The Rooted Life by Justin Rhodes
I wasn't familiar with Justin Rhodes until we discovered the Homesteaders of America organization. After the Joel Salatin and Mother Earth News falling out we sided with Joel. We had been going to the MEN fairs for several years (which I found by following Joel), but after that we decided we were done with MEN and happened upon the virtual HOA conference in 2020. We made it out to the in-person conference in 2021 and that's when I discovered Justin Rhodes. After the conference I started following several of the presenters (including the Rhodes family) on social media. We also plan to use his Chickshaw model for when we add egg chickens to our homestead. When I saw he had this book coming out I bought it right away, which is something I rarely do as a librarian. But, this is a great book for the beginner homesteader. It weaves together their personal story with tips on how to grow/raise more of your own food. There are definitely some good tips - the only thing I thought was missing was on sourcing land/property. The Rhodes family is lucky in that his family already owned this 75 acre plot that they can now use/live on. But, not everyone is so lucky so at least a chapter or part of a chapter on finding land/property would be helpful. But, it's a great overview and inspiration if you're looking to start homesteading or maybe up your homesteading game.
Wastelands: the true story of farm country on trial by Corban Addison
Eastern North Carolina is home to more pigs than people. These are rural areas you may drive by on your way to one of the NC beaches and not think much of it. But in the past two decades huge industrial hog farms have set up shop all over Eastern North Carolina and have contributed to huge amounts of pollution and nuisance to their unfortunate neighbors. Many of these neighbors are poor African-Americans who have lived on their land for generations. When these hog farms came in they tried every resource they could think of to try to combat it with no help. Until 2013 when a law firm in Salisbury, NC was asked to take on some nuisance lawsuits for clients living near these industrial hog farms. These cases would drag on for 7 years and read almost like fiction for all the underhanded dealings of the hog industry tycoons and their cronies in the NC Legislature. And while I don't want to give anything away it becomes very much a David vs. Goliath legal case that will deal a serious blow to Smithfield Foods (currently owned by China).
This book is the story of the legal battle between Smithfield Foods and several dozen residents of Eastern NC, but it still highlights the horrific practices of the industrial food industry. The only people profiting from Smithfield Foods are the executives - the land, the pigs, the farmers, the neighbors, and the people eating this food all lose. This book also perfectly illustrates the proverb that the love of money is the root of all evil. Which is the motto of the industrial food industry anyway. I was also FURIOUS at the men in power in the NC Legislature that lied, cheated, and paid big money to try to legislate protection for Smithfield. As a native North Carolinian I wanted to throw all those men into one of these hog waste lagoons by the end of the book. It's infuriating to me that these people run under the guise of protecting "family farms" which is NOT protecting family farms, but corporations like Smithfield and their own pockets. This book does give an overall look at how awful industrial hog farms are even though that's not the main point.
Reading this book made me wish I had become a lawyer. This is like the hog farm version of Erin Brockovich. A few reviews complained that it was overly descriptive or overly written and I agree there were a few spots of that, but the overall story was just so compelling I could look past that. My only other minor complaint (that couldn't be helped) was that there were just SO MANY people and names that it was sometimes hard to keep track of who everyone was in the narrative. But, overall I thought this book was AMAZING and I'll be buying a copy. It should be required reading for every NC resident as well.
Some quotes I liked:
"It [the lagoon and spraying system for hog waste] was a colossal exercise in magical thinking. Between lagoon spills and flooding from storms and hurricanes, the industry has despoiled waterways across eastern North Carolina and befouled the air and land in dozens of communities. Yet the corporate hog barons - Smithfield chief among them - have never been held to account. Rather, they have raked in profits by the billions." (p. 27)
"There are nine million hogs in the state, nearly one per person. If humanity suddenly went vegan, almost every North Carolinian could have a pig for a pet. All but a nominal fraction of these hogs are concentrated in the vast expanse of coastal plain east of Interstate 95. In Duplin County alone...there are nearly thirty-five hogs for every human being, a density higher than any other place on earth. Yet this truth has remained largely hidden...North Carolina is famous for many things, but being home to the pork capital of the world is not one of them. Quite conveniently - for the tourist bureau, at least - the hog kingdom is tucked away in a rural region of the state invisible to outsiders and forgotten by most North Carolinians, except when they make the drive down Interstate 40 to the port of Wilmington." (p. 30-31)
[When NC Representative Cindy Watson tried to introduce legislation to help combat industrial hog farms she received death threats] "But informing the FBI was not enough. The following day, Cindy told her colleagues on the floor of the House. 'I have a little tape in my hand. Some of my hog farmers aren't real happy with me. They've threatened to kill me, to drown me in the Cape Fear River. I just want you all to know it. I want to make a public record, Mr. Speaker.' No one on the floor moved. No one spoke. But the message got through. The hog farmers left her family alone." (p. 87) [But, they backed her opponent and she didn't get re-elected during the next election]
"John [Hughes - one of the lawyers fighting Smithfield] wades through court record and finds the contract. It's the first grower agreement he has ever seen. He reads it with fascination. He knew the relationship was lopsided, but the full extent of the imbalance blows his mind...The relationship is purely provisional. The grower must live with the constant risk of total loss, all to earn a subsistence income of a few dollars per marketable hog. Murphy-Brown, meanwhile, collects the fully grown hogs from its farms, slaughters them at its slaughterhouse, packages the meat for sale - or exports it to China or elsewhere overseas - and rakes in around a billion dollars a year in profit. The growers, in effect, are modern-day sharecroppers." (p. 127)
[A photographer and scientist are permitted to test and photograph the inside and around some of the hog farms. There are several pages around how long the smell clung to things and how hard it was for the people who were there to get rid of the smell.] "At Corey's Christmas party, he shows off his camera to a few of his buddies. The smell of the hog barns is like a halo around it. One of his friends suggests he file an insurance claim and purchase a replacement...[he] tries an experiment first. He places the camera outside in the golden Colorado sunshine. He gives it time, allows the intense solar radiation to burn the VOCs and bioaerosols off the glass and plastic surfaces. The experiment was successful. The camera is saved. After two months in the sun." (p. 183)
"The $473 million award - reduced to $94 million by the statutory cap - accomplished what Mona and Mike had hoped: It forced the Murphy men to change. That autumn, Smithfield made sweeping improvements to its production practices, installing refrigerated dead boxes, replacing high-powered spray guns with subsurface injection and low-pressure irrigation, and limiting its trucking schedule to daylight hours. Smithfield also announced the planned conversion of 90 percent of its lagoons into covered biogas digesters. The company's publicists spun these changes as an outgrowth of a broader sustainability initiative designed to cut greenhouse emissions across its supply chain, not a concession to the cudgel of $550 million in jury verdicts. But the targeted nature of the improvements, the tens of millions of dollars required to deploy them, and the timing of the announcement suggest otherwise." (p. 344)
The Comfort Book by Matt Haig (Books & Banter book club)
Matt Haig wrote this book during Britain's COVID lockdown to remind himself of good things during that difficult and anxious time. With no real order or chapters it's a collection of short observations, stories, and quotes about surviving and thriving during difficult times. At the beginning of the book he gives the following guidelines for reading it, "You can read it how you want. You can start at the beginning and end at the end, or you can start at the end and end at the beginning, or you can just dip into it." (p. ix) But, it would be easier to "dip into it" if there was any kind of structure or topics. The book is divided into four parts, but the parts don't seem to designate any topic or theme. It was a random collection of feel-good thoughts, quotes, and stories. It was basically exactly what I expected and exactly what I hated about The Midnight Library. The best part was it's a pretty quick read so I was able to finish it over the course of one day. I personally wouldn't have read anything else by Haig after The Midnight Library, but this is for my book club and I couldn't find any discussion questions. So I forced myself to read it so I could create some discussion questions. Since my book clubs both LOVED The Midnight Library I'll be curious to see what they think of this one. Not having personally experienced severe depression or being suicidal I can't say for sure, but I just feel like this would not help someone in that situation and almost seems to make light of it - which is also how I felt about The Midnight Library. Overall, I would not recommend this one or anything else by Haig.
Blood Orange Night by Melissa Bond
Melissa Bond was already dealing with losing her newspaper job during the 2009 recession and having a special needs infant, plus recovering from a traumatic birth when she suddenly couldn't sleep at all. She was getting maybe an hour or two a night. Then she found out she was pregnant again, so when she went to the doctor they couldn't prescribe anything since she was still in the first trimester. But, later in her pregnancy she found "Dr. Amazing" who was supposed to be more of a holistic doctor, but still a real MD. He prescribed her Ativan and quickly upped her dosage from 2mg to 6mg within a few months. And yet she still wasn't sleeping much. Then she began to experience other troubling symptoms - stomach cramps, dizziness, muscle weakness, olfactory hallucinations, muscle pain and spasms. Only after almost two years of taking Ativan daily did she start doing some research on the drug and almost immediately found out that it's not recommended to take longer than 4 weeks due to being highly addictive. So, all of Bond's mystery symptoms were actually "withdrawal tolerance" even though she continued to take the medication daily her body was experiencing withdrawal symptoms. And stopping cold turkey could actually result in psychosis. Yet, very few doctors understand benzodiazepines enough to help someone get off them. Bond was lucky enough to find one not too far away from her and started the excruciating process of weaning off these high powered drugs. Unfortunately through the process her marriage couldn't handle the stress of two very young children, one of which has special needs, and the physical and emotional toll of the benzos and trying to get off them. But, Bond shines a MUCH needed light on how terrifying these drugs are and how often doctors over prescribe them (and also terrifyingly don't seem to understand just how addictive they are either).
I think what's most terrifying about benzodiazepines is that it is a surprise addiction. It's not like painkillers where people often did abuse them because they felt so great taking them. It's also incredibly hard to get off of them. It's not a short 30-day detox and maintenance, the withdrawals are not just physical, but emotional/mental as well and many people become suicidal while trying to get off them.
Obviously this is Bond's story and told from her perspective, but her husband seemed like a HUGE jerk. Instead of being worried about her health issues he seemed irritated that more was expected of him with the kids, yet he also didn't want his mother to help them (and she was VERY willing to help) because he didn't get along with her (and you never know why, I don't even think Bond knew why). Obviously, he had a role in creating these two children, yet he seemed irritated and mad that he had to come home from work everyday and you know, be a parent to his kids. He also seemed to think she was either exaggerating or making up her symptoms. I wasn't surprised when they were separated by the end of the book. It made me wonder if he would have been more sympathetic if she had had cancer or something else that wasn't seen as being her own fault. Even before she was prescribed benzos he wasn't sympathetic AT ALL when she wasn't sleeping and was trying to deal with a special needs baby all day on no sleep. I'm in no way suggesting this wasn't hard for him as well. Even just having a special needs 14 month old and a newborn would be a huge struggle for any parents without the benzo addiction/illness thrown in. But, he really came across like a huge dick throughout the whole book. Luckily, she did have some amazing friends who really stepped up to help her and she managed to find a nearby doctor who was one of the few doctors in the country who could help her. Definitely an eye-opening and terrifying book.
Some quotes I liked:
"Neither of us can believe there isn't more information out there, more doctors who understand what it takes to pull benzos safely from the brain. There are innumerable doctors and clinics specializing in opioid addiction treatment, but this is because the explosion in opioid abuse came with an explosion of overdoses. Part of the horror of opioids is the immense and sudden mortality. Benzos dismantle the brain over time. Instead of a swift and sudden death by overdoes, there's a slide into disability. Cause and effect are harder to track down because the horror is stealth. Instead of a fire burning your house down, benzos are the thief that steals everything you own a piece at a time." (p. 171)
"If I went to a doctor with complaints of numbness or weakness, electric shock sensations and tremors, they'd likely suspect multiple sclerosis or some other neurodegenerative disorder. If I told them I couldn't eat because my stomach cramped and burned, they'd look toward Crohn's disease or irritable bowel syndrome. If I hadn't discovered what was happening, I could be on a terrifying medical track or on terrifying new medications meant to remedy a disorder that was never a disorder at all." (p. 218)
[Bond is contacted by ABC about filming a piece for World News with Diane Sawyer. When she's told it's going to air it ends up being bumped off that night and never ends up airing.] "Len stops calling me after the first week. Two months later I call ABC about the piece. I'd love a copy of the footage, I say. It wasn't run but it means something to me. I'm told that Len is no longer working with ABC and that producers typically take the footage if it isn't aired. I look Len up on LinkedIn a year later and discover he's taken a job with a pharmaceutical company. The piece wasn't run, he likely has the footage, and now he's working for Big Pharma. It's like a bad movie with me as the walk-on." (p. 252)
"In the first year of my withdrawal, I reported Dr. Amazing to the only state agency having a criminal unit for investigation into physician malpractice. A narcotics agent interviewed me and called both Dr. James and Dr. Kate just once, leaving messages. He spoke to neither of them, despite their calls back to him, and the case was quietly closed. Dr. Amazing remains in practice to this day." (p. 265)
The Marmalade Diaries by Ben Aitken
The premise of this sounded really interesting - the reality? BORING. Ben Aitken was looking for a new apartment/roommate and went through a company called Share and Care Homeshare that matched him with a recent widow named Winnie. Winnie is 85 and has been widowed for slightly less than a year when Ben moves in. Part of his low rent is helping around the house for Winnie. But, to say Winnie is demanding is an understatement. She is stingy and particular and less than appreciative as well. I do think Ben and Winnie come to appreciate each other, but based on Ben's telling of it it seems much more one sided (his side). Winnie seems to be like many older people who are aging and unhappy about all they've lost. I don't want to sound like she didn't have reasons to be sad or frustrated, but none of that was Ben's fault and I think he put up with WAY more than the average person would. In fact her son and his family moved in with Winnie at the beginning of COVID and only lasted 6 months and there were STILL hurt feelings between Winnie and her daughter in law over it. And after reading this book I wasn't surprised. She seemed pretty awful and that never got better. I kept reading because I thought their relationship might become more of a reciprocal relationship and less landlady and servant. Overall, I was unimpressed and almost wish I had quit reading after the first few chapters.
