Stephen Harrod Buhner

These kinds of bios are troublesome. Over the past 40 years I have explored many biographical forms to describe myself and have never been satisfied, in part I think because I have a natural tendency against publicly applauding my accomplishments. And perhaps it is the root of that tendency that whenever I do list what I have accomplished, it always seems inadequate to what I could have done had I been clearer or more mature or possessed fewer limitations or started younger or contemplated more deeply. Or perhaps that is just the way all of us are deep down inside in the place no one else ever sees. The struggle is always psychological and I genuinely don’t know how to tell you what I have accomplished over the past half century of my life in any way that the part of me that likes ice cream finds enjoyable. Nevertheless . . . here is one way of looking at who I am — though of course it won’t tell you anything about why I find William Stafford’s poem “A Ritual to Read to Each Other” so deeply moving. I am an interdisciplinary, independent scholar, polymath, Fellow of Schumacher College UK and have been head researcher for the Foundation for Gaian Studies for the past thirty years (gaianstudies.org).