Do * Good Magazines

I have a new favorite magazine, Ode: For Intelligent Optimists. It has been around since 1995, but I'd never read it before. It has a couple downer pieces, but overall it is filled with great articles about serious problems with hopeful solutions like EcoLeo, a Brazillian company that buys sustainably harvested wood and raw materials certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and sells them to "green" architects and designers, or the Memstill which desalinzes water using residual heat from industrial plants, or MobileActive, a network of activists and campaigners using mobile phones for civic engagement, or the European Court of Human Rights.

I like Mother Jones, I even worked there for a couple years, but geesh it's depressing. I used to read UTNE reader, but then they had too many Psychology Today type cover stories like, "Your Secret Self," and "Embrace Your Feminine." Another magazine I like, but that does have a lot of "mushy" articles, is Imagine: Creating a Meaningful Life. It sorta mixes articles about self-help with articles about social change. They had a good one recently about a company called Global Girlfriend, an online fair trade store that sells products that benefit women's human rights, and that are made by women's non-profit programs and cooperatives.

Yes!: A Journal of Postive Futures, can be a little less positive than its title proclaims, but it has some good stuff too. Their last issue was all about the 10 most hopeful trends of the last 10 years.

I'm also waiting for my sample copy of a new magazine that I heard about on Treehugger called Shift, "a lifestyle magazine that focuses on the exploding environmental movement through a pop culture lens." Sounds like it'll have lots of pics of celebs arriving to the Oscars in their hybrids. Fun!



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social change