To accurately
convey Janet Thomas and her work, reminds me of a challenge I
once presented to Paul Merrill, an Vermont farmer I hired in
1959 to bulldoze a field level to play baseball. His experience
was a metaphor of how the limits of contemporary thinking impact
Earth's natural systems, the perfection of the biological world
within and around us. That is where Janet loves to inquire.
Mr. Merrill's
skill in bulldozing a field brings to mind that people are part
of nature. What we do to nature we also do to our natural selves.
Today, both people and the land suffer from being excessively
bulldozed by the destructive ways we have learned to think.
Most of the
Vermont field rocks rolled to the side of the field at the urging
of Mr. Merrill's powerful John Deere blade. However, some small
rocks turned out to be like icebergs of the soil. They were tips
of immense glacial boulders buried deep in the ground. "No
farm tractor gonna move them suckers," shrugged Merrill,
"You gonna need to get some dynamite and them big construction
tractors." Doing that would have brought me way over budget
so we ended making the field part of a wildlife sanctuary. It
began its inherent path back to becoming a maple-beech-yellow
birch forest.
Twenty years
later the Federal Government got into the act in the form of
the National Forest Service. They helped modify the local conservation
laws, blasted the boulders and bulldozed miles of beautiful,
wild plateau life and land into the sterility of a golf course.
Janet Thomas
is as anchored in nature as were those field boulders. She, like
most of us, has been subject to the bulldozer of contemporary
socialization. However out of the desperation and pain, she long
ago became aware and enamored with her resilient roots and grounding
in the landscape. She nurtured those roots to survive and therefore,
she survived. Through one crises after another she has turned
to the grounded sensory boulders in her life and called upon
them for help. Because her good judgment has supported these
profound roots over the years, they now support her in times
of need. That is how nature's renewing powers work when they
have not been bulldozed into parking lots, shopping malls or
buried in fear and hurt in our subconscious so we don't have
to feel them all the time.
Through her
acute love of nature and human nature, Janet's expertise exposes
the trespasses by contemporary thinking on the rights of natural
systems in people and the environment. She is strong and knowledgeable,
a journalistic Druidic princess who, to our benefit, defends
against the violation of nature within and around us. With the
powers of a glacier, her tenacity and wisdom seldom leave an
illegitimate stone unturned. For this reason, David Suzuki applauds
her inspiring looks at people, issues and solidarity; Vine Deloria
Jr. says she creates breathtaking vision. Janet is a critically
thinking playwright, author and editor who deals with issues
of abortion, abuse, nuclear war and environmental degradation.
As sweet as a honeysuckle, when she speaks her truth it is wise
to listen.
- Mike Cohen