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Democratic Forest Trusts (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.Democratic trusts with leadership elected by citizen-members promise to solve many of the problems afflicting both traditional government and corporate ownership of forestlands. This article explores these issues in some depth.Complexity and the Dream of Human Control of Eco-Systems (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.The title captures it. I then explore the kinds of institutions compatible with both nature and the modern world that are implied from this analysis.Rethinking the Obvious: Modernity and Living Respectfully With Nature (PDF)The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, Winter, 1997.Modernity is usually considered a wrong turn in terms of respect for and sustaining the environment. I argue the reality is more complex, for modernity has freed us from personal dependence on agriculture, ended the economic value of children, radically reduced the likelihood of large scale wat, and shifted much production to intellectual rather than material capital. This partially decouples society from nature, which gives us important opportunities as well as problems.Towards an Ecocentric Political Economy (PDF)The Trumpeter, Fall, 1996.This paper begins my effort at showing how liberal modernity can be harmonized with an ecocentric perspective on our relationship with the natural world. It is a corrective to much “free market environmental” literature that sacrifices Nature to money as well as to anti-liberal attacks by well-meaning but economically naïve environmentalists.Unexpected Harmonies: Self-Organization in Liberal Modernity and Ecology (PDF)The Trumpeter, Journal of Ecosophy, 10:1, Winter 1993This is my initial paper exploring how what I term ‘evolutionary liberal’ thought can be an important means by which society and nature can be brought into greater harmony. The other Trumpeter papers build on it.Deep Ecology and Liberalism: The Greener Implications of Evolutionary Liberalism (PDF)Review of Politics, Fall, 1996.Liberal thought and deep ecology are usually regarded as mutually exclusive. But the “evolutionary” tradition offers a way to integrate the two through commonalties in the work of David Hume, Michael Polanyi, Arne Naess, and Aldo Leopold, providing a stronger foundation for liberalism while strengthening the case for an ecocentric ethic.(Related subjects: Ecology)Saving Western Towns: A Jeffersonian Green Proposal (PDF)in Writers on the Range, Karl Hess and John Baden, eds., University Press of Colorado, 1998.Developmental pressures in the rural and small town West involve three groups: long term residents, new arrivals, and environmentalists. Today their interests often conflict. This conflict is in part the outcome of institutions which prevent harmonizing competing interests. The concept of developmental trusts, both for rural regions and for small communities offers a means whereby these interests can be harmonized for the benefit of all concerned.(Related subjects: Politics)Social Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Liberalism (PDF)Critical Review, 6: 2-3, 1992.Murray Bookchin is considered a leading radical environmental theorist. However, his analysis is incapable of leading humankind towards a more respectful and sustainable relationship with the natural world. Criticisms of Bookchin from both the deep ecology and evolutionary liberal perspective complement one another, pointing the way towards a better understanding of how modernity relates to the environment.The paper as a whole offers an early discussion of issues that are more clearly addressed in later papers, particularly Deep Ecology and Liberalism (1996) and the three Trumpeter articles in 1997, 1996, and 1993. However, there are other ideas in the article which have not been developed more thoroughly elsewhere.
Many of us gathered yesterday to do a Sunday May Pole over
in Bodega Bay, a small town on the Sonoma coast. This marked the conclusion of our Beltane weekend. The coastal hills and bluffs were alive with flowers, as were people’s
yards. A cool breeze came in off
the Pacific, but the summer fog has not yet arrived. It was a sunny beautiful day.
A wonderful pot luck with lots of good food preceded and
followed our pole dance. We danced
to live music, and concluded with the best weave I’ve ever seen on a big May Pole.
We hardly ever screwed up the
sequence. The musicians, veterans
of many a dance, were impressed.
Somebody said that indicated a good year to come. I hope so. And I hope everyone who celebrated this Sabbat had as good a time.
posted May 5, 2010 at 4:21 pm
We danced the MayPole as well, weaving diverse communities together (as well as Welcoming May & all else that Beltane celebrates).
Our weave was as unique as you can imagine that blend to be: some parts smooth and other parts lumpy. Joy was had on the meadow that afternoon…..Weave & Spin this is how the work begins……so I take that as a good omen as well.
The work isn’t always smooth and perfect. But joy was there and so were we: different folks from different places/trads (public ritual, don’t you know). In a place in a park where MayPoles have been danced for years.
It was all good.
posted May 6, 2010 at 8:02 pm
Yes, We start out by displaying out maypole with the weave from the previous year, I jokingly review it as a record of events. Starting at the top where it is always a mess and working my way down pointing out where someone tripped and fell, was tackled by another dancer, and where I was inadvertently caught and braided into the pole, and later escaped. Then the braid is removed and burned in the bale fire while we weave in the new.
This year we experienced the same event and belief. This year was by far the best weave our pole has ever had, and we all seriously took it as a good omen, for the year as individuals and for the group as a whole.
Blessed Be.