Hey Mr. Green, or the lawn as a tombstone-less graveyard

Eco-advice columnists are all over the web now. There's Grist's Umbra, Salon's Pablo, Slate's Green Lantern - and even me with my Q&As. But Sierra magazine's Mr. Green -- a.k.a. Bob Schildgen -- is the first of all of these to have his own book out.

Published earlier this year, "Hey Mr. Green" is a compilation of the advice Mr. Green's doled out since Feb. 2005, when his column launched. The Q&As, loosely organized into sections like "At Home" and "Food for Thought," are humorously informational -- not the least because Mr. Green takes on even the oddest and rudest of questions.

Seriously, Sierra magazine appears to attract some strangely angry readers (vegans?) -- many who are unnaturally attached to their air conditioning. (David: "You really ticked me off with your condescending attitude about air-conditioning." Mary: "I'm supposed to sit at home sweating it out? ... Don't make us don sackcloth while our corporate friends wear silk!") Who knew people could get so passionate about AC?

The random questions mean that the columns go anywhere from the big picture -- i.e. changing one's quality of life by spending time to cook healthy meals, instead of spending time "working to pay for processed, instant, plasticized food" -- to the almost inconsequential -- i.e. paper or plastic? Mixed in there is a passionate argument pro eating meat -- in condiment-style moderation, of course -- as well as  recipes for yummy chili and salsa, and a number of money-and-energy saving tips.

Mr. Green even gets poetic sometimes -- especially when talking about lawns, which he seems to have a mild obsession with. "Lawns make the landscape look bleak, like a cemetery without tombstones," he says, then adds in another column:

Lawns are a type of death denial, in that they're replicas of cemeteries where the owner glides on the mower, godlike and immortal, over the pristine green, enjoying the illusion of immunity from burial and decay below.

I'll never look at a grassy lawn the same way again.

Of course, there were times in the book when I laughed at, not with, Mr. Green. One avid knitter wrote complaining that her daughter refuses to wear the handknit acrylic sweaters, the girl's argument being that acrylic's bad for the environment. Mr. Green dutifully points out that acrylic yarn may not be any worse than conventional cotton or wool (he neglects to mention there are organic cotton, bamboo, hemp, and eco-wool yarns) -- never considering that the reason this poor girl doesn't wanna wear her mama's handiwork probably has nothing to do with the environment at all....

Photo by Adam Drewes via Flickr

Comments

[Helen Jupiter]

Why the ire toward vegans? I just don't get it--the vegans I know, myself included, are neither angry nor antagonistic. This is the last place I'd expect that kind of Bourdain-esque attitude. It casts a shadow on an otherwise enjoyable blog...

[Siel]

It was meant to be funny, but you're fulfilling the angry vegan stereotype pretty well --