An attention-getting book about growth

A few weeks ago, I finished reading “Growth, a history and a reckoning” by Daniel Susskind. Let me admit that I’m very much interested in the subjects of growth and sustainability, and the cover of the book caught my eye! 

The first part of the book was well constructed and quite informative. I liked the history of growth, that is the thousands of years of stagnation that preceded the industrial age (even though, the advent of fossil fuels and turning points like the Renaissance period, weren't even mentioned) all the way to the “hockey stick” shaped growth that followed. 

It explained the creation of GDP as a measure of growth and the single-minded quest for ever higher numbers of that magic unit. The author undermined the mantra that “We can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet”, or the need for “degrowth” that would lead to recession, or preserving the planet for coming generations, countering that the world of ideas is infinitely vast and would be magic band-aid. 

Clearly Susskind can’t imagine a world without traditional growth as we know it. Instead, it seems to me that addressing overpopulation, repairing the damages done to the planet, repaying countries’ staggering debt and substituting quality for quantity in a reasonably spread timeline could begin to move the needle in the right direction. 

Well, I’m not an economist, I’m just a retired, old skier...

Knife

A few days ago, I finished reading “Knife”, a book by Salman Rushdie, even though I wasn’t able to push any further than page 15 on his “Satanic Verses” that I had found extremely difficult to get into and left me puzzled as to why Ayatollah Khamenei even decided to get its author killed for it. 

So it took my wife to convince me to read the story of what happened on that morning of August 12, 2022, when Salman Rushdie, standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, in upstate New York to give a lecture on writers’ safety. was attacked by a lunatic wielding a knife and stabbing him 14 times, almost died and lost his right eye in the process. 

In that book, he explains the aggression and its traumatic aftermath, but most important he explained the way he channeled the event without resentment, but just indifference and contempt for his assailant. 

My take-away from that reading is that I better be careful about what I write about as there seem to be a high cost for shocking idea! In conclusion though, a good book, written in its own style that I enjoyed, this time.

Picabo Street’s biography

I just finished reading Picabo’s bio that stops in 2001. 

I had seen the book for a long time at our public library and finally decided to read it. I found the book interesting, honest and it showed me that some fantastic skiers can emerge from poor and sometimes dysfunctional families. 

In fact, Picabo Street’s path and character are very similar to Bode Miller’s. Then you have the well-to-do kids like Lindsey Vonn, Ted Ligety and Mikaela Shifrin, that had a big advantage of capitalizing on their god-given talents thank to a relentless parental support. 

The rest of the athletes muddle through and generally can’t get much of a foothold in a sport that isn’t nearly as well organized in the United States than it is in Europe through well-run ski federations. 

Street who has lived in Park City for a long time has had her share of problems. Her bio stops in 2001, on the eve of the 2002 Salt Lake City winter Olympics in which she only placed 16 and decided to retire. 

In 2005, she was inducted into the US Ski Hall of Fame, and in 2015, she was charged with domestic violence and assault relating to an incident when she allegedly pushed her elderly father down the stairs of her Park City home, but was later exonerated. 

More recently, she co-founded the Picabo Street Academy in Park City, with Michelle Demschar and Dan Kemp, that provides individualized schooling to students training in sports and the arts.