The Whole Earth Catalog got started in a plane over Nebraska in March 1968. I was on the way back to California from burying my father in my hometown in Illinois — a man who loved shopping in mail order catalogs. The sun had set ahead of the plane while I sat reading Spaceship Earth by Barbara Ward. Between chapters, I gazed out the window into dark nothing and slipped into a reverie about how I could help my friends who were starting their own civilization hither and yon with communes in the sticks. The L.L. Bean Catalog of outdoor stuff came to mind, and I pondered upon Mr. Bean’s service to humanity over the years. So many of the problems I could identify came down to a matter of access: where
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ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES & EVOLUTION THROUGH THE AGES