The library in the town where I live has a HUGE collection of back editions of many magazines, Mother Earth News being one of them. I was there reading some of the first editions (in 1970...1?) today and then happened across a current copy, and it's amazing how much it has changed. I guess that's what happens as you get poorer and start needing sponsors... The first editions are amazing. In the first few copies you can learn how to build a teepee, find free land in the U.S. and Canada, make Digger bread, raise geese on a small amount of land... browsing a copy from '81 I saw advertisements for Chevys and Vanagons... and now? I was disappointed with what I saw. It seemed so watered-down, so eager to please, so far from where it began. I was wondering if anyone here has read TMEN from the beginning, or at least for some time, and what your comments are on what you have seen? oshinn
I read it from the beginning and I know what you mean.The man who started it ,did so on his kitchen table and it reflected the optimistic tone of the back-to the-landers of the day,including myself.I remember one issue where a guy asked (in a letter) if there was such a thing as a lifetime subscription.The owner replied"there is now".It was one hundred bucks!I wonder if some of those folks still get it for that 100.Almost sent 'em a check myself/Wish I had.It was a great mag,along with the Whole Earth Catalogs.Man,I haven't bought one in years.The original owners seemed like very real and caring people that cared about their readers----but like Ben and Jerry's---maybe the $ was too big to pass up,sooooo.
Hey woodsman---I'll dig around in my "stuff" and see if I have any.I think I might have a few.If I do,you're welcome to them.Probably be a while--have to go thru some storage.--------scratcho
the new ones are good too, i think its a stupid attitude that just because a magazine changes its style, they've sold out
the magazine changed when robert rodale died and the family sold rodale press.. the new mag sucks,, an im sure rodale would agree...
the rodales never own mother earth news... rodale's owned organic farming and garding, prevention as well as publishing a bunch of books but never mother earth
I beleive the Henderson pack, at least part, went on to create Back Home, which is very much like the mid 70s TMEN, complete with a cartoon at the back and the folksy narrative style. I noticed that the current versions are usung a typical cyclicality to their info, to the point of having the same writers revamp a story from afew years back. Nice for the writer, who gets a new check, but for a reader who has the old version, it's sort of dismaying. As is the habit of using an article as a springboard to selling a book, and not a new to Mother's Bookshelf one at that. that said I read both but buy Back Home a bit more. It is a radical difference to read the Mother's Almanac and pick up a post '87 TMEN.
my bad,, organic gardening went to shit rehash in the mid 80's as well i just got the publishers mixed up.. we have both mags dating back well into the early 70's in binders,,.. we have some organic gardenin dating back to the early to mid 60's.. but as i said,, both are just rehash and advertisements now days..
i regress too, mother earth mag sucks too but in a good way, as drumminmama noted, they rehash stuff in cyclic way so i no longer buy but i'm happy its out there for when folks go shopping, someone who knows nothing about whole earth issues might put in their shopping cart
John and Jane Shuttleworth started the magazine "on a shoestring" budget of $1500, published from home in 1970. The first issue was published in January of that year. In 1979 editor Bruce Woods and two other employees bought the magazine from the Shuttleworths. Eventually, it was sold to a major publisher in the mid-1980s, who redesigned it with a much slicker image and repositioned it as "The Original Country Magazine." A number of employees of Mother Earth News left the magazine at then and started BackHome Magazine. A succession of partnerships and corporations, including Sussex Publishers in New York City, owned the magazine until 2001, when it was acquired by its current owners, Ogden Publications. Back Home's site: http://www.backhomemagazine.com/ And check their Chapters(something TMEN tried to do): http://backhomechapters.tripod.com/ Mother Earth New's site: http://www.motherearthnews.com/ And their forums have lots of good info & experienced folks: http://www.motherearthforums.com/ Here's some more good info sources: http://www.hipforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2950961&postcount=5 Peace, poor_old_dad
thanks for your replies guys... i have noticed that back home resembled the original Mother but didn't really go so far as to investigate it.
I do pick one up now and again, maybe one or two a year (Mother). A few technologies have changed, so if an article has sufficient new info, or I'm jonsing that hard for reading amterial, I'll still support. Of course, I look at it FAR differently than at 12 and 18! Somewhere along the way I lost the Ed Abbey issue.....
