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NEW
INTERNATIONALIST 184
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THIS
MONTH'S THEME
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STOP THE CHAINSAW MASSACRE |
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Tree
of life Fast
food, chop chop Quest
for fire Pulling
the plug on the Panama canal What
you can do: When
the green woods laugh The
man who grew happiness The
last frontier The
forest is dying SIMPLY: A tree for all seasons How
to steal a forest Corruption
and the Minister's golf |
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FROM
THIS MONTH'S EDITOR
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Over two decades have passed since then. So many things have changed - our family might as well have been to the moon and back. Usually I never think about that tree. But in a quiet moment whilst I was putting this magazine together, I noticed how it has grown to the height of a house, its roots anchored deep into the earth. Although I am almost middle-aged, it is still young. And slowly, slowly it is swelling upwards and outwards, each year a little larger, a little stronger, self-contained in silent immobility. It will be there long after everyone has forgotten our family ever existed. Doing this issue of NI made all of us on the collective more aware of the significance of trees. Tree jokes abounded. 'Can't see the wood for the trees, hey?', 'Thick as two short planks!' We swapped information about trees in different cultures. A common variant of the tree-of-life theme is that two trees gave birth to the human race. We recalled that our ancestors lived in forests, worshipping the trees which gave them animals to hunt. Reciting places named after trees reminded us: trees are markers by which human beings have orientated themselves in the chaos of time and space. We realized that the roots of trees go far deeper than the soil, into the depths of our history, our culture, our language. People examined the wood in their homes to find out what it was and where it came from. All of us suddenly recognized just how much we use. And we re-opened the thorny issue of publishing NI on recycled paper. We have worried about this many times. It seems distinctly odd to be telling other people to do something we do not practise ourselves; we must explain. Our dilemma is that the magazine would lose a lot in quality, particularly with regard to picture reproduction. After lengthy discussions and more investigations we have decided that, for the moment, this is a sacrifice we should not make. We may be wrong: you might like to tell us what you think. And if anyone knows a way in which we could use recycled paper and still keep our high standards, please, please do write and let us know. Meanwhile you can be sure that the NI wrapping paper and personal stationery advertized in this issue, is printed on recycled paper. At least that is a start. And as everyone knows, from small acorns great oak trees grow. |
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Sue
Shaw
for the New Internationalist Co-operative |
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Letters
COVER PHOTO:
Mark Mason / The Photo Source |
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When
I was little, my mother and I planted a baby redwood tree in our garden. It
was a tiny shrub-like thing about six inches tall. The whole family gazed
at it in awe knowing it would outlive us by maybe 3,000 years. We tried to
picture it full-size, mighty as a mountain, like the colossal giants that
dominate the coasts of northern California. But we could not. And so we touched
its feathery growing tip, sighed at things we could not understand and continued
on our daily rounds.
