Letters to the Editor

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CHANGING PARADIGMS

In permaculture classes we say that we know what the problems are; let's focus on solutions. This clears our minds so that we can imagine what can work. Students may then create whole system designs that sustain themselves through healthy interrelationships between elements that generate the needed resources [Cover story, Feb. 28: "

"].

In life, we see what the problems are. Sometimes larger institutions and smaller ones acting from within an aging paradigm based on resource consumption create deficits. Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University, calls it Stone Age thinking: We find things and we burn them. We do this to oil, to forests, to fisheries and to human beings with disastrous effect.

A sustainable age calls for us to foster different skills and behavior patterns to succeed. In order to decrease our footprint on the land, use fewer resources or supply our own needs, developing green technologies is not enough. We must also become excellent communicators, facilitators and teachers who cooperate with and value each other, our most important resource. Technologies don't create change; people do. There may always be those who cannot shift gears, or cannot see the whole picture. The solution is to ourselves become powerful agents of positive change.

EcoVersity's instructors are community members and practitioners of every sort. Schools and learning environments in the region embarking on a sustainable path abound. So, the campus is Santa Fe or New Mexico or the world. Class will continue no matter what. Let's get to work.

Thanks to all of EcoVersity's instructors, students and staff members for creating a unique and valuable asset to Santa Fe over these several years. I hope Santa Fe supports your every effort to keep teaching and learning. I also send enormous respect to Fiz Harwood's friends, colleagues and family who created a compassionate space for her to pass on safely with love.

Amy Pilling

Santa Fe


THE FUTURE IS NOW

I feel compelled to share some of my thoughts, as a longtime friend of Fiz and former board member of Prajna. Frances Harwood was a scholar who pondered long and deep. She had moxie and an anthropologist's skepticism about the status quo. Her instincts about where to look, what to cultivate and what to abandon in the search for meaning were imbued with her quirky integrity and brilliance.

What a shame, indeed, that the time to bring her vision for the future of education to fruition is fast ebbing away, into the land of lost opportunities. What if Santa Fe could lead the world with a model of education concerning itself with the synergy of what Fiz called Indigenous Mind with Industrial Mind? This is what Fiz was working on when we lost her. Is it too late to establish an educator like Fiz at her school? I often wondered, after we lost Fiz, how it would be if Dr. Gregory Cajete were funded to develop this model, along with Amy Pilling, Chellis Glendinning, Thomas Berry, Oren Lyons, Ruth Zaporah, Sibyl Harwood, the Luces, the Pittmans and the willing students out there who are hungering for this, now.

In most ways, Fiz' search for a model of synergy between Indigenous Mind and Industrial Mind arose, in my opinion, from the way she worked with her grief, a grief anthropologists feel keenly, always, as strangers and bystanders. In this case, it is grief for our mother, the Earth, and all her relations. Rather than suffer the compounded grief of being a bystander, in this case, Fiz created EcoVersity. It grieves me to see it slip away.

Joey Townsend

Santa Barbara, Calif.


WARNING SHOT

I, as an American citizen, remain outraged at the insensitivity or inability of our "elected" (servants of the public trust) to continually ignore we the people of this country and to constantly thwart our will, excusing us as ignorant, biased, xenophobic [Outtakes, March 7: "

"]. We, the American people, don't want any more traversing of our borders, no more infiltration of our country and the resulting desecration of our sovereignty from the likes of supporters, the likes of a Mr. Coss.

If you can't hear us, Mr. Mayor, get a hearing aid, some tutoring on how to receive, open, read and operate today's technological advances-whatever you need to hear or see the message(s) of the American people. How dare you, Mr. Mayor, so blatantly wave your defiant, socialist, globalist legislative resolve and, trust me, limited authority, to support the law-breaking illegal aliens and their co-hordes, of which I am convinced you are one, while parading your disgusting opposition of the law-abiding citizenry of your fair city, the state and, via the Internet the rest of this country.

If you don't like living under and/or standing up for the "rule of law," including FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LAW, Mr. Mayor, I suggest you step down, relinquish your office and official standing as a representative of the people of your city. Once you leave office-and I do hope you leave and take your dictatorial, criminal-supporting attitude with you-then feel free to join whatever communist organization you so choose.

To those who support you, know that the rubber band of tolerance for the rubbish you support and the rhetoric you spew is coming to its end. "Hunger has no border"-neither will the memories of those American people you betrayed…

Steve Taff

Las Vegas, Nev.


THE OTHER REALITY

I just read the interview with John Agresto [Cover story, March 7: "

"] and was very disappointed. For a much more real and much darker view of the Iraq adventure of John and his friends in the CPA, read

The Prince of the Marshes

by Rory Stewart. Rory met John in Iraq, and gives him some ink, and you will find it interesting, but it does not flatter John, who should have stayed home.

Chris Mechels

Santa Fe


IN DEFENSE OF PIGS

When I first glanced at "

" [Total Pig, March 7], I saw the photo of some "artwork" of butcher blades hanging over miniaturized families of pigs, and I thought, "This must be some pro-vegetarian art exhibit." So then I began reading, and was surprised and disgusted by lines like "The potato salad was too heavy on the mayonnaise, but chunks of meaty bacon made up for the gloppy texture" and "Maybe it's all right to eat at a chain when it serves a kind of food that's rare. Or maybe that's just a deal I'm making with my conscience because I can't get enough pork." I almost wonder if this whole article is a joke. Your conscience? If you had a conscience, you would read the information on the cognitive abilities, awareness and living hell pigs go through (

) and not give rave reviews to a place that has butcher knives hanging over piglets in celebration! I cannot believe how disgusting and ignorant this food review is. This is not a "veg-head" righteous rant, this is common sense and decency coming your way. I hope you can digest some of it.

Colin Donoghue

Albuquerque


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