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Whole Earth,  Summer, 2001  

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While Bruce frantically produced this issue, I went off to Herefordshire, England with Rocky Mountain Institute's (Amory Lovins's) team to help Bulwer's (the world's largest producer of hard cider) prosper and simultaneously move towarff sustainable agriculture.

The Brits having killed off their island's wolves, the food web seeks its revenge'through the microcosmos. Mad cow and foot-and-mouth microbes are the daily fodder of gossip and mortuaries. The hundreth BSE victim died during my stay. Black smoke of burning cattie rises in columns from the pastoral romance of perfect countrysides. I couldn't walk any of the famous paths and Roman roads in the Cotswolds or Wales; trekking is shut down for fear of spreading disease. I stopped at an exquisite all-rock Norman church on the Wales border and talked to a local woman as she licked her fingers clean of a chocolate-and-marshmallow "sticky" and explained how down the road one farmer had his sheep trapped in a muddy field, and couldn't move them because of foot-and-mouth. They bleated and suffered, the government papers to move them didn't arrive, and he couldn't take it and hanged himself. Grim tales, the Dickensian dark belly of verdant green fields, the backside of ley hedges enclosing pointillest apple trees blossoming pink and shocking hardhat-yellow fields of oil rape seed.

Bulmer's secures the cash flow to orchardists with thirty-year guaranteed contracts for cider apples. It helps maintain the most rural county of England. We looked to see if a business case could be made for sugar beets, corn, or barley to replace imported "industrial" glucose; if the Bulmer mills could also produce organic fruit juices (especially from dessert instead of cider apples); if polycultures could remove the need for pesticides and agro-chem fertilizers; if tree prunings could be ground up and made into a medium for shiitake mushrooms; if a by-product of rape seed oil could become a biodiesel. Amory worked his magic on the factory itself by showing how reducing friction in wrongly sized pipes could save thousands of dollars worth of pumping costs and how energy efficiencies would accelerate profits. And the sun shown for three straight days, which was a rarity marveled at in pubs and by kayakers on the river Wye. It helped us parachuted-in consultants become believable.

Twenty miles away, in a town of 1,500 with thirty-two bookstores, the Whole Earth dialogs on chain bookstores, amazon.com, and independents seemed unreal. The Hay-on-Wye book festival featured stars and budding writers of the UK, most completely unknown to me or my American friends. Only Harry Potter seemed to bridge the Atlantic. And there was Bill Clinton talking about conflict resolution to standing applause, shaking hands as if all were well, and demonstrating convincingly that he does love hard-copy reading. The Internet was like a far ghostly creature from across the moors.

Whole Earth News

A beautiful memorial for Donella Meadows took place on Earth Day weekend at the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts. Whole Earth contributors Vicki Robin, Hunter Lovins, Paul Hawken, and Randy Hayes gave witness. This was the message Donella wrote to herself, pinned above her computer:

   My writing is a search for truth.
   It comes out of love.
   It empowers;
   It does not judge or accuse or rob anyone of
   dignity or respect.

   It is clear and precise.

   The passage of my words through the minds
   of others leaves them more open, more
   thoughtful, compassionate, committed to
   Quality.

   Every one of my readers is the Key to the
   Workability of the Planet.

   I give in my writing of myself and my
   struggles unstintingly;
   It is all I have to give;
   The `I' of it is unimportant,
   It is the universal humanness that is
   important.

RELATED ARTICLE: PROVIDENCE SPARES WHOLE EARTH STAFF

Whoever is running the universe must want to see WE continue. In April, a huge, invisibly fungal-rotted oak tree split and crashed onto the driveway of the Falkirk Center, home to our offices. Half the tree obliterated the Saturn sedan of Dana Melnichek, a Falkirk cultural assistant, who was literally seconds away from climbing in. (That's Dana, on the left above, surveying the damage with her friend Joan Peck.) The other half of the tree landed in the stretch where Emily (with passenger Devon) and I had both been parked a few minutes before. Peter, who usually also parks in that driveway, was away giving a speech. Had the oak split at a slightly different moment the entire staff might now be fond (we like to think they'd be fond) memories. We're waiting for further word from the universe. --MKS

COPYRIGHT 2001 New Whole Earth LLC
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