25 Years and Dreaming

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Twenty-five years ago I introduced the first issue of Utne Reader with an editor’s note in which I confessed that I’d designed the magazine not so much for the “public good,” but “to make some profitable use … of my magazines,” to which I was “irredeemably addicted.” Benjamin Franklin had made a similar confession 250 years earlier in the premier issue of his Poor Richard’s Almanack, admitting that he was launching his publication because his wife had “threatened more than once to burn all my Books … if I do not make some profitable use of them for the good of my family … I have thus begun to comply with my Dame’s desire.”

The magazine has chronicled and advo­cated many causes in the past 25 years. Here are a few positive changes that Utne Reader helped advance:

• The divide between the new left and the new age has mostly dissolved. It used to be that readers of the Nation, Mother Jones, In These Times, and the Progressive turned up their noses at magazines like New Age, CoEvolution Quarterly, and Yoga Journal. Now, union organizers practice mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques, inner-city youth and ex-cons plant organic gardens and retrofit homes with solar panels, and there’s no irony meant by anyone who wears buttons with the images of Malcolm X and the Dalai Lama at the same time.
• Alternative medical practices like acupuncture, homeopathy, and chiropractic, now called “integrative medicine,” are widely accepted, taught in most medical schools, and available in communities throughout North America. Twenty-five years ago they were considered by many to be mere quackery.
• Meditation, yoga, and other contemplative practices, dismissed as a fad back then, are now taught in mainstream churches, public schools, and all five branches of the military.
• Organic and biodynamic foods have moved from the bulk bins of natural foods co-ops to the shelves of mainstream grocery stores, as much of America moves from corporate agriculture and fast-food dining to eating more locally, slowly, and seasonally.
• The preeminence of rational thinking and high IQs is being complemented by an appreciation of EQ, or emotional quotient. Heart skills such as social and emotional intelligence are now taught in public schools, in nursing programs, and on the factory floor.

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