cut the lumber. And then he said,
'When gas fumes are being used up there above the pistons, you make sure that
back there at the blades there's lumber being cut.'"
In other words, don't waste the
gasoline.
I remember those kinds of notions
being expressed by my people when I was a kid in rural Kentucky. Back then I thought of such
sentiments as hillbilly talk, for I had seen that people in movies and on TV
didn't say that kind of thing. Today, however, I'm of the opinion that such
thinking suggests a much more sophisticated and realistic assessment of what
has value in this world and how humans should behave, than the general
principles currently guiding our culture.
Why is this matter relevant to a
naturalist's newsletter?
It is because I love living things
and there is nothing more threatening to Life on Earth than the behavior of
people who would ridicule the kind of close accounting favored by Buck's
father.
In my opinion, when someone jumps
into a car and drives someplace just to buy a hamburger, that is the moral
equivalent of environmental terrorism. When people set their air conditioners
at too cold a level and claim it's OK because they're working hard and paying
for the electricity, it is a display of profound ignorance with regard to the
environmental costs in producing and delivering that electricity, and they are
showing how uncaring they are for those who will come later and have to pay the
real costs. When voters allow themselves to be seduced by political demagogues,
especially war-making ones, it is a rebuke to the Creator who endowed us with
brains that when used enable us to see through such people.
How I long for the days when
average folks with rough hands and honest smiles, and often with very little
formal education, were endowed not only with the wisdom to speak in favor of
frugality, self discipline, simplicity and country-style wholesomeness, but
also the gumption to conduct their lives according to those sustainable
principles.
*****
GRANDMA'S BLACKBERRIES
I wrote to my Grandma Taylor in Calhoun, Kentucky
that blackberry thickets here were just white with blossoms, and her reply was
sad. She said she missed seeing blackberry thickets the way they used to be,
missed seeing the pretty blossoms and going gathering the purple-staining
berries.