50 Years of MOTHER EARTH NEWS
Has it really been 50 years? As a 13-year-old in 1970, I remember my straight-laced dad devouring this new magazine, all in black and white on rustic paper. It was called Mother Earth News, and it was filled with every kind of back-to-the-land and self-reliance idea you could imagine. John Shuttleworth steered the visionary team that cranked out counterculture issues.
Post-Woodstock, Mother Earth News embodied both the frustrations and the hopes of the first wave of baby boomers questioning the foundations of the World War II generation. Readers were introduced to many icons of the environmental movement through the Plowboy Interviews, including Allan Savory, Bill Mollison, and A.P. Thomson. In each issue, those of us desperate to redirect the course of our culture received a bonanza of