Our world is changing. I don’t think there is any doubt anywhere about that. So the obvious question is: what do we want it to change to? The Arcadia Project on Facebook has some interesting conversations going about that very question, and two of the articles in this issue come directly from there. Tamra Spivey and Ronnie Pontiac contribute The Utopia File, which includes a perfectly stellar warning that there is no Utopia without Dystopia—something good to remember. Probably why the one rule on the Project page is that posts need to suggest alternatives, constructive possibilities for transformation of present worn out cultural stories. And that’s it.
Rustin Wright got going one day on The Arcadia Project imagining his ideal public transit service (which he called, blush, ‘Daviesville’), and gave gracious permission for us to put it up here: A Fantasy of a Sane Transit System, Parts I to V. More than worth a look for a map of the kind of community thinking that can go into making one’s immediate locale a nicer, more comfortable place to live. It always surprises me when someone says something like, “But happiness isn’t the goal of humanity.” No? Then what is? And WHO SAYS?
Speaking of happiness, you have to read the piece that contributed hugely to mine this issue: Marie Davis and Margaret Hultz’s Feet. Also poetry editor Marissa Bell Toffoli’s poignant words about the joy and sorrow mingled in living in this, and any other, world, Too Much To Ask. And Marvin Bruce surprised me. I thought his Prom Night was going to be a trashing of small town America…but it turned out otherwise. It ended by being about what happens when you don’t believe another world is possible.
Come on over to the The Arcadia Project and join in. We need your help imagining…well, imagining another world. One where happiness for all is the evolving goal. And transformation is a way of life.
Welcome back.