less strident, still committed
Long-time readers of this blog and its predecessor may have noticed that I used to blog more about ecology and sustainability than I have for the last while. There are a number of reasons for this. 1. I started blogging about the same time as I started my “community supported music” initiative, patterned after the “community supported agriculture” (CSA) movement. When this first began, I found that it took a long time to explain to people what this was all about, what was (is) the philosophy behind it, etc. It seemed that very few people had ever heard of this stuff before. In fact, that was a significant part of why I began blogging in the first place – I wanted to have an accessible online “library” where I reflected on these things, and to which I could direct people with whom I am in conversation. (You can find these writings under the “community supported music” and “sustainability and music” categories in my former blog.) By now it seems that this “CSA” concept/philosophy/approach has become far more common, familiar, and (dare I say it?) mainstream. Whereas before it took me a while to explain it, by now all I have to do is reference the CSA concept and most people immediately know what I’m talking about. I now see articles on this in very mainstream publications all the time. And there are more and more people doing exactly what I’ve been doing – not only participating as members of CSAs (which are multiplying all over the place), but adapting the concept to all kinds of other ventures – community supported fishing, community supported restaurants, community supported theatre, community supported art, etc., etc., etc. This is, I think, a wonderful development, and it’s great to see. It has also meant that while what I’m doing is still somewhat unique, it no longer seems nearly so strange or weird or in need of in-depth-and-constant explanation. 2. A second and closely related reason why I’ve not been blogging about ecological/sustainability issues as much lately is simply that, in the past few years, it feels like these concerns/observations/analyses have gone from being kind of “way out there” to becoming, to a significant degree, very mainstream and commonly articulated-and-argued, if not universally accepted. When folks like Gwynn Dyer (hardly someone who people would write off as an environmental fanatic) are doing detailed and widely-read analysis of the geopolitics of climate change, it seems clear that voices articulating the need for major change from “business as usual” no longer sound like wacko “voices in the wilderness” and are resonating loudly in much more mainstream circles. Again, this strikes me as a very good thing. 3. Perhaps the biggest reason why my blogging about these matters has dropped off lately has to do with my own personal circumstances, and those of my family. It was easier...
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