Open Spaces Newsletter, Spring 2008

Open Spaces has moved to an all-electronic format This change will allow us to share our high quality articles, stories, poems and essays with our many thousands of readers in a timely manner and at no charge.

As always, our website content is not public-domain material, and copyright restrictions continue to apply. Open Spaces reserves the right to publish on its website e-mails and letters that we receive. We may edit them for clarity or brevity and unless anonymity is requested will identify authors by name and location.

What's New in the Newsletter:

Shared Knowledge:

We have been impressed through the years with the exceptionally high quality of our readers and their insights. We urge you to continue sharing your insights with us regarding the various works posted and the various happenings in our world -- scientific, political, personal, etc. -- by sending them to info@open-spaces.com and typing “Ideas” on the subject line of your email. On a new “Idea Exchange” page, we will post many of your thoughts in an effort to maintain the high level of dialogue that has characterized the Open Spaces conversation through the years.

Shared Wisdom:

Each Newsletter will include a survey question relevant to our times. We look forward to sharing selected responses with our Newsletter recipients for an in-depth conversation on an important facet of life. When you respond, please let us know if you'd like us to use your name or if you'd like your comments to remain anonymous.

This issue's question:

Many factors (e.g. race, religion, ethnicity, culture, social attachments, place, education, economic level, individuality or others of your choosing) can contribute to a person's identity and by extension, his or her thoughts and actions. Some say identity is determined at birth; others say it is the result of experience or choice. Some say it determines everything from our buying habits to our politics from our work and recreation to our immediate family and circle of friends. Given that the issue of identity is so prevalent in both public and private life these days, we encourage you to share your thoughts on and experiences with this issue by emailing them to info@open-spaces.com . Please type “Identity” in the subject line of your email. Please feel free to be as expansive as you'd like. We will post many of the thoughts we receive on a new page labeled “Survey: Identity.”

Public Service:

We would like to be of further service to you by including useful links by topic, examples of which you can see below, so that you can check out ideas that capture your interest, find ways to further those interests and get credible information on contemporary issues.

Helpful Websites

Now that summer is coming, here are two sites that provide information on regional, national and international writers conferences:

http://www.writersconf.org/memdir/dirPnw.php

http://www.writersconf.org/memdir/dirSummer.php

For the activities of Northwest Association of Book Publishers publishing seminars in Portland in May, July & Sept., see http://www.nwabp.org/.

For up-to-the-minute top stories in general news, politics, health, entertainment, business, hi-tech, sports, etc. from major local, national and international news sources, see: http://news.google.com.

For checking the facts of weekly news stories, visit FactCheck.org, a site of the Annenberg Public Policy center of the University of Pennsylvania.

For checking the facts of political claims (rated between 1 Pinocchio for a shading of the facts and 4 Pinocchios for whoppers) and submitting your questions to be fact checked, visit The Fact Checker.

For a great website on hiking and up-to-the-minute weather in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana, see http://www.nwhiker.com/.

Elizabeth Cosgriff, our East Coast editor, informs us of the following article in the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Check it out: A community tool library." For a modest annual fee, members can take out tools by the week. This idea, along with car, bike and garden sharing and community schools, fits into the larger concept of new ways to build community. Send your ideas to help build community to info@open-spaces.com, and we will post them for our readers to share.

Friends You've Met in the Pages of Open Spaces:

In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mt. St. Helens (pub. May 2008) offers stories about how science informs our lives and our relationship to nature. Editors Charles Goodrich, Kathleen Dean Moore, and Frederick Swanson are joined by contributors Kim Stafford and Ursula K. Le Guin in this project.

Read more information on volcanoes and quakes, past and future.