From the Stacks: February 3, 2006

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Utne receives some 1,200 magazines, newsletters, journals, weeklies, and zines. Add in hundreds of books, CDs, and DVDs, and it's a flood of media that lines the walls of our library and piles high on our desks. All the ideas, people, and stories inspire lively daily chatter, but can't all fit into our bimonthly magazine. So we've decided to share the gems here: Welcome to the second edition of "From the Stacks," a new weekly feature on Utne.com. Check in every Friday for the freshest highlights of the independent and alternative media.

A new issue of The Dandelion arrived in our mail lately, a bright spot of wildness that I latched onto immediately. The little anarchist journal appears infrequently, like many special things, edited and printed by Mike Coughlin in off-the-beaten-path Cornucopia, Wisconsin. This edition, the first published in more than five years (v.6 #23), focuses on the life of Henry David Thoreau admirer Valerio Isca, a Sicilian-American anarchist machinist who lived and worked in New York City till his death in 1996. (Isca is one of many who tell their story in Paul Avrich's oral history of American anarchism, Anarchist Voices). Coughlin also sent along a children's picture book he's just published, Lucius and His Collection of Unusual Things, written by his wife Kathy and illustrated by Robert Holton. For information about Coughlin's other publications (ask him about his Amateur Press Association pamphlets): http://www.superiorletterpress.com/ -- Chris Dodge

Issue #10 of The Polishing Stone just came in, delivering "encouragement and practical ideas for enhancing our lives." Eclectic offerings, loosely united under the theme "Transition," include information-packed articles on hybrid vehicles and water conservation, balanced by personal essays about improving apologies and befriending irrational fears. Best of all: The quirky, ad-free publication out of Washington state features a recipe for a "pre-dinner garlic cocktail." Yep. That's just what it sounds like. -- Julie Hanus

The Winter 2006 edition of PeacePower was hand-delivered to the Utne library this week by an attendee of the recent Independent Press Association conference. It's the second issue of a magazine produced by students at the University of California who describe their publication as "Berkeley's journal of principled nonviolence and conflict transformation." This issue features articles focusing on "constructive alternatives to war," including an essay examining whether Mohandas Gandhi was an anarchist, a transcript of a Berkeley talk by peace activist Cindy Sheehan, and reports on "principled nonviolence" at the grass roots in the Philippines, Lebanon, and throughout the Middle East. -- Chris Dodge

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