Down with Descartes: For better or worse, the distinction between humans and nature is collapsing. THE SHAMAN Martín Prechtel once told me that back in his village, no one would say, “I am healthy but my child is sick.” A person would say, “My family is sick” or “My village is sick.” To think any one individual could be healthy when his or her family, village, or indeed the land, the water, or the planet were not would be as absurd as saying, “I’ve got a fatal liver disease, but that’s just my liver—I am healthy!” Just as my sense of self includes my liver, so theirs included their social and natural community. [Orion]
Why a Gulf Wetland May Become a City: If America learned one thing from hurricane Katrina, hydrologists argue, it should be this: Don’t fill in tideland marshes and build on them. Such human activity, they insist, diminishes the marshes’ ability to absorb some of the wallop of storms as they strike coastal communities. [AlterNet]
Dressing Locally: You’ve probably tried eating locally. What about dressing locally? In my small town in western Colorado, gardeners abound, but seamstresses and tailors are endangered species, made scarce by $9.99 imported t-shirts. Yet local clothes are still grown and raised in the town’s cavernous old livery, where my friend Elisabeth Delehaunty runs her sewing machine and hoards her vast collection of fabric. [Orion]
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