Reviews

The Sweet Breathing of Plants: Women Writing on the Green World by Brenda Peterson, Linda Hogan

msgtdameron's review

hopeful informative medium-paced

4.0

Two big things I learned from these works.  One: I never knew that there was a language of flowers and plants.  That which plants one gave and how those plants and flowers were received could tell you how the person who was receiving them felt about the giver.  Also which flowers were in a garden would tell the mood of the person whose garden it is.  Both of these with the large number of classic works I read will add depth to all the classics that I read.  The second: modern white men were really really dumb back in the 50's and 60's and we haven't gotten a heck of a lot better.  Back in the 50/60's men clear cut old hard wood forests to replace with nice straight loblolly pines.  Clear cut and burned.  Today there are maritime salvage experts getting 20K per old cherry, oak, walnut, or any other hard wood per log.  SO if those meat heads from 60 years ago had just cut and then used for furniture those old growth tree's they would have made a lot more money instead of just the cash from 30 years from now pine tree's.  And, today were still doing the same thing.  We haven't learned a dam thing in 60 years.  Rachel Carlson could write Silent Spring today and we still wouldn't get it.  At the rate were going maybe God should kill us all in another flood or plague.  

tangleroot_eli's review

4.0

This collection is now ten years old, but the essays don't feel dated. Though we've made progress in terms of environmental consciousness and ecological practice since 2001, in many ways we've backslid, a fact the essays make abundantly clear. But there isn't a lot of beating the reader over the head going on here; the editors generally selected pieces that let the terrible facts speak for themselves, plus adding a healthy handful of more hopeful essays, which help us remember that the struggle isn't entirely futile.