The Scything Handbook is one more on a string of beautiful, helpful (and once common) pearls that can help save us from a debilitating fate as mere "consumers," and restore us to our birthrights as participants in creation. Full disclosure here, I know the author Ian. We're teaching a class together in Oregon this August (info and registration here), and I also wrote the forward to his book, which is brief, clear, and as simple as a clean cut with a sharp blade -- an ideal starting place if you're interested in giving up your stinky, noisy mowing machine and replacing it with an old-world . . .
The Value of Water
The thirsty drink water from a bowl made of mountains, hills, and trees... In the rural area where I lived for 20 years -- and throughout Oregon, as well as elsewhere -- "watershed management" has become a common term. Farmers and ranchers compete with urbanites and salmon for water to feed us all. The media call them "water wars," but without water, no one eats and no one "wins." If the salmon lose, we lose too. The issue looms ever larger: climate change, population growth, and an economy on the verge of collapse. Fear makes it hard to manage anything, but we try. Meanwhile, "watershed . . .
Bill Coperthwaite & the Arts of Culture
A review of A Man Apart, Bill Coperthaite's Radical Experiment in Living, by Peter Forbes & Helen Whybrow A Man Apart, Bill Coperthaite's Radical Experiment in Living, by Peter Forbes & Helen Whybrow I met Bill Coperthwaite in 2007. I had recently read his book, A Hand Made Life, and was deeply impressed by his stories and practice, and the way he was trying to live out an answer to questions that, by our denial of them, define our culture: “Can you have ‘culture’ without violence?” “Is beauty useful?” “Are justice, democracy, and peace possible if most all of our . . .