2001 Fall

Starting in 2002, Talking Leaves will be adopting a new format more aligned with our values and goals, and more economically as well as ecologically sustainable. Rising printing costs, the unpredictability of advertising income and wholesale sales, and soul-searching by the staff have all contributed to these changes, which we believe will better serve you, our readers, and the earth:

 

1. Tree-free paper throughout

The same beautiful tree-free paper (supplied by Living Tree Paper Company) that we now use on the cover of the magazine will be used for the insides as well.

 

An interview with Chellis Glendinning by Beth Burrows Chellis Glendinning takes politics very personally. You see that in her latest book, Off the Map (An Expedition Deep into Imperialism, the Global Economy and Other Earthly Whereabouts), wherein she journeys through Northern New Mexico, her childhood, and the consequences of half a millennium of violent, unrelenting imperialism to deliver a stunning lesson about how maps--cognitive or otherwise--serve to define, enclose, and conquer. I phoned her in Chimayo, New Mexico late last year to do an interview and learn about the power of maps.

Beth: Chellis, you have always been out of the mainstream, off the main map so to speak. So what's the difference between the Chellis Glendinning who lives in Chimayo and the one who once lived in San Francisco?

I am not sure how it all began. Did I know that summer pueblos had dotted the Santa Cruz River near my house in the centuries before the Spanish arrived? Had I been told that the women would break up their old pottery and scatter the sherds back into the earth a half mile from my wall? Or that more recently the kids in the village would come upon intact pots and, in adolescent rebellion, crash them against the rocks?

I don't remember. I just remember dipping my hands into the New Mexico soil and finding the ceramic fragments of a people who had lived hundreds of years ago in what was now my neighborhood. I remember thinking about those people, wondering what they saw and felt. And I remember carrying the clay pieces to the rise above the arroyo and arranging them into a jigsaw circle in the dirt.

"Will we see you at Sundance this year?" The words took me by surprise. I had neither anticipated nor sought them out. As I stammered "Uh, well, uh...sure" in response, I had a rush of fear because I knew that this was not a question or a request, it was a directive. And the directive was not from Godfrey, it was from Spirit.

About a month and a half earlier, after a ten-year involvement in various Twelve-Step programs based on Alcoholics Anonymous, I had come to an unusual realization. For the first time in my life, I found myself expressing a desire to have a Teacher that would help facilitate my spiritual path. I was never one to follow anyone in my life. I knew that "following" wasn't what it all was about. I had no idea what such a Teacher would look like. I simply longed to be able to sit at the feet of someone of flesh and blood for a change who could perhaps model what a well-rounded relationship with Spirit was, perhaps just talk to me about such things...who knew? The gist of it was that I was tired of having my spirituality so deep inside me that it had no form.

In the couple months before our Beltane deadline for this issue, I struggled with its theme. I seemed to have several books' worth of material to write on "Spirituality, Religion, and Ritual," and narrowing it down to an article, I imagined, would require a minor miracle.

I grew up steeped in church life--my father the organist/choirmaster of my parish (as well as organist at a synagogue), my mother a choir member and, eventually, an ordained Episcopalian minister. My parents have authored and co-authored at least a dozen books, all of them relating to "spirituality, religion, and ritual" in one form or another (including books on prayer, yoga, sacred music, etc.).