A Guide to Helping Heal the Whole Earth : Magazines: Former hippie back-to-nature catalogue, in revitalized form, offers philosophy and solid instructions.

While most environmentalists are immersed in stopping something--the destruction of rain forests, acid rain, the depletion of the ozone layer--a vanguard is digging in to repair the damage already done.

Restoration ecology are buzzwords to watch for in the ‘90s. The spring Whole Earth Review presents more than 30 major stories on various aspects of the subject along with a swarm of columns, essays and reviews of books, manuals and even dirt-grubbing implements.

A revitalized version of the old hippie back-to-nature catalogue, the Review offers a philosophical framework for environmentally sound activity and nuts-and-bolts instruction in how to achieve it.

As Richard Nilsen says in his introduction to the package: “Working at environmental restoration helps get priorities straight. . . . If there are no trees on your block, or pollution is killing the trees there now, then focusing on rain forest depletion in the Amazon Basin is a misplaced concern. And if lack of habitat has eliminated the frogs or songbirds from your neighborhood, then dolphins or grizzlies should not be the first species you try to help.”

Included in the package are articles on watershed rehabilitation, teaching restoration to kids, tracking down industrial polluters and using computers in restoration projects.

Southern Californians might pay particular attention to the features on urban restoration.

Urban planners, one writer argues, would be well advised to learn from ecologists. In nature, when a forest is clear-cut and one type of is tree planted, the whole plant and animal ecosystem is thrown out of whack, becoming vulnerable to disease and other threats. Urban restoration, which levels city blocks and replaces an array of old and new buildings with ones of uniform age and design, similarly limits human diversity.

This is bad planning, he contends, pointing out that “the presence of diversity is what informs and protects us, it keeps us from becoming stupid.”

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* It’s hard to find a more definitive landlubber than author John McPhee, who has spent the better part of the last decade lavishing loving detail on subjects geological. But in the March 26 New Yorker, McPhee hits the high seas in a two-part article on America’s Merchant Marine. The first piece ends with the ship on which McPhee is sailing under attack by modern pirates. Great stuff.

* When the big Anheuser-Busch Co. sued the little company that makes “Party Animal” crackers over alleged copyright violations, the owner of the underdog took the pit bull approach. He dug in and fought Spuds McKenzie’s owner. And he won. The April Success magazine gives blow-by-blow accounts of victorious battles small entrepreneurs have fought against multinational corporations, providing how-to strategies along the way.

* The April issue of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has received much attention for the turning back of the famous “doomsday clock” because of Cold War cooling. But a package of articles in that issue on the problems of low-level nuclear waste is just as interesting. Termed miscellaneous radioactive junk by one author, the nuclear materials pose problems that, according to the articles, have yet to be adequately addressed.

* Good schools, innovative child-care programs, low crime, and nice parks are among the criteria Working Mother magazine factored into its list of “The 10 Best Cities for Working Mothers.” Los Angeles didn’t make the list, featured in the March issue. Nor did Irvine. Or Pasadena. Or San Diego. Or Long Beach. Or any city south of San Jose.

* Two million people a year are reportedly taking up golf. And that’s not counting the sensible ones who play the version that sports windmills and castles on its links. To enlighten the horde of new duffers, Golf Magazine has issued a special one-shot publication called “Get Into Golf--the Definitive Primer on the Game.”

* For its 15th anniversary, Yoga Journal, a bimonthly publication of the California Yoga Teachers Assn., offers a two-part look at yoga in America. The magazine offers everything an enthusiast could hope to know on the subject. Probably more.

SHREDDER FODDER

* Does racism only cut one way? If a white writer at Cosmo were to suggest a feature on “The Black Boy Question,” chances are she’d find herself covering lip gloss conventions fast. Yet an editor at the black woman’s magazine Essence not only got an article on “The White Boy Question” past her editors, but got it onto the cover of the April issue. The piece manages to demean white and black men alike.

* President Bush is a crack-up who surrounds himself with funny advisers, and since he took office the White House has been a laugh riot. At least that’s what the folks at M magazine assert in their April issue. Yet the article doesn’t supply a single laugh. Here’s one example of the alleged humor the magazine cites: “When (the President) had a stiff neck,” says Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher, “I reminded him that I’m pretty good at giving massages, but that this time, if I made a mistake, I’d probably be shot.”