Where to Spend a Little of That Green

Earth Day has passed, and the vote on Big Green awaits in November. Meanwhile, what’s the growing army of neophyte environmentalists to do with its energy and money?

The September Outside presents a layman’s guide to environmental groups. It’s both informative and irreverent.

The rundown of greenie do-gooders includes a basic profile of each organization, a look at the leadership, the finances and inside information--such as the allegation that Nature Conservancy staffers, “while conducting a federally sponsored study of natural landmarks, routinely trespassed on private lands, fearing owners would refuse permission if asked.”

The piece also rates the groups on a “milquetoast/bombthrower” scale, telling readers exactly how much they (the magazine) would donate to each cause and a description of the typical member.

At Defenders of Wildlife, for instance, the typical member is “a bearded, middle-aged man who likes following game trails through the underbrush, wearing knobby Vibrams and no underwear.”

REQUIRED READING

* With Operation Desert Shield under way, Operation Just Cause seems like ancient history. In the September Harper’s, Francisco Goldman returns to Panama and the devastated barrio El Chorrillo to ponder the U.S. invasion.

In that brief war, 24,000 U.S. troops killed 50 of Noriega’s soldiers and between 200 and 700 or more civilians, most of them from El Chorrillo, according to the story.

President Bush called the loss of civilian life “worth it.” But Goldman clearly sides with the barrio resident who now calls the invasion Operacion Injusta Causa .

* Fantasy scares adults, noted novelist Ursula K. Le Guin writes, because “they know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is false, all that is phony, unnecessary, and trivial in the life they have let themselves be forced into living.” Still, adults buy books for their kids, and sales of children’s books this year are expected to pass $1.5 billion. The September Connoisseur offers an excellent examination of kiddie lit, old and new, from “Where the Wild Things Are” to those nerve-racking volumes in which you--er, rather your children--waste hours searching for that little twerp for whom the work is titled, as he wanders through intricate scenes. “It is no easier to create Babar than it is to create Madame Bovary,” Michael Dirda writes in the article. “The great children’s books are more like ancient myths than they are like modern bestsellers. They tap into the never emptied reservoir of young hopes, fears, and dreams.”

* In a display of some magnanimity, Playboy’s October list of the Top 10 Top 10 lists on the David Letterman Show includes “The Top 10 Reasons Hugh Hefner Will Make a Good Father.” Among them: “10. He can warm bottles of formula in the hot tub; 8. There is no greater authority figure than a dad who hangs around all day in a bathrobe; 6. He can help make college choice through a Girls of the Big Ten pictorial, and 1. If he didn’t care about America’s young people, he wouldn’t marry them.”

NEW ON NEWSSTANDS

Sometimes magazine titles proliferate so quickly and remain so similar it seems they are cloning themselves. BioWorld, though, is a new life form. According to MagazineWeek, BioWorld, a San Mateo-based publication that premieres in October, will be the first to cover the biotechnology industry, a field projected to jump from $6 billion to $10 billion in annual revenues over the next 10 years. Publisher David Bunnell, who also created Personal Computing and PC Magazine, believes BioWorld--and other magazines--will eventually be delivered via computer modem. Readers may then decide what parts to print out, Bunnell says, “making the printed word a more economical, timely and effective medium.”