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Not Quite Our Sort

“Anything,” I say. “Anything but that.” They were trying to make me eat chicken. As an intelligence agent I had been through the wringer many times — torture, torture, forever torture. But I hate chicken. I detest chicken. I would tell them anything if I had to eat chicken.

A Banana By Any Other Name

The Case Against Brand-Name Vegetables

Four years after the Chiquita campaign had been launched, United had captured nearly a third of the country’s market at prices 10 to 15% higher than other bananas. Through brand name promotion, United had convinced consumers to pay more for Chiquitas than other bananas and to like doing it.

Right Livelihood

The Briarpatch

Are you a Briar? Well, you might be if you try to live simply, share resources and skills with others, and practice right livelihood rather than grasp for fame and riches.

Publishing, Hopefully Not Perishing

The Small Press Movement

I can’t remember the first time I heard someone say that the conglomerates (giant U.S. corporations like Xerox) were buying out the big New York publishing houses, the ones that 20 or so years ago were a fairly reliable place to publish a first novel, a well-written book, something that might someday be known as a great book, as “literature.”

Creating Hunger: The World Food Crisis

The question is not “How can we get them to feed themselves?” How paternalistic! People will feed themselves unless they are prevented from doing so. The fact is that the poor of this world are engaged in feeding us and trying to feed themselves.

Tales Of Politics

“What are you — a weirdo?” the man in the cowboy hat and plastic clogs asked me. For hours I had been hanging around the foul-smelling men’s room of the Greyhound bus station in Ishpeming, Michigan waiting for The Wizard. The Wizard was to tell me about the secrets of politics on this planet.

Fortune Cookies

I was looking up monasteries in the yellow pages when she knocked. I was living at this time in Jersey City, N.J., on top of a meat market. It was the dingiest of places. I got up from my fleabitten couch. I opened the door to a dazzling darkhaired woman.

Discipline: Reorienting Lines Of Force

What each can contribute toward the good of the whole is definite and needed. So each must ask himself or herself how we qualify or color the lines of force which course through us as human beings.

From The Honey Pot

Creating an atmosphere of love and beauty often offsets the apparent meagerness of a meal. Wildflowers are free — dandelions, clover, all those pretty little flowers popping out in vacant lots or around public buildings in spring and summer — and as a centerpiece they remind us of the richness of the earth.

Doing Business

I am interested in being part of a community business for a number of reasons. Basically, I am sick and tired of working for organizations which put some distant goal or task (such as working on a “very important” government research contact) above my own needs as a person.