CI-News 1997Sign up for ci-newsci-news -- 14 JAN 1997GREETINGS FOR THE NEW YEAR!I hope it is treating you well so far ... and will continue to do so! I'm finding myself feeling unusually "up" about it, perhaps because the foundation-laying work of the past year is starting to bear fruit. We have good news to share on a number of fronts. Do read on ... WELCOME WALT BLACKFORDWe're pleased to announce the addition of Walt Blackford to the Context Institute staff as a Senior Associate. Walt brings a rich background in business plus a long interest in sustainability. In 1996, after many years as a businessman and consultant, Walt decided to open a new chapter in his life which he began by spending 6 months working and studying at the Schumacher College delighted that this then led him to CI. Walt is currently working hard on getting IC back issues prepared for posting, but soon will be turning his attention to CI's business and program development. You can find out more about Walt at: http://www.context.org/PEOPLE/WBBio.htm You can write him at wblackford@context.org SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND THE NETIn mid-December I joined about 50 others at an invitational meeting in Washington, DC, on Sustainable Development and the Net, organized by Global Environmental Options (GEO) and co-sponsored by The Department of Energy's Center of Excellence for Sustainable Development and The President's Council on Sustainable Development. You can find out all about it at http://www.geonetwork.org/sdnet.html A number of things came out of the meeting. First, it is clear that there is already a rich, and rapidly growing, body of good sustainable development material now on the web. Here are just a few of the sites by participants and invitees of the meeting: CREST - Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD) Resource Renewal Institute (RRI) Sustainable Building Sourcebook - Austin Sustainable Communities Network U.S. DOE - Center for Excellence on Sustainable Development Second, there is considerable room for improvement in making this material easily and usefully accessible even to those with good web access and skills. Partly, this is a matter of better web-site design, but it is at least as much a matter of providing training and other support for people who can serve as intermediaries between the wealth of material on the Web and human-scale communities and organizations where this material could be put to use. To work on addressing this need, Context Institute is partnering with GEO (http://www.geonetwork.org) and the Whidbey Institute (http://www.whidbey.com/Whidbey_Institute/) to facilitate a design process, over the next nine months or so, for a supportive infrastructure for local sustainability catalysts. We are just in the beginning stages of our planning on this and I hope to have more to share with you about this soon. BACK ISSUES ARE THE FOCUS FOR NOWFor a variety of reasons (including our human limits!), we've decided to postpone the development of new IN CONTEXT issues until we finish getting the back issues posted. Thanks to Walt, we are moving much faster on this now and hope to get them all up by the end of February. At the end of this message you will find the tables of contents for the issues posted on the web site since the last 'ci-news' (IC #2, 3, 27, 30, and 31). Walt keeps being struck by how relevant even the articles from the early issues still are. Take a look. You might well find items of interest and use. THANKS FOR SPREADING THE WORDThis list is now over 1000 names. Please continue to let others know about it and about 'www.context.org'. Thanks! Robert Gilman TABLES OF CONTENTS FOR THE RECENTLY POSTED BACK ISSUES:[abreviated to links here; given in detail in the original ci-news] IC#2 - ECONOMICS IN AN INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE IC #3 - REDISCOVERING THE NORTH AMERICAN VISION IC #27 - THE LEARNING REVOLUTION: Education Innovations for Global Citizens IC #30 - RECLAIMING POLITICS: Participating in Public Life IC #31 - BIRTH, SEX, & DEATH: Human Family Planning Sign up for ci-newsci-news -- 16 JAN 1997This interim issue of CI-NEWS is just to alert you that ... IN CONTEXT ISSUES 19, 20, 25, & 26 ARE POSTEDThese include one of our all-time best sellers on Simple Living (#26) and two still-quite-timely issues on the sustainability movement and its agenda (#19 and #25). Look over the Tables of Contents that follow, or even better, go straight to http://www.context.org/ICLIB/backi.htm Here are the Tables of Contents: [abreviated to links here; given in detail in the original ci-news] IC#19 - THE NEXT AGENDA: Building a Livable 21st Century IC#20 - IS MILITARISM FADING?: What's Next for the Warrior? IC#25 - SUSTAINABILITY: The State of the Movement IC#26 - WHAT IS ENOUGH?: Fulfilling Lifestyles For A Small Planet Sign up for ci-newsci-news -- 26 JAN 1997WE'RE MORE THAN HALF-WAY THERE!We have now posted issues 21, 22, 23, & 24 which brings the total number of on-line back issues to 22 (1 - 3 and 19 - 37), including over 500 articles. It feels great to be getting these up and freely available. There is lots more great stuff in this new set, including two long-out-of-print issues: 22 & 23. Look over the Tables of Contents at the end of this message, or even better, go straight to http://www.context.org/ICLIB/backi.htm LOTS OF VISITSWe are currently getting over 1,200 visitors a week to our web site. At this rate we now have more visitors per quarter (i.e. 15,600 in 3 months) than we ever had subscribers (max. of 8,500) to the print version of IN CONTEXT ... and it feels like we've just begun! The visits are also coming from all over the world. Here is a list of the 62 countries we've had visits from in the last month or so: Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Moldavia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Yugoslavia. APPRECIATION AND FAREWELL TO JOE DOMINGUEZIt is with considerable sadness that I let you know that Joe Dominguez died on 11 January 1997 at the age of 58. Joe was a long-time personal friend, a pioneer in the sustainability movement, a founder of the New Road Map Foundation, co-author of the bestseller: "YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE, Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence," and much, much more. He was a tireless, playful, creative, iconoclastic example and voice for living well on a low cash-flow so that his life could be devoted to joyful service. He will be missed AND his life was certainly well lived. Joe, with others of the New Road Map Foundation, contributed many articles to IN CONTEXT over the years. The following articles have been posted so far: Achieving Financial Independence Serving The Earth Pogonomics Essence And Form A Movement Blossoms (Note the "misspellings" of Dominguez in the above URLs are correct. We keep file names to 8 characters or less.) More of his articles will be coming soon. Use "Search" to find Dominguez and U. V. Family. THE LATEST BACK ISSUESHere are the Tables of Contents: [abreviated to links here; given in detail in the original ci-news] IC#21 - CARING FOR FAMILIES: Nurturing the Root of Culture IC#22 - GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE: Social and Personal Responses IC#23 - THE ECOLOGY OF MEDIA: From Storytelling to Telecommunications IC#24 - EARTH AND SPIRIT: Redefining the Sacred for the Planetary Era Sign up for ci-newsci-news -- 28 JAN 1997NOW ... IT'S ISSUES 15, 16, 17 & 18We have another 4 issues posted. The topics are US/USSR citizen diplomacy (15), gender (16), cross-cultural experience (17), and education (18). Lot's of good stuff. Look over the Tables of Contents at the end of this message, or even better, go straight to http://www.context.org/ICLIB/backi.htm By the way, we don't expect to be normally sending out ci-news quite so frequently, but while we're on a roll with getting these back issues posted, we want to keep you up-to-date. We'll slow down somewhat in the coming weeks, but still hope to get all the back issues posted by the end of February. We are now getting down to mainly the early, pre-desktop-publishing issues (up to #14) that have to be scanned in, a slower process than #15 and up which were already in electronic form. THANKS FOR THE GOOD WISHESWe've been getting many supportive messages from people all over the world who are appreciating what's developing on the web site. Here's an example: "Subscribed to IC and thought I was sorry to see you stop publication. Not any more - what a huge step forward. This is the sort of thing I was hoping for when I dreamed about meaningful communication on "the net". And you haven't had to cut a single tree, use any oil, or burden my mail box. Do you suppose that the catalog outfits might take a hint? "Congratulations and continued success." SORRY, BUT NO BACK ISSUE ARTICLES VIA E-MAILWe've also started to get requests like the following: "I must say that these old issues look so attractive that I wonder if they are available on email? Although [our local computer group] has been talking about providing web access, it seems it's going to be a while yet." I wish I could say yes, but we've decided, at least for now, to focus on building the web site. This is both because of the real limits on our time and energy and because of the potentials that we want to develop that are unique to the web. However, if you don't have web access (yet), find a friend who does, get them to download the articles you want and e-mail them to you. (Remember when you do this, that all the articles are copyrighted. Republishing them in print or electronic form requires specific permission from us.) CI-NEWS IN PIECES?Some ci-news subscribers on the igc/apc network are getting these messages broken up in strange ways. If you have been having any such trouble, please let me know at ci@context.org. THE LATEST BACK ISSUESHere are the Tables of Contents: [abreviated to links here; given in detail in the original ci-news] IC#15 - USSR/USA: The Human Connection, IC#16 - GENDER: Fresh Visions and Ancient Roots IC#17 - BEING GLOBAL NEIGHBORS: IC#18 - TRANSFORMING EDUCATION: Sign up for ci-newsci-news -- 11 Feb 1997WE'VE POSTED ISSUES 4, 5, & 6These are from 1983 and 1984 with topics of peace (4), art and ceremony (5), and learning (6). I keep being delighted by how relevant and fresh much of the material from these early issues still is. Look over the Tables of Contents at the end of this message, or go straight to http://www.context.org/ICLIB/backi.htm -- or if you only have e-mail and no web access .... GOOD NEWS FOR THOSE WITH ONLY EMAILAfter saying in the last ci-news that we COULDN'T provide articles from back issues via email, one of the people on this list pointed out a promising solution. There is an email servers that can fetch web pages for you via email. Here is part of the "help" document for this server: > Webgate: Vancouver Webpages' W3-by-mail Gateway > You can use this to get back issue articles in the following way. Begin by getting the Table of Contents page for the issue you are interested in. You do this by sending an email message to webgate@vancouver-webpages.com with the following body: get http://www.context.org/ICLIB/ICxx/TOCxx.htm This will give you the file names of all the articles listed in that Table of Contents. The file names will be in the HTML coding that looks like (from TOC35.htm): <B><A HREF="Worth.htm">Audubon's Living Building</A></B><I> by Mark Worth</I><BR> This tells you that the article "Audubon's Living Building" by Mark Worth has the file name "Worth.htm" (whatever is in the quote marks after <A HREF= ). The complete URL for this article is thus www.context.org/ICLIB/IC35/Worth.htm. To retrieve this article via Webgate, you would send (to webgate@vancouver-webpages.com) the message get http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC35/Worth.htm If you used "dump" rather than "get" you would get the article as pure text (that is, easily readable in a word processing program). You might want to do this for articles, but you need the HTML for the Tables of Contents so that you can find out the URLs for the articles. If you have a web browser, you can view the HTML files from your hard disk just as if you were reading them over the web. As you may have guessed, most file names are simply the name of the author (or interviewee) with the suffix ".htm". HOWEVER, this is not always the case, so it is best to get the Table of Contents first so that you can be sure of the file names. Note especially that long names are shortened to 8 characters which produces some strange "misspellings." To make this easier (and hopefully a bit clearer) I've included the article URLs as part of the Table of Contents listings at the end of this message. This isn't as "user friendly" as direct web access, but it works. THE LATEST BACK ISSUESHere are the Tables of Contents: [abreviated to links here; given in detail in the original ci-news] IC#4 - The Foundations of Peace IC#5 - Art and Ceremony in Sustainable Culture Sign up for ci-newsci-news -- 24 Feb 1997PAST ISSUES OF CI-NEWS NOW ARCHIVED ON THE WEB SITEYou can find out what you missed via: or by going straight to: It is all there except that I've replaced the long Tables of Contents listings with links to those Tables of Contents elsewhere on the site. JOIN AN ONLINE SEMINAR ON HERMAN DALY'S NEW BOOKI've agreed to help moderate an online discussion, starting 17 March, on Herman Daly's BEYOND GROWTH: The Economics of Sustainable Development -- and I'd like you consider joining in! Herman Daly is one of the great pioneers of sustainable economics. Here's the official announcement with the details: The seminar will commence the morning of Monday, 17 March 1997, which we hope will give interested parties sufficient time to purchase and read the book. The publisher, Beacon Press, is offering a 20% discount on the book to the participants of the seminar. See the specifics below. The discussion will focus on the issues raised in the book. Anyone can submit comments or questions but the moderators will accept only those submissions that reflect familiarity with the book. Herman Daly will be online to give his input on some of the submitted questions or answers. We have a distinguished group of moderators and expect a superb discussion. To participate or just listen to the discussion, please send an e-mail message of:
to: LISTPROC@csf.colorado.edu If you are interested in the seminar please subscribe now. There will be no traffic on the list until Monday morning, March 17. The discussion will last two weeks. Herman Daly is the recipient of
According to David Orr, Professor and Chair of the Environmental Studies program at Oberlin College:
_________________________________________________________ Beacon Press is generously providing a discount of 20% to participants of the ISEE-Daly discussion. There are a variety of ways to order the book: 1) Access Beacon's discount order form via the ISEE, CSF, or Beacon Websites, http://kabir.cbl.cees.edu/ISEE/ISEEhome.html http://www.beacon.org/Beacon/promo/hdaly.html 2) If you're ordering by credit card, fax the Web order form (available via the sites mentioned above) to Beacon at 617.723.3097. 3) Order by phone using a credit card. Call Beacon directly at 617.742.2110, ext. 596., and mention code ISEE. 4) Mail the Web order form, with your check or credit card info. to Beacon Press, 25 Beacon St., Boston, MA 02108, USA. _________________________________________________________ We look forward to a rigorous and stimulating discussion with Professor Daly and look forward to seeing you online. IC ISSUES 7, 38, 39, & 42 ARE POSTEDHere are the Tables of Contents: [abreviated to links here; given in detail in the original ci-news] IC#7 - Governance: Power, Process And New Options IC#38 - The Ecology of Justice Sign up for ci-newsci-news -- 27 Feb 1997Just a quickie to let you know that ... IC ISSUES 8, 9, 40, 41, & 43 ARE POSTED IC#9 - Strategies For Cultural Change IC#40 - Creating a Future We Can Live With IC#41 - Business On A Small Planet
Sign up for ci-newsci-news -- 11 Mar 1997**ALL** THE BACK ISSUES ARE NOW POSTED!We now have all 43 back issues up on the web site. That's almost 1100 articles spanning from 1983 to 1995. The final group are IC#10 - Friends And Lovers I would particularly note #12 which provides a good overview of Context Institute's philosophical perspective. As usual, you can look over the Tables of Contents at the end of this message, or go straight to http://www.context.org/ICLIB/backi.htm to reach the Tables of Contents online. We're very please to be able to share all this material with you -- and the world. Many thanks to Walt Blackford for his extensive work on this and to Celeste Gilman for her help with scanning in issues 1 - 14. Whew! NEW SEARCH ENGINE INSTALLED ON THE SITEWe are now using the Excite for Web Servers search engine that allows both "keyword" and "concept" searches. You will find a link to the search page at the bottom of every article -- and on the home page. Give it a whirl, I think you will find it quite useful. GLOBAL CONTEXT TOPIC INDICES UPDATED AND EXPANDEDI've added more "topic" pages to the Global Context section with listing of articles on the site that deal with those topic. So far I've only indexed issues 1 to 12, but we should have the rest done over the next few weeks. These topic pages provide a useful additional alternative to the Tables of Contents and the search engine for finding articles of interest. HERE ARE THE TABLES OF CONTENTS FOR # 10, 11, 12, 13, & 14:IC#10 - Friends And Lovers Sign up for ci-newsci-news -- 30 Apr 1997IN GESTATION: CATALYZING LOCAL SUSTAINABILITY -- WORLDWIDEAfter the big push to get the IC back issues up on the web we've taken a break from the web work to take care of some administrivia AND develop the groundwork for a major new program. It's not "cooked" enough yet for a full description, but it all has to do with using the web, training programs, and networking to help local face-to-face groups (households, neighborhoods, workplaces, communities) move toward a more sustainable way of living in direct, practical, nitty-gritty ways -- all over the world. One "walk the talk" way that we've started working on this is helping with the formation of a group in our own community called "Sustainable South Whidbey". At our initial meeting of over 50 people we formed seven working groups on the topics of:
Since then the working groups have been getting oriented to their topics and getting focused on just what they want to do relative to those topics. The whole process has been quite organic and exciting. I hope that during May it will have clarified enough that I can post a longer description on the CI web site. This is all part of the new material we are gathering for the next IC issue -- definitely some great stuff in the works. All of this work, of course, needs support. I'll have more to say about how you can help in the coming weeks, but right now we've gotten a matching grant to go with CI's AFFINITY program that creates an offer that I hope you won't be able to refuse. A MATCHING GRANT OFFER FOR CI'S AFFINITY LONG DISTANCE SERVICEHow would you like to help support the work of Context Institute AND save money at the same time? I know that sounds amazing, but it's for real through a program we have been part of for over three years now. Do read on... If you have long distance phone service in the US please consider joining the 200 or so people who already help support Context Institute AND get guaranteed savings (10% residential, up to 20% for businesses) on their long distance phone bills. AFFINITY can do this because they don't advertise, and the money they don't spend on advertising goes to reduce your phone bill PLUS support Context Institute (5% of your bill is donated to CI at no cost to you). This is a MUCH better program than Working Assets Long Distance which provides a much smaller savings to you and donates only 1% to nonprofits. It is also much better than anything AT&T, MCI, or Sprint can offer you. Whatever you current long distance service, AFFINITY guarantees as good or better service at lower cost -- WHATEVER your current service. Please consider switching over to CI'S AFFINITY program. As a special incentive -- here is where the matching grant comes in -- CI will get an extra donation of $30 for each business account and $12 for each residential account that is switched before May 15. It is easy to switch. Just call AFFINITY at 1-800-670-0008 and give them CI's organization number: 971026-000. Call now or write BOTH numbers down so you'll have them handy when you do call. PLEASE give this serious consideration. If all of the US people on the 'ci-news' list were to switch to AFFINITY, we would have ALL the financial support we need to enable IN CONTEXT and the CI web site to really thrive. Think about the poetic beauty of having IN CONTEXT supported by money that otherwise would have gone to advertising .. and all through a process that saves you money! In addition to your own residential service, please also think about any businesses you are connected with. Because of their generally higher phone bills, the savings and the donations can be quite substantial for business accounts. If you want more information, click here. Whatever you do, please do SOMETHING. This is a great win-win opportunity for all of us. Thanks! Robert Gilman Sign up for ci-newsci-news -- 11 Aug 1997FAMILY HEALTH CRISIS PUTS FURTHER WEB WORK ON HOLD;
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