Jack Burns Lives!

The Hopi word meaning “life out of balance” or “weird craziness, man.” Abbey wrote about it when discussing the insane growth in and around Tucson, but it accurately describes life all across these not so United States of America. And perhaps no more so than in Texas, which is experiencing one of the worst droughts in that region’s history. Massive expansion of human populations in cities, unsustainable demands for water in homes, in recreation, industrial agriculture and energy production equals a cluster-fuck of immense proportions.

Today’s New York Times has an article about the emerging water wars in Texas, which are most assuredly going to worsen as the population continue to expand and resources become more and more scarce.

It was drought that lead to the collapse of the Comanche empire. Their massive horse herds competed with buffalo for water during a ten year drought, taking the best watering holes and driving the buffalo north. An instance where American Indian land use practices weren’t so smart, since the buffalo where critical to their existence on the plains. In a weakened state, they started raiding cattle, which didn’t sit too well with anglo settlers. The Feds and Texas Rangers intervened and the rest, as they say, is history.

Now it’s our turn to face the music.

“The purpose and function of government is not to preside over change but to prevent change. By political methods when unavoidable, by violence when convenient.”-Edward Abbey

I’m been helping a friend with the maintenance of a Facebook page dedicated to Cactus Ed. He’s in the middle of a move and needed a hand with posting daily Abbey quotes.
When the plea for help went out, I eagerly volunteered, figuring the worst case scenario was I’d have to pull out all of my Abbey books and start looking up quotes. Sounds like a nice way to spend a day. I could take the easy way out and go to the quote database at the Abbeyweb, but decided to be a stubborn purist and pull the quotes directly from my own collection of books.
After all, books are now a threatened species, thanks to the emergence of digital readers. On one level, they seem like a sensible way to maintain a large volume of information in a single, easily accessible place, but I’m not sold. I like the book in my hand. I like to make notes in the margins, dog ear pages. I get comfort from seeing all my books along my walls. And all of this digital information resides somewhere, and that somewhere is a data center that requires massive amounts of energy to keep it up and running. Of course, it takes energy to produce and transport the books, perhaps more. Who knows, but I want the book in my hand. Old school. Always resist “progress.”
Each evening, I pull out “an Abbey” (they’re like works of art to me) and start reading. Sometimes, I just scan a few pages searching for one of his hundreds of gems (it doesn’t take a long to find one), but most days, I indulge myself with several of his essays, underlining, making notes, just like I did when I first discovered Cactus Ed. It’s been a refreshing fun ride, reading some essays and passages I haven’t read in several years.
And after all these years, his words are fresh, and his spot on prescience never fails to amaze me. With honesty and clarity, he accurately identified the enemy, clearly explained our predicament and offered reasonable suggestions on how to resist. He made it clear we have a moral obligation to resist and made clear he didn’t suffer fence straddlers.
Neither do I. Either join us or gird your loins.
Who is “us?” We’re the earth lovers. People that love our home, our natural home and our only home, and feel it is our moral obligation to stand against mindless industrialism, tyranny and oppression. We follow the truth, no matter where it leads us. We speak for the voiceless, and we stand for what we stand on.
We thank Cactus Ed for leading the way, and though Ed is sadly no longer with us, his ideas and his words live. The Abbeyeistas still ride.
Onward, compadres!

“If industrial man continues to multiply his numbers and expand his operations he will succeed in his apparent intention, to seal himself off from the natural world and isolate himself within a synthetic prison of his making. He will make himself an exile from the earth and then will know at last, if he is still capable of feeling anything, the pain and agony of final loss. He will understand what the captive Zia Indians meant when they made a song of their sickness for home:

My home over there,
Now I remember it;
And when I see that mountain far away,
Why then I weep,
Why then I weep,
Remembering my home.”

Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire, “Down the River”

I can’t get out of here fast enough. Surely there’s a place in the mountains of New Mexico or in the Southern San Juan’s where I can get away from these people. As a people, Christians are by far and away the most violent people on this continent. They’re the ones that want to wipe out other cultures. Just ask an American Indian.

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This is a 25 minute short proposal for the long form documentary feature entitled NOT WELCOME by Eric Allen Bell.

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CONTACT: Eric@BellMedia.org