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Another way to prime the pump is to write by hand. Keep a legal pad, or something like one, and when you are stuck dead at any time—blocked to paralysis by an inability to set one word upon another—get away from the computer, lie down somewhere with pencil and pad, and think it over. This can do wonders at any point in a piece and is especially helpful when you have written nothing at all. Sooner or later something comes to you. Without getting up, you roll over and scribble on the pad. Go on scribbling as long as the words develop. Then get up and copy what you have written into your computer file.
And how will we deal with unfolding climate change? There is now a widespread consensus that we need to do something to prevent many highly undesirable consequences, but what kind of action, what sort of behavioral transformation would work best? For those who ignore the energetic and material imperatives of our world, those who prefer mantras of green solutions to understanding how we have come to this point, the prescription is easy: just decarbonize—switch from burning fossil carbon to converting inexhaustible flows of renewable energies. The real wrench in the works: we are a fossil-fueled civilization whose technical and scientific advances, quality of life, and prosperity rest on the combustion of huge quantities of fossil carbon, and we cannot simply walk away from this critical determinant of our fortunes in a few decades, never mind years.
How the World Really Works
Vaclav Smil
I wanted to know where Nebraska came from, what it led to. It sat between two of Springsteen’s most celebrated recordings, in its own quiet and turmoil. He described it to me as “an accident start to finish” but also as the album that “still might be [his] best.” The recording came from a place and a time in which Springsteen was facing troubles in his life, troubles that had no name as of yet. Wordsworth defines poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings…recollected in tranquillity.” Quite differently, Nebraska came from the middle of that “overflow,” was not a thing “recollected in tranquillity.” It came from the heart of trouble and led to still more, its stark character the lasting reward.
Deliver Me From Nowhere
Warren Zanes
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