I can’t find my copy of the Whole Earth Catalog.  I used it for years as a solid representation of utopian ideas that could be condensed into one volume as a concise statement of what my beliefs were about the social condition of mankind.

Of course it was simplistic and naïve and I loved it.

On the top of page 4 of today’s NY Times is a story by Edward Rothstein on Connections. It is entitled “A Crunch-Granola Path From Macramé and LSD to Wikipedia and Google”.  I think Mr. Rothstein did a good job of synthesizing the effect of what was happening along with the training of the American people to become good little cooperative Republican manikins.  This was, of course, the enunciation of a counterculture that eventually segued into a cyber culture.

It has been said by many that they were born too late because an earlier time was a better one to be their real selves.  It is often a lag in our education or events which sweep us up that takes us out of synchronization with the rest of the people who occupy our globe and who are interested in other things unquestioning the values they hold or are taught.

I yearn (for it would be impossible at my stage of life to actualize these earlier dreams) for a geodesic dome house dreamed up by Buckminster Fuller.  I think it should be outfitted with a dry toilet in order to produce sterilized manure that could fertilize crops growing in the field outside my door.  A windmill would produce all the electricity we could use and batteries store enough power to run our assortment of motorized tools which would be a very small group indeed.  This is because we would be using more muscle power on hand tools rather than those requiring motors and repairs when they often fail.

For some reason, despite my hankering for a simpler time (I do admire the Amish and other peoples who derive their lives and ambitions from the earth) I am perfectly at home with the computer age as long as I do not have to figure out how to use all the potential in printing out enlarged copies and duplicate off-set publishing including color photography.

Yet, I hanker after my copy of the Whole Earth Catalog although I can call it up on my computer screen and add to it later versions of encyclopedias  that are up there in the ether-sphere.  I am anxious to get going to get out my roll of sharp carving knives and set up a table in my office and do some real hands on work as a counter to the virtual and other unrealism of typing in instructions and remaking the world in the image of the future, not in the pleasures of the past.