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[bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

Abbey was important and largely he influenced for the good.  Unfortunately  , 
there are reactionary types within the environmental movements who use his 
satire and sarcasm as excuse doing stupid things like pouring sugar into 
bulldozer engines.

  The corporations are never hurt by these reactionary activities, only the 
wage-paid employess of the companys contracted by the corporations.  I think 
Abbey would be horrified that his words are used by the prsent-day "Earth 
First".  'The Monkey Wrench Gang' was satire ....bobford



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--- On Thu, 11/6/08, Don Bowen <don.bowen AT earthlink.net> wrote:

> From: Don Bowen <don.bowen AT earthlink.net>
> Subject: Edward Abbey was:ld water
> To: bobford79 AT yahoo.com, homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Thursday, November 6, 2008, 5:17 AM
> Edward Abbey was one of my favorite authors.  I have never
> felt the grief
> over another author I felt when I learned of his death.
> 
> > Abbey was fairly prolific with his essays, etc.  He
> > also , as I'm sure you realize, has a very mixed
> reputation out here.
> 
> Edward Abbey was born on a farm in Pennsylvania in the late
> 20s and died in
> Tuscon, AZ in 1989.  He joined the Army at the end of WWII
> and spent time as
> an MP in Italy after the war coming away with a deep
> distrust for authority
> and disgust for war and its aftermath.  He went to school
> in New Mexico and
> was a Stegner Fellow along with the likes of Wendell Berry.
> 
> The best way to describe Abbey is through some of his
> quotes.
> 
> "The subject of illegal aliens is a touchy one ...
> They come to stay and
> they stay to multiply. What of it? say the documented
> liberals; ours is a
> rich and generous nation, we have room for all, let them
> come. And let them
> stay, say the conservatives; a large, cheap, frightened,
> docile, surplus
> labor force is exactly what the economy needs. Put some
> fear into the
> unions: tighten discipline, spur productivity, whip up the
> competition for
> jobs. The conservatives love their cheap labor; the
> liberals love their
> cheap cause"
> 
> "A knowledge of the true age of the earth and of the
> fossil record makes it
> impossible for any balanced intellect to believe in the
> literal truth of
> every part of the Bible in the way that fundamentalists do.
> And if some of
> the Bible is manifestly wrong, why should any of the rest
> of it be accepted
> automatically?"
> 
> "Better a cruel truth than a comfortable
> delusion."
> 
> "Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsman
> grinning over his kill, I am
> always impressed by the striking moral and aesthetic
> superiority of the dead
> animal to the live one."
> 
> "The fat pink slobs who go roaring over the landscape
> in these over-sized
> over-priced over-advertised mechanical mastodons are people
> too lazy to
> walk, too ignorant to saddle a horse, too cheap and clumsy
> to paddle a
> canoe. Like cattle or sheep, they travel in herds, scared
> to death of going
> anywhere alone, and they leave their sign and spoor all
> over the back
> country: Coors beer cans, Styrofoam cups, plastic spoons,
> balls of Kleenex,
> wads of toilet paper, spent cartridge shells, crushed
> gopher snakes, smashed
> sagebrush, broken trees, dead chipmunks, wounded deer,
> eroded trails,
> bullet-riddled petroglyphs, spray-painted signatures,
> vandalized Indian
> ruins, fouled-up waterholes, polluted springs and
> smoldering campfires piled
> with incombustible tinfoil, filter tips, broken bottles.
> Etc."
> 
> "Abolition of a woman's right to abortion, when
> and if she wants it, amounts
> to compulsory maternity: a form of rape by the State."
> 
> "In the Soviet Union, government controls industry. In
> the United States,
> industry controls government. That is the principal
> structural difference
> between the two great oligarchies of our time."
> 
> The most common form of terrorism in the U.S.A. is that
> carried on by
> bulldozers and chain saws."
> 
> Don Bowen  KI6DIU
> http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html