Sunday, May 28, 2006

GRENDEL'S LAUNDRY LIST:     THE CASSANDRA READINGS The first observation that must be apparent to all men is that our dominion has been mostly destructive.   We have been greatly engaged in digging up the stored resources, and in destroying vast products of the earth for some small kernel that we can apply to our necessities or add to our enjoyments. We…blast the minerals and metals from underneath the crust, and leave the earth raw and sore; we box pines for turpentine and abandon the growths of limitless years to fire and devastation; sweep the forests with the besom of destruction; pull the fish from the rivers and ponds without making any adequate provision for renewal; exterminate whole races of animals; choke the streams with refuse and dross; rob the land of its available stores, denuding the surface, exposing great areas to erosion.   How many and many are the years required to grow a forest and to fill the pockets of the rocks, and how satisfying are the landscapes, and yet how desperately soon may men reduce it all to ruin and to emptiness, and slatternly may they violate the scenery!   All this habit of destruction is uneconomic in the best sense, unsocial, unmoral.   Yet there is even a more defenseless devastation than all this. It is the organized destructiveness of those who would make military domination the major premise in the constitution of society, accompanying desolation with viciousness and violence, ravaging the holy earth, disrespecting the works of the creator, looking toward extirpation, confessing thereby that they do not know how to live in cooperation with their fellows; in such situations, every new implement of destruction adds to the guilt.   In times past (!) we were moved by religious fanaticism… Today we are moved by impulses of trade, and we find ourselves plunged into a war of commercial frenzy; and as it has behind it vaster resources and more command of natural forces, so is it the most ferocious and wasteful that the race has experienced, exceeding in its havoc the cataclysms of earthquake and volcano. Certainly we have not learned how to withstand the prosperity and the privileges that we have gained by the discoveries of science; and certainly the morals of commerce have not given us freedom or mastery. Rivalry that leads to arms is a natural fruit of unrestrained rivalry in trade.   Liberty Hyde Bailey, from The Holy Earth, 1915  10:41:31 PM    comment []

DICK JONES, GUEST POET: STILL LIFE CLICK IMAGE TO READ POETRY 5:46:31 PM    comment []

LOOKING THROUGH THE GLASS    DR. OMED STILL LIVES AND LURKS... 1:51:52 PM    comment []