Scranch Scranch

It is difficult
     to get the news from poems
           yet men die miserably every day
                 for lack
     of what is found there.
-William Carlos Williams


"To take Williams' statement that people die for lack of what is found
there, I think this means lack of open-heartedness, lack of sweetness
and tenderness to each other. But then a little later I saw that
meaning also as ecological, that openness not just for the human
community but for the natural community; it's for our immediate
neighborhood of all the other species, all of us passing through time.
I get angered when the bears eat my apples right off the tree. But I
can say well, okay, they got to them first; they must have enjoyed
them."

-Gary Snyder

________________________________________________________

"We, the people, had better keep an eye on our government, not out of
contempt or lack of appreciation or disrespect, but out of a sense of
guardianship...
"How do you use these tools we have given you to make us safe in such
a manner that will preserve our freedom? . . . Freedom is no policy
for the timid. And my plaintive plea to all my colleagues that remain
in this government as I leave it is, for our sake, for my sake, for
heaven's sake, don't give up on freedom!"
-Dick Armey, Retired "very conservative house majority leader"

Greed is

Love is

Life is expensive,
The world is conservative,
and we all just want to get buy.
--The Believer