Step away from the asphalt machine

"You could probably get rid of eighty percent of the paving in Los Angeles and make it infinitely more habitable."
- Carl Anthony, Ecopsychology and the Deconstruction of Whiteness in the anthology Ecopsychology.

On a total ecopsychology kick right now.  Love David Abrams.  Bill Plotkin seems a bit ethereal but interesting.  Have about seven Gary Snyder books out of the library. About to dig into Chellis Glendinnig.

And then there's Lewis Mumford weirdness: The Myth of the Machine. He argues for a larger definition of technology than is currently current. On-board there.  He points out that the first machines had human parts (think building the pyramids). Check.  He thinks domesticating (and castrating) animals led to castration anxiety. Umm, losing me... "But woman, freed from her masculine obligations to work and govern, no longer crippled physically by excessive muscular effort, became more enchanting not just for her sexuality but for her beauty." Really?  That's just creepy, even for a guy born in 1895. 

Rained a little at night on the last day of September, after not raining hardly at all in the month. 

Bamboo patch has turned brown and gold, wind, heat.  Grasses desiccate.