Nina Utne Finds Her Voice

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Two recent encounters gave me a glimpse of the role Utne Reader plays in our culture. At the Social Venture Network, a conference for entrepreneurs committed to social responsibility, I met Keith Cylar, whose Housing Works, Inc. serves 2,500 homeless people living with AIDS/HIV. "What’s it like to be on the cutting edge of trends?" he asked. When I gave him a perfunctory answer, he verbally grabbed my lapels and gave me a shake. He counts on the magazine to inform him, he insisted; I needed to take that seriously. Then Jim Slama, who co-founded Chicago monthly Conscious Choice and has galvanized public response to organic standards issues through Sustain, his PR firm, echoed those sentiments: "I want you to know that I do what I do because I was inspired by Utne Reader."

What Eric’s vision created has become a web of relationships among people—including our dedicated staff, past and present--who passionately devote themselves to the "greener, kinder world" Eric wrote about in his first editorial. And the people we inspire in turn inspire us—like the reader who, moved by the editor’s note (July/Aug. 1999) about Robin Lindquist, the Book Lady, sent Robin $10,000, which she is using to create a new books program for the children of prisoners.

Above me now, through the last yellow leaves of a maple silhouetted against blue, has just appeared a rainbow: beautiful, unexpected, a glimpse of unimagined possibilities. I hope that whether it is in these pages, online in our Utne Cafe, or through our forthcoming books on visionaries and salons, our work continues to inspire you to raise your voices and see life’s magic. We expect that you will continue to inspire us.

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