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INTERVIEW
Wendell Berry’s
thoughts on the good life,
interview by Holly M. Brockman
"The issue here is
the extent to which a family is like a community in its need to
live at the center of its own attention. A family necessarily
begins to come apart if it gives its children entirely to the
care of the school or the police, and its old people entirely to
the care of the health industry..."
HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT
How industrial pollutants and consumptive lifestyles are killing Americans,
by Bobbi Buchanan
If you think teenagers account for worrisome highway statistics, consider this: Everyone who drives, regardless of age, contributes to the leading cause of school absenteeism in the United States—asthma.
HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Children benefit from connecting with nature
Today, 20-year-old University of San Diego student Lauren Haring avows that her childhood experiences in nature were important to her emotional health. Her testimony is among dozens included in Richard Louv’s book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Louv, a scholar and child advocacy expert, draws on personal experiences and a growing body of research to show the benefits of exposure to nature from an early age.
HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Food, vitamins and herbs: Natural remedies
are often overlooked for treating symptoms
Reliable scientific research shows that natural remedies such as these produce significant health benefits. Although alternative medicine has gained popularity over the past few decades, naturopathic physicians and nutritionists say that nutrition and dietary supplements are often overlooked as treatment options.
Dave Etheridge: Running
with ideas
When artist Dave
Etheridge created cutoff shorts from a pair of old blue jeans, he
couldn’t bring himself to throw away the legs. He wondered what
other people did with the severed denim. After finding a pair in a
dumpster, he started collecting what eventually amounted to
thousands of denim pant-legs.
Afterword from
Missing Mountains: We Went to the Mountaintop But
It Wasn’t There,
by
Wendell Berry
In a little more than two centuries—a little more than three
lifetimes such as mine—we have sold cheaply or squandered or given
away or merely lost much of the original wealth and health of our
land. It is a history too largely told in the statistics of soil
erosion, increasing pollution, waste and degradation of forests,
desecration of streams, urban sprawl, impoverishment and
miseducation of people, misuse of money, and, finally, the entire
and permanent destruction of whole landscapes.
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POETRY
The Zen of
Mountain Driving,
by Christina Lovin
Singer/songwriter Brigid
Kaelin has a story to tell,
by Erin Keane
"Coming from Kentucky, I grew up surrounded by an oral tradition.
And when I made documentaries, I learned that there always has to be
a story. So when I write songs, I try to find the story, to make
them interesting to other people, not just me," she said.
Warm up with Kentucky Burgoo,
by Ellen Birkett Morris
One of burgoo’s strengths is its versatility. You can use the vegetables you
have on hand—onions, potatoes, corn, cabbage, okra, lima beans. The meat and
vegetables cook in a tomato-based sauce that you can make sweet (try brown
sugar) or spicy (use hot sauce). Make big batches to freeze or invite your
neighbors over to join in the fun.
Chocolate
Romance: The Way to a Woman's Heart,
by
Heather T. Shaw
Oh, we pretend that the flowers, the lingerie, the card all mean as much as
the sweet treats, but secretly every woman wants her own, carefully selected
box of chocolates—or a gooey chocolate dessert made just for her.
So if you want to really thrill her, try one or all of these three
easy-to-follow recipes. Believe me, you’ll be glad you made the effort.
The Elk on Runaway Ridge: Who Doesn’t Belong Here?,
by Sara Jenkins
The ironing boards are,
quite simply, a visual joke. They are an assemblage of almost
identical objects, more or less the shape of ruminant animals in
having a horizontal body supported by four "legs," one end of the
body blunt, the other extending beyond the legs and tapered in a way
that signifies "head" not "tail." And with 48 of them clustered
loosely on a grassy field and facing the same direction, the sense
of "herd" is undeniable.
Family Values,
from the editor
We’re the
people who believe gifts have to be hunted down like wild game. We’re the ones who make lists and compare prices, or who wait until the last minute to bear the gridlock of cashier lines and traffic. And secretly, when the shopping is done, we worry over money.
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?,
by Cecilia Woloch
Either Americans are getting louder or I'm getting crankier. Or
both. Probably both. It may also be the case that I've developed a
kind of hearing disorder called "figure/ground distortion"
that makes the whole situation worse. As it's been explained to
me—by a speech therapist, not a medical doctor—this condition makes
it difficult for me to distinguish sounds in the foreground—sounds I
want to hear—from background noise. From cacophony.
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