You are invited to join the Planet Drum Discussion Circle to share how, why and where you bioregion. Tell us how you explore and incorporate a bioregional point of view in your life and what you’re doing that works for you & your bioregion. Both current and timeless suggestions will find a home here.
Send thoughts, ideas, observations, poems, graphics, videos and suggestions for this page to Planet Drum Foundation at mail@planetdrum.org or P.O. Box 31251, San Francisco, CA 94131, Shasta Bioregion.
This page has two sections—Riffs & Reads & Reels for presentations, writings, video/cinema, etc and Circles of Correspondence for letters, emails, photos etc..
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Riffs & Reads & Reels
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Presentations, Manifestos, Screeds, etc.
Stephanie Mills in Traverse City, Michigan—April 8, 2026
Starting from and Staying with the Nature of Place
Good evening!
Thank you for coming out tonight to gather with other folks who care about the life and health of our waters and their watersheds.
Thank you for being humans interested in what it might mean to start from and stay with the nature of place.
My talk tonight is about bioregionalism. It’s a version of the keynote speech* I gave at the 18th Annual Freshwater Summit late last year. Friends thought it might be worth sharing again, and as part of this event to benefit Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation…
So here we are, together on an early Spring night...continue reading
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Writing of all kinds—essays, books, poems, etc.
Kimiharu To in Aomori, Japan, sent this email with his paper—February 15, 2026
The Shin-yu Charter and Its Educational Significance: Practicing Reinhabitation in Contrast to the Multiplanetary Species Vision
Hi Judy,
Sharing a small update with you.
I just completed a paper dealing with Peter’s [Peter Berg’s] “Reinhabitation” and “Figures of Regulation.” It introduces and explains the meanings of a charter that was articulated for our small educational cabin with natural hotsprings, located in the midst of the national park which you and Peter once visited.
Here is an overview of the essay in English as well as a link to the paper which has an introductory abstract in English. I hope you like it.
Cheers,
Kim
English Overview
This paper analyzes the philosophical and educational framework of the Shinyu Charter, developed at an outdoor education facility located within Towada-Hachimantai National Park in Japan.
Grounded in the theory and practice of outdoor education, Shinyu articulates four interrelated principles: respect for environmental carrying capacity, restrained and context-sensitive use of appropriate technology, collaborative learning grounded in shared values, and embodied learning through communal living and physical labor. These principles form not merely an operational guideline but an educational model aimed at cultivating the ethical and practical capacities necessary for sustainable dwelling in a specific place….continue reading
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Movies, documentaries, videos, etc.
[Coming soon]
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Regional reports— letters, emails, photos, graphics, etc.
Two Letters From Chris Wells
Dear Peter Coyote, and open letter to random Digger, Hipi, Bioregional Earlies and later day Saints & Sinners,
It’s been many years since I last ran into you in Santa Fe. You may not remember me. I’m still producing All Species bioregional cultural-arts public-education events. Now almost half a century of producing All Species community programs: after 20 years in Santa Fe , then Ecuador, Peru, Chile , Brazil & Sweden. We carry on now in Oaxaca, Mexico where I have a small tropical food forest farm and we are fighting the battles of glyphosate killer pesticide and gmo corn. In 2020 we along with 60 other groups of the demanda collectiva won the first supreme court battle against these ills and here is an article about our piece of that puzzle, as we now go toward putting an Historic Mural commemorating winning those cases in the National historic mural museum in Mexico City.
I’ve read both your memoirs, Peter. I also spent many days & nights at Olema ranch in 1968-69 after Lew Welch sent me to meet you. As it turned out you and I were both runners for Rolling Thunder (RT). Once coming back from Nevada with RT, a car in front of us hit a deer and RT said instantly, “Pull over, spirit dropped that for us.” …continue reading
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The Fairview Profile—Ken Lassman
OK, it’s a little bit of a stretch to write about Ken Lassman and call it a “Fairview Profile”—but I think the term fits.
After all, for several years, Ken’s work has been featured on page four of the Enterprise: “The Kaw Valley Almanac—Fairview Edition.” I hope you read it religiously, as I do. Not only does it give you the basics—sunrise/sunsets, phases of the moon, daylight and darkness—specifically for Fairview, but it includes highly readable narratives about nature, about the habits of the plants and animals that surround us and whose lifecycles throughout the year we should observe and appreciate.
Ken is an occupational therapist by training, a credential earned after also graduating with an anthropology degree from KU, and he has also been called a “nature essayist.” He notices the world around him, and has been writing about it for many years in his weekly “Kaw Valley Almanac,”…continue reading
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