[From Ann Medlock for the Context Institute Board]

Dear Contexter,

What happened to your In Context? Why did Context Institute stop printing it? Is Yes -- the new print journal you received recently -- In Context with a new name? Why haven't you heard from the Institute? Such questions are coming in to the Institute office daily; the answers are in this rather fat mailing. Do read on.

I'm a longtime In Context reader, a new Context Institute (CI) Board member, and the founder of a nonprofit that honors people who stick their necks out for the common good. Given all that, I got involved because I think that Institute founders Robert and Diane Gilman have started on a brave and promising new phase of their important work. I also got involved to support them through a crisis.

Here's what I see has happened:
It started when Robert, after 12 years of creating, guiding, and maintaining In Context, took a sabbatical year (self-supported) in Europe -- to look at sustainability from outside the US, to be with Diane as she co-produced the Eco-Villages Conference at Findhorn, and to take his own in-breath. The staff he had trained here in the US put out four issues of the journal. Toward the end of the year Robert, as the Institute's Director, analyzed the state of the journal and concluded that CI couldn't go on using print as a medium for its work.

Like many small publications these days, In Context was in deepening financial trouble, taking the Institute further into debt with every issue printed. On top of that, its stately quarterly pace had simply become too slow -- information moves constantly and instantly in the 90's.

Robert proposed that CI move In Context onto the Web to continue its mission of fostering sustainability -- sustainably. The Institute would cut costs astronomically, would get the message to many, many more people than the journal's 6,000 (and falling) print subscribers, and those messages could go out around the globe the minute they were written. He even figured out how people not on the Web could still get In Context.

Robert expected CI's Board of Directors to agree that more outreach, faster, for less money, made sense. He was wrong. The board, it turned out, was deeply divided.

The Gilmans came back to the US and a long, painful negotiation with those Board members and staff who wanted to stay with print -- and change the mission and leadership of the organization. Eventually this part of the Board formed Positive Futures Network to publish Yes, which would report on "the emerging culture."

The full Board also decided to donate a goodly portion of Context Institute's assets (including the asset/obligation of the subscriber list) to PFN to help them get started. More months of negotiation over just what assets should go to PFN followed -- and kept us from communicating directly with you before now.

Of the many decisions made during this process, the one that has probably led to the most confusion was agreeing that Yes could publish its first issue with an In Context dust cover and describe itself as "a successor journal to In Context." That implied that In Context wasn't alive and well -- in a new medium. It also implied that Yes was a continuation of In Context, yet, whatever the apparent similarities, its mission, world view and animating spirit are -- appropriately -- different.

In Context and Yes each has its own gifts to give to the world, but this has been a parting of the ways, not a passing of the torch. We apologize for CI's role in creating the image of descendancy. It's important to both entities that you see them as they are: independent and distinct from one another.

The Gilmans, joined by CI Board members Fred Noland, Bob Kincheloe and Danaan Parry, remain on the CI Board. They've been joined by former member Ellen Ghilarducci Camin and myself. Seven others have left, five to the PFN Board and two to other activities.

The Institute has relocated from Bainbridge Island to Whidbey Island. Here, In Context is staffed (again) solely by Robert and Diane with their trusty computers, modems, phones, and -- very importantly -- their living-lightly skills. A growing group of volunteers and a worldwide network of pioneering thinkers is with them electronically, plugging their ideas into In Context, as always.

As Robert planned, In Context's expenses are now a fraction of what they had been. (One-sixth, to be exact.) No printing and postage bills, no long payroll. Money from speaking fees, product sales, and donations is beginning to come in, but it's going to take a little push from our friends to get this stripped-down CI to sustainability.

The now-tiny costs of the Institute's new operations (including their absurdly modest salaries) should be assured so the Gilmans can get on with what they've got to do -- for all of us, and for the future of our home planet.

They've done the hard stuff: surviving a painful dividing up of much that they had built, trimming costs, and tight-rope walking onto the Web -- without a net. Now it's our turn. The enclosed letter from Robert tells you how you can help create that net.

This is the last time you'll hear from us via your mailbox, so don't put this aside, waiting for our follow-up. Please think about it now; make your move now.

If you care about In Context and want to see its service to the world thrive, fill out the enclosed support card and send it off in the enclosed mailback envelope right away. All of us at Context Institute will rejoice in your company, sustaining the work of creating a sustainable world.

Ann Medlock [PO Box 759 Langley WA 98260; medlock@giraffe.org]
for the Context Institute Board