Knowledge of place taken for granted

When you live in a place for a very long time, you can sometimes come to take things for granted. Little things, like knowing where the grocery store is and the best way to get there (even if there’s road construction), and knowing how to find the sugar and milk once you’re in the store, become second nature, and so we don’t even think twice about them day to day. But these many little bits of local knowledge – and the mental geographical map of the place where we live – are truly and vastly more important than we ever consciously realize.

Because I’ve lived in Appleton my entire remembered life, I take the knowledge of where the grocery store is in my home town for granted. So a small task, like running to the corner store to get milk when we run out, is no big deal. Just a quick trip, in and out. The location and layout of the store are familiar to me, the cashiers are my neighbors and friendly, the milk nearly the exact same price as always.

As I contemplate moving to a new place soon, I find myself wondering casually how long it will take me to gather the same knowledge of my new town as I have of Appleton. For instance, how long will it take before running to the store for milk in Bloomington is second nature?

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Still, I likely needn’t worry too much. While the Walgreens in Bloomington will be in a different location, its layout will be probably be the same as the Walgreens in Appleton. Perhaps this predictability is part of the reason national chain stores such as Walgreens, Target, Wal-Mart, and others have such success and universal appeal. Apart from their considerable purchasing power, these national chains have nearly the same layout in every town across America, and so they look familiar and appealing no matter where you are. In a fast-paced world, where people commonly move many times in a single lifetime, knowing where the milk is in every single Wal-Mart across the country contributes to the easing of displacement.

In a way, this is a way of bridging towns and cities together by the similarities they possess (though many would argue that having a Wal-Mart in common is hardly a cause for uniting in celebration). However, a supermarket with a common layout and appearance also means less uniqueness is preserved in the smaller stores in the area. Smaller stores serving local neighborhoods, where we meet our neighbors working at the counter, share a conversation with our elementary teacher while reaching for apples, and greet the old widow from the local Rotary Club over at the deli, offer greater opportunity for engagement between individuals than do giant Wal-Mart Supercenters with entire aisles of only bread, that serve sometimes multiple communities, where people rush through the over-sized store in order to get their shopping done quickly.

Should we trade familiarity in space (knowing where the milk is) for familiarity in people (knowing the person behind the deli counter)? Knowing people in your neighborhood, I think (and many experts would agree), leads to healthier, happier people. The more connected we are to one another, the more chances of having extended relationships,* of becoming friends, of knowing we can rely on one another when needed. And the more we recognize others we may need, the more we see the possibility of them needing us, too, making us feel purposeful, included, needed, wanted. The more communal we are with those around us, the more of a community we will have.

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Because I believe it is extremely important to know the place we live in, I will likely start gathering bits of local knowledge the moment I move to Bloomington. Indeed, I have already started logging away on a miniature map in my head knowledge from my two visits to the city: where the farmer’s market is, where the university and my apartment are, that there are in fact two branches of the Bloomington Bagel Company. Paul and I will be taking a local paper when we arrive, both for the purposes of learning about our new town and to get the coupon deals in the Sunday edition. The day after we move in, we’ll go knock on our neighbors’ doors and introduce ourselves. I plan to ask people familiar with Bloomington in my master’s program for recommendations for doctors, the best place to get shoes or books, and where’s the best cup of coffee in town. I want to start building connections with those around me, and indeed, as I’ll be so far away from my family, I’ll inevitably need these connections.

I am excited to move to a new place, to have a new city to explore. My mind is like a sponge when it comes local knowledge. We’ll just have to see how long it takes me to navigate the nearest grocery store to find the milk.

[*This term is used in holistic education literature to refer to the encounters occurring between teachers and students in places outside the classroom (for instance, the grocery store). I use it here to refer to outside encounters between individuals of all types (for instance, seeing your coworker at your son’s Little League game, seeing your music lessons teacher walking her dog, seeing the woman who works the deli counter at the gas pump next to you, etc.).]

Conkey’s Bookstore is closing, the world is changing

Conkey's Bookstore, in Downtown Appleton, Wisconsin. Taken during the first snow of the winter of 2006.

Conkey’s Bookstore – the oldest independent bookstore in Wisconsin, a critical part of downtown Appleton, my place of employment through my four years at Lawrence University, where my mom took me for a cup of hot chocolate after the Christmas parade when I was a little girl, the place so many Appletonians rely on year after year for their Christmas gifts, birthday cards, and unusual book orders – is closing after 113 years of business.

An article in the Appleton Post Crescent last week gave the details of the store’s reasons for closing, so I will not go into those here. For me, and for many, the closing of Conkey’s Bookstore is much more than a news item.

The closing of Conkey’s is more than the loss of another independent bookstore in a community. It’s the loss of a way to make a livelihood for the store’s many full-time employees. It’s the loss of a neighborhood bookstore alternative to heading out to the mall for the residents of downtown Appleton. It’s the loss of a place to get cards, books and gifts for its thousands of loyal customers. It’s the loss of an anchor store for the many local businesses located on downtown College Avenue.

The closing of Conkey’s Bookstore is also a symbol of the direction this world is going in. The McDonaldization of America is often used by sociologists as a metaphor for the takeover of the so-called standardized, predictable, mass marketable, and “economically efficient” in modern American society. McDonaldization as a concept could have just as easily been termed WalMartization. The Big Box stores and chain fast food dives are beating out the small local businesses and ma and pop restaurants. Add this to the recession that is taking its toll on all businesses, large or small, local or chain, and the closing of another independent bookstore doesn’t seem so unlikely or surprising to today’s reader.

But the loss of independent businesses of all types means the loss of the individuality and character that comes with the businesses. Conkey’s has been in Appleton for over one hundred years. It has that charm of an old business, and it used to thrive on the services it provides, such as out-of-print book ordering, and the knowledgeable employees who can recommend a book for anyone. There is an one of those old rolling ladders inside, the kind that nowadays is only seen in movies or in pictures of old libraries. It has the charm of a bookstore that has been there forever. Conkey’s has been in downtown Appleton for longer than living memory.

Countless articles and blog posts have been written about the benefits of independent businesses to communities. One of the more often sited facts I’ve come across is that for every dollar spent at a locally owned business, approximately 60 cents returns to the local economy through wages, investments, and more. Compare this to every dollar spent in a Big Box or nationally owned chain, only 40 cents of which returns to the local community, and it’s clear that locally-owned, independent businesses support community much more than chain stores. Local businesses are also more likely to give donations to charitable causes than chain stores, because there is less corporate mumbo-jumbo to hurdle to get the donation to go through. Local businesses also collaborate frequently with each other, creating a social network of individuals and businesses that can support and cross-publicize one another.

Customers have come into Conkey’s over the past weeks, since the news of our closing was published, and all have lamented the fact that we will be closing our doors after so many years. It really is a tragedy. The oldest independent bookstore in the state of Wisconsin is closing after over a century of business. I think deep down we’re all sort of hoping for a miracle, that some one will be interested in buying the place and keeping it in business. Or that by some sort of divine intervention, business will take a drastic upward turn and we’ll be able to stay open. Or someone will come up with a brilliant business plan to turn Conkey’s into a co-op, like a bookstore in Shorewood, Wisconsin will hopefully soon become.

For me personally, it still hasn’t quite sunk in. It can’t be really happening. The community will find a way to keep Conkey’s open. It’s been such a downtown icon for so long. I’ve had two dreams since I found out Conkey’s was closing. In the first, I’m walking down College Avenue in Appleton and nearly every store is closed and boarded up. In the second dream, I’m talking to customers in the store and I finally start crying, letting out all the welled up grief and tears I have for the fate of the bookstore. I woke up sobbing.

It’s especially disheartening to find the store to be closing as I embark on schooling for a career in sustainable communities. Integral to the health of a community is the health and sustainability of its local businesses. Without places like Conkey’s to provide valuable services like book selling in downtown districts close to where people live and work, residents of communities are forced to get into their cars and travel to large shopping malls for their everyday needs. Local grocery stores, hardware stores, clothing shops, schools – in a sustainable community, these every day places should be within walking or biking distance of every resident. But as more and more local businesses and shops close and are out-competed by the malls and the Big Box stores, community citizens become more and more dependent on their fossil fuel powered vehicles. How can we be otherwise, when stores are farther and farther from our homes, and public transportation in most smaller cities and towns is awful?

It’s easy to sit and lament all the things that will be lost as Conkey’s closes. To berate the Big Box stores and the economy and the internet for forcing the little guys out of business. However, when I become angry at the whole situation, I have to remind myself of what one of Conkey’s loyal customers said the other day. We should have a big party here, she told us. It’s sad that we’re closing, but Conkey’s has had a great run of it for 113 years. We should have a big party, with all of the community invited, to celebrate a century of life. When a 113 year old dies, she said, you don’t have a funeral, you have a party, celebrating a good, long life!

I will miss Conkey’s. I had been planning on coming home to visit the place when I come home for Christmas during the next few years for my yearly walk down memory lane. With the store closing, residents of Appleton and graduates of Lawrence will all have to rely less on the store as a place to conjure nostalgia for our childhoods, and more on the fond memories inside our heads.

“The Lawrence Bubble”: Just a PR problem?

(A version of this post will appear in tomorrow’s Lawrentian, but I wanted to post here as well.)

As I am writing this, it is a gray Thursday. I sit looking out over the Fox River, watching the seagulls swoop low over the moving water among the rocks. The white smoke from the paper plants melt into the gray-white sky that is rimmed with trees and smokestacks and radio towers. Though this view I have is far from natural, it carries a rich history that lends a sort of industrial beauty to the landscape.

As my time at Lawrence University comes to a close and I reflect, I regret that I have not learned more about this landscape that surrounds us. Though I am an Appleton native, I have not spent much time at all thinking about the Fox River—its ecology, industry, history—or the greater Fox Valley community during my time at Lawrence. Until this, my last, term at Lawrence, when I have been involved in a project on the history of the Fox River for Professor Monica Rico’s American Environmental History class, hardly a single class I’ve had at Lawrence has integrated this place Lawrentians call home into the academic subjects we learn here.

Lawrentians could easily spend four years here and never truly get to know the community’s history, ecology, politics, socioeconomic demographics, or current issues. Lawrentians joke about the “Lawrence Bubble,” and possibly lament the fact that they rarely get off campus into the surrounding community. We hear how the “townies” dislike the students for having loud parties on the weekends and riding their bicycles down College Avenue on the sidewalks, or stereotype us as being a bunch of snobby rich kids at private school.

Many on campus would make this out to merely be a PR problem—it is only because the surrounding community doesn’t know all the good things Lawrence students do: they don’t get to campus enough to see the “real Lawrence,” and only the bad things that get into the local papers. But is this really true? I argue that the issue of the “Lawrence Bubble” is more than just bad PR; it is also the lack of involvement and positive interaction between Lawrentians and community members.

True, programs like LARY Buddy and Habitat for Humanity do attempt to reach out to members of the non-Lawrence community and create a positive face for the University. Students are regularly encouraged to vote in local elections (though they may know little about the local issues on which they are voting). In the education program, student teachers are required to observe and teach at a local school. The Campus Center will purportedly be available to the community at large as a limited convenience store and for community events when requested. And some faculty, like Professor Mark Jenike through his research on nutrition in area schools, and the aforementioned Fox River project in Professor Rico’s class, are attempting to break out of the Bubble and use the surrounding community for translational research and experiential learning.

But for the large part, these are isolated examples that only reach a small portion of students and the community. There has been no comprehensive, University-wide effort to engage students in the Fox Valley community. If Lawrence is to truly prepare students that are prepared to be both world citizens and also contributing members of a community, it must start with encouraging students to be members of this community. We need to attempt to burst the “Lawrence Bubble” by engaging ourselves in meaningful ways in the greater community.

The Green Roots mission statement reads, “Responsible citizenship…requires…that we act in a manner that cares for the places in which we, and others, live and work. [T]he hallmark of an educated person…must be knowledge of the places we call home, an awareness of their interconnectedness, and an acceptance of our civic duty to act in ways that protect their wellbeing.” In order for Lawrence to truly create graduates that go out into the world with an understanding of “the places we call home,” it is necessary that our curriculum and civic outreach reflect these goals.

We must encourage faculty to use the Fox Valley as a “text” for academic study. We must educate students on the current local issues, so that they can become engaged citizens working toward a better community. We must teach students about the importance of local businesses in sewing together the economic and social fabric of the town. We must bring in more community members to share their knowledge about local and global issues with Lawrentians.

If we can develop students that truly know this place, perhaps they will go out into the world knowing the importance of place and how to live well in a that place, and contributing to strong vibrant communities. Only if we can take care of our own communities will we be able to extend that care into the larger world in the search for a global sustainable society.

(Many thanks to Stewart Purkey for exposing me to many of the ideas present in this article in his class Environment, Community and Education, and for suggestions on a draft of this article.)

A brief outline of the modern socioecological crisis, Part 1: A “paradox of affluence”

The more I read in environmental studies, the more I realize that there seems to be a consensus among those in the field on two things: first, that we are definitely in an ecological crises, the causes of which are largely sociocultural (and within this, mainly consumerism and the modern worldview); and second, that there needs to be some sort of (at the very least, minimal) paradigm shift both outside of and within the environmental movement if we are to collectively solve any of our global problems.

In regards to this first point, in my post on Annie Leonard from a few weeks ago, I began to put together some thoughts on the effects of the disintegration of community on the environment and our current ecological crises. A quick, over-simplified recap of Leonard’s thesis is that the vast amount of consumerism in today’s (modern, Western) society contributes to ecological degradation in the form of loss of natural resources, destruction of natural habitat, and release of toxic pollutants and greenhouse gases. According to Leonard, this consumption also leads us to have increasing work hours to fund our consumption, and decreasing time for community and meaningful relationships, which means we’re not as happy as a society, though our standard of living is higher than ever.

Leonard is not alone in thinking that our overconsumption leads to environmental degradation and unhappiness. Gregg Easterbrook, in The Progress Paradox (2003), expands on the point that as a society Westerner’s (and moreover, Americans) are less happy, despite our increased standard of living. Easterbrook argues that although we (in the Western world) are for the large part getting smarter (having higher average levels of education—debate the difference between degree-level and intelligence as one may) and wealthier (at least on average, or at least until quite recently—and our purchasing power and standard of living are definitely increasing), we are not getting happier. Levels of depression and mental illness are higher now than at any point in the past, and, according to Easterbrook, polling of the US populace has indicated that people were happier in our parents generations than in our own.

In addition to the paradox of affluence, disconnect from the environment has also been sited as a root cause of unhappiness. Journalist Richard Louv writes in his book, The Last Child in the Woods (2005), that a decline in awareness of the natural world—a sort of ecological intelligence—has accompanied population growth and the need for larger houses, yards and vacation homes that spurs urban sprawl and soaks up natural spaces in previously rural communities. Louv goes on to write that the loss of these “wild spaces” and of opportunities for children and adults alike to be out in nature has resulted not only in a largely ecologically illiterate population, but also individuals that are more stressed and less happy than during past times and in places where access to nature is more available. Environmental sociologists call this the so-called “paradox of affluence,” whereby individuals feel worse and worse, though they are supposedly “better off.”

Likewise, local Fox River Valley historian Gregory Summers, in Consuming Nature: The Rise of Environmentalism in the Fox River Valley 1850-1950 (2006), claims the rise of consumer society both contributed to a growing disconnect between society and the nature and natural resources upon which it relies, as well as allowed for the increased use of the natural environment for recreational activities. “Consumption served as a filter in people’s interactions with the material world, screening out nature’s unpleasant realities while at the same time creating new attachments to its recreational and aesthetic charms,” Summers writes (p8). As society became more and more market-oriented during industrialization, people’s direct interactions with the environment became much more limited than they had been under subsistence modes of production. Concurrently, however, as people became more affluent, opportunities to enjoy nature for recreation became more common and available to individuals (particularly those of the middle- and upper-class). Other environmental historians, such as Carolyn Merchant, concur with Summer’s view.

This increasing disconnect society faces between the natural world that sustains us and our day to day activities brings me to the second point of this essay: that there must be a paradigm shift both within and outside the environmental movement in order to solve our environmental crisis. If we as a society continue to think as we do in regards to the earth and each other, we will not be able to successfully move out of the current ecological crisis into a sustainable world.

A professor of mine at Lawrence University, Professor Stewart Purkey, in teaching the class Environment, Community and Education, puts it this way: The environmental crisis is essentially a sociocultural crisis, and all the technical or scientific changes or advancements in the world will not make a difference, unless we change the underlying paradigms within which we see the environment and the natural world. I believe this is true: unless people begin to see things differently, the way we interact as humans—consumers, deforesters, resource-users—in the world will not change.

I’ve long thought that the biggest environmental problem facing the planet is education—that enough people do not recognize or acknowledge that our planet is in peril, nor do enough people know what they can do to help. However, it’s only been recently that I’ve become aware of the cause of this apparent lack of environmental education and awareness.

David Orr, in his groundbreaking book of essays in the field of environmental sociology, Earth in Mind (1994), states that all education is environmental education of some form or another. Either directly or indirectly, the modern educational system teaches us how to interact with the planet: as economically-minded consumers, as recreational tourists seeking exotic nature, as eco-conscious buyers of organic vegetables. More often than not, however, it is what our education does not teach us, claims Orr, that impacts the way we view the environment. For the large part, we do not see the connections between what we consume and how we live, and the environment. People do not recognize that the ability to turn on a light with the flip of a switch comes from the burning of coal at a power plant and the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We do not realize that the growing of our food via conventional agriculture in the US results in the runoff of fertilizer into the water of the Mississippi and thus in the eutrophic “Dead Zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. Unless, Orr continues, we somehow retool the educational system to teach our children holistically about the environment—how we affect it and how it affects us, and how all educational disciplines are interrelated—we will never be successful at creating a society of individuals capable of constructing a sustainable world.

Author and education professor Paul Theobald expands on the thoughts outlined above in his 1997 book, Teaching the Commons, furthering that the disconnect between humanity and the environment originated with the degradation of community—particularly rural community— that correlates with the rise of modernity over the past 500 or so years. This piece of theory is likely the root of the cultural crisis mentioned above. As society moved from collective, interdependent, communities of connectedness to individualistic, independent, modern corporate society (for a variety of reasons; see Teaching the Commons for a deeper explanation), the “ethic of care” for one another and for the earth was lost. Thus, environmental degradation is a casualty of modernization. If we could get back to a society that was more community-minded, more responsible for one another, more decentralized and participatory, more locally-oriented, says Theobald, we could hopefully create a healthier and more sustainable society.

All the things I’ve been talking about fit together. With a society that is more community-oriented and environmentally-aware, possessing an “ethic of care” for the environment and each other, we may have the paradigm shift we need to solve the disconnect inherent in modern, consumer, possessively-individualistic society, making us a healthier, happier, more sustainable society living with the natural world. The question, then, becomes how to inspire this new paradigm.

(To be continued in Part 2: A New Environmentalism)

The Evolution of a Sustainable Mindset

Trips to Northern Wisconsin to fish and swim at my grandparents cottage, digging in the garden in my grandpa’s backyard, family vacations to the wilderness of the American West, nature walks around the neighborhood picking up rocks and sticks, living in a house full of books on science and nature. These are the experiences that shaped my interest in the natural world around me. The more I learned of the natural world through experience, the more I wanted to read about it through books. I’ve always been someone who has loved ideas and books. Growing up, nearly every open wall of my house was filled with bookshelves and books. Year after year, they piled up on coffee tables and countertops. I picked up a new book nearly every afternoon when I came home from school. They were full of new ideas, possibilities, and knowledge. Throughout the course of my high school and college education, as my interest in science solidified, I began to read books on the well-being of the environment and the people who live in it. The evolution of my desire to have a career in sustainability can be traced through several key books I have encountered throughout high school and college.

When I was a junior in high school, I was assigned a final project in American History to examine American environmental history over the ages. As part of this project, my mom gave me the book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, by Michael Braungart and William McDonough. I was enamored with the way these masters of sustainable design described processes of industrial production where every waste was a resource, and all facets of society incorporated concern for the environment, the economy and society. This “cradle to cradle” production (as opposed to the current “cradle to grave” methodology where materials go from extraction to consumption to waste) and “triple bottom line” of consideration are key elements of a sustainable society, whose definition I also came across as part of this project. The Brundtland Report (also titled “Our Common Future”), born of the 1987 United Nations Commission on Environment and Development (UNCED), defines sustainable development as “meeting the needs of the future without compromising the ability of future generations to meet those needs.” This vision fit directly with the principles outlined in McDonough and Braungart’s book. More importantly, it made sense to me on a personal level. Such a vision aligned with the teachings of my parents, who, while ordering paper and cleaning products from Seventh Generation, told me about the importance of preserving the Earth’s resources for use seven generations from now.

In my freshman year of college, I took a course on International Relations and wrote a term paper making the case for collaborative environmental sustainability in a globalizing world. In addition to reviewing the Brundtland Report and Cradle to Cradle for this project, I also discovered the principles presented in the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth, the Easter Island story, Lester Brown’s Eco-Economy, Herman Daly’s Beyond Growth, Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce, and a number of other books on environmental economics, sustainable development, and the future of the social and natural world. The research for this term paper supported my conclusion that sustainability is not just necessary for continued human society but also possible.

This past spring, I picked up a book in my family’s living room entitled The Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv. Louv’s research on the importance of “nature play” – time spent in the outdoors – both for robust and healthy mental development in children and for maintaining mental health in adults further solidified what my own experiences in nature as a child had taught me. Playing outside, exploring and discovering the intricacies of nature taught me about how things worked, and developed in me a keen interest in science and biology. Reading Louv’s empirical approach confirmed for me the necessity of preserving natural spaces within easy reach of every person, especially in cities, in order to maintain a healthy society.

At the end of this summer, I heard about community study circles that were starting in the Fox Cities to investigate sustainable development right here in my own community. Using the book The Natural Step for Communities: How Cities and Towns can Change to Sustainable Practices, by Sarah James and Torbjorn Lahti as a guide, these study circles brainstormed possibilities for implementing the Natural Step principles in our community. This book, which discussed the principles and methods for creating sustainable communities, was instrumental in confirming my desire to work at the level of municipal governments, businesses or institutions to implement real change in policies and practices, and to plan to meet a vision of a sustainable world. My experience in this study circle has brought perspective to the academic knowledge of sustainable development I gained from the previously mentioned books and research projects. Through discussion with citizens of the Fox Cities area about the possibilities for a sustainable community, I have become excited about the opportunities for creating sustainable policies and practices in our communities.

My environmental education, through both books and academic research, has taught me that the challenge of creating a sustainable future is not solely about developing practices that prevent the depletion of the Earth’s natural resources; it is also about commitment to more equitable distribution and use of the world’s resources. Developed nations, and those in the upper segments of all societies, currently consume far more than their fair share of natural resources, while contributing to a polluted environment that disproportionately diminishes the quality of life of those in poverty. Sustainable development – whether in a rural village in the developing world or an urban center in America – can help increase the health and well-being of all members of society.

My personal and academic reading continues, and with every new book or article, I become aware of some new aspect, method, or principle of sustainability. I look forward to continued deeper research into these methods, as I develop my own experience and credentials for future use in working with communities, businesses or organizations toward creating sustainable practices and contributing to a healthier earth.

(This essay was originally written for graduate program applications.)