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Show THE ZEPHYR/JUNEJULY 2005 the earth, we never will. Therefore, surprises: Ivory billed woodpeckers. Exotic diseases. Global warming. Tsunamis. Drought. Earth rumbling, spewing lava. Glaciers melting. Ocean currents at risk. And the sun still rises. I think this view of nature is pure gold. The best part is that just about everybody possesses it. I think we varmentalists ought to be among those who bring it forward, keeping it there, for thought or meditation, insisting upon it. Or, at the very least as a humble goal,. What do you think? Sixty four years ago a president of the United States presided with a different style of power, one that had responded to a fought-for and uneasy compromise between corporate , FROM FOOTPRINTS 121 EAST 100 SOUTH #108 MOAB, UT 84532 800.635.5280 insistence and mass movements in the heartlands. It created Social Security, for one thing. And genuine environmental victories were possible. “Please tell Major General Adams or whoever is in charge of this business that Henry Top 10 Contemporary Oxymorons Lake, Idaho is to immediately be struck from the Army planning list for any purposes. The verdict is for the trumpeter swan and against the Army. The Army must find a different nesting place.” 10) Free Checking 9) User Friendly Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Memo for the Secretary of War, 1941. But we can’t sit on our butts waiting for an environmental president, no matter how cheering it might be to look back to an era when we came close. Nor can we depend on green organizations that have such a poor hold on their reason for being that they have to go to the market and buy reasons. And the “greening” of corporations is most definitely a weak reed. Witness: Exxon (now Exxon-Mobil) still fielding lawyers to dispute the damage 8) Internet Security 7) Affordable Prescription Drugs 6) award for the Exxon Valdez disaster. So many ideas and movements floating around now, we flounder in a sea of relativity, and perpetual war, and record profits for the few. Henry Thoreau, wandering around Concord, literally framed views of nature, shapes of pines against a sky, their composition, things like that. He noticed, of course, that he could shift the frames, bring into being a new view. Commonplace enough, we all do it, but Henry came upon an audacious thought. “Can I not by expectation affect the revolutions of nature -- make a day to bring forth something new?”” (3) I interpret this as a claim that walking, expecting, observing, are more than outsider work, they are integral parts of the workings of nature. We are inside, totally, whether we admit it or not. And yet we are also able to stand aside from nature, and society too, conceive of them as from a distance, from outside. That doubleness is perfectly natural, not a curse; tensions and contradictions are simply the way life evolved, the way things turned out, on this planet, very different from perfect harmony laid out in boring straight lines or standardized, permanent windings. Thinking along these lines and stirred up by that sentence from Thoreau, I’ve come to believe in a certain kind of humility that accepts some responsibility for my insider status, by reducing consumption of trivial stuff and by shedding oppressive notions of behaviors and body care that come at us every night on the screen. We can create refusals, decline silly excuses for buying a station wagon. reject herbicides and pesticides for lawn and garden; plot ways to reduce the lawn to reel mower size. Much can be done in these individual decision arenas. Our moves there will not shake the world, but they might prepare the way. They will at the least highlight the deep ditch between what humans need and what we actually consume of the world. Good, but not good enough; won’t get us off the endangered species list. For that we need a little nameless nag in the back of our mind that keeps insisting that individual lives can’’t come to full flower without involvement with others for substantial change. The nag can be comforting, too, reminding that changes are normal parts of the earth’s workings. Unlimited Resources ) A Democratic Iraq 4 Acceptable Pollution Levels ) Cooperative Government 2) Well Funded Public Education 1) Sustainable Growth Bonus: Decaffeinated Coffee! NOW...MORE THAN EVER SUPPORT OUR ADVERTISERS!!! _ These are the People who keep one of the West's last TRUE independent publications alive. LET THEM KNOW! The nag can do great service, breaking this silly idea that we have to live in a totalized, totalitarian buying-and-selling regime masquerading as democracy, for ever. No, the nag says, wecan break out. The process will be hard, requiring step-by-step inquiry, action, mutual confidence and consultation and weathering of disagreements. There willbe surprises. LITTLE WEASEL ADS, INC. PRESENTS THE DESERT RAT COMMANDO {va This just in from The Land Institute: “Imagine if in the 21st century we could see the end of the idea that knowledge is adequate to run the world. This would cause us to feature questions that go beyond the available answers. We would learn patience, and we would enjoy a kind of yeastiness for thought. I think this also would do the absolutely necessary job of driving knowledge out of its categories.” (4) (1) Amanda Little, “”“Muckraker,”” in /Progressive Populist/, May 1, 2005. (2) Holmes Rolston HI, /Philosophy Gone Wild. Essays in Environmental Ethics /. Prometheus Books, 1986. (3) Henry Thoreau, Journal, 1852. (4) Wes Jackson, froma talk at The Land Institute’’s 2004 Prairie Festival. (www.landinstitute.org). Is THIS what we 'VARNMENTALISTS mean when we THE LAZY LIZARD INTERNATIONAL HOSTEL One Mile South of Moab on US 191 435.259.6057 reservations@lazylizardhostel.com www.lazulizardhostel.com Check out our nightly rates: "THE B TALK “ about the GREENING of AMERICA??? | THINK WE'RE IN DEEP MANURE. |