Jack Burns Lives!

Everyone has their own version of the “certain” collapse scenario. Peak Oil theorists, conspiracy theorists, Glenn Beck, even Forbes. Edward Abbey wrote about the collapse of civilization. I’ve written about it, but I’m just a nobody getting my ideas from other people. I just like to spread gossip, because it gives me something to [...]

Who would have thought Detroit would be the city leading America to the post-Peak oil, mega-capitalist, industrial age?
Detroit is embarking on a plan that would reduce the size of the city and restore its blighted core to a greener, more rural landscape that more closely resembles the area before the Age of Oil. [...]

Perhaps we’d be better off with a King or a Queen. As Abbey said, we shouldn’t “…entrust the management of our lives to “kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.” Just drop the King part.
Why?
After years of living in the The Bible Belt, where The Good Book apparently rules all, I’m convinced there [...]

Spring fever here in the Mississippi Delta…. We had bright sunshine yesterday and will again today. The birds are singing like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir this morning, as they dart about gathering nesting materials and food in preparation for raising their offspring. Chipmunks are warily poking their heads out of their holes, hoping to fill [...]

The best instituted governments carry in them the seeds of their destruction: and, though they grow and improve for a time, they will soon tend visibly to their dissolution. Every hour they live is an hour the less that they have to live.”-Henry St. John, First Viscount Bolingbroke, 1738
The Course of Empire is a five-part [...]

The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders-Edward Abbey.
With spring approaching, I find myself once again yearning to head west. To cross the mighty Mississippi and flee to the land of mountains, mesas, deserts, cowboys and Indians. In the interest of balanced reporting, I should also say the land of [...]

A little over a year ago, there was much hope in America. Many people falsely believed they’d elected “their guy,” a man that would fairly represent the average, standard fare citizen, if there is such a thing. Our first black President. A community activist, liberal and Constitutional scholar. Someone that would stand up against power [...]

“I am going to venture that the man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures, and acknowledging unity with the universe of things, was infusing into his being the true essence of civilization.”
-Chief Luther Standing Bear
When confronted with the choice of reading [...]

2009 wasn’t a great year for a lot of folks, but overall, I’ll give it a C-. We got rid of the Bush Crime Family, and while the replacement seems only marginally better, he is better. At least our President doesn’t stumble over his words like a third grader that just got caught throwing [...]

This started out as a piece on birds. Winter birds, as we’ve had the recent pleasure of visiting with some seasonal friends visiting during their winter vacation. Then it morphed into something else entirely, thanks to my Attention Deficit Disorder or what used to be called lack of concentration or focus. I shifted to e-mail [...]