Last night I was hanging with my friend Robin and she was reading me this chapter from Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind, a book I bought several years ago when I was out of mine. The chapter she was reading was an interview of a guy named Carl Anthony, whom I'd never heard of, by Theodore Roszak, whom I had. Roszak's been around forever; the first book of his I remember is The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition. I was too busy making countercultural to read it at the time, and later, after I came down and got old, it seemed irrelevant. Roszak is your basic Luddite, which I don't hold against him (some of my best friends, etc.), but I do hate him for other reasons that I find it difficult to articulate. It's just a feeling, you know? Like meeting someone at a party and wishing you'd gone for that Black Belt in May-Hem-Do. I don't know. I guess it's not a real rational sorta thing, but hey, what're ya gonna do?

We were trying to figure out if this Carl Anthony dude was black. Sure seemed like it. He was saying things that most of us Caucasians wouldn't be quick enough to think of right off. I guess another clue was the title of the chapter: "Ecopsychology and the Deconstruction of Whiteness." Robin and I were having a rockin good time reading and kibitzing on this exchange, especially when Roszak was digging his own grave in passages like the following...

ROSZAK: ...there are a whole set of references that the dominant white society has with blacks and these include nature references. But in the case of blacks, the psychological associations don't come out favorably. They come out as reference to jungles, savages, and wildness, and they take on a threatening aspect. Has it ever occurred to you that this is a strange reversal of the way in which nature metaphors and associations work?

ANTHONY: It's interesting to me that you used the word "jungle," because now we call it "rainforest."

ROSZAK: Rainforest, right. More benign. "Jungle" is the more menacing word.

ANTHONY: And when I was growing up, we always talked about "swamps." Now we talk about "wetlands." Do you know what a "wetland" is? It's a swamp that white people care about.

Mining for deeper background (and yet another citable source for my quasi-mythical book-in-progress), I came across the following piece from Psychology Today...

The term "ecopsychology" was coined 25 years ago by Theodore Roszak, Ph.D., author of The Voice of the Earth (Simon & Schuster, 1992) and a history professor at California State University at Hayward. It is grounded in the notion that people experience what renowned ethnobiologist and Harvard University professor Edward O. Wilson, Ph.D., calls "biophilia," an innate need to interact with the living world of which we're a part. But as humankind becomes increasingly reliant upon modern technology and less in tune with the natural environment, this disconnection from our roots instills feelings of restlessness and alienation and may undermine emotional health.

from: Nature's Path To Inner Peace by Carin Gorrell
source: Psychology Today, 1 July 2001
via: HighBeam Research
Copyright © 2001 Sussex Publishers, Inc.

Speaking of emotional health, to my way of thinking both Theodore Roszak and Carl Anthony are whackjobs of the first water, hearing -- as they claim to -- the lamentable cries of the wounded Earth. Uh-huh. But surely Anthony is the lesser nutcase -- the less deluded about the "spirituality" of Nature-with-a-capital-N, and a whole lot hipper with respect to swamps.

You think the server has been my biggest problem lately? Guess again. Here's what's really been going on...

"The Committee" has masterminded a fiendish, far-reaching plot rooted in the highest corridors of power. Code name: Tantalus. Tantalus -- all the more daring because it is so obvious -- strikes at the very lifeline of humanity. Its aim is enormous, horrible, and unknown even to the superpowers. Only one man, Christopher Locke, an unsuccessful college professor, can expose the trail that begins with the brutal execution of every person in an obscure South American town. But even as Locke navigates the labyrinth leading to The Committee and Tantalus, The Committee is hunting him down, using even his most trusted friends against him.

For more about the book, go here. For more about the author, check the following.

Entertaining is author Jon Land's top priority by Carol McCabe
source: Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, 13 December 1995
via: HighBeam Research

All that traffic seems to have reduced my poor wi'l server to a puddle of molten virtuality. You heartless bastards!

Actually, I'm not sure what the problem was, but it's fixed now. I think. We shall soon see...

Yesterday I revived a mailing list I started in 1995 when I was working at IBM. It has nearly 5,000 subscribers, though I hadn't posted to it in well over a year. I sent a simple message -- some of them have reached 3,000 words in the past -- basically saying hello, how ya doin, and inviting these "Valued Readers" (a long-standing joke) to check out this blog.

Well, pardners, I don't think I've ever gotten as many replies in a single 24-hour period in the whole time I've been online. And that's been a long old time (e.g., my email address turned ten this year). Even more amazing, this mail tsunami was 99.9% positive. Usually, given half a chance, people will kick my ass just for the hell of it. But everyone's been real cordial and sweet. I'll have to do something to rile them all up again. Don't worry, I'll think of something.

One thing that stood out in these responses was that many folks still prefer lists over blogs. I've been thinking about this for a long time now, as has my friend and co-author David Weinberger. Lists and blogs have differing strengths and weaknesses, and not all these are patently obvious at first glance. Plus, many of these differences relate not to the form itself, but to readers' proclivities (sometimes referred to as "likes and dislikes," in case you don't have a dictionary handy).

At any rate, I'd like to thank all of you who've started checking out the CBO site as the result of my mailing. I can assure you that I'll be listing & blogging both in future -- and that yes, I did take that bath. <g>