from With by Donald Harington

"What's bored. Bored is when you caint find something to keep you curious. So long as there's anything going on in the world, I'll never be bored....You just aint looking fo rit. Or you caint see it. Or caint hear it. Or caint taste it or smell it or feel it. Why there aint a moment goes by that something wondrous don't occur...Like a orange garden spider building her web. Or like the wind a-slewing through the cedars. Or the sound of them dogs afar off a-hrolfing and a-hrothgaring as they chase their game. Or the lightning bugs all over the meader at dusky dark. Or the fine smell of oak wood fresh cut. Or the sweet breeze that puffs from your nose when you're a-sleeping." spoken by Adam Madewell's in-habit (306-7)

"a small group of thoughtful, commmitted citizens..."

I've seen this quote a hundred times in the past few years, partly because it's painted in Lincoln High School's hallway.

Sometimes it's unfortunate that "...a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead

That's what the Bush administration has done. That's what the timber companies have done in recent decades. That's what the Inquisition did in medieval/renaissance western Europe. That's what the farmers of Mesopotamian antiquity did when they annihilated the indigenous folks in front of them and then spread north, south and east from there.

This "empowering" idea is meant to inspire hope to its readers. Does it inspire the best sort of action?

Thomas Pynchon

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers."
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, page 251

Ivan Illich

"The world does not contain any information. It is as it is. Information about it is created in the organism through its interaction with the world. To speak about storage of information outside the human body is to fall into a semantic trap. Books or computers are part of the world. They can yield information when they are looked upon. We move the problem of learning and of cognition nicely into the blind spot of our intellectual vision if we confuse vehicles for potential information with information itself. We do the same when we confuse data for potential decision with decision itself." p86 Tools for Convivialtity by Ivan Illlich

Cornel West

"Never confuse knowledge with wisdom. By wisdom I mean wrestlng with how to live."
--Cornel West (African American Wisdom)

"Love is a choice--not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile." --Carter Heywoard (A Passion for Justice)

"As an entry in any intergalactic design compeitition, industrial civilization would be thrown out at the qualifying round." --David Orr (Orion Jan/Feb 2004)

"There is also in each of us the maveric, the darling stubborn one who won't listen, who insists, who chooses preference or the spritied guess over yardsticks or even history. I suspect this maveric is somwhat what the soul is, or at least that the soul lives close by." --Mary Oliver (Long Life & other essays)

Mental Slavery

"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery/None but ourselves can free our minds." -Bob Marley

"Through clever and constant application of propaganda people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise." -Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1923

"There is also a lot of infrastructure inside of people's heads." –Aric (from Derrick Jensen discussion group)

"The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed" –Steven Biko

"Wilderness begins in the human mind" -Ed Abbey

"The concept of duty has been a means used by the holders of power to induce others to live for the interests of their masters rather than for their own." -Bertrand Russell

"There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old system and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new one." - Machiavelli - 1513

Scott Russell Sanders

"The earth needs fewer tourists and more inhabitants, it seems to me--fewer people who float about in bubbles of money and more people committed to knowing and tending their home ground."