Like Lost Valley Educational Center (also founded in 1989), Talking Leaves is a being in evolution, an adolescent. We can expect more changes ahead. We at Lost Valley are currently in our annual visioning and planning process for the coming year, so we do not yet know specifically what those changes will be. Because Talking Leaves is a unique vehicle for networking, education, and inspiration within the local and larger communities of people devoted to evolving an ecological culture, we are committed to its continued existence and flourishing. We see it as an important meeting-place both for those with personal experience of Lost Valley and for those whom we have never met personally but for whom its mission and contents resonate with their own life paths. Some of our readers and contributors date from TL's very beginnings, while for many of you, this may be one of your first issues.
An active readership is essential to TL's vitality. Most of our articles, poems, and artwork come from readers, and we also depend almost entirely on readers for financial support. Producing a magazine using materials and methods aligned with our values (ecologically responsible paper, local printing and binding, etc.) costs substantially more than the "cheap, easy, dirty" methods too common in the publishing industry. Talking Leaves helps support the larger work of Lost Valley in many ways, both quantifiable and non-quantifiable, but both the magazine and this nonprofit educational center depend on an active membership, without which we will need to curtail our activities. Your support of Talking Leaves and Lost Valley helps us continue to offer quality educational programs and maintain a sanctuary for the evolution of the cultural and ecological understandings that we explore in these pages and at the educational center.
For up-to-date information about Talking Leaves and Lost Valley, please visit our websites: www.talkingleaves.org and www.lostvalley.org.
We now offer a wide range of membership premiums (see page 29), which we encourage you to take advantage of. Also, please let us hear from you. Next issue will see a resurrection of our "Talking Back" section, assuming we have enough diverse material to fill it. Most of the comments we received in response to last issue were along the lines of Amberllyn Peabody's--"This is a fantastic beautiful creation and I'm so grateful that you generate it season after season"--and author Jesse Wolf Hardin's: "Great looking issue, and I liked the way the slightly sepia toned ink looked on the hemp paper. I wish it were 400 pages long and read by everyone in the country, but even a thin volume on newsprint would be filling an essential role. I love TL so much, as many or few as I ever reach through it... It is a sacred alliance, venue and purpose." The only exceptions to this praise were comments we received about the "Gregory" article.
We want to know what you think. While we love appreciation, we also welcome challenges and diverse viewpoints. And we especially invite your submissions to future issues.
Thank you for being a part of TL and the community which surrounds it.
Chris Roth edits Talking Leaves.
©2002 Talking Leaves
Winter 2003
Volume 12, Number 4
Animals, Earth