Monthly Archives: March 2010

Previewing Natural Life Magazine’s May/June 2010 Issue

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Natural Life Magazine’s May/June 2010 issue goes to press later this week.

We’ve posted a preview of the cover and table of contents here. This is one of my favorite all-time issues (although I say that every time!), with great stories and photos about urban homesteading, vermicomposting, unschooling/life learning, personal peacemaking, remembering the value of wildness, and hiking as a metaphor for life, and some delicious and eye-catching seasonal organic recipes. The cover story – “Real Food, Real Kids, Real Love” – is full of tips for raising healthy eaters.

There’s still time to begin your subscription with that issue if you act soon. Here is a link to both digital and print subscription sign-up pages. (If you subscribe to the digital edition, you’ll receive access to the issue about three weeks before print subscribers receive their copies  in the mail!)

Avoiding the Plastic Menace

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Some of the questions we’re asked the most here at Natural Life Magazine involve plastic: How dangerous is it? Can we avoid it in our lives? What do those numbers mean on the bottom of plastic containers?

We’ve just updated an article that we published in answer to those questions back in 2008. It includes a chart explaining the plastic recycling numbering code, details plastic’s harm to the environment and to our health, and provides some suggestions for avoiding it in our everyday lives.

Can most people live completely without plastic? Probably not. But we can go a long way in that direction by avoiding processed foods, including canned and those wrapped in plastic; breastfeeding; giving our children wooden toys and handmade dolls rather than plastic playthings; storing leftovers in glass jars; composting food waste, recycling and wrapping what little garbage is left in newspaper rather than plastic trash bags; and – perhaps the easiest of all – taking reusable canvas bags to the store.

Parenting For the Sake of Our Children

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Natural Life Magazine’s publisher Life Media also publishes a small selection of books under The Alternate Press Imprint, founded in 1976. Our most recent book is For the Sake of Our Children by Leandre Bergeron. This book is unique in many ways.

One of them is that it’s a natural parenting memoir written from the perspective of a father  who stayed home with his three daughters. For the Sake of Our Children is a powerful memoir of a life led respecting and trusting children, from the naturalness of home birth and breastfeeding on demand, through learning by living and working together on a small farm and in a natural food store. The author’s passionate ruminations about his strongly-held philosophies of attachment parenting and self-directed education are woven throughout a series of journal entries describing the daily life of a family of three unschooled teens.

The result is a wonderfully warm, sometimes funny, always wise potpourri of advice and inspiration about natural parenting and unschooling. Bergeron writes, “I believe I have broken free from my complicity with other adults. I have chosen to remove myself from this adult world to side with children.” This book provides both rationale for and proof of the wisdom of choosing a path that is so little trod upon in our world…the path of freedom, of respect for our children, of trust in them and belief in their ability to regulate and educate themselves.

Renowned author and homeschooling advocate John Taylor Gatto wrote the preface. And he fell in love with the book, recently telling us that he thinks it’s “the best of the breed” and asking how he can help promote it.

You might want to become a fan of the book’s newly created Facebook page in order to learn about updates, reviews, info about the author, and more.