Dear Folks: June 19, 1995
Dear Folks,
WE’RE GETTING A PUPPY!!!
I’m so excited you’d think I was 8 years old! It isn’t often that we get a new puppy — it’s been 11 years since I brought home the small golden butterball we named Basil.
Now Basil is slowing down so much that he can snore peacefully on the back porch while a raccoon scampers freely over [...]
Dear Folks: February 21, 1993
Dear Folks,
I’m even more than usually happy to be in my study this Sunday afternoon, with the Mozart oboe concerto playing in the background, and with another snowstorm beginning to gather outside. I’m simply delighted to be starting this letter to you about 30 hours later than I had intended to, and with no pain.
That’s because I spent last night [...]
Dear Folks: January 23, 1993
Dear Folks,
It’s 4:30 Saturday afternoon and the last act of Meistersinger is coming over the radio from the Met. The daylight is nearly gone. The days are still short, but not as short as they were in Germany, and we’re a month past the solstice. I’m already thinking of spring. The seed packets are arriving in the mail, and I [...]
Let’s Have a Little More Feedback
By Donella Meadows
–August 15, 1992–
The reason the market system and democracy work as well as they do is that they are designed around the principle of FEEDBACK. Feedback means, basically, giving people quick, accurate, emphatic information about the results of their own actions. A seller who sets a price too high gets no customers. A politician who thwarts the public [...]
The Environment Can Support Bonfires — For Awhile, Anyway
By Donella Meadows
–October 24, 1991–
A bonfire on a crisp night at the darkening time of year is a heartwarming thing — especially a huge bonfire like the one they light for Dartmouth Homecoming every year. Freshmen labor for a week to erect its star-shaped wooden structure, three stories high. When it burns, showers of sparks fly up into the black [...]
