A Forest of Controversy

Whenever I get distressed about pristine areas being developed, (1) I think of the millions upon millions of species that have become extinct over hundreds of millions of years; (2) I remind myself that humans endanger their own existence more than that of other species when they destroy their own life support system(s);  (3) I remember the once clearcut areas of the the East that have regrown forests, albeit second and third-growth; and (4) I think of Japan, once threatened with a fate like that of Haiti that stopped, reversed course, and became the beautiful archipelago that it now is.  The human race is simply one more natural phenomenon WITHIN the natural system.  We are less disruptive than a major asteroid or comet to the 'web of life'.  And if humans self-destruct, life will 'fill in' around 'the failed experiment' just as it has filled in many millions of times before.  When each of us dies, the universe dies.  And when a new creature is born, a new universe is created.  

Australia's  Aboriginal  people  got  the  same  official  "cold  shoulder"  from  the  government  for  years,   now  there  are  official  apologies,  but  the  damage  cannot  be  reversed.   Hopefully  we  treat  this  unique  old   growth  forest  better,   which  would  be  a  good  thing,  although  bittersweet  in  irony.

Interesting how the name itself has been excised.  I'd be looking into the developer and their relationship to the local government as well as the bank accounts of same.

I aggree with you Andy, what's behind all of this?  It doesn't matter if the effects of the development could be reversed a few generations from now or not, the developers need to be transparent about their motives.

They can try to build a road through it. My school was built on a swamp, and the first few years they had problems with gators lying in front of the school buses.
There's a nasty one in our backyard at the moment.

Ok VELVET- you get the award for the creepiest post!!!! Do you have to be on the lookout each time you go outside? Are you freaked out by this?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Velvet: Do any of the kids try to feed the gators?   How do you get rid of a gator?

Alligators get a bad rap....you just don't swim tin their pools, you keep your small kids and dogs away from them, and you don't mess with them when they're raising their 'little ones'.  Then they are pretty inoffensive.  Now that I think of it, they're not much different than some of my neighbors (except that they never sleep in the street).  

Doc:  The difference between alligators and your neighbors is that you can't turn your neighbors into a status purse or wallet.  Even if you hunted them for their pelts PETA wouldn't care.

As a 12-year-old I watched the bulldozers finish three years of destruction of the woods, fields and swamps in which we played.  I remember turning to my (very) little brothers thinking, 'They'll never know'.  The unspoken rest of the thought was '.... what a magical place it was.'  Now, more than 50 years later, the youngest brother and I go hiking together.  He's an Eagle scout, multiple Philmont 'vet', and co-leader of his local Boy Scout troop.  (He and his wife have no kids....).  And in June I 'went back' to my hometown, reconnected with high school friends, and discovered that all those places that had been 'erased' still live on -- in our memories.  Mentioning 'the clay mines', 'the punk yard', 'the fossil place', 'the foxtails', 'the tree house', and so on means nothing to anyone reading this -- but they bring up vivid memories for those of us who lived in a different world in a different time. --- And perhaps that's why I spend a certain amount of my time living in Second Life.  It's just as real (no more/no less) than the world that exists in my mind from my childhood.  In a very real sense, all of us are exiles.  Time changes everything.  The past can never be 'kept in a bottle', but each of us can BE the bottle that keeps images of the now gone past.  And when our valuable memories perish, the world loses nothing.  The next generation will go through precisely the same process!  And when it's all over, it's just as if a film had gotten to the point where it says, 'The End'.  And... that's why dinosaurs don't weep over their tragic demise.

I remember years ago watching this great little cartoon called "The Wild Thornberrys" with my daughter. It was all about nature and the animals how humans are destroying everything in our paths. Sad to say, even a cartoon had it right...and they are fictional folks!

I'm sure that whatever replaced the swamp is of greater value to more people.

morning all!
 
 
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2_mZj_WBro&NR=1
 
 

  
What DOC NOLAN'S observations have done for me is to separate "Our World," that is: our species past and present, our experiences and the effect that we have had on the planet, from all of the other species past, present and future some of which have superior abilities to adapt, and the planet itself.

Someday, noticing the remaining few grains of sand exiting the top of the hour glass, the last man standing will realize that he had better turn out the lights because there is no one else.

The roach King will declare: "See, I told you, all we had to do was wait."

It does not seem to me a particularly dismal prospect. We had our chance and maybe we'll go down in cosmic history as a species that failed because we killed a lot more than we needed to eat.

It is interesting to think that these days will be looked back on as someone's golden age.



Julia Masi,

Your assertion: "I'm sure that whatever replaced the swamp is of greater value to more people." may be true only in the very short term. Time will tell.




 

Matter is neither created nor destroyed. You could have Shakespeare's atoms in you! Quit worrying about it. It will all work out. Simple isn't it?

Bebe: Velvet's post {gator in back yard} isn't creepy. Since she acquired the cool newsboy cap, she has had to learn to defend herself against thieves. So my guess is that she acquired a concealed carry permit. Should the gator approach her out back {pun?}, she merely says "Go ahead, punk...make my day."

We have one other woman, similar cap, but all we see is the back of her head, and some blonde hair. I wonder if she packs iron as well.....

Speaking of the movie "Fargo," it's on tonight on WGN, 7:00 central time, I don't know the listings for the rest of you...great movie, black black humor, the most foul language per minute of probably any movie I've heard, but it's fun-nee.  Francis McDormand as the pregnant chief of police is so good, it's worth watching just to see her performance.  Macy's no slouch either.
 
So, here's Fargo.  Opening shot looks a lot like the road to Janesville, Wisconsin:
 
 
Fargo (1996) - 7:00 PM Central  WGN (check your local listings for time and channel) 
Joel and Ethan Coen's alternately hilarious and shocking "true crime" drama follows a shady Minneapolis car dealer's plan to have his wife kidnapped and then take part of the ransom from her wealthy father. When the crooks hired to abduct the woman wind up killing a state trooper and two witnesses along a rural Minnesota highway, the very pregnant local police chief begins her own investigation into the murder. Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, and Peter Stormare star.
 
 
 

Also on tonight:
 
It's A Wonderful Life (1946)  7:00 PM Central, NBC
 
Classic comedy/drama that is the quintessential Frank Capra film. James Stewart is a small-town banker who is driven by circumstances one Christmas Eve to consider suicide, only to be shown by neophyte angel Henry Travers what a difference his life has made. Tremendous cast includes Donna Reed, Thomas Mitchell, Lionel Barrymore and Ward Bond. 130 min
 
 
It's a wonderful movie.  A must-see.  Especially for you Scrooges out there.
;)

A follow up to the destruction of our swamp.... It was a very large shallow depression into which a small stream entered on one side and exited hundreds of feet away on the other side.  It was NOT a natural feature, however; it was called 'The Brickyard' for a reason!  A century before... yep!  Now, the sequel!  A few years after 'The New Development' was finished and scores of houses had been built, a torrential downpour hit the area.  And... the 'depression' (now filled with homes) filled up with rainwater.  Since this was 'up north' and the homes were built with basements, I'll leave the rest of the story up to you.  As very smart ass kids, we informed the 'new people' why their homes had flooded.  None of them knew it had been a swamp.  (Kids love it when they know stuff adults don't!).  

Perhaps it's because I have been listening to "Wild Bird" sounds from around the globe. I have been playing that "album: on iTunes the last few hours to keep my inside birds company while I was painting upstairs. I think itt made me sextra receptive to the image of that magnificent, gnarly tree pictured at the top of the page.  

Maybe it was simply the image itself that made me think of the sense of awe and pure wonder I would feel if I were to stumble upon such a tree while wandering and woolgathering in its home.

It reminds me to remember that to be a better guardian of the natural wonders that surround me; I have to stop and take notice of them, and become more aware of these gifts that are all too often taken for granted.

Now if I can just translate such good thoughts into some form of positive ac

And the reason it was beloved by us kids?  Every winter the junior high school kids (the supervisors) and the 'little kids' (us common laborers) would dam the exit stream and fill 'the punkyard' (aka 'the brickyard' if you were not 'one of us') with water.  The junior high school kids would eitther burn off or cut down the 'punks' (cattails) to below water level, thereby creating a very large pond.  This project was NOT pointless.  It was to prepare for ICE SKATING season!  Scores (sometimes a hundred or more) people would gather to ice skate!  It was glorious!  (Unfortunately, every Spring the 'mosquito control people' would tear our dam down and pour oil all over the area.... but it was one more thing we, as kids, had zero control over... except to repeat the cycle the next year...) ----- Incidentally, the swamp was also home to muskrats, which the 'older kids' would trap (and then sell the pelts).  Charlie M. gained fame as someone who never ruined a pelt as he skinned the muskrat he trapped.  He later became an incredibly wealthy and famous surgeon, and has (according to a mutual friend) credited part of his surgical skills to his early work playing the violin and to skinning muskrats from 'the punk yard'.  --- So, I'll leave the judgment as to the value of the swamp and to what followed it all later to people wiser than me.... I refuse to make that judgment!

I remember when:  the town and village parks were flooded by the village -- usually the softball fields, and the best ice skating ever was had in those parks when that ice froze.
 
That's where I learned to ice skate.  That's where I learned to get up from the ice on ice skates after I fell, which was often in the beginning.  That's where I learned to spin around and around, but I never could figure out how to stop gracefully...that's where winter fun was, in our parks.  Summer:  swimming and softball and tennis; Winter: ice skating.
 
That's not done any more.  Not anywhere I've seen.
 
Why not?
 
Does anyone know?
 
 
 
 

PeterLake:
in your comment, just above Doc's, you wrote:
 
"I think itt made me sextra receptive"
 
Now, if it's none of my biz, just say so, but is this some sort of sensual reference that I'm missing completely (sextra receptiveness)? or is it perhaps something else like maybe a typo, because everyone knows you create the best typo words.
 
Again, if it's none of mine, don't hesitate to tell me to mind my own, but I am ... awfully curious.
 
 
p4
 

PARK4 -I think it may well have been a Fruedian typo ....... or not.  I kinda like the idea of extra sextra; it even rhymes.  I am a bit worried about the double t's in it though.  Perhaps thinking about all of that extra sextra made me stutter a bit.
 Sounds like 'It's a Wonderful Life' is playing on the sepiatrain tonight.  Buy one popcorn and get a free drink.

Peter  Lake:   Speaking  of  movies,  shall  it  be  said  that  Park4  is  Curious,  But  Yellow?
 
Park4:  Nice  work,  picking  up  immediately  that  Fargo  is  actually  a  complicated,  dark,  existential  dilemma  movie.   I  have  an  engagement  with   a  dinner-sized  salad  and  an  a  friend  who  is  singing  on  Riverboat  Row  on  the  Kentucky  side  of  the  river,  back  later...or  not.    Remember,  I  will  have  movie  questions.

The gators don't bother us until they've been fed. It's a small pond, so when they get too big they move out.
In the case of my school, I think everyone was much better off with it as a swamp.

bert:  Fargo isn't existential or profound -- it's just horrifyingly *true*!
 
There's nothing existential about being fed into a woodchipper....
 
!!

I hope to never be put thru a woodchipper...

PARK- I so love "It's a Wonderful Life" & we (I say we, but my husband is only half watching it guystyle & half doing something else) always watch it on Christmas Eve. I always cry at the end- do you? I will pass you some tissues towards the end. I am watching Rudolph.

is woodchipper another name for (shudder)audit?

and there's that silly story of the blonde and a bunch of dead gators, and she couldn't find a one with a purse,shoes,or even a belt.......

Have you seen the Kay jeweler's Christmas ads? The one w/ the guy "taking care" of his woman when it is storming- it's so bad it could possibly be a devious trick to turn women gay... after seeing it the thought occured to me...

  

In the fifty-ninth minute of a forty-five minute MRI the start of which had been delayed a couple of hours, back spasms brought the process to an end. It was not only the fear that I would be unable to sit up, get up and walk out but the inability, any longer, to remain still.

It isn't unusual for me to demur or delay but it was a new thing to be unable to see a process through and it was not a good feeling.

An afternoon old-timer's reunion at a downtown pool hall saved the day. Dozens of guys some of whom were as glad to see me as I was to see them; memories, terrific, well told stories and the realization that though some were hanging by a thread, we were all there while some were gone.

You can never get too much of that kind of handshake, hug or even headlock... at our age nobody does the noogies anymore. You can't be sure that your victim doesn't have a fragile plate in his skull. 

The tall guys were a lot taller than I remembered, some of the not tall guys were too.

A fellow we hung out with in Junior High and whose slightly younger sister had bridged the gap from astonishingly pretty to beautiful by a complete lack of self-awareness, was there.

He doesn't like kids and never did, not his, not theirs. You don't hear that often.

We gathered once in his mother's kitchen before setting off on a long-planned adventure. It was a big deal and as the last guy out of the door, I had the chance to lean over and tell his sister that I would bag the whole weekend just to sit in the corner and watch her shell peas.

A very nice, unexpected kiss was the reward but the way her gaze locked in on her hands suggested that she was hoping that when she looked up, I would be gone. I was.

Because life is a lot more fair than deserved, I recently had that same feeling sitting in a corner watching my wife dip vegan chocolates except that when she looked up it was to wonder why I was slow switching pans.

 

STONEY- wonderful story. Listening to various men- including my love- I think that the friend's younger, shy, beautiful sister crush happens alot to young men/boys.
 
Just have to know- what makes a chocolate vegan?????????

  
Bebe,

Even some high quality dark chocolate has a dairy component. We avoid that. Then, we buy at great expense, creature free almond toffee, peanut brittle, chocolate/orange fudge, chai fudge that is so flavor intensive that it is dipped in quarter inch pieces and caramels made with coconut milk and such.

Nut clusters of all kinds are great as well and the smallish vegan marshmallows are really good too.

It would be hard to imagine what kind of price the stuff would carry but it is all for gifts mostly within the family.

Stoney:  I so loved your story.
 
 
I'm sorry about that MRI, those things are the invention of the devil.  In years to come they'll be looked at as some sort of torture mechanism.
 
Do you have access, anywhere even remotely nearby, to an open MRI machine?  Or, god help you, was this one open?
 
My dad bolted from one of those closed MRI's, twice.  I think finally they travelled up to Madison for the open version, it was booked but they caught a cancellation.
 
To be stuck like that is horrifying; the strongest of souls can't endure that process without superhuman effort, and even then, most don't make it though.
 
I'm so sorry you had to endure that, but I'm happy the day took a turn for the better later on.
 
 

 
Park 4,

Thanks. Oddly enough, it wasn't the creepy snugness that was my undoing but just the inability to lie on my back for that length of time. I never do it even on a comfortable surface.

The whole deal made me decide never to go to the hospital on Saturday for anything other than an emergency.

You do get the feeling that it is something that will be looked back on kind of like we view the use of leeches or something.

But it developed into a grand day ending with dinner up the valley with friends at a nice new restaurant that were it not for the fact that somebody was apparently winging heads of roasted garlic at an inside fan, would have been perfect.

How annoying is that Packer half-time guy? "Jacksonville Jag-wires."

Bert? Me? Pack iron? 
 
Naww, but a few years ago I DID pick up a mean driftwood slingshot while beachcombing.  Gators fear me.

STONEY- I echo what PARK said- what a horrible ordeal. I'm glad that at least the evening went well. The list of vegan treats made me ravenous!