An excerpt:
I believe that Jack Burns, a character in several of Edward Abbey’s novels, is in effect a time traveler from the pre-agricultural world. The hunter-gatherer societies that inhabited that world thrived for nearly 200,000 years and constituted the basic environment of human evolutionary adaptation. In duration they dwarf the last 5,000 years of agriculture-based human civilization (“syphilization” is what Ed called it).
I also believe that humanity is destined to reclaim salient features of those pre-agricultural societies, whether we do so by our own choice or because we are hammered into it by a long series of ecological disasters.
So Jack Burns is also a time traveler from humanity’s future.
Click the image below to read more of Scott’s article:
http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2014/12/02/jack-burns-an-abbey-fictional-character-from-two-dimensions-by-scott-thompson/
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An excerpt:
I was a kid, maybe ten or eleven and at home alone one evening with a bowl of popcorn and the TV. I’d turned the channel to NBC to catch that week’s presentation of “Saturday Night at the Movies.” It was a western, a film I’d never heard of, ‘Lonely Are The Brave,’ starring Kirk Douglas and Walter Mattheau. As the opening scene played out, I assumed it was set in the Old West, that it was another ‘Wyatt Earp/Gunsmoke’ kind of movie. But when Douglas, as ‘Jack Burns,’ leans back to savor his hand rolled smoke and offer a few soothing words to his horse Whiskey, the desert silence is disrupted by something out of place. Burns reluctantly lifts his eyes to the sky, not out of surprise but bitter resignation, to the sight of a squadron of screaming jet aircraft, their contrails fouling a faultless New Mexico sky.
This story wasn’t taking place in 1882…this was 1962—the “Modern West,” and Jack Burns was trapped in it. The film was about a world he loved—his beloved West—but a world that was fast spinning out of control
Click the image below to read more of Jim’s article:
http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2014/12/02/lonely-are-the-brave-revisited-by-jim-stiles/
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EXCERPT: And of course, wherever rodents go, they leave their calling cards behind. Over the years the mouse and rat turds accumulated behind the walls. Whenever we bumped into the walls or tried to hang a picture–whenever anyone so much as touched those walls, you could hear the most recent rodent deposits trickle slowly to the floor. It sounded like one of those rain sticks you can buy at the nearest New Age crafts store. So in the brutal heart of a typical canyon country summer, listening to the gentle beat of mouse turds behind our walls was such a comfort. On demand, we could conjure up the sensation of a light summer rain. Blessed we were beyond my ability to describe it.
Click HERE to read the full story
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An excerpt:
I’ve noticed, in my non-scientific polling of post office conversations, that lately the standard answer to “How are you doing?” has changed. I have always relied on that old standby, “Good. How are you?” But I seem to have missed a major shift in word usage, because my “How are you?” is rarely answered with an agreeing “Good” anymore. Now, I’m much more likely to hear, “Oh, you know. Busy.” or “Ugh. So Busy.” Or a tired sigh and a shrug, suggesting that the “busy” is so obvious, who needs words for it?
Click the image below to read more of Tonya’s article:
http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2014/12/02/sowing-clover-living-on-company-time-by-tonya-stiles/
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