Wednesday, June 23, 2010

The Questionnaire


Questionnaire


1.  How much poison are you willing to eat for the success of the free market and global trade?  Please name your preferred poisons.


2.  For the sake of goodness, how much evil are you willing to do?  Fill in the following blanks with the names of your favorite evils and acts of hatred.


3.  What sacrifices are you prepared to make for culture and civilization?  Please list the monuments, shrines and works of art you would most willingly destroy.


4.  In the name of patriotism and the flag, how much of our beloved land are you willing to desecrate?  List in the following spaces the mountains, rivers, towns, farms you could most readily do without.


5.  State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes, the energy sources, the kinds of security, for which you would kill a child.  Name, please, the children whom you would be willing to kill.


(Taken from Leavings  Poems by Wendell Berry.)


(And, yes, I am somewhat indecisive/dyslexic on what to do with all these blog template choices!)

15 comments:

  1. Some list of choices. Bad and awful!!
    This list really makes you think about what choices are being made and how low we could go.
    Hugs
    SueAnn

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  2. Wendell Berry is an amazing writer. He certainly makes one think! Put that way, the choices seem all wrong, don't they? And yet we make them every day without thinking about them.

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  3. Your new layout reminds me of the scene in "Contact". Love it!

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  4. Well, THAT really makes one think, doesn't it?


    I like this header!

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  5. WOW! Excellent points.

    I would like to see all political leaders have to answer the question in the past tense "......
    have you DONE.........".

    This should be required for them and should be published in local and national papers! When they fudge, an editor can fill in the blanks for them.

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  6. Your notes.......you leave me laughing. Thanks.

    Blog templates. Nope, I want plain white to back the photos and make readability easy for everyone. I want to widest possible blog template so I can hang big photos in it. I'm half blind, so I want to see what I am putting up. Nothing fancy for me. Darn it.

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  7. Anonymous4:22 PM

    It is all in the way it is presented, isn't it? Your post makes me think about what I say yes to, on the ballots.

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  8. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  9. Sorry for getting it wrong first go.
    Second go:


    Drill, baby, drill!

    Our lifestyle demands cheap petrol, demands any and all consumer goods on tap, transported to us from across the world; whether we exploit the earth's resources or cheap labour, preferably human resources from other nations, who cares about the world we leave behind,

    Tread lightly? That's for wimps.

    There, will that do?

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  10. Well when you put it that way! We are digging our own early graves and those of others. The oil in the Gulf will be killing others for along time in that way. I will not wear sunscreen because I know about 70 percent of what we put on our skin we might as well eat and I'm not willing to eat that poison.

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  11. We are digging an early grave. The oil in the Gulf will be killing for a long time. I don't use sunscreen because I know that 70% of what you put on your skin you might as well have eaten. I'm not willing to eat that poison.

    One of my favorite books was Jayber Crow by Berry.

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  12. I have been reading all of Wendall Barry's essays on ag, farming, and community. Like 'Silent Spring,' he nailed today's current problem way back in the '70s!

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  13. RYN: The problem is always me. :) Usually I have not checked the setting on my camera, and even if I have it set to automatic, I don't wait until it is in focus. I've been spoiled by generations of point and shoot cameras that now live in an upper closet shelf.

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  14. My goodness...
    I am amazed about your ability to bring forth very interesting questions...they make people think.
    ;)

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  15. Not my questions...those of the great writer Wendell Berry.

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Take your time...take a deep breath...then hit me with your best shot.