Sunday, April 08, 2007

I decided to go with something different on this Easter morning.  What follows is a selection from Eduardo Galeano’s book, Voices in Time.  Galeano is one of Latin America’s most gifted writers who speaks with an understatement that roars.  I would heartily recommend any of his books.   --Case     Mute   Many are the rings inscribed on their trunks.  These giant trees, heavy with years, have spent centuries chained to the depths of the earth, and they cannot escape.  Defenseless against chain saws, they crack and fall.  Whenever one topples, a world comes crashing down, and flocks of birds are left homeless.   Unwieldy old trees are fated to die.  In their place grow profitable young saplings.  Native forests give way to contrived forests.  Order—military, industrial—triumphs over the chaos of nature.  Pine and eucalyptus grown for export look like soldiers in formation, marching off to the world market.   Fast food, fast wood.  Man-made forests grow overnight and are sold in the time it takes to say amen. Source of hard currency, triumph of development, symbol of progress, these wood farms suck the land dry and leave the soil barren.   No bird sings in them.   People call them “forests of silence.”   6:29:20 AM    comment []

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