I recently read "The Unwinding" by George Packer. What's an engineer doing reading a history book? I received this from my father-in-law for Christmas--he's a retired English professor. Packer's book won the prestigious National Book Award. As I started reading it over the Christmas break, I found it hard to put down. Packer has written a recent history in novel form, focusing on several real "characters" and updating their situations as you go through the book. The title "The Unwinding" refers to the return to simplicity and our earlier ways after complicated versions failed. For example, the term "unwinding" in the financial sector refers to closing out or liquidating complex investments such as securitized mortgage obligations, derivatives, and other financial detritus that many Wall Streeters don't understand (and certainly, most of us don't).
Back on Main St., unwinding refers to more reliance on ourselves and neighbors to provide for our subsistence--the return of the vegetable garden, pesticide-free and organic growing methods, generating our own energy through solar, wind, and other means. Above is a picture of one of Packer's characters at his Virginia business. This is Dean Price and his partner at Red Birch Energy, where Dean manufactured fuel from spent cooking oil and built the first biodiesel truck stop. All did not go as planned, but Dean's story is compelling as he worked his way through the unwinding.
I'll post more on "The Unwinding" in future posts.
Back on Main St., unwinding refers to more reliance on ourselves and neighbors to provide for our subsistence--the return of the vegetable garden, pesticide-free and organic growing methods, generating our own energy through solar, wind, and other means. Above is a picture of one of Packer's characters at his Virginia business. This is Dean Price and his partner at Red Birch Energy, where Dean manufactured fuel from spent cooking oil and built the first biodiesel truck stop. All did not go as planned, but Dean's story is compelling as he worked his way through the unwinding.
I'll post more on "The Unwinding" in future posts.
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