Ellen Laconte
Autor(a) de Life Rules: Nature's Blueprint for Surviving Economic and Environmental Collapse
About the Author
Ellen LaConte sits on the Advisory Board of the Earth Walk Alliance. She is a contributing editor to Green Horizon Magazine and The Ecozoic, a frequent talk show guest, and publisher of Starting Point online newsletter. She has written two books about Helen and Scott Nearing, homesteaders and best mostrar mais selling authors of Living the Good Life, and she is the author of the upcoming environmental novel, Afton. mostrar menos
Obras de Ellen Laconte
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Membros
Resenhas
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 4
- Membros
- 22
- Popularidade
- #553,378
- Avaliação
- 4.0
- Resenhas
- 2
- ISBNs
- 7
A good ending is essential to a good story. As Helen told it in Loving and Leaving the Good Life, when Scott reached one hundred, he knew his health was failing. Their life was about honesty, simplicity, fearlessness and deliberate choices, a path outside a system they viewed as unsustainable. At Scott’s end, he was not about to seek medical interventions to prolong his life. One day he decided to stop eating. He died peacefully at home. This image of his death affected me. If I find myself in a similar situation, I thought, dying and clear of mind, I would like to make that kind of choice about my death, and face it with eyes open. It would be a good ending.
I have sometimes told others about Scott’s death. The usual reaction is, yikes, starving to death would be painful. I would just brush aside that natural reaction, but LaConte’s Free Radical has given me cause to reflect more deeply. After Scott died, LaConte become close with Helen, working with her as a secretary and designated biographer. She learned that there was more to Scott’s death, more that needed to be told for people like me who felt Scott’s death exemplary. The short, inexpensive book is available from the Good Life Center. LaConte provides keen insight into the mythology that shrouds the Nearings. She adds missing elements about Scott’s suffering and the Nearing’s dependence on others, without detracting for a moment from respect for them. It completes the picture for ordinary people, essential reading for anyone interested in unconventional views about death. A sad or bittersweet ending can often be just as satisfying as a happy one.
http://johnmiedema.ca/2009/02/06/free-radical-a-reconsideration-of-the-good-deat...… (mais)