Whole Life Times: We Piss You Off. You’re Welcome.

October 2007 | Letters from Readers

We Piss You Off. You’re Welcome.

A recent conversation at our house went something like this:

“This magazine makes me angry.”

“Well, don’t read it.”

“I have to read it. Everyone should read it.”

I needed a few moments to chill and damp down my fury (no, that’s not too strong a word) after reading “The Hope is Us,” (Aug. ’07) a review of the film, The 11th Hour, a commentary on and proposed solutions for the mess we are making of our planet. Next I read “The Good($) Life,” an observation of America’s excesses and shortcomings, and began to hyperventilate and sigh. I kept it up through “The Real Wealth of Nations” which made a trenchant point of political indifference to the “work of caring,” and so it goes. “Mobile Madness” in the June issue had me positively apoplectic about the greed and intransigence of politicians and large corporations.

Unless we can begin to constrain our constant quest for products and procedures to make us artificially beautiful, healthy and thin (while gorging on junk food), to have the very latest technology, to drive the most up-to-the-minute mega gas guzzler, to have a huge house with a mortgage we can barely afford, heat it to tropical temperatures or chill it like a deep freeze, and then to stuff the house so full of consumer goods that we need to rent a storage locker to take the overflow, we will only keep wanting more, with the ensuing environmental chaos your magazine makes clear month after month. I used to brag to my European friends that everything is bigger and better in America, but now I’m beginning to feel ashamed of that very thing. We all need to feel ashamed of our excesses and wastefulness and take personal responsibility for the future of our environment and the welfare of our fellow human beings. Change must burgeon up from the bottom as well as trickle down from the top.

Whole Life Times keeps churning my feelings of outrage, and that is a good thing. My concern is that those of us who already make “conscious choices” make up a large proportion of your readership.

Have you considered broadening your scope by mailshotting some politicians, schools, colleges, libraries with a few copies of your magazine or having a syndicated column in local newspapers? Your publication is so thought provoking and well written that I wish it was required reading for all.

Keep up the good work and I’ll try to get my breath back before the next issue comes out.
— Carol Cooper, via email

Ed. Note: Whew! Thanks Carol, for some of the highest praise we’ve received in a long time. We try to hit up as many libraries and colleges as possible in attempt to widen our audience, but “mailshotting” politicians is not a half-bad idea. In the meantime, subscriptions on our website are free to anyone who signs up, so if “someone” were to add folks they thought could benefit from WLT… we’d be none the wiser. Not that we’d ever suggest impersonating a politician, or anything like that.

“Greenwashing” a Carnivorous Diet
I’m left cold by the article about Grace chef Neal Fraser’s “sustainable tasting menu” (“Find Grace Close to Home,” July ’07). I simply can’t muster any sympathy for how difficult it is to find local, sustainable slaughterhouses and meat packers.

Raising and killing animals for food is not sustainable by any definition. I can tolerate an argument that one can eat an egg without killing a chicken or drink milk without killing a cow. However, one can’t carve a pork chop from a pig and expect the pig to keep on producing pork chops for you, or more piglets, for that matter. An animal is not an apple tree that continues fruiting until you chop it down.

Labels like “sustainable,” “local,” “natural,” “free-range,” “cage-free” or “grass-fed” exist simply to mask the unattractive reality behind the slaughter of animals for human consumption — and assuage our guilt about it. The fact that some animals may be allowed to live peacefully is one thing; it’s hardly humane when they are killed to serve our lust for their flesh.

I appreciate that chef Fraser includes some vegetarian menu items, but a truly sustainable, gourmet menu of vegan and vegetarian foods — minus the blood and death — would demonstrate to his carnivorous clientele that it’s possible to be a foodie, exercise compassion and enjoy true sustainability.
— Kezia Jauron, via email

A Note from the Inside
What a breath of freedom your magazine provides here in prison, where we have no access to wholesome media. I’m grateful to you for providing me this joy.

Like most people in California, I’m a prisoner. We are not allowed hard cover books, and have no access to the web or educational TV. The only form of torture here is blaring network TV with no off switch, from 5:30 to 2:30 am on weekends!

I worked 14 years teaching ecology in rural Bolivia and Peru before coming here in 2002. My students’ website was Bolivia’s most visited site in 1998 when it started (see riverprincess.tripod.com). I look forward to continuing when I get out next summer.

Again, thanks so much for providing our only wholesome alternative to network TV here. We read every page with an interest I doubt can be matched out there in the free world, and it provides a glimpse of something very beautiful developing beyond the razor wire. Namaste.
— Daniel Burns, Avenal California

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