Roads, Dreams, Musk, and More
Environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb shares his research on the road less traveled – that is, one that examines how our road ecology is shaping the planet’s future for the worse – in a talk at the Community Environmental Council’s downtown Hub on October 24. In “Crossings,” Goldfarb, the award-winning author of Eager (about beavers), shares his eye-opening and witty account of the global ecological transformations wrought by roads, which extends far beyond the statistic that a million animals are killed by cars each day in the U.S. alone, actually acting as “agents of chaos” that deform the Earth at all scales. Visit https://cecsb.org/events.
Pacifica Graduate Institute founder and Dream Tending creator Stephen Aizenstat is headed to Chaucer’s Books for a talk and signing of The Imagination Matrix: How to Access the Greatest Power You Have for Creativity, Connection, and Purpose. The depth psychologist’s book offers a step-by-step process to help you gain access to the “source code of imagination” – energizing your capacity to innovate new outcomes, evolve real-world solutions, and nurture your well-being. Aizenstat delivers his powerful message of hope on October 25. Visit chaucersbooks.com.
Two powerhouses of the profession come together at UCSB Campbell Hall on October 26 when Walter Isaacson engages in conversation with Pico Iyer to launch the new UCSB Arts & Lectures series. Isaacson, whose bestselling works include monumental biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Steve Jobs, just published a new book on Elon Musk, delivering what has been called an astonishingly intimate story of one of the most fascinating and controversial innovators of our era. Isaacson, who has previously served as president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair and CEO of CNN, and editor of Time magazine, shares the stage with one of our own great thinkers and writers of our time in Iyer, whose non-nonpareil interviewing skills elucidate themes and nuances that often surprise.
The previous evening (October 25), Iyer will also appear at an A&L Thematic Learning Initiative (TLI) event surrounding his book The Half Known Life, the TLI book giveaway for fall. Iyer will engage in a brief Q&A and signing at Santa Barbara Wine Collective downtown, where you can pick up a free copy of the book.
In an incredibly timely event, Israeli-born storyteller and author Noa Baum is coming to town to share stories from her memoir A Land Twice Promised – an Israeli Woman’s Quest for Peace. The 2017 book grew out of conversations she had over long periods with a Palestinian woman when both lived in Davis, with Baum weaving together their memories, and their mothers’ stories, to create a moving testimony that illuminates the complex and contradictory history and emotions surrounding Jerusalem, for Israelis and Palestinians alike. With the parable that “an enemy is one whose story we have not heard,” the book, and Baum’s stories, tell the human story that stands apart from politics in the hope that hearing it will call upon us to listen with compassion without surrendering to prejudice and fear, choose dialogue, and commit to peace. Baum will be at the Ojai Storytelling Festival next weekend, and appears the day before at Congregation B’nai B’rith – Trinity Campus (909 North La Cumbre Road) for a free performance on October 26.
