Spring Reading List

With snowy peaks still surrounding us in Denver, our team has spent many recent winter evenings curled up with a good book or article. I asked everyone to share what’s been stacked on their bedside table lately. Happy reading! -Meriwether

Sarah’s pick

Vanishing Fleece: Adventures in American Wool By Clara Parkes

Sarah’s own textile project nestled with her book choice

While finishing graduate school in the midst of a pandemic was not ideal for finding a career, it allowed me to branch out into specialties I had not considered before. Prior to joining BLC, I spent nearly a year working at one of the craft-store meccas in the U.S. Working there blended my hobby of sewing and creating with learning which materials other makers prefer. During that time, I became engrossed in learning about the environmental factors of textile production and sourcing. Vanishing Fleece was the perfect book to pick up while learning about the intersection of fiber and America’s landscape of farming and shepherding. This book takes a hard look at the social and economic factors that go into wool production— a raw material that is biodegradable, renewable, and versatile. I see parallels between the wool and food industries, where a promising solution seems to be smaller, more regionalized systems. While the textile industry in America is shrinking through forces like consolidation and globalization, Vanishing Fleece provides a glimmer of hope for American wool and the people that sustain it.

Luiz running in a marathon before contracting Covid

Running has always been part of my life. It is a democratic sport available to anyone. Running creates a calming rhythm, makes you aware of the gift of your body and its potential, and for me, it is a sport where I compete against myself rather than other people. As a child, I ran through the impoverished neighborhoods of Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, and I now run through the streets and trails of Boston, Massachusetts. 

In the hospitality industry, as I attended conferences around the world, I found a global community of runners and 20 years ago started participating in marathons around the world: France, Italy, Canada, etc. No matter what the challenges were in my personal or professional life, I always found time for running and running always helped me find inner peace. Prior to the pandemic, I was training for my first Ironman Triathlon race. As Covid made itself known in Massachusetts, I took the necessary precautions to protect myself, my staff, and my family. But it wasn't enough. In mid-February I was literally felled by the illness, unable to even walk. Thanks to many people's prayers and unbelievable support, I survived. It took many weeks of slow walks around my neighborhood before I could comfortably run my first mile. Going through Covid was an experience like no other; I am very aware of how close I came to death. When I was well on the path to recovery, even my doctor admitted he thought I wasn't going to make it. 

Gratitude has always been part of how I navigate life, but now I'm more aware than ever before of how random luck can be. We can't ever fully know why the hand of fate spares some and not others. Nowadays I appreciate running so much more, with every step feeling a greater sense of the gift of my health. 

Gaelen’s Pick

Braiding Sweetgrass By Robin Wall Kimmerer

This month I completed a book called Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. The book was a Christmas gift from our CEO, Grant. At a surface level, the work seemed well in line with the work we at BLC do each day, trying to find and implement more wholistic solutions to the extractive ways humans interact with our planet. This work was, for me, a reminder that our work has limitations if we forget to balance our scientific and human-centric approach with the continual cultivation of a spiritual connection and sense of belonging. Kimmerer puts it bluntly when writing about restoring a damaged ecosystem, “We’re not in control. What we are in control of is our relationship to the earth. Nature herself is a moving target, especially in an era of rapid climate change. Species composition may change, but relationship endures. It is the most authentic facet of the restoration. Here is where our most challenging and most rewarding work lies, in restoring a relationship of respect, responsibility, and reciprocity. And love.”

This work has brought for me, a strong sense of wanting to share in the journey of rediscovering a spiritual connection to place. To have deeply instinctive knowledge of my landscape. The desire to become native to a place, the way Kimmerer defines native, “To be native to a place we must learn to speak its language.” 

Jacob’s Pick

Who Do You Want Controlling Your Food by the New York Times Daily podcast

A very friendly cow

At BLC, we have spent the last several years studying how absurdly concentrated our meat processing industry has become, as well as the risks and externalities that have cropped up as consequences. The tale is as old as capitalism, it wasn’t an accident, and the same forces are at work everywhere else in our food system. It’s an issue that fundamentally affects omnivores and vegetarians alike, and one we are excited to try and dismantle. This podcast episode from The Daily — ‘Who Do You Want Controlling Your Food’ — is as excellent and concise as any explanation of the situation I have heard.

Meriwether’s Pick

Conservation groups should be able to lease land to protect it by Shawn Regan and Bryan Leonard

Bison grazing in Wyoming

Fun fact, I once applied to a journalism internship with High Country News. I didn't get the internship, but I still avidly read each issue cover to cover when it arrives in my mailbox.

An article in the January 2022 issue highlighted how, on both federal and state land in the Western U.S., a general rule applies: leaseholders must intend to drill, log, graze or otherwise develop public land; if they don't, their leases can be canceled. This mentality of 'use it or lose it' applies to other scarce resources in the west, including water and incentivizes extraction.

As we partner with large landowners who are focused on both restoring and stewarding Western landscapes, we see firsthand the devastating impact that these laws can have on both people and place. It is time to update our policies so that they recognize, incentivize and support conservation as a legitimate 'use' of natural resources rights.

Lilly’s Pick

Creating a Better Leaf By Elizabeth Kolbert

Although most of Creating a Better Leaf focuses on creating a more ‘efficient’ photosynthetic pathway as a way to solve our global food crisis – something I could riff on for a while – the best part of the article comes in the last few paragraphs when Kolbert interviews Vara Prasad, a crop scientist at Kansas State University. She points out something that is often missing from the world of scientific research and academia: the social component. In essence, we can spend all of our money and time modifying crops, engineering seeds, and building new technologies but if we don’t figure out how to transfer this work into the hands of our farmers – the people who actually manage the land – then none of these technologies actually matter in our efforts to address food production and sustainability.

Gigi’s Pick

Solar Photovoltaic Module Recycling: A Survey of U.S. Policies and Initiatives by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Gigi and Patrick right after signing their mortgage paperwork!

Last year, when we started looking for our first house, I was excited to install solar panels on our roof. I thought that was something we could do for the long-term health of our pocket and environment. Around the same time, I enrolled in a Corporate Social Responsibility certificate program. For one of our classes I analyzed the emissions and waste from solar modules. The more I read about it, the more anxiety I felt. I learned that solar panel manufacturing involves a mix of materials and the two most common release toxic byproducts or use a dangerous toxic and carcinogenic element.  

Why does this matter? A solar panel's lifespan is 25-30 years, current federal, local, and manufacturer guidelines of disposal and recycling are few or unclear, and only the State of California recognizes solar panels as hazardous waste. Crazy, right? The International Renewable Energy Agency (IREA) estimated that by 2030, the same year the US is targeting to be carbon neutral, the accumulative mass of retired Solar PV modules will be 10 megatons. By 2050, it will exceed total global electronics waste by 10%. As demand increases, I’m afraid that while aiming to solve a problem we are creating a new one. On a positive note, we did get a house! Just not with a solar panel, at least not yet.

Tad’s Pick

And Still the Song Dog Sings By Will Stolzenburg

Images captured during a recent adventure out the backyard by Tad

Navigating several big changes in my life this year, I've had the gift of living temporarily in the mountains some twenty miles west and 4,000 feet up from Boulder. I toss and turn when the moon is full and bright on the snow, I ski across empty Forest Service roads, and some nights, when I'm lucky, I hear the coyotes singing in the dark.

In that mindset, I was struck by a poetic take on the accelerated evolution occurring in coyote populations near larger human settlements. Far from the threatening wilder beasts in our collective consciousness, the coyote is an intelligent, social creature – a fellow survivor in the rapid climate and land use changes we humans have wrought. I love this line in particular:

"...hitching its evolutionary wagon to ours, the coyote would appear to be reinventing itself, in a fashion eerily reminiscent to that milestone in life’s history some thirty thousand years ago, when wolves domesticated themselves into dogs. By whatever the means, the coyote is forcing humanity to reconsider our humbler, more tolerant selves, the kind who once shared this world with a bestiary far more ferocious than today’s."

The impact of the Covid pandemic on the global supply chain has been widely discussed, but this article describes how extreme weather, ranging from floods to wildfires, is increasingly wreaking havoc on ports, highways, and factories around the world, and experts warn that these climate-related disruptions will only get worse. Last February, only a few months after moving to Houston, Texas, I felt this affect to the extreme. The worst involuntary electricity blackout in US history was induced by the Texas freeze. It was the 15th of February, to be precise; I know this because it is my birthday. At 9 a.m., after waking up, I discovered that my house was without power and running water. I couldn't get to work because of the severe weather advisory, and by the time I figured out what was going on, I'd rushed to the grocery store and saw that everything was gone. My sister, my pet rabbits, and two out-of-state friends were left to fend for themselves for four days with little food, water, and no heat. The outages took their toll on the economy, forcing train closures, crop losses, water disruptions, and pipe and drainage system breakdowns. These effects, even after the electricity was restored, were felt for weeks after: access to organic produce, shortages in ingredients for product operations and so on.

Morgan’s Pick

The Food of Sichuan by Fuchsia Dunlop

As an end of year holiday gift for our team this year, I gave everyone a copy of a cookbook that my family has used for years as a reference and source of inspiration whenever we are cooking Sichuan food. The book is by an author Fuchsia Dunlop, and it is titled The Food of Sichuan. Recently, my colleague Lilly and I were discussing a recipe from the book that is a staple dish of Sichuan cuisine called Mapo Tofu. While the dish originated in the Sichuan province of China, it is a tofu preparation that exists in many forms and is a part of many different food cultures around the world.

Lilly had prepared the Mapo Tofu recipe from the cookbook and reported back that it was well received by her son, Baxter. I confirmed that it is a dish that also a favorite of my daughter Madeleine. We noted that the combination of the salt and umami flavors provided by the soy sauce and fermented black beans, along with the protein rich and texturally simple ground pork and silken tofu ingredients, made it a dish that was probably a universally loved by kids across the globe. Mapo Tofu is for the children!

We then discussed how a barrier to entry for the dish could easily be the additional ingredients of chili and Sichuan peppercorn, which each bring some unique (and intense, depending on the quantity used) flavors that can be spicy and have a tingling, or numbing, effect on the palate. Lilly asked how we prepared the dish in our home, and I realized that it is one of the meals that we prepare that is always changing as my wife Linh and I take turns at the stove. Sometimes addressing the consistency of the sauce with changes to the corn starch used to thicken the dish, often dicing and adding in additional vegetables in a constant effort to get more fiber and vitamins into our daughter’s diet, and sometimes experimenting with different ratios of tofu to sauce, to change the focus of the dish from the big flavors of the sauce to the unique texture of the silken tofu. One consistency in our process is that we like to hold back some of the spice in the sauce, and then serve a few condiments at the table that allow for folks to add the numbing spice and chilies to the individual’s dish, so that each diner can choose their own adventure in building the stronger flavors into their bowls.

In some ways, how we cook the dish at home is representative of the way that Mapo Tofu manifests itself around the world. A dish loved by many, easy to prepare and made from modest ingredients, and constantly evolving and iterating as folks cook and share through restaurants, food stalls, carts and trucks, and on dinner tables with friends and family. So I sat down at my desk, recalled the way that I had cooked it last, and typed up the recipe to share with Lilly for her to try out the next time she prepares the meal for her family. And in the spirit of contributing to the flow of ever evolving recipes, food, and culture as they move across the planet, for our blog this month I’ve attached it here, to share out with you all.