On good news

I am a sucker for good news. I admit that I go through times when I immerse myself in what I can only think of as bad, bad news. How the environment is being destroyed. The dangers of climate change. The conundrum of how we will feed an ever-increasing human population when fishing stocks are dangerously declining, topsoil is flying off or floating away in staggering quantities, and water resources are becoming more and more strained. Or in the news, how the Republicans are stealing elections, not just with flawed voting equipment and redistricting, but also with caging schemes to peel off just enough voters so that they can continue to win, even though they are more and more being exposed for what they are--greedy bastards. See? I can go down that road. Sometimes I do.

But I'm thankful that there is a counterbalance to all that. People are doing amazing stuff in this world. I read a book last year that was so wonderful, it brought me to tears over and over again. The book was called Hope's Edge, by Francis Moore Lappe and her daughter Anna Lappe. In the book they travel around the world to look at what kinds of things people are doing--from organizations teaching schoolchildren and prisoners to garden, to the story behind Organic Valley (a very, very cool story), to a city in Brazil where they have declared access to food a human right and have found that it was really quite easy and cheap to eliminate hunger in their city.

I also love Yes!, a magazine I'm proud to know is produced here in the wonderful Puget Sound area, just a ferry ride away from me. The most recent edition of Yes! talks about the changes going on in South America, and had some amazing articles--like about how the IMF (the International Monetary Fund--an organization little known or understood by Americans but one that has wreaked more than its fair share of havoc in the world by demanding that debtor countries sell off their infrastructure and resources, lay off civil servants, and cut back on domestic spending, among other types of "structural adjustments") is on the verge of bankruptcy because countries are finding ways to pay off their IMF loans--and saying that they don't want to be party to destructive trade agreements.

Another newer favorite of mine is Ode, a magazine that started in the Netherlands, but now has an international edition which is published in English. I love Ode--it has a wonderful mixture of stories of activism, of sustainable business, of spirituality...

There are a lot of things wrong with this world, and I get scared sometimes thinking about the future. But I know that part of getting a future that we want is being able to imagine what a better world would look like, and so I think that anything that helps us to do that, and to recognize those among us who are contributing to this cause, is a precious, precious thing.

Links:
Hope's Edge (and other resources)
Yes! Magazine
Ode Magazine