Reviews & Interviews: Bothered By My Green Conscience
by Franke James
BlogTalk Radio: Connecting Women
Faten Abdullah, Book Review Book Review: Bothered by My Green Conscience:
How an SUV-driving, imported-strawberry-eating urban dweller can go green
Going green is now the latest craze. Whatever the reasons why “going green” is the latest craze, the Earth benefits from the actions of people going green. Author Franke James wrote Bothered by My Green Conscience: How an SUV-driving, imported-strawberry-eating urban dweller can go green to show her experience of doing something “big”, not just small steps like changing to fluorescent light bulbs or recycling cans…
This is a must read because not only is this educational, it is written in a whimsical style–entertaining. I would highly recommend this book because it is edutainment for adults.
Greenpeace Canada
Anil Kanji, Book Review Bothered by My Green Conscience
Franke James, talking about how lasting change is often sparked by a combination of factors – legislation, social acceptance, and community initiative and desire:
What levers work best to change behaviours? Will we do something we hate to avoid a fine and social disapproval? People are pretty good about stooping and scooping. New York created the ‘Pooper Scooper’ law in 1978. The threat of a fine caused people to pick up, but a major factor was social pressure. Is everyone doing it? No, but now it causes shock if a dog owner fails to stoop and scoop. If people can be convinced to pick up dog shit, who knows what social change is possible?
Bothered by My Green Conscience describes Franke’s journey from an SUV-driving, imported-strawberry eating urban dweller into an inspiration for those of us looking to make green changes to our lives. The quote above doesn’t do justice to the book’s colourful illustrations and scrapbook-style text and photography. I’ve been a fan of the creative visual essays on Franke’s website for years, and it’s nice to see how she’s adapted them for book form. She tells the stories of letting go of her SUV, converting her front parking pad into a garden, considering the future she’s leaving for her grandchildren, and being inspired by a Malcolm Gladwell and Mark Kingwell talk.
What I like most about Franke’s approach is that she’s not really that radical, and isn’t preachy about the changes she’s making in her life. She readily acknowledges she’s not perfect, she’s just someone who started to listen to their “green conscience” and acted accordingly. I take to heart her advice for anyone who wants to make a change in their lives but feels overwhelmed by where to start: “Do the hardest thing first”.
In our fight against climate change, much of our work involves political action. But equally important is “walking our talk” – conserving energy, reducing waste, and decreasing our carbon footprints. What’s the hardest thing for you? And conversely, what do you see in daily life that would be easy to change? Franke shows that doing the right thing can be easy, and even fun.
North York Mirror, InsideToronto.com
Fannie Sunshine, Interview North York resident pens environmental book:
Challenges others to think green
What’s bothering your green conscience?
That’s a question North York resident Franke James likes to pose when discussing ways to help save the environment. James, who made headlines in 2007 when she became the first resident in the city to win approval to build a green driveway, recently released her first environmental book, Bothered By My Green Conscience: How an SUV-driving, imported-strawberry-eating urban dweller can go green.
The book, printed entirely on reused paper, chronicles her decision to go green and the impact on future generations through drawings, photos and hand-drawn text. James, who wrote and illustrated the book, started to really become environmentally aware after a 2005 energy audit on her Lawrence Avenue and Avenue Road home… James said her book’s message isn’t about selling the family car and planting over driveways, but about doing the hardest thing first when it comes to saving the planet.
“I’m looking to inspire people to do more than change the light bulb,” she said. “I can’t change the world but I can take personal responsibility. I have a lot of fun talking to people and asking what bothers your green conscience? It’s amazing that people have a green conscience and something has been nagging at them.”
The News Record, University of Cincinnati
Green Conscience activist sows seeds of sustainability
By Taylor Dungjen
She renovated her home, sold her SUV, fought city hall, planted grass where her driveway used to be and wrote a book.
Franke James – artist, writer and environmental activist – had to fight Toronto City Hall to remove her interlock driveway so she could green up her property. Upon inquiry of the driveway’s removal, the city sent out an official to say, not only could she not remove her driveway, but she could only have one tree in her front yard.
“That’s when I had an eye-opening moment,” James said. “I thought, ‘How can that be? That doesn’t make any sense at all. [The city of Toronto] is saying they’re green, that they want people to plant trees, but I can only plant one?’ It really bothered my green conscience.”
James will present “Paradise Unpaved: How Nurturing your Inner Alice-in-Wonderland Can Win Over City Hall,” Monday, May 18, to the University of Cincinnati community as the last installment of the Climate 101 Lecture Series for the current academic year.
CO2 NOW
Michael McGee, Atmosphere Monthly Bothered by My Green Conscience | A book by artist Franke James
“The full name is Bothered by My Green Conscience: How an SUV-driving, imported strawberry-eating urban dweller can go green. It’s by Franke James of Toronto. This book of visual essays is engaging, beautiful, ingenious and an unusual pleasure to read. It is good for future generations, for frugal budgets and one’s own spirit.”
BurnerTrouble
Book review by Martin Edic: I’m not ‘Bothered By My Green Conscience’ (Franke James new book!)
Franke’s visual essays have been spreading virally over the past few years with mentions on major blog sites like Kottke and Treehugger. Now they are gathered together in a book, Bothered by My Green Conscience (New Society) and I think it gives us a very good reason to still value having a bound and printed object that we can share without peering into a screen.
Franke’s essays are illustrated guides to her process of changing internally and externally — we literally see into the conscious and unconscious thought process as she decides to take real action in dealing with the personal effects of climate change. Not content to simply change lightbulbs and stop drinking bottled water, Franke (with her husband) sells her SUV, rips up her driveway and plants a garden (battling a confused bureaucracy in the process) and writes a moving letter to her unborn grandchildren, a letter bemoaning in advance our pitiful lack of effort to improve a world we’re destroying. This essay, To My Future Grandkids in 2020, goes beyond the humor of the situational earlier essays and paints a poignant picture as Franke attempts to explain our collective failure to change things now when change is required — an explanation written for a generation yet to come.
The essays must be seen to be appreciated. Combining text, illustration and collage, they express the messiness of creativity and the beauty of action. This really is a book to give to your friends and family. Though we’ve never met in person, Franke and I are friends, separated by 80 miles of Lake Ontario water. We’ve been corresponding for several years now and I’ve had the pleasure of seeing these essays appear on her blog. When the book arrived in my mail I realized that they were deeper and more thought-provoking when revisited in this format.
Jim Carroll, Innovation Expert & Author
Book review: I read a book today, oh boy! “Bothered by My Green Conscience”
Last night, I read Franke’s new book, “Bothered by My Green Conscience: How an SUV-driving, imported-strawberrty-eating urban dweller can go green.”
It’s an absolutely stunning, delightful, colorful, inspirational and thought provoking romp through Franke’s unique adventure to change her life to pay more respect to the environment. It’s artistic, creative, and unique. I don’t think I’ve quite ever read a book like this.
It’s not really a book that you read; it’s more of a colorful diagram that you work your mind through. Franke’s unique skill has always been her ability to draw her thinking. And that’s what she does in this book — it’s an absolutely fascinating display of what can be done when a truly unique, creative mind sets out to tell a story in a unique and innovative way.
You really need this book – both for the unique creative way in which she tells her story — and for the importance of the message that it provides. Inspirational!
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Montreal Gazette:
Interview by Monique Beaudin: Beyond the bags and bulbs
Franke James had made small steps in the pursuit of an eco-friendly lifestyle, but it was the selling of her SUV that started a giant leap toward greener pastures
Franke James has a message for people who want to make environmentally friendly changes in their lives: Do the hardest thing first…
“It’s human nature to want to postpone hard things,” she said. “We need to face up to the fact that we need to tackle the hard stuff first while we’re strong enough to do it.” And that’s how she decided to do something big about climate change – by selling her family’s only vehicle, their SUV. “You can change a light bulb, but do you really feel good about that?” asked James, who will be in Montreal next month to take part in the 5th World Environmental Education Congress. “I wanted to do something that was a big statement that I would feel was a big lifestyle change… Selling the car was definitely the hardest thing,” she said. “Every day you get up, and you don’t have a car. So you have to live with that reality… In general, people are not aiming very high in terms of climate change,” she said. “They say, ‘I’m recycling, changing light bulbs, what more do you want me to do? I’ve got a life.’ ”
In her book, James writes to her future grandchildren, saying she imagines them “cursing us – yelling and stamping your feet that we were stupid and selfish and mean.” She says she wants them to know that she tried to do something about climate change. “Even if I’m one of the few who is actually taking personal responsibility and changing my lifestyle, at least I’ve done something,” she said. “My future grandkids are going to think, ‘She did try. She changed her lifestyle and she did write about it and communicate it.’ ”
Lest you think James is hectoring people who aren’t as green as she is, she says that’s the last thing she wants to do. Everyone can tackle global warming in their own way, James emphasizes.
“I would hope that each person would find their own thing that’s right for them to do,” she said. “If they could just raise the bar a little and do something ambitious, because we are seeing the changes all around us – the polar ice caps melting, we are having weird weather. Climate change is coming faster than anybody expected.”
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Treehugger.com:
Lloyd Alter writes: No One Will Know Except You.
Franke James is an author, artist, photographer and writer who has been on TreeHugger and Planet Green before with her illustrated essays like MySUV and Me Say Goodbye. They were recently published in her book Bothered By My Green Conscience, where the printer made a mistake and didn’t print the inside covers red… The printer said sorry, but said “no one will know except you.” That got Franke thinking.
And when Franke gets thinking, she gets drawing and twittering, and the results are interesting and entertaining. Read about the resolution of the Mystery of the UnRed Page.
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BlogTO:
Joshua Tusin reviews: Bothered by My Green Conscience
“Local artist Franke James is no stranger to interest in her endeavours to go green, but with Bothered By My Green Conscience Franke has made the jump to the hardcopy book world. Until now people have only been able to follow her stories through her vertically-oriented, online visual essays, a format that had be to re-worked to fit a book 5.75″ wide and 6.75″ tall.
Franke not only provided the book content but designed the book too, and thank goodness she did. Her visual aesthetic is as crucial to the stories as her compelling content, and if the design of the pages were left to somebody else I suspect the translation to paper would not have been so perfect. And that’s really the word here: perfect…
…a letter to her future (as yet unborn) grandchildren in 2020 was a touching and clever way to articulate the reason Franke has become a green crusader. Not that people need to justify why they sell their SUVs, install a green driveway or otherwise go green, but since Franke keeps making waves with the grand green gestures she makes, this essay gave her the freedom to express, in her own way, why it’s so important to her that she does her part for our planet.
And so whether it is for inspiration, admiration or discussion, this undersized book will become my new favourite coffee table book. Not only does it take up less space, it’s more important than whatever beautiful picture book I might have put out instead.” Read full article
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