Green River Tools Spring 1985 Catalog, from: Green River Tools 5 Cotton Mill HiU Brattleboro, VT 05301 Green River Tools has a glossy, color catalog of imported and domestic garden tools. These tools are not all found at , your neighborhood feed and seed store. . One·specialty item is a two-handled, · extra-wide"pitch fork designed to prepare and fluff the soil. A new kind of bird house made of a wood and cement combination that l 1 asts over 20 years is available as well. This catalog would look good on your coffee table, and might e'ven help you tool up for the growing season.-MD The Avant Gardener: The Unique Horticultural News Service, monthly, $15·/year, from: Horticultural Data Processors Box489 New York, NY 10028 The Avant Gardener makes for enjoyable after-dinner reading, if you like to read about flowers, gardening, and green- . ,house cultivation. This eight-page newsletter disseminates information, news, and novelty items from many sources. All articles and news briefs ai;e referenced, enabling the reader to gain access to plants, catalogs, and more information. You'll find suggestions for unusual houseplants, as well as ideas of plant cultivation, species and variety comparisons, and even effects of a nuclear winter on plants. If you like .little tidbits from the plant world, or like to read seed catalogs (yes, many do!), then subscribe to The Avant Gardener. _:_MD Samples of recycled containers for resourcefu.l gardeners (FROM: Anything Grows_!) March/April 1985 RAIN Page 13 WllTERPROOF :5t/OE58R.oAD·8RJMNJED HAT / -~--~ Manure couture-what to wear for comfort- . ablegardening (FROM: Anything Grows!) ACCESS: Ecophilosophy Deep Ec_ology: Living as if Nature Mattered, by Bill Devall and G~orge Sessions, 1985, 266 pp., $15.95 from: Gibbs M. Smith, Inc. POBox667 Layton, UT 84041 Deep Ecology is a delight and a disappoint- · ment. It's a delight because it assembles . in one place a great deal of ecological wisdom from a wide variety of sources. · Short quotations from such ecological sages as Ame Naess (originator of the term "deep ecology"), Henry David Thoreau, Gary Snyder, John Muir, Alan Watts, Paul Shepard, Aldous Huxley, and Martin Heidegger, as well as insights drawn from Eastern philosophies, Christianity, Native American traditions, and feminism, give the book the feel of a rich collage spanning both time and place. This is good; it shows that deep ecology has extensive roots in a variety of traditions, rather than being some new and exotic species of thought _unlike anything we've seen before. · Deep ecologists strive toward what Naesscalls 1'self-realization"-"self" in this context defined not as individual but as the entire community of life on earth. The realization of this greater self requires that humans eschew "mastery" over nature, and work instead to encourage the expression of the full range of potentialities within the biotic community. This is a noble aspiration, and one that strikes a deep chord within me. 5ut recognizing these ecological principles is much easier than creating the social forms that will advance them. And this is where the book falls short. Sessions and Devall emphasize two kinqs of strategies for promoting de~p ecology principles. The first, which they call "the real work" (after Gary Snyder), is to "cultivate ecological consciousness." But the ability to have spiritual communion with old growth forests, by itself, is not going to save them. Add their second strategy, "ecological resisting," and still. we have not gone far enough." Ecological resisting consists of acting from deep ecological principles .and using nonviolent direct action to protect threatened ecosystems. Although this kind of ad hoc protection is an essential tactic, it is by no means sufficient. It still amounts to The essence of deep ecology is the· recognition that human beings are merely one element in a vast web of life and · deserve no priveleged position. It is thus distinguished from "shallow" environmentalism, which seeks to preserve the environment merely for human·benefit. ' attacking the branches inste,ad of the . roots. To get at the roots of ecological destruction, we must restructure every aspect of our lives-not on~y consciousness, but also our technologies, economic institutions, and political forms. Unfortunately, although the authors recognize the need for fundamental social change, they have little to say about what kind of social change we need. (Their chapter on defining the "ecotopian" vision was · disappointi'ng.) A fundamental principle of deep ecology is that everything is connected. But unless it deals with how human consciousness is connected to social institutions and technologiesi any formulation of "deep ecology" seems rather shallow to me. What we need is a kind of social ecology that can illuminate the interconnections among all elements of the social "ecosystem" and show which of these elemei:tts enhance diversity, fecundity,_and self-realization, and which do not. 'fhis kind of understanding must emerge out of the practic.al, material activity of developing new patterns of · land tenure, food and energy production, finance, political decision-making, and so forth. These various efforts to bµild a new kind-of society, and reflection upon how they all fit together to enhance the susta_inability and well-being of the planet, this seems to me to be the real "real work."-FLS
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