steph (librarianish)

“Time makes things worse. Bad is faster than good. Wickedness is a weed and does not wither on its own. It grows and spreads.”
― Ben H. Winters, Underground Airlines

“The Middle Mind attempts to find a middle way between the ideological hacks of the right and of the theorized left. Unlike Middle-brow, the Middle Mind does not locate itself between high and low culture. Rather, it asserts its right to speak for high culture indifferent to both the traditionalist right and the academic left. The Middle Mind is pragmatic, plainspoken, populist, contemptuous of the right's narrowness, and incredulous before the left's convolutions. It is adventuresome, eclectic, spiritual, and in general agreement with liberal political assumptions about race, gender, and class.”
― Curtis White, The Middle Mind: Why Consumer Culture is Turning Us Into the Living Dead

“sustainable," like "green" and "organic," is an easily corruptible concept that, not surprisingly, has been willfully corrupted by people who would very much like to sell you a hybrid SUV or an Energy Star-rated flat-screen TV with no money down and zero percent interest for 60 months. There is very little about agriculture that is truly sustainable. At its core, agriculture is a human manipulation of a natural process. Is there a version of agriculture that is truly sustainable? Probably so. Is there a version of agriculture that is truly sustainable and able to feed 7 billion people? Almost certainly not.”
― Ben Hewitt, The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food

“The cheap-food boom has been seductively comfortable for us all. Let's face it: Farming is damn hard work, typically done for damnable pay. By relinquishing this burden, by handing the reins to the corporations, we relieved ourselves of a lot of backaches, sunburns, and financial strains. We struck a deal: The agribusinesses got a guaranteed chunk of our income and our full faith in their ability to keep us sustained. In return, we got to pursue lifestyles that don't revolve around soil and toil and that allow us a measure of leisure time unprecedented in human history.”
― Ben Hewitt, The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food