Peter Berg’s Writings
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador Ecuador has just ratified a new constitution overflowing with innovations that make it a trail-blazing 21st Century governing document. Environmental awareness and protection are recognized on a particularly high level in response to present day revelations about local destruction of habitat and species as well as planetary climate change. These are covered as extensively as might be hoped for in sections of […]
Meeting Thomas Berry, Biospherean was written in 2008 to go into a “book of appreciations” celebrating Berry’s 93rd birthday. Thomas Berry watches the same eclipse of the sun that we all see. Many observors are shocked by the gradual loss of light and point at the darkness, shouting alarms. Thomas concentrates on the bright nimbus continuing around the shadow. He believes the full sun will gradually […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador We hosted a dinner billed as a “celebration” for both landowners and representatives of urban communities who have participated in Planet Drum’s 2008 revegetation program. After an hour of meeting each other and waiting for the inevitable late arrivals, Clay as Field Projects Manager explained the purpose of the gathering, described Planet Drum’s history in Bahia, and invited everyone to watch […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador Ecuador is undergoing a political transformation of undeniably profound and long-lasting significance. As with most South American countries this is a time of widespread change and realignment for many reasons, but in Ecuador there is an additional uniquely internal factor that stands out above all others. It is rewriting the national constitution. President Rafael Correa put the issue of constitutional reform […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador At this moment hundreds of thousands of tons of water hyacinths are floating down Ecuadorean rivers headed for the coast. Heavy rains that flooded out the shallow places where they overgrew during summer and fall have loosened stalks and leaves in long drifting lines that now artfully illustrate the river current. Occasionally there are large patches of plants that tore away […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador After many delays due to rain and unavailability of people or horses, Clay and I finally made a second trip to the village of Pajonal for the purpose of riding over the most promising road site to the Planet Drum land. We began to encounter the usual obstacles immediately. At the outset there was only one horse and one burro for […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador Whenever I return to Ecuador the first real taste of the country is the Guayaquil bus terminal (terminal terrestre). Serving the biggest city in the country, it feels like the commercial district of a uniquely busy small town of its own because there are thousands of people and hundreds of seemingly permanent features such as import and export delivery businesses, vendors, […]
Francois Truffault’s 1960 film “Shoot the Piano Player” was acclaimed as part of the French cinematic New Wave spearheaded by Jean-Luc Goddard. It even bears some resemblance to the tense pairing of characters who represent innocent liberated role-playing contrasted with overt criminality that marked Goddard’s brilliant “Breathless”.Truffault’s free-living but seemingly innocent musician is like the young woman newspaper vendor in “Breathless”, and his unredeemable thief […]
In his numerous peregrinations, Peter sent us dispatches from distant bioregions, our eyes and ears, a sort-of latter-day combination of Darwin (as chronicler of minute botanical/zoological detail) and Bakunin (as pollinator of the Reinhabitory Movement). Bioregionalism Meets Local Autonomy in Mexico reports on the November 1996 Turtle Island Bioregional Gathering (TIBG) in Tepoztlán, Mexico. 1999-1010 index of Ecuador Dispatches August 2001: Reports from the Planet Drum Bioregional […]
Peace Boat off Baja CaliforniaOctober 8, 2006 This story is atypical at the start, then becomes progressively more unusual. It began when I gave a talk/show about living within the natural systems of the place that one inhabits for Be Good Café (a traveling media event that changes venue for each performance) in a large coffee bar in Tokyo. An American woman was waiting in […]