Whole earth 107, try this at home

Much of this issue focuses on small-scale maps in the health atlas--resources for personal and planetary health found in backyards, families, neighborhood schools, geographical and spiritual communities. Working on the issue, we've been reminded again of the etymological kinship of "health," "wholeness," and "holy."

Peter Warshall writes (page 77) that it's not possible just to think globally and act locally; we also need to act globally and think locally. We do some of all of that here (see, e.g., pieces on global activism and alternative news sources, pages 88-92). For the most part, though, we're sticking closer to home this time around: local actions and organizations that perform what Ram Dass calls "heart-to-heart resuscitation" on people and places.

We begin in the backyard, with 7Song's tour of medicinal herbs found within ten minutes of his door (page 6). Susun Weed (page 12) expands the herbal discussion, while suggesting that "organic" can conceal as much as it reveals.

David Kupfer's survey (page 16) of "ecofolk" music reminds us that healers--including Earth healers--work with music as well as with herbs and medicines. Larry Dossey, M.D. (page 20) discusses research supporting what cultures have believed for millennia: that spiritual communities can heal through prayer. "Surviving Prostate Cancer" (page 22) is personal, but along the same lines ... finding communities--from the family to strangers on the Internet--that are available to help people make health-care decisions.

The San Rafael Police Department, across the street from our offices, is piloting a different kind of community effort--bringing together police and mental health professionals for the sake of mentally ill people living on our streets (page 26).

The latest Mead2001 award (page 33) goes to a small group in Bhopal that continues--in spite of government and corporate inaction, and sometimes opposition--to care for their city's residents eighteen years after the Union Carbide disaster.

Our cover article on Berkeley's Food Systems Project (page 38) is about local action--beginning with gardens in schools and scaling up to the level of the school district, the city, and the farms of the surrounding region ... all directed toward changing complex local, national, and international systems that are creating crises in both public health and the well-being of communities.

Wade Davis's "Naked Geography of Hope" (page 57) brings us back to the local/global union. When the communities that preserve cultural diversity fall or are pushed off the human map, the world becomes a less healthy place for everyone.

Besides this central focus, we hope as always that the issue embodies healthy diversity--an environmentally friendly camper design by J. Baldwin; new tools; nearly a dozen essays from the Global Business Network, imagining "What's Next" for the coming decade; a remembrance of Ken Kesey, with some of the most moving writing we've ever published; reviews of women's comics and dozens of new books.

We're especially thankful to the Bioneers Conference--just for being, and for help obtaining transcripts that became the basis for the pieces by Susun Weed, Larry Dossey, and Wade Davis. We're also grateful to the Global Business Network for permission to reprint the "What's Next?" essays (page 66).

Our last issue must have struck some chords, or pushed some buttons, because it inspired some of the most impassioned letters we've received in a long time (page 96). We mean it when we say that Whole Earth is a conversation. We don't print only articles we agree with (as if we on the staff agreed about everything!). We hope to feed your appetite for ideas and perspective, and to push your borders a little. When we do, we hope you'll push back, and we want to hear from you.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Point Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group