alright, alright.” The next day I bought a used paperback. It had a picture of a blazing sun on the cover.

The book sang to me. Being on the backside of many journeys, it was more of an uncanny companion (had Jack been with me?) than an inspiration. But there it was, a perfect, almost musically rendered travelogue of bar stories and holy road tales – the kind I had been gathering and was just beginning to learn how to tell. It was what the road sounded like. It was how it felt.

The novel, largely based on Kerouac’s real-life experiences, is the first-person reminiscence of the 20-something Sal Paradise (Jack). It takes place over the waning years of the 1940s, during which time Sal meets and then “absorbs” his pal Dean Moriarty (based on Jack’s real-life companion Neal Cassady). Dean is an iconic symbol of the fading American frontier. Raised in the rail yards of the West by a now-lost alcoholic hobo father, he’s wired to explore with abandon a world whose post-war boundaries are closing in (“a bomb had come that could crack all our bridges and roads and reduce them to jumbles”), making him a maniac by society’s standards and a winged, yet sad, Beat hero, saint and angel by Sal’s. Together and apart, they crisscross the highways of America (mostly blue at the time), intersecting on and off with their sometimes like-minded crew of contemporaries (almost all based on Kerouac’s circle of friends, including soon-to-be notables such as Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs).

The story is of adventure nonpareil. It’s a bop-and jazz-infused, abstract Huck Finn meets Moby Dick on wheels—a purely American tale complete with an intrepid search for a lost father, fearless in its exploration of time (everything is epic; a few hours passing through a meaningless town is worthy of its own mythologizing) and space (no heretofore secret place is off-limits, from the darkest bar at dawn to the dankest Mexican brothel). And the characters know it’s all pure life and they embrace it every inch of the way. Sal’s oft-quoted whoop:

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’

Like I said, I was 20 and the time was right. As it had been for untold millions of young Americans, On the Road was perfect fodder for me as I set out to explore life unknown. I saw it as an anthem, really, for brave, invincible and outward-bound youth. And now I wanted to be a writer.

I decided that I would spend my last year as an undergraduate buttoning down a lit degree and writing a thesis on Jack’s book (and his more experimental Visions of Cody). As part of my “research,” I found myself a dropout once more and headed back to San Francisco, in part to explore the Great Man’s haunts and dives. Reading my own shoddy poems, drinking to excess and listening to anyone who would tell me a Jack story, it quickly became apparent that the now-dead writer was buried under a mountain of hangers-on and cultural noise. The hype was as immeasurable in the 1980s as it was when the book was first published in 1957. Worse, in fact. And from what I could gather, Kerouac never did get used to his own celebrity, and his work and life suffered greatly.

Though some intermittently great achievements did come—The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, a few others – he never achieved the success or creative reach of these two books (On the Road and Cody, respectively). Jack eventually drank himself back full circle, seemingly unlearning the world, surrendering whatever claims to enlightenment he may have achieved, and dying a pitiful alcoholic’s death in 1969. His final days were clouded by all-too-public rants of bigotry and self-obsession.

So I focused my work on the words, setting out to examine the purely literary aspects of the novels. I brattily teased out the influence of Proust, Joyce and Céline. I fought with a professor who refused to read my thesis (while Kerouac’s female characters can be thin and leave something to be desired on every front, I never bought the misogyny charges). I avoided the bloated and self-aggrandizing I-knew-the-Beats biographies. I protected Jack’s words at every turn. I needed his books to be legitimate. I thought the world did too.

And when I was done I put On the Road away. While I did keep traveling for a number of years (I was a real pro for a while), eventually I got married, returned to my hometown of Detroit and had kids, got a dog and gave up the road. The book (now a first edition purchased to celebrate the completion of my thesis) was consigned to a shelf. Jack was in my past. I did become a writer, though. A journalist. But I never wrote a novel about my travels. One day, I always thought.

II.

My kids are both off to college now, having their own great adventures. My oldest has read On the Road. My youngest (whom I named Cody, incidentally) says he’ll get around to it one day. Meanwhile, I’m wondering what my 50s are going to look like, sitting back to catch my post-parenting breath (like it ever really ends) and thinking of what it would be like to be on the road again. I do live in the San Francisco area, though I seldom go to Jack’s beloved North Beach bars. In fact, I don’t go to bars much at all.

Last weekend, I reread the book. Again I heard music, although it sounded a little bit different than it did a quarter-century ago. I’m a hell of a better reader now than I was then, and I know my jazz (I get the references to Miles and Bird and Billie). I also know what happened to poor Jack, who passed at 47, a year younger than I am today. (I may not be a famous novelist, but I’m alive. I no longer drink.) And interestingly, maybe sadly, this time I couldn’t read the words without hearing Jack’s actual voice. (I’ve heard endless tape recordings of his readings since I first read him.) It’s that signature Lowell, Mass. slur, with its boozy Beat rhythms and accentuations. Unmistakable.

But here’s the rub: This time around, I saw the road from a very different angle. Without the roar of youth, the sentences popped. It’s as if I first read the book while singing along at a rock show and today, well, it’s clearer now – clearer, even, than when I struggled so hard to give Jack his academic due. It speaks of becoming the weather (“The atmosphere and I became the same”) and the whoops scream “we are here now” – be here now. A portend, perhaps, of the Buddhist philosophies that would entrance and perhaps save some of that generation, including its most noted survivors, Ginsberg and the great poet Gary Snyder (Japhy Ryder in The Dharma Bums.)

I missed this quote the first time around. It’s Dean talking to Sal about a couple of  “squares” they traveled with for a short spell, who were in the front seat:

Now you just dig them in front. They have worries, they’re counting the miles, they’re thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they’ll get there – and all the time they’ll get there anyway, you see. But they need to worry and betray time with urgencies false and otherwise, purely anxious and whiny, their souls really won’t be at peace unless they can latch on to an established and proven worry and having once found it they assume facial expressions to fit and go with it, which is, you see, unhappiness, and all the time it all flies by them and they know it and that too worries them no end. Listen! Listen! 

Today, I realize something new about Jack’s road. Or maybe I just have to see it differently. Now the book is no longer about being brave and hip and Beat – and it’s not about getting somewhere. It’s about being present. It’s about “it,” as Sal and Dean discover together. And though I may have thought I got “it” back then, I didn’t.

Revisiting On the Road, I see something that I couldn’t know as a young man – and certainly not as the young man who judged and tormented his older self for so long for choosing a road less dangerous than the one he traveled in his younger days. I see that the road never ends and I know this is good news for an older person who, unlike Jack, survived his own life to live and work and read another day. My road today no longer calls for the wild whoop! of a daredevil, but rather for the measured and accepting smile of an adult allowing himself to experience new things as each day unfurls. Know this about Jack’s book: Whether you’ve read it before or wisely decide to read it for the first time, it’s not just for the young. It’s a tome for seekers – no matter your age.

And now, I still think of On the Road. And I still think of Dean Moriarty. Maybe I’ll write that book.

Editor’s note: News & Culture contributor Scott Adelson’s biweekly feature, InPRINT, reviews and discusses books new and old, as well as examines issues in publishing.

ALSO CHECK OUT:

InPrint: Les Histoires De Paris & Two Novel Additions

Between the Lines: The Power of the Written Word

InPrint: Small Presses, Big Fiction – 2 Books You Shouldn’t Miss

Book ‘Em: 10 Best Reads from 2011

Top Image: Caveman Chuck Coker

The post InPRINT: On the Road, Again – Revisiting Jack Kerouac appeared first on EcoSalon.

That’s right. Shitkickers.

Your go-to shoe, your second-skin shoe, your I’m-feeling-like-I want-to-walk-softly-upon-the-earth-today shoe that reminds you that the weekend is coming.

Do you have a pair?

I love my heels and I love my boots, but sometimes it’s nice not to make such an entrance at the supermarket.

Clip clop clip clop. You know what I’m talkin’ about. Add to that the broken carriage I always get with the squeaky wheel, that I walk hard and fast at almost 5’9″, frequently suffer bad bang days, and therefore some days just want to slip into the natural foods section without notifying the entire store.

Here are some of my very favorites:

The Vegan Fringe Bootie by Manimal, which designer Kristen Lombardi is letting you pre-order at 15% off when you enter the code “ecosalon” at her site.

Denim Booties by Osborn Shoes

The Baskemolla Low by Swedish Hasbeens

Tom’s Habitante Vegan

Main image: SMercury’s98

The post Sh*tkickers appeared first on EcoSalon.

Both of my grandmothers worked in textile and sewing mills in Fall River when the city was in its heyday. My paternal grandmother, a Kerouac, came from Montreal to work, leaving behind all that she knew for a different life.

Sometimes I think about the power these jobs held for young women when I see beautiful pictures of her clad in stylish garb on French fire escapes, young and content. I think these mills called to women to come out of kitchens and washrooms to do something with more purpose. Many of them knew how to sew already, so this was just money made for what they already did.

Having a sense of community also gave them power and strength and a voice to protest against unfair wages and long work hours. What doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger.

Today, when you go into Fall River, you’ll see those goliath mills crumbling or filled with an outdated outlet mall. Others are being turned into loft apartments and some just line the highway going south into Rhode Island like crumbling icons of when the city was worth something more. You can say the same of Lowell and Lawrence, Massachusetts.

When I came across an Ecotextile News story about how U.S.-based Sustainable Textile Group LLC, a producer of fabric made from pre-consumer waste, was to move into the former Hanesbrands production facility in Rowan County, North Carolina, I felt hope.

Surely there are other large companies that can make us proud and restore these dilapidated buildings for textile manufacturing. It will take government legislation and hard agreements within the U.S. textile industry to woo cautious businesses to start again, but wouldn’t it be worth it?

Can you imagine if all the mills came back to life and had the same standards to which we hold China? Eco-designers could get even greener, skilled women from knitting and sewing groups could come out of hiding and real estate values would only appreciate in these towns hung out to dry.

Image: Keeley Library

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