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Book Club
May 20, 2024 LWV Book Club
The Berrien/Cass League had 10 members who attended our May book club.
The book selection for May was The Comfort of Crows, A Backyard View. by Margaret Renkl. Most everyone found it to be a delightful read with appreciation for the structure of the book - short, crisp - 3-page sections, and for the author’s brother Billy Renkl’s accompanying beautiful art work with each section. Her writing style was compared to Mary Oliver’s poetry for its perceptiveness and sensitivity to her natural surroundings.
The Comfort of Crows is divided into the four seasons, where she describes in detail the weekly changes in her yard and neighborhood. Several members appreciated the author’s keen attention to the cycles through the season, the interactions and relationships among the myriad species residing in her backyard species and humans. Some of us appreciated her linking the loss of species to the grief she has experienced in her own life, and to both the fragility and resilience of nature.
All the while, the author and her brother -- the artist -- keep bringing the reader back to the preciousness and utter delight that each species offers us. She implores us to never lose sight of the joys despite the pain of the losses.
Faith led the discussion with several probing questions, including: “What can we do to reduce the loss of species and slow climate stress on the planet? How can we be of help rather than be part of the problem?". There were no easy answers, but we agreed the book enlightened us to how our choices affect the survival of many species and how interconnected all our actions are.
Comments ranged from how to greatly reduce plastics to letting leaves, downed trees, etc., remain on the ground throughout the year for insects, worms, critters to feed and thrive on, and to reduce or eliminate pesticides. References were made to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and to how we’ve known about the ecological problems since the 1950’s.
A broader view emerged questioning the outward active energy of our culture, the ‘yang’ propensity toward the masculine, doing, amassing stuff, building, expanding, with a suggestion to shift to a more yin way of being in the world-reflective, inner oriented, feminine, intuitive, relational, receptive, and earth oriented. Maybe it’s time for things to come more into balance as the yin/yang symbol suggests.
Our next book club:
Date: July 1, 2024 at 10 am
Title: Prequel by Rachel Maddow.
Location: 17286 Sloan Ln, New Buffalo, MI
Please RSVP to jscully@luc.edu or
call (773) 677-2528
Other titles of interest:
The Genius of Impeachment by John Nichols
The Unfinished Love Story by Doris Kearns Goodwin
"The All-American" - an excellent PBS program
We also discussed the idea of bringing in authors for informal talks for future meetings.
---- Kyra Walsh
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