condition: good, minor edge wear, binding intact.

A social documentary. An appropriation of distinctions between elements. Grey area. An essay in images that repeat themselves. An apparent way to dilute the importance of one over another. Black and white photographs, hand written texts, and xeroxed pages.

condition: fair, worn cover, interior in good condition, first edition, excellent reference copy.

all color book of Flowers, published in 1974 by Octopus Books, London. A collection of 100 photographs of flowers from around the world. Color illustration on front and back cover, all color photographs inside. Contents: Flowers that change the landscape; Europe; North America; South America; Australia; Africa; Asia; The development of garden flowers; Acknowledgments.

condition: good, edge wear, worn cover/spine, interior discolored, very good reference copy.

We can’t put it together. It is together.

The Whole Earth Catalog is an American counterculture catalog published by Stewart Brand between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. Although the WECs listed all sorts of products for sale (clothing, books, tools, machines, seeds — things useful for a creative or self-sustainable lifestyle), the Whole Earth Catalogs themselves did not sell any of the products. Instead the vendors and their prices were listed right alongside with the items.

The title Whole Earth Catalog came from a previous project of Stewart Brand. In 1966, he initiated a public campaign to have NASA release the then-rumored satellite photo of the sphere of Earth as seen from space, the first image of the “Whole Earth.” He thought the image might be a powerful symbol, evoking a sense of shared destiny and adaptive strategies from people. The Stanford-educated Brand, a biologist with strong artistic and social interests, believed that there was a groundswell of commitment to thoroughly renovating American industrial society along ecologically and socially just lines, whatever they might prove to be.

Function
The Whole Earth Catalog functions as an evaluation and access device. With it, the user should know better what is worth getting and where and how to do the getting. An item is listed in the Catalog if it is deemed:

1. Useful as a tool
2. Relevant to independent education
3. High quality or low cost
4. Not already common knowledge
5. Easily available by mail

Catalog listings are continually revised according to the experience and suggestions of Catalog users and staff.

Purpose
We are as gods and might as well get good at it. So far, remotely done power and glory — as via government, big business, formal education, church — has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing — power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by The Whole Earth Catalog.

condition: very good, shelf wear, interior unblemished, first edition, excellent reference copy.

Before Christopher Nance arrived in 1985 at NBC-TV in Los Angeles, he began his career as a weathercaster and television personality in 1979 in his hometown of Monterey, California. Since 1982, Nance has talked to over 450,000 students with his self-designed program, offered at no charge, called Let’s Talk Weather. Nance was fired from his job at NBC in 2002 after developing “a reputation for profane and menacing off-air behavior, marked by sexual innuendo and violent outbursts.”

“To my mother Sarah, my daughter Noel and to all the boys and girls who dream the wonderful dreams. You are the future.”

— Christopher Nance, 1995

condition: fine, shelf wear, interior unblemished, first edition, excellent reference copy.

Before Christopher Nance arrived in 1985 at NBC-TV in Los Angeles, he began his career as a weathercaster and television personality in 1979 in his hometown of Monterey, California. Since 1982, Nance has talked to over 450,000 students with his self-designed program, offered at no charge, called Let’s Talk Weather. Nance was fired from his job at NBC in 2002 after developing “a reputation for profane and menacing off-air behavior, marked by sexual innuendo and violent outbursts.”

“My new motivation is my God, my wife Nicholette, my family and friends.”

— Christopher Nance, 1998

condition: fair, missing dust jacket, worn cover, interior in good condition.

all color book of KITTENS, published in 1974 by Octopus Books, London. A collection of 108 photographs of kittens being as cute as they can, doing kitten things: drinking milk and playing with string. Black and white illustration on front and back cover, all color photographs inside. Contents: You and your kitten; The new arrival; The variety of kittens; Discovery and exploration; In high places; Kittens at play; Acknowledgments.

condition: very good, with dust jacket, shelf wear, first edition, excellent reference copy.

Forbidden Dreams (1984) is the first monograph by Belgian-born, New York-based photographer Rebecca Blake. Elegant and darkly alluring fashion photography/erotica from the late 1970s and early 1980s.

condition: good, shelf wear, excellent reading copy.

If you don’t think the title of this book is Whole Parent / Whole Child, then you are the exception. Most people do. Implied is that if the parent is whole, then the child will be whole. If the parent knows how to do it, then the child will turn out okay. But then — oh, horrible thought and worse experience! — if the child seems not to be whole, then the parent must not be whole either.

So we seek diagnoses, explanations for what’s wrong with the child. If we can’t take credit for our children, then at least please excuse us from the blame. I thought it was my fault. I thought he was stupid, lazy. Indeed, recognition of our children’s special differences, limitations, styles of learning, and so forth can be very helpful. But there is another side as well. Secretly we are almost grateful to think that there is something really the matter with him, something only mechanical, something wrong with him rather than with us. So in a strange way, the very thing we started out in favor of (rearing a whole child) turns out to be something we are somehow also against.

This book stands out as one of the first resources to link the teachings of mystics and the world’s religious traditions to the present-day practice of child-rearing. Polly Berrien Berends’s second intention is “to bring to light the far-reaching spiritual significance of even the meanest momentary details of our experience.

For more than two decades, Whole Child / Whole Parent, the first spiritually oriented book on parenthood and the first to address the value of parenthood for the parent as well as for the child, has provided a sound, practical, psychological and spiritual footing for parenthood and family life.

condition: good, shelf wear, excellent reading copy.

You Are Your Child’s First Teacher: What Parents Can Do With and For Their Chlldren from Birth to Age Six.

The importance of what our children learn in the home and through their relationship with us forms the irreplaceable foundation of all that comes later. Mother, childbirth educator, midwife, and Waldorf educator, Baldwin aims to deepen our understanding of the nature of the young child as a whole being — body, mind, emotions, and spirit — so enabling us to meet their needs for balanced development.

In a society which values intellectual development above all else, we tend to ignore other aspects of development. We reason with our children as if they were grown ups and teach them with techniques appropriate for much older children. Distrustful of natural processes, we believe we have to do something in order to ensure our child’s development. Milestones of the first three years — walking, talking, thinking, and memory — occur by themselves, according to their own timetable. Trusting natural processes does not mean that we do nothing, but that the things we do need to be consonant with the child’s own developmental stages.

The world of the young is critically endangered, as more and more children are placed in daycare in infancy, and academic pursuits are pushed onto younger and younger children. The hurried child syndrome is apparent in all spheres of activity. We try to speed their development with baby walkers and gymnastics, and reason with five-year-olds as if their ease with words ought to translate into control of their actions in the future. Problems arise when we fail to realize how different a three year old is from a child of nine, or a teen from an adult. Children do not think, reason, feel, or experience the world the way an adult does.

She advocates nurturing babies’ development through the first year by touching, carrying, talking, singing, contact with nature, nursery rhymes, and movement games. She cautions against baby bouncers, baby walkers, playpens, and baby gymnastics, and believes that one of the greatest gifts parents can give a child between birth and first grade is time and materials for the creative play which helps her work her way into earthly life by imitating all she experiences. The very young do not need playgroups (though their parents might!), gymnastics, educational tools, nor fancy toys. They need circle and movement games, songs, musical and artistic activities, and examples of real work for imitation. They need contact with nature, nourishing images from stories, and simple toys they can complete with the imagination. We learn, for example, that the beautiful doll and the anatomically correct doll are a hindrance to the child’s inner development, leaving nothing for her imagination to supply, and providing more than she can hold in awareness. Toys based on TV and movie characters (therefore with fixed personalities) leave little room for creative imagination. Baldwin urges that we consider not only the safety, but aesthetic quality of a toy. Is it beautiful? How does it feel to the touch? What pictures of the world does it offer the child?

She cautions us against providing rational and scientific answers before our children are ready. Because their verbal skills far outweigh their conceptual knowledge, we tend to answer at a level of abstraction far beyond their comprehension. Calling directly on the intellect and memory of the child during the first seven years, not only takes him away from movement and valuable play, but accelerates his change of consciousness and robs him of valuable years of early childhood — years vital to later physical health and mental development. At this age, children learn best through direct life experiences and imitation.

The young child accepts us as perfect and good; once he becomes older and sees our imperfections — the most important thing is that the child sees we are striving to do better. Our desire for inner growth (or our complacency) is perceived by the child and has a very deep impact.

condition: very good, shelf wear.

Bernadette Corporation: three people in New York City (today, 1999, or 2000) working together on a new fashion magazine called Made In USA and making art. We came from different backgrounds, but we had something in common: we wanted to change the world because we didn’t like the way it was.

The first issue of Made in USA is devoted to how people create their own spaces, spaces that can be invisible or imaginary. You may have heard this trend called DIY (do-it-yourself) or Amateurism. We like to call it the EMPTY WIDE SPACE trend, a place we can all disappear to, instead of being anti-everything and writing the new manifesto, or instead of being pro-everything and buying the latest CD.