Santa Cruz High School drawn by architect, William H. Weeks.
Back in the saddle after three months at our retreat–Cisco Point–in Phelps, Wisconsin where I kept myself busy by writing drafts of two books.
How To Become A Spiritual Millionaire When Money Is No Object tells the story of nonprofit corporations in this country, their historical background, as I see it, in the radical reformation of the sectarian movements in Europe which established the principle of voluntary association. The nonprofit corporation is the legal form of a voluntary association. I develop the theme of an economy of gift which I learned from Alan Chadwick who gave everything he grew away, freely and gladly, and there was always more to give, i.e., the principle of plenitude which confirms an economy of gift. I had already learned the gift theme from Erik Erikson who once told me that his definition of identity was “you have it to give it away”. Paul Ricoeur introduced me to the concept of an economy of gift and develops this theme in his essay on “The Golden Rule”.
The other book is an effort to deliver myself of my knowledge of herbal health care based on my period as Executive Director of the Herb Trade Association, in the late ’70′s, with responsibilities for organizing the national industry. It is a cookbook: Being and Thyme. Both efforts are just over a hundred pages. Not bad for a left hander.
Our Garden in the Mind Team is hard at work on grants and planning for the Circle Trail and the anticipated move of the Homeless Garden Project to Pogonip.
I am going to be speaking at the Homeless Forum on Oct. 8th at 7:00 pm at the Santa Cruz High School Auditorium. Hope to see you there.
Filoli Botanic Garden in Woodside California is a beautiful formal garden and a manor house. They also have a lecture series where well–known authors, curators and historians share their knowledge and experience. Each lecture presentation is followed by a reception where guests mingle with each other as well as the presenter. In some cases, a book signing and sale will immediately follow.
Spend an afternoon experiencing something new at Filoli.
I am presentating there Friday, September 20, 2:00 pm–3:00 pm. This will be a memorable lecture that presents an engaging look at the work and life of pioneering organic farmer Alan Chadwick and his profound influence on the organic farming movement. Based on my book, There is a Garden in the Mind is a wide–ranging and philosophical memoir starting with my first serendipitous meeting with Chadwick in Santa Cruz in 1967 and our subsequent founding of Chadwick Garden at UC Santa Cruz, the first organic and biointensive garden at a U.S. university. Filoli embraces organic practices whenever possible through such things as selecting disease and pest resistant plants to minimizing the use of pesticides and our composting program – nothing green ever leaves the property!
There is a book sale and signing immediately following the presentation.
Fee for series: $25 members; $35 non–members.
Publishers Weekly gave my new book,There Is a Garden in the Mind: A Memoir of Alan Chadwick and an Organic Movement in California, an appreciative review.
In 1967, author and educator Lee and amateur gardener Chadwick established the University of California, Santa Cruz, Chadwick Garden. Lee originated the idea for the garden, but Chadwick made the garden a reality and, to Lee, seemed to embody the vitality of the space. To many he became the “Pied Piper” of the organic movement in California. In what he describes as a philosophical memoir, Lee provides glimpses of Chadwick’s pedigree, temper, drive, and vision, but a fully realized portrait or biography never emerges. Instead Lee delivers a meditation that begins with Chadwick and explores the modern tension between positivist science and the integrity of organic nature. He laments that the more holistic, organic approach has been driven out of academia and contemporary culture by the quantitative analysis of the physical sciences. He traces the contributions and insights of Goethe, the philosophers Paul Tillich and Rudolf Steiner, ecologist Rachel Carson, and many others. The book is part philosophy, part personal meditation, and part tribute to a man who was a transformational figure in the organic movement that began from small seeds in California and has now reached a global community. (Mar.)
The book was reviewed on 01/21/2013.
The book will be available on March 15th and can be ordered now on Amazon. It’s published by North Atlantic Press (Random House, dist.), $19.95 trade paper (240p) ISBN 978-1-58394-559-9
The Greeks called Homer wise, the wisest of all mortal men, and made his poems their only schoolbooks. It may be not unwise to ask the question, what kind of knowledge did the Greeks suppose Homer possessed-why was he called wise?
Of course, Homer occasionally inserts into his narrative sentences about life in general, man’s happiness and misery, good and evil, such sentences as we call wise. None of these sentences nor all together make Homer the wisest of all men. The question cannot be answered by referring to these sentences. His wisdom is far greater, but not so easy to extract. It is not at all presented as knowledge, doctrine, or advice. The presentation is much more efficient than sentences and advice can be. His wisdom permeates his poetry and is transmitted in visible images of human actions and passions. It is wholly inseparable from what we call the “beauty” of his poems. Homer’s wisdom and his greatness as a poet are indeed accounted for by the same reason. It is a kind of wisdom that is by no means Homer’s alone. Homer shares it with Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe but only with the greatest. But there the modest question concerning Homer’s wisdom transgresses its limits and grows into a philosophical problem of the first magnitude.
Since a poet’s greatness has to do with something we call “beauty” (in the sense of “quality” of a work of art), and since “wisdom” as a kind of “knowledge” refers to something we call “truth,” there seems to be a link between “beauty” and “truth.” But “beauty,” we are told, is a matter of appearances, senses, taste, and pleasure; “truth,” we learn, has to do with “facts,” propositions, and the syntactical rules of a calculus. I shall, however, not start from such words as beauty and truth, their meaning in a philosophical system or their possible interrelation. I shall inquire into the concrete case. It may be that the concrete case yields at least some suggestions that a philosopher concerned with the meaning of beauty and truth might be wise to consider.
