Sunday, October 08, 2006

Quotes from Sage's recent reading and a new picture

I thought I needed a new photo. This one was taken after a few days in the bush. Also, what about those Tigers! They beat the best team money can buy, the Yankees. It's always like Christmas in my home when the Yankees get beat! Anyway, here are some quotes from this week's readings.

The Achilles’ heel of consumer society is that it hasn’t made us happy as it promised it would. Although Americans have tripled their prosperity since the mid 1950s, the percentage who say they’re “very satisfied” with their lives has declined. In face, only about a quarter of Americans now say that they’re “very satisfied,” When you think about it, this is pretty sad considering the unbelievable amount of resources and energy that we have consumed—and waste we have produced—in the last fifty years. “We’ve pursued the American Dream to no real apparent end.
- Bill McKibben in an interview by Alexis Adams, “Dream A Little Dream” The Sun (October 2006)

Community is as endangered by surplus as it is by deficit. There is too much money floating around it enables people to have no need of each other.
-Bill McKibben in an interview by Alexis Adams, “Dream A Little Dream” The Sun (October 2006)

Their schooling is more than mass hysteria. It has hydro-dynamic advantages. Like geese in their V formations, like bikers in a pack, the schools get along with less energy than if they were swimming alone… their individual oxygen consumption is lower when they are in school.
-John McPhee, The Founding Fish

My hypothesis is that what keeps these guys going further and further, when there are clear disadvantages of doing so has to be advantages for their progeny… to put your offering at the head of the food chain.
-John McPhee, The Founding Fish (On shad migration)

The very word canyon suggested to me protection, a dramatically confined place under the guard of impenetrable cliffs; walls drawn narrowly inward on both sides and a ribbon of sky above. It was a place that would hold me.
-Craig Child, Soul of Nowhere

If the rest of the Grand Canyon is made of rock, then the canyon of the Redwall are made of seduction.
-Craig Childs, Soul of Nowhere

I admire more than ever, the power and grace of your style, the vivid rendering of the physical scene—you manage to make even Michigan sound like a land of splendor and mystery.
-Edward Abbey in a letter to Jim Harrison (an author from Michigan) after reading his book Sun Dog. Abbey goes on to chastise Harrison for creating a hero out of an engineer/dam builder who works for a company like “Bechtel.” He follows this up with a rant on the damning impact of dams around the globe. Letter in The Sun, October 2006.

17 comments:

  1. Such profound comment on the fallacy of consumerist society. Wonderful...these totally jibe with my own writings on this topic.

    Thanks for keeping the quotes coming. They rock, as do you.

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  2. Yeah, I just cannot get enough of these wonderful quote posts. Keep them coming Sage!

    I'm not familiar with Bill McKibben, but sure seems like a very sharp man. There's very little mainstream critical thought about our modern consumer society and the real impact it has on other societies and the planet.

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  3. sage~ I'm so *gun shy* 'bout the Tigers after what happened to Red Wings and Pistons that I decided =IF= they win the World Series, I'll go absolutely nuts on my blog! {fingers crossed} :+)

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  4. So you pulled your nose out of a book to watch the last game, eh? I'm glad they beat the Yankees but I have a bit of a problem with the amount of celebrating that they did. It wasn't even for the division title. Was champagne really necessary?

    I have a couple of Craig Childs books (and an Eric Hoffer one) on my list for whenever I remember to go to the library so thanks for a) reminding me to go to the library and b) not quoting him too much or else I won't feel like reading them. ;-)

    You did need a new photo and this is a lovely replacement. Hopefully now, the nightmares I've had of you with hair and bright red headbands will disappear. :-)

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  5. Carmi, I'll have to go find your articles, are they in your blog?

    V, Bill McKibben is an ecology writer who wrote "The End of Nature" I think he lives in NH

    Karen, we can keep hoping!

    Murf, I thought you'd like the pic, lol, and I really can't see you reading a Craig Child's book, he writes about the desert. And yes, I did pull my head out of a book and watch about 1/2 of the game on Saturday.

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  6. Carmi, I'll have to go find your articles, are they in your blog?

    V, Bill McKibben is an ecology writer who wrote "The End of Nature" I think he lives in NH

    Karen, we can keep hoping!

    Murf, I thought you'd like the pic, lol, and I really can't see you reading a Craig Child's book, he writes about the desert. And yes, I did pull my head out of a book and watch about 1/2 of the game on Saturday.

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  7. great hunky new picture! :)

    i do love these quotes. all of them.
    thanks babe.

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  8. I said that last quote? *laughs* Edward Abbey was great at practicing Dale Carnegie techniques in his letter writing. Start off with something positive before getting down to business.

    Your first two money related quotes made me remember one of my all time favorite books on the subject called, "The Millionaire Next Door." If you haven't read it, you should sometime. It changed my life and how I view money.

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  9. John MacPhee is a wise man. I think that he is brilliant in so many different ways.

    Is that the hat that got a washing? :-)

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  10. Well, babe, when I read his books, I will take a picture of myself doing so and send it to you. And I dig the desert, I'll have you know. While you enjoy the Nevada version, I prefer Arizona and New Mexico.

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  11. Well, babe, when I read his books, I will take a picture of myself doing so and send it to you. And I dig the desert, I'll have you know. While you enjoy the Nevada version, I prefer Arizona and New Mexico.

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  12. I hate Blogger for Mac.

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  13. Keda, Glad you like the quotes and didn't find the pic to be too offense!

    Ed, I haven't read the Millionaire Next Door, but I have heard of it. As for the Abbey quote, there's more coming, I think I'll do a post on the collection of his letters.

    Dawn, I remember you suggesting McPhee in a post--I'm enjoying the book so far, it's my "audio book" on my ipod--about 13 hours of listening to shad fishing tales! And, don't my hat look clean? lol

    Lover of Buttes (or is that butts?) I'm not sure why blogger is giving multiple posts, it did that to me also. I'm looking forward to that pic and even more forward to a book review in your blog!

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  14. I'm always impressed with the amount of reading you do and the good quotes you find.

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  15. Depending on the guy, it could be butts as well. I'm not sure if the book review will be as in depth as yours seeing as that it will probably be a library book and writing in it is not allowed. Maybe I should really shock you and just buy them. They would fit nicely in my bookcase filled with Nicholas Sparks, Nora Roberts and Nancy Drew. ;-)

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  16. Nice! very Nice! I like the new shot.

    Still liking the quotes. I agree with the one on community especially. As much as I tend to dislike being around people even I miss the days when our little community had day "events" where you all saw each other. I had no idea when I was younger just how much the world would really change.

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  17. Like the new picture

    Found the quote on life satisfaction and prosperity sad but too true

    We don't communicate or socialize the way our parents generations did. Our families are scattered and it's hard to find the time or make the effort

    Have read a lot of John McPhee. He's one of my brought up on The New Yorker, Johns.

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