Many of you have read or quoted from Christopher Hitchens’s profound essay on his cancer. I point out this little bit, because it speaks in a few sentences what I dislike about religion or, more specifically, constant religiousness. Things don’t have to happen for a reason. To think otherwise is creating a crutch. That’s no way to live. Especially as you fight death.

I had real plans for my next decade and felt I’d worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read”if not indeed write”the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger? But I understand this sort of non-thinking for what it is: sentimentality and self-pity. Of course my book hit the best-seller list on the day that I received the grimmest of news bulletins, and for that matter the last flight I took as a healthy-feeling person (to a fine, big audience at the Chicago Book Fair) was the one that made me a million-miler on United Airlines, with a lifetime of free upgrades to look forward to. But irony is my business and I just can’t see any ironies here: would it be less poignant to get cancer on the day that my memoirs were remaindered as a box-office turkey, or that I was bounced from a coach-class flight and left on the tarmac? To the dumb question Why me? the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?

Dichotomy, artist unknown

Ed Darrell points out at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub an interesting 2008 exchange between Speaking of Faith’s Krista Tippett and Cal DeWitt, professor at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies of the University of Wisconsin at Madison on the history of environmentalism. According to DeWitt, it would seem that human beings stopped viewing themselves as part of their environment, in order first to conquer it and then to protect it. I’d love to learn more about this philosophical fork in the road given that it involves more than us seeing ourselves as separate from the creator; this is divorcing the human self from the rest of creation.

Cal DeWitt tells an interesting story about the origins of the word environment. It emerged, he says, from a term coined by Geoffrey Chaucer: environing. This became a linguistic way of distinguishing our human selves from the world around us. Previously, DeWitt avers, human beings had thought of themselves as part and parcel of the same creation. At best, this implied a certain responsibility and relationship that has been absent in the modern Western approach to the world.

Western Christianity itself has, ironically, been a potent historical driver of enmity between humanity and nature. But after careful study, Cal DeWitt found the Bible to be an “ecological handbook.” And he has long put it into practice in this way, beginning with the marsh beneath his feet.

… DeWitt also points out that the stereotype of environmental activism as liberal and secular has never been accurate. Devout evangelicals have long been in positions of environmental leadership. And on this program last year, the chief representative in Washington D.C. of the National Association of Evangelicals, Richard Cizik, stunned many of our listeners with his passionate declaration that he is a “convert” to the science of climate change. As it turns out, Cal DeWitt was one of the organizers of the global gathering that exposed Cizik and others to the science of climate change. DeWitt describes an intriguing theory of his this hour, that evangelical and charismatic Christianity may be better equipped than other Christian traditions to change and galvanize and lead on an issue like this.

It has indeed been almost five years since The Storm.

The fifth annual Rising Tide conference on the recovery and future of New Orleans will take place on Saturday, August 28th at the Howlin Wolf in New Orleans, Louisiana. Mac McClelland, human rights reporter for Mother Jones and bad smartass or is it smart badass, will be keynote speaker. After a day of discussions on politics, crime, the environment and the levees, the conference will end with me moderating a panel on the HBO show Treme. I know, Sweet Baby FSM help us all. Did I mention the bar opens at 9am?

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A Howling In The Wires book launch and reading: It looks like I am going to be published again, but not in a science journal. Consider me equal parts honored and mortified.

Gallatin & Toulouse Press announces the publication of A Howling in the Wires: An Anthology of Writings from Postdiluvian New Orleans. This collection combines the vivid post-Katrina experiences captured by the best New Orleans bloggers with the work of traditional writers from the same period, cataloging some of the best-written and most powerful reactions of the people who experienced Katrina.

The original announcement to the trade is heavy with established writers. Bloggers include Clifton Harris, Ray Shea, Maitri Erwin, Troy Gilbert, Tim Ruppert, Peter Athas, Greg Peters, Sam Jasper, Ashley Morris and others. Cover by Greg Peters. Sam Jasper and Mark Folse, editors with much assistance from Ray Shea. Proceeds from the book will be donated to Hana Morris.

The book launch will be Thursday, August 26th at Mimi“s in the Marigy in New Orleans. Conveniently, that’s two days before Rising Tide.

Update: You can now purchase the book at Amazon.com Alibris.com

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Back Of Town: The Treme blog is on hiatus (sorta) after Season 1, but will be filled with posts during and following the Rising Tide conference. I still have no idea when the second season is set to air, but expect the gang back in full regalia when it does.