This used to be one of my favorite roads to drive on. I take it when my job takes me down to Saxonburg. I always loved driving past the beautiful rolling farm country... This view began to be marred in June, when a drilling rig sprang up in the midst of that farmland, on property leased to the industry by the monks of Holy Trinity Monastery. (For me, personally, that makes it even MORE of a travesty, that "holy" men were accomplices to this assault. A throwback to my Catholic upbringing, no doubt...) But that wellpad was just in one location along the road. Today, Aug. 22, I saw that this ENTIRE STRETCH of farmland had a hideous bare strip down its ENTIRE LENGTH, and that strip was littered with long pieces of pipe...
This is going to happen to each of us at some point, where some special place that feeds our soul with its beauty is going to be decimated, raped, assaulted and pillaged by this soul-killing industry.
Yes, we are fighting for the air and water that we need to live, but we are fighting also for that which makes life worth living: the beauty and wonder of our native planet, our "soul connection" with the earth. All of that is steadily being taken away from us by this out-of-control industry...
Some of you may remember the song "Out in the Country" by Three Dog Night: "Before the breathing air is gone, before the sun is just a bright spot in the nighttime... I stand alone, and take back something worth remembering..." I've been singing that song a lot lately. I feel that those dark days are rapidly approaching, that this industry is accelerating that process more than anything that has ever been created.
But I feel that there is something within us, and within the earth itself, that is more powerful than all the corporate political might being brought to bear at this pivotal time in our history. Because of that, we WILL overcome...
"Don't be so proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The power to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force..."
j.p.m.