The Ability To Speak Exactly Is Intimately

It Was A Country . . . That He And His People Had Known How To Use And Abuse, But Not How To Preserve.

I Believe Until Fairly Recently Our Destructions Of Nature Were More Or Less Unwitting -- The By-products, So To Speak, Of Our Ignorance Or Weakness Or Depravity. It Is Our Present Principled And Elaborately Rationalized Rape And Plunder Of The Natural World That Is A New Thing Under The Sun.

Without A Complex Knowledge Of One's Place And Without The Faithfulness To One's Place On Which Such Knowledge Depends, It Is Inevitable That The Place Will Be Used Carelessly, And Eventually Destroyed. Without Such Knowledge And Faithfulness, Moreover, The Culture Of A Country Will Be Superficial And Decorative, Functional Only Insofar As It May Be A Symbol Of Prestige, The Affectation Of An Elite Or "in" Group.

Unexpected Wonders Happen, Not On Schedule, Or When You Expect Or Want Them To Happen, But If You Keep Hanging Around, They Do Happen.

I Think Of The Old Slavery, And Of The Way The Economy Has Now Improved Upon It. The New Slavery Has Improved Upon The Old By Giving The New Slaves The Illusion That They Are Free. The Economy Does Not Take People's Freedom By Force, Which Would Be Against Its Principles, For It Is Very Humane. It Buys Their Freedom, Pays For It, And Then Persuades Its Money Back Again With Shoddy Goods And The Promise Of Freedom. "buy A Car," It Says, "and Be Free. Buy A Boat And Be Free." Is This Not The Raw Material Of Bad Dreams? Or Is It Maybe The Very Nightmare Itself?