Give Your Reading a Lift

Most North Americans think of ginseng as a Chinese herbal remedy, a mood lifter and energizer, encountered most often in the health food aisle. But David Taylor's new book, Ginseng, the Divine Root, tells a much more complex story. Journalist Taylor followed the herb for a year, from its native forests in Appalachia (it's nearly extinct in Asia) to the streets in Hong Kong, where a pound of wild roots can bring $400. Along the way, Taylor looks back, too, to learn that Jesuits in colonial Canada first recognized that the Asian and North American plants were viritually identical, launching over 300 years of lucrative international trade. He also investigates the health claims (confirmed and purported) by traditional herbalists and modern phamaceutical peddlars. No wonder Taylor's subtitle is: The Curious History of the Plant that Captivated the World. To learn more about the book, see David Taylor's website .

Reading this delightful book was part of the too-long research for an article that I wrote this week. Although ginseng is quite fascinating, I needed to hurry up but couldn't seem to get just the info that I needed. So I kept reading and reading, plus interviewing a few experts and re-reading their remarks. The process was dragging, which often happens to me at least, if not to most nonfiction writers.

This time, though, I found a way to perk up my research by getting away from the printed word. Though there are no movies about ginseng (an empty niche, Ken Burns?), I found a cool video showing an herbalist digging the roots on YouTube Digging Part I . There were some other lively entries in the category, too, including one the debate about health effects and several music-related. While at the site, I checked for Rachel Carson and Henry Thoreau-related videos and came up with a few of those, too.

I think I'll make YouTube a regular stop on my reading list. I think it can give visual variety, authenticity, and even humor to your reading life. That's a lift from ginseng I didn't expect.

Thoreau-ly Useful

Thoreau-aholics everywhere will be pleased to learn that The Walden Woods Project has just finished scanning all 20 volumes of The Writings of Henry David Thoreau. Walden, The Maine Woods, all the journals, and many other works as published by Houghton Mifflin in 1906 are now available online.

I've already used it. As a nature writer, I often want to know what Thoreau said about a plant, animal, or issue for possible inclusion in an essay or article. Yesterday, I was working on a piece about American ginseng, a woodland herb found in Eastern hardwood forests valued for medical properties by Native Americans and ever since. It sounded like the kind of plant that would attract Thoreau's keen eye, and I was able to quickly search to find what he had to say about it on June 3, 1851. To investigate your own Thoreau-ly fascinating questions, go to your favorite search engine, type in the term or phrase of interest, plus "Thoreau writings1906" (no space between writings and 1906). So cool.

To learn more about The Walden Woods Project's efforts to promote Thoreau's literary and philosophical legacy, visit their website: Walden Woods Project. Other worthy recent projects include opening a self-guided interpretive trail, "Thoreau's Path on Brister's Hill," and offering for sale a unique Steinway concert grand piano featuring maquetry depicting scenes from the Massachusetts woods. Some of the proceeds from the piano's sale will help support conservation of Walden Woods.

The Thoreau volumes join many other classic writings about nature that are free for the asking and occasionally free for the searching on the web. While teaching online mini-classes about Evolution, I found Origin and many other books by and about Darwin among the 20,000 volumes in Project Gutenberg's e-library. If you'd like free access to some classics online, visit Project Gutenberg. Or, you could go to the library . . . .