“A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule.”
~Michael Pollan, American author, journalist & educator
“Gardening Means War” (19 June 1988) The New York Times Magazine, New York: The New York Times,, Inc. [page number not shown]; online via MichaelPollan.com, www.michaelpollan.com
Extended excerpt [Essay]:
“Domination, in suburban or rural terms, means lawn, a demilitarized zone patrolled weekly with a rotary blade. The lawn holds great appeal; it looks sort of natural – it’s green, it grows. But, in fact, it represents a subjugation of the forest as utter as a parking lot. Every species is forcibly excluded from the landscape but one, and this is forbidden to grow longer than the owner’s little finger. A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule.”
Source link: “Gardening Means War” (19 June 1988) The New York Times Magazine; online via MichaelPollan.com: https://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/gardening-means-war/
“Dreams of innocence are just that; they usually depend on a denial of reality that can be its own form of hubris.”
~Michael Pollan, American author, journalist & educator
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006) New York: Penguin Press, 2006, p. 362
Extended excerpt [Non-fiction]:
“I have to say there is a part of me that envies the moral clarity of the vegetarian, the blamelessness of the tofu eater. Yet part of me pities him, too. Dreams of innocence are just that; they usually depend on a denial of reality that can be its own form of hubris.” (p. 362)
Source: Editor’s copy – The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006) International Standard Book Number (ISBN) 1-59420-082-3
“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
~Michael Pollan, American author, journalist & educator
Summarizing nutrition advice, in “Unhappy Meals” (28 January 2007) The New York Times Magazine; New York: The New York Times Co., [vol., issue, page number not shown in digital ed.] online via The New York Times archives [subscription service] www.nytimes.com
Extended excerpt [First lines of essay]:
“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy.”
Source link: “Unhappy Meals” (28 January 2007) The New York Times Magazine; online via The New York Times [subscription service]: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html
“Ideologies are ways of organizing large swaths of life and experience under a set of shared but unexamined assumptions. This quality makes an ideology particularly hard to see, at least while it’s exerting its hold on your culture. A reigning ideology is a little like the weather: all pervasive and virtually inescapable.”
~Michael Pollan, American author, journalist & educator
“Unhappy Meals” (28 January 2007) The New York Times Magazine; New York: The New York Times Co., [vol., issue, page number not shown in digital ed.] online via The New York Times archives [subscription service] www.nytimes.com
Extended excerpt [Essay]:
“The first thing to understand about nutritionism – I first encountered the term in the work of an Australian sociologist of science named Gyorgy Scrinis – is that it is not a scientific subject but an ideology. Ideologies are ways of organizing large swaths of life and experience under a set of shared but unexamined assumptions. This quality makes an ideology particularly hard to see, at least while it’s exerting its hold on your culture. A reigning ideology is a little like the weather: all pervasive and virtually inescapable. Still, we can try.”
Source link: “Unhappy Meals” (28 January 2007) The New York Times Magazine; online via The New York Times [subscription service]: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html
“The family meal is really the nursery of democracy. It’s where we learn to share; it’s where we learn to argue without offending. It’s just too criticial to let go, as we’ve been so blithely doing.”
~Michael Pollan, American author, journalist & educator
Interview response, “Fire, Water, Air, Earth: Michael Pollan Gets Elemental in ‘Cooked’” (21 April 2013) NPR Books, ‘Weekend Edition Sunday’ interview with Rachel Martin; audio (6:19 – cited line at approx.4:29) and transcript highlights via NPR, www.npr.og
Extended excerpt [Radio interview]:
“You can only microwave one person’s entrée at a time. And you’re not sharing. And there’s something magical that happens when people eat from the same pot. The family meal is really the nursery of democracy. It’s where we learn to share; it’s where we learn to argue without offending. It’s just too critical to let go, as we’ve been so blithely doing.”
Source link: “Fire, Water, Air, Earth: Michael Pollan Gets Elemental in ‘Cooked’’ (21 April 2013) online via NPR: https://www.npr.org/2013/04/21/177501735/fire-water-air-earth-michael-pollan-gets-elemental-in-cooked
“The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature half way.”
~Michael Pollan, American author, journalist & educator
“Why Mow? The Case Against Lawns” (28 May 1989) The New York Times Magazine, New York: The New York Times Co., [vol., issue, page number not shown in digital ed.] online via MichaelPollan.com, www.michaelpollan.com
Extended excerpt [Non-fiction essay]:
“Gardens also teach the necessary if un-American lesson that nature and culture can be compromised, that there might be some middle ground between the lawn and the forest – between those who would complete the conquest of the planet in the name of progress, and those who believe it’s time we abdicated our rule and left the earth in the care of its more innocent species. The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature halfway.” (pp. 76-77)
Source note: The essay “Why Mow?” is also included as chapter three of Pollan’s 1991 text, Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education. See “Source Link” tab for a link to the text via Open Library.
Source link [Featured source]: “Why Mow? The Case Against Lawns” (28 May 1989) The New York Times Magazine; online via MichaelPollan.com: https://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/why-mow-the-case-against-lawns/
Source link [Reprint – 1991 text]: Library – Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education (1991) online via Open Library [free subscription service]: https://archive.org/stream/secondnaturegard00pollrich#page/76/mode/1up/search/garden+suggests
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