Letters To Whole Earth

Whole Earth, Summer, 2000

Whole Earth is a conversation. Compliments, cavils, and corrections are welcome. Letters and e-mail may be (reluctantly) edited for space or clarity.

We have fans

As a charter subscriber to Whole Earth, there have been many editions that I couldn't even begin to understand, but I faithfully read through them, with the belief that some day much of what I was reading would make sense--and it so frequently has.

But with this Spring [2000] issue, I am truly overwhelmed. It is simply wonderful--and Paul Hawken's article on WTO caps it all.

As I am 77, I can't help but wonder if some of the kids I saw growing up with mine in San Francisco and the Bay Area have gone on to be the leaders that Paul talks about--and if how we raised them in those days has borne fruit.

Warmly, Ruth Gottstein (by e-mail) Volcano Press

The color photography of Antarctica in this [Spring 2000] issue is wonderful. If this has anything to do with the new art director, Stefan Gutermuth, kudos to him too.

The Stephen Pyne excerpt was so good, I cried out when I got to the end of the spread and realized it was not the start of a feature.

Paul Bissex (Posted on the WELL)

Thanks for the lovely magazine each quarter.

Its material is useful and the information great. During the past couple of years, I have been thoroughly enjoying it.

The new format is "friendlier" and the classified section is interesting. Winter '99 issue: The article on the "nine-dot problem" was simply amazing. The gist of it was: There can be a different world beyond the simply obvious--one should develop the ability of looking beyond the apparent to discover the endless world of creativity!

I hope you guys keep us changing, like what you have been doing in the past.

Arif Masoud Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

I think you folks edit the magazine with a certain elegance no newspaper has ever known.

Thanks again.

Pat Holt (former book editor, San Francisco Chronicle) (by e-mail)

I have been a long-time subscriber and small-time supporter of WE and its former incarnations, and if I was limited to just one magazine, it would be this one. I enjoy having my perspective tweaked, validated, or thoroughly confronted every time I open the pages. I can't think of any other source of information that has made a greater impact on my life than WE. I feel that I am offered a greater view of the world from WE that I couldn't otherwise obtain for myself. I found Issue 100 [Spring 2000] particularly useful in the understanding of just what we are losing with the globalization of the world.

I have been trying to think of what new tools for modern life WE could review, and all I could think of were tools to be used to live more consciously and deliberately and with less consumption. Then it occurred to me that you folks have been doing that all along. There also seems to me to be a difference between being a green consumer and green consumerism, so maybe tools that help distinguish between the two would be useful.

It sometimes seems to me that WE is rather like the World Wide Web in print. The best browser available on what is going on in the world, that isn't filtered by big corporations, governments, or greed.

Maybe it is not so much what you folks present but the way you present it--always with an eye to how the individual could use the item, book, or idea to enhance their life and that of the Earth. This seems just as valid to me now as it did in the seventies, when I first became acquainted with

CoEvolution Quarterly. Paul Hawken mentions in his report of his experience in Seattle last November that there are no leaders, per se, of the protest against the WTO, but that there were thought leaders. I only recognized a few of the names he listed, but I am pretty sure that I heard of them first in WE's pages. Perhaps more tools on how to access these thought leaders would be useful. But, isn't that what your articles do already? I am sure that you offer as much (and from as many) of these thought leaders as space and money will allow in each issue.

Thanks again for a useful (at least to me) magazine.

Kay Robison (by e-mail)

My name is Lee Peh Long, I wrote a letter to the editor to WER not long before I left the States and it was published (to my surprise!). Now I am in Malaysia, a ThirdWorld country where the postal service is TOTALLY UNRELIABLE.

I want to subscribe to WER but I am afraid that the local Malaysian postal service will do the same thing as to my other magazine subscriptions --non-deliveries, torn magazines, and so on.

Malaysia is a weird country--they censor almost everything. It is not unlike the North Korea, where everything must conform to the "Leader"'s liking; anything that doesn't conform to it will be censored. They even censored a CARTOON MOVIE--The Prince of Egypt, a cartoon about the story of Moses, and the reason they censored the cartoon was because it was about JEWS!

I came to Malaysia because I work here. The local authority has (I suspect) censored some of my other foreign subscriptions, because I have so many NON-deliveries. You have to live here to know the frustration of NOT receiving the magazines you subscribe to and you know there is NO WAY you can get anyone from anywhere to listen to you.