"Why Bother?" by Michael Pollan

There are so many stories we can tell ourselves to justify doing nothing, but perhaps the most insidious is that, whatever we do manage to do, it will be too little too late. Climate change is upon us, and it has arrived well ahead of schedule. Scientists’ projections that seemed dire a decade ago turn out to have been unduly optimistic: the warming and the melting is occurring much faster than the models predicted. Now truly terrifying feedback loops threaten to boost the rate of change exponentially, as the shift from white ice to blue water in the Arctic absorbs more sunlight and warming soils everywhere become more biologically active, causing them to release their vast stores of carbon into the air. Have you looked into the eyes of a climate scientist recently? They look really scared.

Every day, my fear of what we’re leaving our children grows exponentially. Pollan is right in that we can’t be dissuaded by the seemingly small part we feel we may be playing. As trite (and difficult) as it sounds, we need to try to inform more decisions by the imminent situation that our kids are going to have to deal with.

On Wanting To Be Joel Fleischman

We’ve been catching old episodes of Northern Exposure on Universal HD. Both Becky and I were diehard fans of the show when it was orginally on. Seeing it again, 15 years later, made me realize how enduring it is.

We couldn’t get enough, so we also started renting the DVDs. A few years back, I was looking for information on when the DVDs were going to get released. Apparently, all those songs that Chris would play on KBHR were going to make the DVDs prohibitively expensive to sell. The DVDs finally came out, unfortunately filled with indistinct, royalty-free music.

I started to look around to see if there were others who still enjoy the show as much as we do. There are a ton of fan sites out there. Some have taken their fascination with the show to an almost obsessive level.

There is a yearly festival, called Moosefest, that takes place in Roslyn, Washington, where Northern Exposure was shot. I visited Roslyn about 10 years ago, and have to say that it feels remarkably close to what you would expect out of the fictional Cicely, Alaska. You just need to look past the fact that every other storefront has turned into a Northern Exposure t-shirt store.

Thinking back to when I originally watched the show, I remember how much I wanted to move to Alaska. Looking through Alaska message boards, there seem to be plenty of people who get drawn in by the myth that Hollywood creates for Alaska. The most recent vehicle to create this fascination has been Into the Wild, despite the doomed conclusion. Alaskans on these message boards will stop short of calling you an idiot, if you think Alaska is like what you see on television.

I guess you don’t feel the cold weather as a child. I can’t entertain the thought of living in Cicely anymore. I’m probably more suited for Roslyn, a little further south.

Photo by tiny_tear.