Book Review: The Nature Principle

Finally I have finished my book.

Today I am sitting out in the backyard.  All I can hear are Morning Doves cooing and the flutter of their wings.  The wind blowing in the nearby Maple trees and the call of the Cardinal in the Walnut tree.  Our family dog is bringing me a throwing toy and laying it at my feet.  I'm in an easy chair.  I can see my blooming roses and day lilies.  The wild purple mallow is getting tall.  The rain gauge which hasn't been dumped out in days reads 3/4 of an inch.  Now a sparrow calls to me.

Does that get you a book picture of my backyard?  Did I say that I was still in my pajamas?  and the family is all still asleep at 7:30am?  Last night was a late one watching a family movie until nearly 9pm.  This momma was up for two hours in the night with a little one who couldn't sleep from 2:30am to 4:30am. Yet my body is set to awake at 6am and so I am reveling in this quiet time.  Even all the neighbors have chosen not to mow or exit from their homes this morning.

It's wonderful here.  I hear the wren singing to it's mate.

So all this quiet afforded me the opportunity to finish this book by Richard Louv.  The first half of the book was full of statistics and research and quotes that I found very interesting.  The second half was personal visits he'd had with people who were having a positive impact on the nature movement.  This part I found less interesting....

Random notes in my book journal read: We use our senses fully when we are outdoors.  "Interruptions Science" is the new condition we have as adults.  We are not able to focus on one thing with our hand held devices calling to us constantly.  We tend to have "continuous partial attention".

Mycobaterium Vacae is a soil baterium that is commonly ingested/inhaled when working in nature. In mammal studies, it has shown an increase in learning.  (MUST GET TO GARDENING!)

Gary Small (some kind of researcher) suggests a brain gap is developing between generations due to increased technology input in his book called iBrain:surviving the technological alteration of the modern Mind.

Thoreau might have had it just right when he suggested we need the 'tonic of wilderness'.

The prefect drug substitute is Vitamin N.  Nature.

The 2008 American Journal of Preventative Medicine found the greener a neighborhood the lower the BMI of the children!  Wow.  We have a very green yard with at least two trees that I think are over 100 years old and 13 other trees some that we have planted in the last six years of living here.  I also have over 100 different kinds of perennial flowers to keep me busy and this year we planted over 40 kinds of vegetables.  There is lots of green here.  And I have five fairly skinny kids.  :)

Mental health as well as physical health are improved with increased time in nature.
We need to overcome 'place blindess' by learning the treasure of the out doors where we live.  Learn the names of the flora and fauna.  Investigate the water, the land, the trees.  I personally like this Wildflower Book for learning names.  (It's specifically for Illinois.)

As a family you can make it a goal to have the "Green Hour".  The National Wildlife Foundations recommends one hour of outdoor UNSTRUCTURED time each day.  I think this is no problem in this house.  ( I love the comment that Wii should be replaced by Whee!)

One suggestion that I just can't seem to implement that I totally agree with is getting a rain barrel! It makes so much sense especially in the spring months when we have SO MUCH RAIN.  And right now we have very little....Perhaps I will get this done in the coming months.

Create a silence sanctuary.  Not sure how to do this when you live in a neighborhood.  Now that I have been outdoors for more than an hour the weed whacker machines have come on in the neighbors lawn and there is a baby crying down the street.....

The second half of this book (as I clearly stated was less interesting to me) was full of personal stories of ways others have naturalized their places of living.  Using mirrors on sky scrapers to reflect light into shaded spots.  Ways to increase button parks (a term for neighborhood planned parks by persons not by city planners).  Nature hikes as a family and even how to create urban nature outings for families.  Hooked On Nature.  

I was appalled to read that the 2008 edition of the Oxford Jr Dictionary took out the nouns 'acorn', 'clover', 'dandelion', and 'blackberry' to name a few in order to make room for new words that children need to know such as Blackberry, blog, chat room and MP3 player!  ahh!

Just now seven Geese flew over the house!  Joy!  And I have been joined by two children outside also in their pajamas!  Double joy!

So after reading this book I reflected on my youth and the time I spent out of doors.  My parents moved farther away from the city center when I was 6 or 7 and I found myself near some woods.  These were owned by someone and perhaps were not open to children, but we discovered them none the less!  During my junior high years a highway was built right through the woods.  Unfortunately it was also the time in my life where I spent less time just discovering the woods and it wasn't so saddening to me (but it is now...).  There was a boggy swamp area near this woods that was typically full of bull frogs and I have great memories of trying to catch them.  That pond was filled in with the name of urbanization.  The rest of the woods that wasn't bulldozed down was turned into a subdivision.  I did appreciate being able to tour the homes as they were being built.  Soon became a gated community using the name of the trees that had to be taken down in order for the subdivision to be built- Thousand Oaks is the name of the subdivision.  Irony in that they cut down so many of those amazing oaks.

So I can't make a forest where the highway now stands, but I can consider ways to keep the unused land near us as open areas for my kids to discover.  There is a state park less than 5 miles away that we don't visit often enough (in my humble opinion).  But the times we do visit we just can't stay for an hour.  We enjoy our time so much when we discover the local animals and trees and natural creeks.  We laugh often as a family of the time when a child exclaimed there was a brown cow at this park as we were leaving.  It did look like the backside of a cow, but was a white tailed deer.  Now we always look for brown cows when driving in this park.

I wonder if you can increase your families unstructured time in nature (or even your own!) and reap the benefits of a healthier life.

In response to this a Cardinal landed near by and exclaimed "sweet, sweet, sweet!"

Movie reviews: Father of Mercy and the Rape of Europa

Okay so I watched it. And cried and cried. Today Fr. Carlo Gnocchi becomes SAINT Fr. Carlo Gnocchi. I would like to learn more about the children that he cared for after the war and if any of them are on their way to sainthood. What a life to live...and the difficulty of war.

And the other WW2 movie? I really AM on a theme here aren't I? It was more enlightening that the Monuments Men was in giving the whole picture of Hilter and WW2. What a confused bunch of years for us in the US....we must have really closed our eyes to the damage he was causing in Europe and around the globe. It makes me think that perhaps we don't know the whole picture of what still continues in other countries today. Perhaps we will find that the same horrors are going on today in Africa and Russia.

How do we spend our time?

I read Archbishop Chaput's take on the media today. I fully agree about the impact we take away when we watch something or listen to something! I've been discussing with some friends the impact of one pop psychologist seen on TV and his impact on child rearing! If we give our attention and time to something it impacts our minds and in turn the way we live. I continue to put tight reins on the media that I allow myself and my children to watch. I learn from my husband who rarely watches TV. With no digital TV access here our unfiltered media is at an all time low. And we don't seem to notice.