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Janet Thomas, Investigative Journalist
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
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INSTITUTE OF GLOBAL EDUCATION Special NGO consultant United Nations Economic and Social Council
PROJECT NATURECONNECT
Readily available, online, natural science tools
for the health of person, planet and spiritP.O. Box 1605, Friday Harbor, WA 98250
360-378-6313 <email> www.ecopsych.com
ORGANIC ADVANCED ECOPSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION
The Natural Systems Thinking Process
Dr. Michael J. Cohen, Director
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The Web of Life Imperative.
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