Nick Offerman gets philosophical on Mother Nature in new book: ‘Were all the same batch of molecules’ – USA TODAY
Amy Poehler teases 'Duncanville''s mini 'Parks and Rec' reunion
The season two premiere of Fox's Duncanville" will feature a mini 'Parks and Rec' reunion with Nick Offerman, Adam Scott, Aubrey Plaza and Retta all voicing characters. The animated comedy follows a spectacularly average teenage boy named Duncan and his family. Poehler, an executive producer, voices both Duncan and his mother. (May 20)
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Nick Offerman is not Ron Swanson.
Anyone with lingering confusion about the differences between Swanson, the fictional mans man and staunch libertarian on NBC's Parks and Recreation, and Offerman, the mans man and bleeding-heart liberal actor who played him, will have their misguided notions of the real-life man quickly dispelled in the pages of his new book, Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside"(Dutton, out Tuesday).
The book is an amiable ramble outdoors,with Offerman sharing his assorted experiences in the wild and his musings on nature, land use, labor, agriculture and community. He takes readers on the hikingtrails of Glacier National Park, where he gets into scrapes with two of his best buds, Wilco songwriter Jeff Tweedy and author George Saunders. He walksthe verdant pastures of an English sheep farm with shepherd James Rebanks. And he visits the sprawling RV parks of the American Southwest, where he camped in an Airstream with wife Megan Mullally during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Offerman, 51,is generous with hilarious anecdotes, including a choice discursion about how both he and his wife ended up kissing Rob Lowe during their careers ("Now that I think about it, given some slight allowances for time and space, you could technically say that RoLo, Megan, and myself had a threesome").
But when he's not being funny,Offerman, who is also a professional woodworker and cohosts NBC's crafts competition show "Making It" withAmy Poehler,is quite serious, waxingphilosophical about Mother Nature and our relationship with it, and how he thinks we can live better in it.
Offerman spoke to USA TODAY about his new book and his optimism for, and hope in, humanity.
Question: You make a compelling case forpeople to learn to make and build things with their own handsand to do their own labor.Can coddled city folk learn to do these things even if theyve been taught not to all their lives?
Nick Offerman: Theres been this renaissance of creativity and artisanryin my lifetime where people are becoming reinvigorated by how things are made. I like to think that we as a society are waking up to the fact that corporate-made goods, and especially corporate-made food, are not the best for us or our planet. Across the board, you see it everywhere: people are learning to grow food, raise rotationally grazed livestock andgrass-fed pasture-raised eggs, but also clothing, beer, spirits, barbecue, woodworking, blacksmithing. You name it, people are reteaching ourselves the old ways of doing things because theres a purity to them.
Q: What do you think has kept people from being more self-sufficient?
Offerman: People everywhere can now live comfortably without ever owning a socket set, because the consumer paradigm has made it available:Theres an app for everything. If you need somebody to come over and change your lightbulbs, you can do itwith a touch of a button. And that nefariously plays on human nature. I as much as the next monkey am like, Oh, I can either climb this ladder and do it myself or I can press a button and have it done for me? Of course Im going to choose the button. Its having the wherewithal to say, Hang on guys, I happen to know that button is dangerous.
Q: You write about the gratification you feel changing a tire, and it made me want to change my next flat. My dad taught me how when I got my first car, but I've always defaulted calling AAA.
Offerman: It makes perfect sense. Among other things, you get dirty changing a tire. And weve been taught we should aspire to a life where we never get dirty because its beneath us. Thats part of what weve been sold, that you deserve to put your feet up and take it easy, so put down your broom and buy a vacuum cleaner. Getting your hands dirty is for laborers and peasants. You should aspire to be a hip-hop star and relax on your yacht while other people are getting their handsdirty. Luckily, I grew up in a family of people who still get their hands dirty, and I grew up understanding that not only is that not beneath me, thats a super power.
Q. The pandemic seems to have a lot of people rethinking the way they live. Do you think there's an opportunity here for meaningful, lasting change?
Offerman: Ultimately, it needs to reflect back on the way we vote. If were going to reshape our economy, it's going to beby the labor class standing up and saying, Wait a second, my life has so much more value than you are giving it in this low-wage job. And people often take umbrage with me and they say, Well sure, you can say that because you are paid very well to do what you do, but I felt the same way when I was a carpenter and when I was alaborer for many years before I started doing well as an actor.
Through no wisdom of my own, but through the love and perspicacity of my family, I understood the value and the recompense of doing hard work out of affection for my loved ones and for those around me. And then it bleeds into affection for our ecosystem. The older I get, the more I read, the more I understand its all the same. Were all in the same family. The bluebirds Im looking at out the window right now if I treat them with disrespect, thats eventually going to come back and bite somebody with the butterfly effect. Weve got to understand were all the same batch of molecules.
Q: Are you optimistic?
Offerman: Im always hopeful in humanity. … In my lifetime, weve come a long way. Same-sex marriage has become a yawn of a subject, and we were going to war over it 20, 30 years ago. The ever-increasing, alarming signals of climate change, more and more, I think humanity has the capacity to wake up and say, OK, I guess wed better do something about this. The same way that nowadays we say, Can you believe we used to smoke in restaurants? The fact that there was a smoking section in airplanes? Its like having a smoking section within your Prius. So thats laughable and crazy now, and my optimistic hope is (that) before long, well similarly be saying, Can you believe that everyone used to have a household SUV?
Q: Throughout your book, wherever you happen to be in the wild, you pause to reflect on the indigenous tribes that used to live there. Is that something you think about often?
Offerman: Its something Ive come around to. … I had a wonderful moment some years ago, my wifes band was playing at the Sydney Opera House. There was an announcement before the show started that said, Lets just take a moment to recognize that this theater is built on the land of this aboriginal tribe and this peninsula was a traditional place of performance and festival. So lets take a moment of silence and respect for those tribes we displaced, but lets not forget that thats how we came to be here tonight.
And I just thought, boy, thats a big deal, to simply cop to culpability. Thats all Im asking for. Nobody should be self-righteous. Were all just farting, (defecating) eating mammals. The beautiful thing is, were doing our best to create beautiful sandwiches and works of literature and symphonic compositions and also governments and schools and municipalities and bridges. Well never be done. Were always going to continue to do it in a way thats better for us and better for Mother Nature if we hope to survive.
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Nick Offerman gets philosophical on Mother Nature in new book: 'Were all the same batch of molecules' - USA TODAY