My meeting with JMG
Having met JMG in the flesh, about a decade ago, I may be the reigning expert on this blog. I have not met him since then, but I did read most of what he wrote in his main blog...didn't pay much attention to his druidry or science fiction efforts.
When I met him, he had just moved from Ashland,OR to Cumberland, MD. He was surprised that I knew anything at all about Cumberland. I used the phrase 'red brick town' to describe Cumberland. He picked up on that phrase and continued to use it for years. (This is my fallible remembrance, so buyer beware.) I explained that the old red brick towns were built on the fall line to harness the power of falling water, and were mostly displaced by fossil fuel powered industry and then decimated by offshoring of manufacturing. So what you had left was what had once been a thriving town producing useful goods, now a town gone to seed with various forms of dysfunction.
The unspoken question was 'Why leave Ashland for Cumberland?' I didn't know how to graciously pose the question, but it was hanging in the air. He explained that the rather precious tone of Ashland wasn't to his liking, that he intended to make his living writing, and a writer needs a cheap place to live. If you check:
https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/C ... rect/5_zm/?
you will see that reasonable places to live can be had for about 120,000 dollars, about 400,000 dollars less than in Ashland.
Cumberland was also on Amtrak, which meant that JMG could do modest traveling without using a car...which was important to him.
I discovered his Druid connection. I did not detect even a hint that he was anything other than very sincere. A number of years later he wrote several articles about druidry, which I will summarize as 'a druid is a wise person who can intuit what might help another person adapt to the reality of the world'.
We chatted for perhaps 15 minutes, then, over my shoulder, he spotted Bill Catton, who wrote Overshoot. Catton was a hero of JMGs, and so he excused himself and went off to have a close conversation with Catton. I think they talked for perhaps 45 minutes.
JMG seemed to have some interest in Peak Oil, but it was just one of many contributors to Overshoot. As I recall, he believed that civilizations had a strength which led to bumpy declines and collapses (such as Rome). I would not call him a fan of Seneca Cliff scenarios. If you read his stories about the Lakeland Republic, you will see that 'collapse' led to a better place to live than the alternatives.
And, of course, he had a world-class beard. I have recently talked about Robert Sapolsky, another guy with a world-class beard. Besides the facial hair, both share a sense of responsibility for helping humans get through the trials and tribulations. JMG turned to Druidry, Sapolsky is a lapsed Jewish Atheist, but one of his heroes is the man who became an Anglican minister and was an important force in eliminating slavery from the British Empire (and who wrote the hymn Amazing Grace). Sapolsky describes his hero as 10 steps forward and 9 steps back...finally stumbling into his calling and accomplishing his great work.
Don Stewart