It is told that some divorcees, elated by their freedom, pause on leaving the courthouse to kiss a front pillar, or even walk to t...he Truckee to hurl their wedding rings into the river; but boys who recover the rings declare they are of the dime-store variety, and accuse the throwers of fraudulent practices.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the labor interests, an...d the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nearby Bodie was a notoriously tough camp, where "a man for breakfast" was so frequent an occurrence that the phrase "bad man from... Bodie" was coined to describe those residents who were still in the land of the living. So impressive was its reputation for wickedness that once when an Aurora family considered moving to the town, the young daughter of the family finished her evening prayers with a tearful, "Goodbye, God, we're going to Bodie." Aurora ruffled whatever virtuous feathers it could muster and pointed scornfully. Bodie resentfully charged that the child has been deliberately misquoted--that what she had actually said was "Good! By God, we're going to Bodie"!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The chuck wagon carries the food and utensils for the range kitchen. Man-at-the-pot is the first buckaroo to pick up the coffee po...t when out with the chuck wagons. It becomes his duty to pour the coffee for the outfit. "Come and get her before I throw her out" is the time honored mess call.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the atom's fizz and pop we heard possibility uncorked. Taffeta wraps whispered on davenports.... A new planet bloomed above us; in its light the stumps of cut pine gleamed like dinner plates. The world was beginning all over again, fresh and hot; we could have anything we wanted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let's not go overboard in setting and en...forcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The difference between humans and other organisms is that humans, having discerned something of how evolution works, are now able ...to confront their choices consciously. That is not the same as saying that we can now control evolution. I don't know how much of a difference it is in effect: we may be able to perceive our choices and still be unable to choose and act. By overpopulating the planet as we are now doing, for example, we are making an evolutionary choice just as unplanned as that of our hominid ancestors when they began cracking antelope and other hominids over the head with sticks. Nevertheless, we do differ from the first hominids in our having some notion of the implications of our behavior.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Why should all the major religions of the modern world include a crucial encounter with wilderness--Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed in ...the desert mountains, Siddhartha in the jungle? And why should the predominant modern view of the origin and development of life have arisen from the five-year wilderness voyage of a Victorian amateur naturalist named Charles Darwin? There evidently is more to wilderness than meets the eye--more than water, timber, minerals, the materials of physical civilized existence.... Placing Darwin in the tradition of Moses and Jesus may seem heresy from both the Judeo-Christian and scientific viewpoints, but I think the roles played by the three figures have been similar. They wrenched their respective cultures out of a complacency that amounted to self-worship and thrust them in new directions that (if not always entirely beneficial) enlarged the human perspective. Moses forced his society to accept a unifying law; Jesus forced his to accept the unity of all humanity; Darwin forced his to accept the unity of all life. I doubt whether any of the three would have been able to influence his society if he had not been fortified by a season in the wilderness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »