Improving vocabulary

What you need to know about Greenwashing

Posted on by Julia Tomiak / 0 Comment

With recent news about companies striving to “go green”, e.g. Hertz’s recent deal with Tesla to purchase 100,000 electric cars, I’ve been hearing the term “greenwashing” more often. Of course, the Word Nerd had to learn what’s up with greenwashing and how common it is.

Apparently, it’s pretty big.

Definition of Greenwashing

Greenwashing is just what you might expect: companies trying to brainwash us into believing their products or actions are “green.” According to Merriam-Webster, greenwashing is “expressions of environmentalist concerns especially as a cover for products, policies, or activities.” To further illustrate the term, Merriam shares a quote from Fortune magazine:

As money pours in, critics warn that greenwashing is becoming endemic, as companies spin their behavior to attract ESG investors’ dollars. —

Katherine Dunn, Fortune, 11 Oct. 2021

Here’s another explanation of greenwashing from the Corporate Finance Institute. Greenwashing happens when “companies spend time and money advertising and marketing that their goods or services are environmentally friendly when, in fact, they are not. In other words, greenwashing is the act of making false or misleading claims about the environmental benefits of a product, service, technology, etc.”

Kinds of greenwashing to watch out for

Not only does the Corporate Finance Institute explain greenwashing, it also outlines practices companies use to convince consumers they are acting in environmentally ways.

  1. Hidden Trade Off- A company might emphasize an environmental benefit over another problematic issue
  2. No proof- claims are not backed by data or third party certification
  3. Vague claims- companies make vague claims that lack specific details, e.g. a label of “all natural” or “recyclable” (just because it is recyclable doesn’t mean your community will accept it for recycling)
  4. False labels – companies will create false labels or certification to make a product look like it has been approved by a green screening process
  5. Irrelevant information- unrelated environmental issues are emphasized
  6. Lesser of two evils- claiming environmental benefit for a product or service when there isn’t one to begin with, e.g. organic cigarettes
  7. Fibbing – making claims that are false

What you can do to avoid being “greenwashed”

In a time when disinformation and misinformation run rampant, we must ask more questions. As with everything else, we need to seek reliable data and information about environmentally friendly claims. We also need to hold companies, individuals, and agencies accountable for their practices. Treehugger.com suggests looking for data, hard numbers, and comparisons to other products when considering a purchase. Consumers should also check if a brand is making sustainability a foundation of its business model. Most companies truly interested in the environment will make information readily available to the public via a website.

I must admit, in my desire to pursue more sustainable living habits, I have definitely been greenwashed. Now, when I see something is “recyclable” or that it has been “green certified”, I will look for more information about what that really means.

How about you? Have you been greenwashed?

Thanks for getting nerdy with me!

Book reviews/Favorite Authors

Explore adoption with Ann Stewart’s Out of the Water

Posted on by Julia Tomiak / 1 Comment

My friend Ann Stewart, winner of the 2017 Christy Award for best debut in Christian Fiction, has a new book releasing TODAY! Out of the Water spans over 60 years and three continents. It tells the story of Irish immigrant Siobhan Kildea, who in 1919 flees heartbreak and disappointment in Boston to build a new life in a Montana prison town. After tragedy tears her new family apart, she must make the most difficult decision a mother can – and the consequences ripple for years afterward.

I’m excited to have her with me on the blog to answer a few questions about her new release. But first, my review.

What I liked

I enjoyed the multiple historical settings Ann creates in Out of the Water, as well as the themes of motherhood, adoption, and the ramifications of our choices that she explores in her new novel. Out of the Water covers early 20th century Boston, the front lines of World War I, and the stark beauty of the American western states. I felt like I was right on the front with Nurse Genevieve and working the farm with Siobhan in Montana.

Ann’s characters face incredibly difficult choices about things like abortion, adoption, and what is needed to make a family. Although I didn’t always agree with those choices, I did appreciate the different perspectives and ideas each character offers. I also enjoyed the literary references and the focus on books as a way to grow and unite us.

I’m so excited to have Ann on the blog today!

Interview with Ann!

Julia: Out of the Water explores the theme of adopted/ chosen families. What inspired you to write about this?

Ann: I have always been fascinated with adoptions whether in my own family or with my friends. I always want to know the backstory, and so I chose to write one. Why do some children choose to seek out their biological parents and why are some satisfied without that information? What do they learn when they find a biological parent? Is it better to know their background or not? In each novel I write, I want a lingering question. In STARS it was “If the worst happens and there’s no one to blame, do you blame God?” Out of the Water asks, “Is it always better to learn the truth?” With some of the characters, readers may determine it is not. And yet there is an underlying lie in this novel —that is hidden –which causes a family divide. That topic is ripe for discussion in book clubs. I also volunteered at Special Delivery, a group which helped women in crisis pregnancies. Some were keeping their babies and some relinquishing. Very tough choices.

Julia: I enjoyed all of the different places and different moments in history covered in Out of the Water. Your description of the front lines of WWI was particularly memorable. (Scars on palms of the stretcher bearers – such detail!) How did you tackle research for this novel?

Ann: When readers look at the Digging Deeper section in the novel, they’ll see many books used for research. Once I learned that my daughters’ Alma mater had sent nurses to the Great War front lines at St. Denis, and I have a daughter who is a UVA graduate and nurse at UVA hospital, I researched that base. I found it particularly fascinating because they, too, were in the middle of a pandemic, and it was killing more than the guns and gasses on the battlefield. There is a Stretcher Bearer’s Manual and book entitled WOUNDED and many poignant pictures of the men up to their waist in mud. The idea that they carry no weapons but strive to recover and revive injured men in the middle of no-man’s land was both horrifying and heroic.

The research was often connected to unconnected ideas in the novel. For example, one child is mute after witnessing an unrelated tragedy. When reading in my Voice magazine, I learned of a stretcher bearer who lost his voice after being unable to retrieve a wounded soldier. They “treated” him by asking him to make the sounds of those he had left behind. I couldn’t even begin to believe that the two topics could intertwine in a 2020 magazine on Singing. Some research is straight off the internet, some books, some magazines, some interviews. I have a box of resources at my feet right now — a box under my computer desk. It’s filled with everything from Priest Lake to Deer Lodge, to Boston to a notebook full of research. That’s one phase and I have to keep going back to it over and over and over.

The PLACES are the best part of the research. I went where I like to visit:  Boston, Priest Lake, Seattle, and DEER LODGE. After a friend kept talking about this quirky town, I visited and KNEW it had to be in a novel. I can’t wait to SHARE that place with readers. SUCH a fascinating back history and so much left there to mine.

Julia: Besides the mention of the story of Moses being lifted out of the water, I didn’t get strong Christian messaging in this novel. What distinguishes a novel of Christian fiction from regular / general fiction.

Ann: That is perhaps the most challenging question. Am I an author who is a Christian or a Christian author? I prefer to think of myself as an author who is a Christian. I want to write books that are read-eemable. They must have some element of hope and redemption.

But as I wrote this book, the themes of redemption, hope and reconciliation were very subtle. It became a book about appreciating and considering life at all stages:  the unborn child, the baby without the possibility of parents, the elderly woman, the depressed father.  I knew the title OUT OF THE WATER early on:  It is straight from the verse that Moses was drawn out of the water. His mother made the most difficult decision of her life:  to give him up so that he might have life. There is the parallel that God gave up His only Son that we might have life, but there is nothing heavy-handed. It’s not even being published by a Christian publisher and perhaps that’s why a Christian publisher did not take it on.

Where to find Out of the Water

Purchase Out of the Water through one of the links below: 

Amazon
Apple
Barnes & Noble
Bookshop.org
IndieBound
Kobo

Also available to retailers through IngramSpark.

If you read and enjoy Out of the Water, please be a good Word Nerd and leave a review on Goodreads, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon and help Ann out!

Thanks for getting nerdy with me!

How to encourage reading

What you need to know about Squid Game

Posted on by Julia Tomiak / 5 Comments

I don’t know what’s more concerning: the premise of the Netflix show “Squid Game” or the fact that it is now Netflix’s most popular show ever.

I’ve heard college kids talking about it, then some of my favorite podcasters announced it was the top show on Netflix. So I watched the first episode to see what all of the fuss was about. My first impression: it’s like the people who ran Auschwitz joined forces with the people who ran The Hunger Games to turn innocent children’s games into a harrowing quest for survival.

The Premise

The show is Korean, and I watched with subtitles. The first episode opens with an explanation of Squid Game, in which kids on a playground battle to gain position on a squid drawn in chalk on the ground. It looks innocent enough, but there are menacing undertones.

Then we meet broke and broken Gi-hun, a man with a bad gambling habit and crippling debt. After suffering a beating from the people to whom he owes money, Gi-hun meets a handsome, well dressed man in the subway who promises Gi-hun can win easy money in a game. Gi-hun accepts the invitation, not understanding until it is too late that the opportunity could cost him dearly.

What I didn’t like

I didn’t enjoy the spurting blood. Or the senseless murder. Or the spinning head and swiveling eyes on the giant robotic doll that monitors a deadly game of Red Light, Green Light. (Anyone who moves after the woman on the PA says “Red light” gets shot with swift and lethal precision.) The poor people recruited for this dangerous game, including Gi-hun, lose their individuality and humanity as they march, dressed identically in green exercise suits, onto a giant sandscape for the start of the game. As the violence unfolds, a man sits in a huge cushioned chair and watches it all on a giant TV screen while sipping his drink.

I found it quite disturbing.

After my horror wore off, I realized, like The Handmaid’s Tale or Lord of the Flies, “Squid Game” is supposed to be disturbing. And then I wondered why so many people are drawn to being disturbed.

What intrigues me

I can’t say I like “Squid Game,” but it did get me thinking. Perhaps the appeal lies in the drama of a scenario much worse than life in a pandemic. Or the creators wanted to present a cautionary tale about the folly of poor decisions and wasted money. Or, most likely, its international popularity can be traced to people around the globe feeling helpless and hopeless in a world that values money, power, and capitalism at the expense of human well being.

If it is a story of the privileged manipulating the oppressed, I am tempted to watch and see how it turns out. I hope in the end the oppressed will rise. But I’m not willing to commit valuable hours of my time to watch a creepy drama that reiterates what I already know: humanity needs to do better. I’d rather spend my time focusing on solutions. Or with Ted Lasso.

“Squid Game” piques the public interest in the sensational and the shocking. But while commenting on the darker side of human nature, “Squid Game” is also feeding and breeding that side. How different is the audience in front of the Netflix screen from the character in “Squid Game” watching the murderous game of Red Light, Green Light on his TV? Are we as numb and accepting of death as the person who engineered the deadly game?

If “Squid Game” is capturing and dramatizing the discontent of millions, I hope it will spur them to do more than sit in front of a screen. (Apparently, the developers of the show plan to launch a video game based on Squid Game. Fabulous. More screen time.) I hope they will be inspired by the commentary of “Squid Game” to bring more good into the world, not more fear and violence.

Word Nerd Note: I have only watched the first episode of Squid Game. A reader has told me that as the series goes on, there is more emotional development of the characters.

What do you think of Squid Game and why do you think it’s so popular?

Thanks for getting nerdy with me!

Improving vocabulary

What to know about “epidemic,” “endemic,” and COVID

Posted on by Julia Tomiak / 0 Comment

Public health officials keep referring to the potential for COVID to become “endemic.” Yet I’m not sure the public actually understands what that means. Let the Word Nerd break it down for you.

Defining important public health terms

According to Merriam-Webster, an epidemic (noun) is an outbreak of disease that affects many people at once. As an adjective, epidemic describes disease that affects an unexpectedly large part of a specific population. That’s the key – it is specific to a community or region. (The prefix epi– comes from Greek to mean “on, at, or besides.” -Demic comes from the Greek “demos” meaning district, country, people.”) For example, when COVID first appeared in Wuhan, China and was only there, it was an epidemic. Epidemic also describes something that is actively spreading.

An outbreak is a sudden rise in disease that typically stays within a certain area or population of people.

An outbreak or epidemic becomes a pandemic when disease spreads over a wide geographical area (many continents and countries) and affects a significant portion of the population. Once COVID started spreading to multiple countries and making thousands of people sick, it became a pandemic. (The prefix pan comes from the Greek pan meaning “all, every.”)

Endemic comes from the Greek inos (meaning “of or belonging to”) + demos (district, people). As an adjective, it describes something belonging to a people or country or prevalent in a field or environment. As a noun, it means an organism restricted to a specific region.

If COVID changes to an endemic virus, the number of infections will remain constant from year to year, and it will be always present, like how malaria is endemic in some parts of Africa. So, if COVID becomes an endemic disease, that means it will become a regular part of our world. What does that look like for us?

Life with endemic COVID

Experts are creating models to predict how COVID might behave in the future. They are looking at current data about COVID as well as reviewing how viruses like the 1918 Spanish Influenza have affected populations in the past. Unfortunately, there are a lot of unknown variables about COVID that make predictions difficult.

Scientists expect there will be better immunity to COVID as more people get vaccinated or are exposed to the virus. The population most likely to experience serious COVID illness could change over time from the elderly to infants and young children. That young population will be vulnerable since it is always getting new members (e.g. babies) with no previous exposure to COVID and no immunity to it.

For adults, duration of immunity will depend on how well our immune systems remember the virus and how much the virus changes with time and transmission. The effect of COVID will be determined by how quickly the population develops immunity (faster is better) and if we can minimize person to person transmission.

Let’s look at measles as an example of a disease that has been successfully eliminated in most of the world. Scientists developed a highly effective vaccine to fight the virus, most of the world has taken that vaccine, and the virus has not evolved. However, measles is endemic in some places where vaccination rates are low, like Africa. Outbreaks of measles do occur if enough unvaccinated people get sick with it and spread it.

What we can do

Some scientists believe COVID could follow the same path as the Spanish flu. It will change into an endemic illness – always around with seasonal, and potentially lethal, outbreaks in the winter. But a lot depends on how quickly and effectively we develop immunity to COVID in our population. So that means a lot depends on us.

Diseases like measles and polio have largely been eliminated because of effective and widespread vaccination. We have vaccines available to eliminate the threat of COVID for the long term. We have the power to determine if COVID will become endemic problem with the potential for serious outbreaks or a disease we don’t have to think about much any more. Wouldn’t it be nice to stop thinking and talking about COVID? There’s a way to make that happen.

For further reading…

Thanks for getting nerdy with me!

Book reviews

What I loved about The Vanishing Half

Posted on by Julia Tomiak / 0 Comment
Cover of The Vanishing Half

When my daughter and a librarian friend recommend the same book, I know it’s got to be good. And The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is. I’d even say it’s great. Bennet tells an interesting story that explores the influence of race, family, and personal history on identity.

Everyone who lives in Mallard, Louisiana has fair skin but is still black, and therefore still subject to the prejudice of 1950s America. When they are just 16, identical twins Stella and Desiree Vignes disappear from Mallard without explanation. Years later, when Desiree returns to Mallard with a very dark skinned daughter, the people from her hometown wonder where’s she’s been, why is her child SO DARK, and where is her sister, Stella? Only later will they learn how Stella abandoned her family and her history for “freedom”.

I listened to the audiobook, which was well done. My fellow book club members thoroughly enjoyed The Vanishing Half, saying they couldn’t put it down, and it had them thinking about the characters for days after they finished reading. The Vanishing Half won the Goodreads Choice Award for Historical Fiction in 2020.

What I liked

The prose of The Vanishing Half is beautiful and accessible. Bennett doesn’t follow a chronological timeline, but collapses the years to share important events in the life of each main character, jumping around from the 1950s to the 1990s.

The characters are interesting and multidimensional, and although the main focus of the novel is the disconnect between the twin sisters after one vanishes, all of the main characters in the story have a “half” that has vanished or that they hide. Two of my favorite characters are marginalized black men, one a former convict and one transgender, who would most likely be shunned by society but are two of the most loyal, loving, and compassionate characters in the entire novel.

The Vanishing Half explores themes of finding oneself and defining oneself in relation to family, history, race, and sexual identity. Some characters are transgender or practice cross dressing, and their stories blended in beautifully with the themes of the novel. I am not black or transgender, but reading this book helped me understand, just a little more, how it might feel if I was.

What I didn’t like

Not much. Some reviewers, as well as some of my fellow book clubbers, thought the ending left too much unresolved. But I thought the novel ended as it should, leaving us with some answers and even more questions about how we define ourselves and what is most important to us.

Recommendation

I highly recommend The Vanishing Half in print or audio.

Have you read The Vanishing Half or Brit Bennet’s other novel, The Mothers? If so, what did you think?

Thanks for getting nerdy with me!

Awesome Young Adult Books/Favorite Authors/How to encourage reading

Jason Reynolds shares wise advice about kids and books

Posted on by Julia Tomiak / 2 Comments
Puppy wants to know why we stopped.

You know someone has said something amazing when you have to stop walking the puppy, make the puppy sit, and jot down a quote in your notes app. That happened to me this morning while I listened to the TED Radio Hour podcast featuring Jason Reynolds talking about “The Antidote to Hopelessness.” This man LOVES kids, and he has some pretty profound things to say about them.

Wait, do you know who Jason Reynolds is? He’s just been appointed the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature for the THIRD time in a row. He’s the author of many award winning books for kids and young adults, including All American Boys, (which I LOVED) Ghost, and Long Way Down (a story told in verse about a ten minute elevator ride, which I also LOVED).

He is a 6’3″ black man, sporting dreadlocks, who visits children in schools not just to get them excited about reading but to assure them he understands them, he hears them, he sees them. He also has an awesome voice – literally and figuratively. Let me share some of the awesome things he says with that voice.

Reynolds started writing books at a young age. He self-published some books in his teens, and after college, he took off for New York to break into the publishing world. But it wasn’t until his late 20s, with the publication of When I Was the Greatest in 2014 and then All American Boys in 2015, that Reynolds’ work got noticed.

During the TED Radio Hour interview with host Manuosh Zomorodi , Reynolds talked about how kids handle the challenges of life. He said they move on not because, like adults, they have responsibilities like paying the bills or taking care of family. They move on because they appreciate life and humor. “They are always willing to make a joke,” he said, noting that was an important lesson for the rest of us. “I love jokes, I love laughing. Kids always make time for laughing, and we adults should do the same.” Reynolds said he can’t be “childish”, but he strives to be “childlike”.

Sage advice.

One of my favorite quotes from the podcast, the one that I had to write down, was,

We should sprint toward compassion and crawl toward judgement.”

Jason Reynolds, on the TED Radio Hour

The podcast also shared a clip of Reynolds talking to kids during a school visit, and he said,

Excellence is a habit, not something you turn on and turn off. You will either be excellent or you won’t. Remember that.”

Jason Reynolds

I’m thankful and happy Jason Reynolds is using his amazing voice to connect with kids of all kinds and get them excited about reading. I’m also glad he’s sharing his wisdom with the rest of us. We need more voices like his. Learn more about Jason Reynolds at his website. There is also a video of a conversation with him featured during this week’s National Book Festival sponsored by the Library of Congress.

Have you read any of Jason Reynolds’ books or heard him speak? What did you think?

Thanks for getting nerdy with me!