OK, lest I start to sound like one of those NPR pledge week drones, this will be the last time I ask for volunteers to be interviewed for the forthcoming crunchy-con book. Thanks, everybody, for all the e-mail. I’ll be in touch once I start researching. On the fence about whether or not to participate? Here are a few excerpts from letters so far. If any of this resonates with you, write me at [email protected]: “It’s frustrating, at times; people whose lifestyles most resemble mine often drive me bonkers when politics come up, and those whose ideologies I share or respect have very different lives from mine. … I’ve been living the crunchy-con philosophy for years: a respect for tradition and institutions; believer in hard work, the free-market system and republican government; but tempered by the recognition that none of it means spit if you don’t enjoy the aesthetic bounties of civilization: positive spirituality, family, art, music, architecture, good food and conversation, polite company and reverence for nature. … My wife and I try to live counter to the suburban lifestyle that pervades our landscape. Here it’s fairly easy to hold conservative political views, but we see very few people actually living conservatively. People focus on the Big House, Big SUV, Big Boat, Big Toys. They commute for two hours a day, keep their kids in soccer, baseball, football, dance and music lessons concurrently, never eat together as a family, and wonder why their kids grow up spiritually bankrupt. … I really can’t think of anything more crunchy-con than [somebody like me], an infantry officer in love with the Grateful Dead.”