As more and more trees are removed in Eastsound Swale and all over the island, we are literally missing the forest for the trees. Eastsound Swale sits in a low valley surrounded by hills and rises. All water flows downhill. As more and more trees get bulldozed to make new developments and commercial buildings, there is less windbreak and tree root filtration. This causes twofold problems: flooding in the rainy season and drying out in our dryland summers. When you remove tree shade and roots, you remove the cooling shade for amphibians and fish. You remove the cooling effect and shade which keeps the soil more moistened. You remove habitat for migratory songbirds, amphibians, bats, and other beneficials.
The trees in Eastsound Swale are drowning, due to all this excess water roaring down the hills in winter, eroding silt into the wetland ecosystem, thus clogging Enchanted Forest Road culverts with silt and not letting the water drain through to the other side of the road. There is permanent ponding on one side of the road and drought on the other. More and more runoff and eroded silt is gushing into the Swale and clogging what used to be a moving seasonal waterway. More and more trees are dying. More and more road pollution runoff pollutes our critical aquifer and drinking water. Fallen trees and debris are not removed and thus, more blockages. While the Swale drowns, nothing is being done to address the stormwater problem. Permits are being given out like Get- out-of-Jail-Free cards in a crazy out-of-control monopoly game of greed. A few for-profit developers get richer while the rest of us lose our natural diversity and health of our waters - OUR riches.
For those of us for whom Eastsound is not just a Place to Shop, but Home, this is frustrating and sad - and maddening to watch the greed and blindness or worse, lack of care. It's take and take, and the rest of us are holding the garbage bag. We Chicken Little environmentalists really do feel that the sky - and a whole lot of other human debris - is falling - literally into Eastsound Swale and from there, spilling out into Fishing Bay and President's Channel.
The stormwater issue is the elephant in the living room and we need to take off our blindfolds and face the whole of the beast. An moratorium on tree cutting in Eastsound (without a permit and a proof of a darn good reason to cut) and outward for at least a mile in any direction would be a first step in the right direction. That, and abandoning the idea of incorporating Eastsound SubArea Plan into the county's Unified Development Codes.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Who is Trojan Heron?
I found out. He is Ed Kilduff, trained wetlands "expert." He won't reveal his real name or affiliations. Instead, said person hangs posters on community bulletin boards in Eastsound, and maybe on other islands in the San Juans. What are the connecting affiliations, once you start reading the blog, watching the youtube videos, and reading the posters accusing Friends of the San Juans and environmentalists in general, of attacking the very fiber of our community? Is Trojan Heron another deep- pocket or one of their (often unwitting) tools, seeing to it that the people are duped, misled and confused, and incited into an angry irrational froth? Or is Trojan Heron a concerned citizen just trying to do the right thing? Who knows? The blog, from what I've read, is divisive. In using spin and truth-bending, it is doing the very thing it accuses the accused of doing.
In connecting the dots for Trojan Heron's possible affiliations, they lead indirectly and directly to CAPR (with several chapters in Ca. and 12 in Wa), and , Resources Coalition, Olympic Stewardship Foundation, Kitsap Alliance of Property Owners, Freedom Foundation, Eagle Forum, Heritage Foundation, Freedom Works, Heartland Institute, American Crossroads, Koch Brothers, Bradley Foundation, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and many more private foundations and corporations and CEOs. Most of the big guns that could be affiliates, or influences on Trojan Heron, probably have some ties to, or have bought votes and membership in ALEC. (American Legislative Exchange Council).
Don't know what ALEC is? Learning about ALEC might be one of the most important things you can learn. The corporations and 1%ers belonging to ALEC are the true puppetmasters, and are buying votes (and legislators) and writing the laws the legislators pass; laws that attack the environment, deny climate change, dissolve public education funding and privatize schools, eliminate social programs, medicare, health care, unions, womens' rights, reproductive rights, civil rights, whistle-blowing rights,ability to assemble in peaceful protest, ad nauseum.
The goal of ALEC's puppetmasters? More land grab and exploitation of resources and Critical Areas for "free enterprise." For them. Meanwhile, tactics of front groups divert our attention while the chain saws rip and more gang-bangers develop and destroy our forests, oceans, and Critical Areas. Maximum development in throwaway UGAs prevails over stewardship and sustainable long-term planning to protect our Critical Areas.
If Trojan Heron cares about community as he states, wouldn't he be asking some profound questions about Critical Areas, and making some observations based on that caring, leading to heartfelt dialogue and sincere attempts to join with environmentalists in educating people to want to protect critical areas because it's good for their grandchildren to do so? Because intact critical areas are a wealth you can't buy? Because if we knew and understood what they are and what they do, and wanted to, we wouldn't need laws that no one obeys or enforces anyway? And yes, something does need to be done about repeat violators who know exactly what they're doing, and get a hand slap from the corrupt CD&P's Rene Beliveau, while poorer landowners are put through the wringer.
When the accusers twist and turn facts into arguments "proving" that environmentalists and CD&P (Shireene Hale specifically), County Council, Dept. of Ecology and any other group trying to protect Critical Areas, are the villains driving the wedge and inciting us against each other, how is that helping to bring our community together?
I have watched 30 years of many of the same old players (and some new ones) stalling, and stopping outright, any lasting or effective protections of our Critical Areas while certain land-grabbers trade their revolving-door chameleon-like LLCs and continue degrading wetlands and shoreline habitat with large scale for-profit developments.
Our hearts are sore at this destruction, whether we know it or not. We know deep down that we are destroying ourselves by destroying the earth, and the closer to home it is, the more it affects us - consciously or unconsciously. Not just our physical selves, but the very best in ourselves. The Earth's body is as ours. When we poison her waters, we poison our bodies and brains. We try to numb our heartbreak and outrage with misdirected anger or palliatives. But we have to face the truth of this heartbreak and mind-fuck if we are going to get on with creating a better, more just world for all.
No matter what Trojan Heron or his people say, using spin-doctoring front group tactics to incite the populace against environmentalists - a tactic used by "free enterprise" rapists, pillagers, and land-grabbers ever since humanity began - is a grave and unjust error. It's time to start de-constructing and exposing the myths and erroneous thinking on all sides, and come together, ready to listen to each other and work for the common good of generations to come who will inherit the earth, and who might like to have clean drinking water and forests and beneficial creatures and who might want a different world than the one we've created so far.
In connecting the dots for Trojan Heron's possible affiliations, they lead indirectly and directly to CAPR (with several chapters in Ca. and 12 in Wa), and , Resources Coalition, Olympic Stewardship Foundation, Kitsap Alliance of Property Owners, Freedom Foundation, Eagle Forum, Heritage Foundation, Freedom Works, Heartland Institute, American Crossroads, Koch Brothers, Bradley Foundation, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and many more private foundations and corporations and CEOs. Most of the big guns that could be affiliates, or influences on Trojan Heron, probably have some ties to, or have bought votes and membership in ALEC. (American Legislative Exchange Council).
Don't know what ALEC is? Learning about ALEC might be one of the most important things you can learn. The corporations and 1%ers belonging to ALEC are the true puppetmasters, and are buying votes (and legislators) and writing the laws the legislators pass; laws that attack the environment, deny climate change, dissolve public education funding and privatize schools, eliminate social programs, medicare, health care, unions, womens' rights, reproductive rights, civil rights, whistle-blowing rights,ability to assemble in peaceful protest, ad nauseum.
The goal of ALEC's puppetmasters? More land grab and exploitation of resources and Critical Areas for "free enterprise." For them. Meanwhile, tactics of front groups divert our attention while the chain saws rip and more gang-bangers develop and destroy our forests, oceans, and Critical Areas. Maximum development in throwaway UGAs prevails over stewardship and sustainable long-term planning to protect our Critical Areas.
If Trojan Heron cares about community as he states, wouldn't he be asking some profound questions about Critical Areas, and making some observations based on that caring, leading to heartfelt dialogue and sincere attempts to join with environmentalists in educating people to want to protect critical areas because it's good for their grandchildren to do so? Because intact critical areas are a wealth you can't buy? Because if we knew and understood what they are and what they do, and wanted to, we wouldn't need laws that no one obeys or enforces anyway? And yes, something does need to be done about repeat violators who know exactly what they're doing, and get a hand slap from the corrupt CD&P's Rene Beliveau, while poorer landowners are put through the wringer.
When the accusers twist and turn facts into arguments "proving" that environmentalists and CD&P (Shireene Hale specifically), County Council, Dept. of Ecology and any other group trying to protect Critical Areas, are the villains driving the wedge and inciting us against each other, how is that helping to bring our community together?
I have watched 30 years of many of the same old players (and some new ones) stalling, and stopping outright, any lasting or effective protections of our Critical Areas while certain land-grabbers trade their revolving-door chameleon-like LLCs and continue degrading wetlands and shoreline habitat with large scale for-profit developments.
Our hearts are sore at this destruction, whether we know it or not. We know deep down that we are destroying ourselves by destroying the earth, and the closer to home it is, the more it affects us - consciously or unconsciously. Not just our physical selves, but the very best in ourselves. The Earth's body is as ours. When we poison her waters, we poison our bodies and brains. We try to numb our heartbreak and outrage with misdirected anger or palliatives. But we have to face the truth of this heartbreak and mind-fuck if we are going to get on with creating a better, more just world for all.
No matter what Trojan Heron or his people say, using spin-doctoring front group tactics to incite the populace against environmentalists - a tactic used by "free enterprise" rapists, pillagers, and land-grabbers ever since humanity began - is a grave and unjust error. It's time to start de-constructing and exposing the myths and erroneous thinking on all sides, and come together, ready to listen to each other and work for the common good of generations to come who will inherit the earth, and who might like to have clean drinking water and forests and beneficial creatures and who might want a different world than the one we've created so far.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Eastsound Swale is Dying
Dear Citizens;
Eastsound Swale, our beloved wetland, is dying. The trees are drowning. We need the trees! They are our filters, our lungs.
The realtors, developers, planners, and county officials are probably relieved to have gotten away with the tree genocide and land grab glut, and have almost completed the destruction. How do they feel, selling the dream while in reality, trampling the land and its inhabitants, fouling our waters?
Spin doctors are spinning lies and fear tactics - tripe such as this> " you won't be able to have a garden or even dig a hole with the new CAO regulations." Lies are being propogated in epidemic fashion, a cancer polluting the minds of the gullible and uneducated. The liars are saying that Eastsound Swale is man made. Hogwash! Don't believe them. They're all about the money and profit. They'll do anything to sell us down the river including poison us all and cut all of our trees. After all, who can afford to live in Eastsound? Just us poor and middle class folk. We're in the way anyway. Eastsound Village Proper used to be a community - now it is a Business District. Nobody but a few people actually LIVE there.
The County and Planning Dept. have thrown Eastsound and its inhabitants (human and non human) under the bus. Our own Eastsound Planning and Review Committee (EPRC) has thrown us under the bus. What a selfish short-sighted lot are these few filthy rich and greedy spin doctors! Gangsters one and all. **
**a clarification: i'm not saying that EPRC or the County or CD&P are gangsters - or filthy rich and greedy. I am saying that there are a few who are, and they generate lies and spin, sometimes through a few individuals in well positioned places. What I'm also saying is that excessive wealth and greed are a bad combination which produce gangster mentality and control, since the bottom line is profit at all cost. What I do notice about the EPRC is that there is not even ONE conservationist or environmentalist on the EPRC - not for a long time. Those who have tried to join have either not been appointed, or have given up early when they realized what was going on within the EPRC. But I sort of digress.
Even the citizens of Orcas have thrown us under the bus. Any and all of them could have come to bat for the Critical Areas in Eastsound. Where are they when we need them? Do any of them put themselves in our shoes? Try to imagine how it'd feel if it were them in our predicament?
In the Growth Management Act, because Eastound was designated an "urban growth area," over 50% of the total population must live in Eastsound, by mandate. Our commissioners of the past sold us down the river and made us into an Urban Growth Area. Up all the way through 2011, we had a chance to get out of this - something our bureaucrats wanted us not to know - and we didn't. So we lost the chance for any flexibility in that.
Now there is a plan afoot to incorporate the Eastsound SubArea Plan (the one thing that supposedly protects Eastsound Swale, which the County continues to ignore anyway!) into the County Unified Development Codes. This effectively, once and for all, removes any power of protection from the citizenry. The most rapacious and greedy developers have the most holdings here in our UGA, and have built so many illegal and exploitative developments in the past 20+ years it's sickening.
Not ONCE did the County recognize or honor our SubArea Plan or the Conservancy Overlay District (16.55.250) when it really would have counted to protect the Swale, nor did they use the Conservancy Overlay District to safeguard trees in Eastsound Swale slated for demolition - wetland trees. Instead, they passed every single permit - legal or not!
The first offenders to radically change Eastsound Swale for the worse were the Outlook Inn owners. The Inn sits at the South end of the Swale creek. The inn expansion diverted the natural (NOT man made) creek, cut many trees to make parking lots and roads. Water was piped, diverted. What was built to supposedly handle their stormwater were two ugly scummy algae-covered, mosquito-infested eyesore "ponds." The "treated" stormwater then dumps into non-flushing Fishing Bay, likely poisoning it and any fish left in there. The airport destroyed the North end of the Swale (along with the Ditch). That took out a category 1 peat bog swamp; irreplaceable.
Even today, dirty deals are being made by the same few players; LLC's are trading land back and forth, probably to avoid taxes and capital gains taxes. Then they develop the hell out of them and nobody is watching or if they are, they're too confused by the shell game. All of these exploited lands WERE the Swale, ARE still the Swale, no matter how unrecognizable or degraded. Local wetland "delineations" - hired out by charlatans who can pay enough to have anyone to say what they want them to say - never take into account the whole big picture of connectivity and interconnected wetlands How can something be declared "part of Eastsound Swale" in a wetland report and at the same time be downgraded and considered "not a part?" You tell me! So... the Swale gets chopped into little bitty pieces, then downgraded to "low value" wetlands and razed, raped, gutted, drained, filled, graded, plugged.
The Planners and Council are planning a whopping 6 years out - as if that is "long range planning" - while certain realtors and permittors who have conflicts- of-interest while "serving" on the planning commission and EPRC, continue to "sell the dream" and serve the town folks the Nightmare - and allow decimation of what few trees are left in town. They murder our songbirds, bats, frogs, salamanders, etc and destroy all their habitat. How many ways can you say "corrupt?"
Meanwhile, Eastsound gets colder and even more intensely windy, because there are no windbreak trees left. More get cut every day it seems. Stormwater rushes into the Swale at an alarming rate. Roads cut across it, damming the seasonal creek the First Nations used to use as a navigable waterway, and choking off its flow.
Eastsound Swale used to be a dark, dank, creepy, wild, mysterious, thick wooded area; it was huge, and wide and thick, and choked with willows, crabapples, alders, and old fruit trees from earlier farming days in the 1800s. The Swale was full of songbirds, muskrats, bats, and amphibians galore, including salamanders and newts. It was an oozing, croaking, stinking, singing place. It was cool and sheltering in summer, warm and protecting in winter. The creek was full in winter and then dried up a bit in summer. It always flowed. The trees filtered the water and allowed it to meander, not gush or pond. Now it is all a dead flood zone with a few trees here and there, all of them drowning. Invasives and noxious weeds have been introduced by chopping trees and degrading the buffer edges over and over and over again.
Stormwater from all the hills surrounding our Critical Aquifer basin rushes down in eroding rivulets, and dumps into the Swale, which was never meant to hold it all. Roads cut across it like handcuffs, like straitjackets, damming (damning) seasonal creek into permanent dead zone pools. Natural wetlands are never meant to be "stormwater treatment facilities." Stormwater is killing our Swale. Tree cutting is killing our Swale. Development is killing our Swale. Enchanted Forest Road is killing our Swale. Short sighted greed, stupidity, and corruption are killing our Swale. Apathy is killing our Swale.
Who will speak up for it before it is too late? Who will help plant trees to reforest it? Does anyone care anymore enough to get up off their behinds and DO something? If so, please get in touch - Let's do something! Let's put our heads and hearts together and stop the exploitative carnage. I have some ideas; I'll bet you have some, too. I've been gathering information for a long time. Some of it can help us legally. We have standing. I've also gathered some information on reforestation and restoration of wetlands. If the county won't do something, then it's up to the citizenry to take matters into its own hands. We need citizen watchdogs. I have a whole outline in place for a citizen watchdog group. I can't do this alone. Please come forward and help the trees. Help the beings who can't speak for themselves. Please.
Sincerely,
the Lorax
Who Will Speak
Eastsound Swale, our beloved wetland, is dying. The trees are drowning. We need the trees! They are our filters, our lungs.
The realtors, developers, planners, and county officials are probably relieved to have gotten away with the tree genocide and land grab glut, and have almost completed the destruction. How do they feel, selling the dream while in reality, trampling the land and its inhabitants, fouling our waters?
Spin doctors are spinning lies and fear tactics - tripe such as this> " you won't be able to have a garden or even dig a hole with the new CAO regulations." Lies are being propogated in epidemic fashion, a cancer polluting the minds of the gullible and uneducated. The liars are saying that Eastsound Swale is man made. Hogwash! Don't believe them. They're all about the money and profit. They'll do anything to sell us down the river including poison us all and cut all of our trees. After all, who can afford to live in Eastsound? Just us poor and middle class folk. We're in the way anyway. Eastsound Village Proper used to be a community - now it is a Business District. Nobody but a few people actually LIVE there.
The County and Planning Dept. have thrown Eastsound and its inhabitants (human and non human) under the bus. Our own Eastsound Planning and Review Committee (EPRC) has thrown us under the bus. What a selfish short-sighted lot are these few filthy rich and greedy spin doctors! Gangsters one and all. **
**a clarification: i'm not saying that EPRC or the County or CD&P are gangsters - or filthy rich and greedy. I am saying that there are a few who are, and they generate lies and spin, sometimes through a few individuals in well positioned places. What I'm also saying is that excessive wealth and greed are a bad combination which produce gangster mentality and control, since the bottom line is profit at all cost. What I do notice about the EPRC is that there is not even ONE conservationist or environmentalist on the EPRC - not for a long time. Those who have tried to join have either not been appointed, or have given up early when they realized what was going on within the EPRC. But I sort of digress.
Even the citizens of Orcas have thrown us under the bus. Any and all of them could have come to bat for the Critical Areas in Eastsound. Where are they when we need them? Do any of them put themselves in our shoes? Try to imagine how it'd feel if it were them in our predicament?
In the Growth Management Act, because Eastound was designated an "urban growth area," over 50% of the total population must live in Eastsound, by mandate. Our commissioners of the past sold us down the river and made us into an Urban Growth Area. Up all the way through 2011, we had a chance to get out of this - something our bureaucrats wanted us not to know - and we didn't. So we lost the chance for any flexibility in that.
Now there is a plan afoot to incorporate the Eastsound SubArea Plan (the one thing that supposedly protects Eastsound Swale, which the County continues to ignore anyway!) into the County Unified Development Codes. This effectively, once and for all, removes any power of protection from the citizenry. The most rapacious and greedy developers have the most holdings here in our UGA, and have built so many illegal and exploitative developments in the past 20+ years it's sickening.
Not ONCE did the County recognize or honor our SubArea Plan or the Conservancy Overlay District (16.55.250) when it really would have counted to protect the Swale, nor did they use the Conservancy Overlay District to safeguard trees in Eastsound Swale slated for demolition - wetland trees. Instead, they passed every single permit - legal or not!
The first offenders to radically change Eastsound Swale for the worse were the Outlook Inn owners. The Inn sits at the South end of the Swale creek. The inn expansion diverted the natural (NOT man made) creek, cut many trees to make parking lots and roads. Water was piped, diverted. What was built to supposedly handle their stormwater were two ugly scummy algae-covered, mosquito-infested eyesore "ponds." The "treated" stormwater then dumps into non-flushing Fishing Bay, likely poisoning it and any fish left in there. The airport destroyed the North end of the Swale (along with the Ditch). That took out a category 1 peat bog swamp; irreplaceable.
Even today, dirty deals are being made by the same few players; LLC's are trading land back and forth, probably to avoid taxes and capital gains taxes. Then they develop the hell out of them and nobody is watching or if they are, they're too confused by the shell game. All of these exploited lands WERE the Swale, ARE still the Swale, no matter how unrecognizable or degraded. Local wetland "delineations" - hired out by charlatans who can pay enough to have anyone to say what they want them to say - never take into account the whole big picture of connectivity and interconnected wetlands How can something be declared "part of Eastsound Swale" in a wetland report and at the same time be downgraded and considered "not a part?" You tell me! So... the Swale gets chopped into little bitty pieces, then downgraded to "low value" wetlands and razed, raped, gutted, drained, filled, graded, plugged.
The Planners and Council are planning a whopping 6 years out - as if that is "long range planning" - while certain realtors and permittors who have conflicts- of-interest while "serving" on the planning commission and EPRC, continue to "sell the dream" and serve the town folks the Nightmare - and allow decimation of what few trees are left in town. They murder our songbirds, bats, frogs, salamanders, etc and destroy all their habitat. How many ways can you say "corrupt?"
Meanwhile, Eastsound gets colder and even more intensely windy, because there are no windbreak trees left. More get cut every day it seems. Stormwater rushes into the Swale at an alarming rate. Roads cut across it, damming the seasonal creek the First Nations used to use as a navigable waterway, and choking off its flow.
Eastsound Swale used to be a dark, dank, creepy, wild, mysterious, thick wooded area; it was huge, and wide and thick, and choked with willows, crabapples, alders, and old fruit trees from earlier farming days in the 1800s. The Swale was full of songbirds, muskrats, bats, and amphibians galore, including salamanders and newts. It was an oozing, croaking, stinking, singing place. It was cool and sheltering in summer, warm and protecting in winter. The creek was full in winter and then dried up a bit in summer. It always flowed. The trees filtered the water and allowed it to meander, not gush or pond. Now it is all a dead flood zone with a few trees here and there, all of them drowning. Invasives and noxious weeds have been introduced by chopping trees and degrading the buffer edges over and over and over again.
Stormwater from all the hills surrounding our Critical Aquifer basin rushes down in eroding rivulets, and dumps into the Swale, which was never meant to hold it all. Roads cut across it like handcuffs, like straitjackets, damming (damning) seasonal creek into permanent dead zone pools. Natural wetlands are never meant to be "stormwater treatment facilities." Stormwater is killing our Swale. Tree cutting is killing our Swale. Development is killing our Swale. Enchanted Forest Road is killing our Swale. Short sighted greed, stupidity, and corruption are killing our Swale. Apathy is killing our Swale.
Who will speak up for it before it is too late? Who will help plant trees to reforest it? Does anyone care anymore enough to get up off their behinds and DO something? If so, please get in touch - Let's do something! Let's put our heads and hearts together and stop the exploitative carnage. I have some ideas; I'll bet you have some, too. I've been gathering information for a long time. Some of it can help us legally. We have standing. I've also gathered some information on reforestation and restoration of wetlands. If the county won't do something, then it's up to the citizenry to take matters into its own hands. We need citizen watchdogs. I have a whole outline in place for a citizen watchdog group. I can't do this alone. Please come forward and help the trees. Help the beings who can't speak for themselves. Please.
Sincerely,
the Lorax
Who Will Speak
Who will speak on behalf of trees
to stay saw’s bite, blade’s slash and sting?
Can the heart hold what the eye sees?
Home to eagles, quetzals, chickadees
chattering to down-fuzzed nestlings –
Who will speak on behalf of trees?
Gifts of plums and almonds, reddened leaves
melting into soil with winter’s wetting –
Can the heart hold what the eye sees?
Sheltering under lush green canopies –
do we thank the Amazon for rain it brings?
Who will speak on behalf of trees?
Frost-kissed leaf skeleton filagrees,
arboreal trilling, squawking, croaking, singing-
Can the heart hold what the eye sees?
Bare-boned stark windswept effigies,
spring blossomed crowns, bee- beckoning;
who will speak on behalf of trees?
Can the heart hold what the eye sees? 2011
Sunday, January 15, 2012
It sucks being a canary -- Skip if you can't handle anger and lengthy rants
I haven't written since August, because... what can I possibly say that isn't going to end up a rant or a wail? As I watch the Critical Areas in Eastsound be bulldozed, raped, logged, paved, destroyed - illegally and legally, with no repercussions for the violators, I can feel the pain of it in my own feminine body. It hurts more than I can say, and believe me, I've tried to express it more articulately than the hash I'm making of it right now. I can feel the earth's agony. Can't you? Maybe that sounds melodramatic but I no longer care how it sounds. It is so beautiful; all we've been given - and we throw it away. All we've been born into, been priviliged to have in our lives; don't our kids deserve at least as well? Don't they deserve to know the peace and beauty we have known? Don't they deserve our protection and stewardship of the lands we borrow from this Earth? Isn't the real wealth in our supporting lands, waters, and the community that comes together to honor and protect them?
I have wondered what my purpose is in writing these blogs. Who reads them? Who are they for? What do they really offer? Is it just mental masturbation, a journal written in the dark inside a crumbling coal mine as the oxygen runs out? How can I "just think positive," and then what - forget about it all and disassociate? Who even wants to know or ponder what we're doing to the planet, since pondering it hurts too much? Who is actually looking for being part of solutions, rather than just complaining, and who is willing to take the time to co-create them, implement them, and stand firm and hold steady against those who would destroy everything, and not give up or give in? Who in town (mostly moderate to low income people) even has the time or energy to do anything but survive and hope they can feed their kids from paycheck to paycheck?
I've wondered how to get people interested in sitting through arduously boring meetings that effect nothing, no matter how many times we tell the engineers and governmental officials that we don't want the trees cut, and have our offerings of other less hostile solutions for the land rejected in patronizing smiles. And what does "educating" people mean? It seems twofold. We have to be mindful of what is happening around us, and acknowledge the consequences of our thoughts, habits, and actions; ie our part in it. And if we then want to change those things to do least harm, we have to find ways to step outside the paradigm of this dysfunctional matrix and create something from the best of every one of us, and we have to want it really badly - so badly that we're willing to stop blaming our differences and learn to co-create and see them as a strength and an opportunity to have more creative ideas than if we were all alike. Easy to say, harder to do.
Then there's the whole white-male cultural rules: Men aren't supposed to be sad or feel the feminine inside them. (ie "no sissies."). Women aren't supposed to be angry ("bitches.") Everyone should just think positive and read a new self-help book, take more prozac, and go to a therapist or the latest motivational speaker or new age guru. Heh.
Even while understanding the historical moment we're in right now - the working class becoming a serf population, the hold the powerful few have on us all - I am frustrated by the lack of involvement locally. What will it take for Eastsound residents to be engaged with their own homeland? I am also disheartened that those outside of town with more acreage, time, and money - whose lands our sacrificial-lamb-the-Urban-Growth-Area, protect, turn away from our difficulties here. How can they look away? How can they not claim their connection with us and this land and these waters - in the heart, the hub, the most vulnerable geographic and geologic place in the island? In all the ferry islands, probably, due to our sea level location and narrow bridge of land which gets hammered by all the wind we get here, Eastsound is the most vulnerable.
Then there's the social ramifications: I am livid when someone moves to a place like Madrona Point and "loves" Madrona trees, then cuts down a bunch of them to build their "dream cottage" and complains about our dances at Oddfellows, the one joy many of us low-lifer blue collar workers have, while saws roar and trees fall around us. How can they call the cops on a fraternal organization that raises money for kids' scholarships and does all manner of good deeds for the community through rental of their hall for social events; here long before these new breeds who want closed gated communities for the rich with multiple homes, most not even willing to spend a winter here with just the locals? Who ARE these people?
Soon Eastsound area will feel the long-term effects of the latest onslaught by Public Works which dovetails nicely with their new excessively-monied grant program called "roadside hazard mitigation project."(more about that in another posting).
My frustration with Public Works is that they plan, engineer, seem sincere and probably are, but go about it backwards. First they apply and get the grant money. Then they spend some (plenty!) of that money planning and engineering. Then they have open houses, which are not really open houses, since they're "telling" us what they are going to do. It's frustrating to watch the engineers plan and then consistently run out of money for monitoring and maintenance; the very things that would make the new "constructions" work. The job goes to the lowest bidder; it has to by law. Never mind if they are skilled or ethically qualified to do the best job they can do. It's all about the dollars. There are too few Public Works "blue collar" crew to do the work of the white collar experts! Now, how is that?
And very soon Mount Baker Road, home of some longtime island families and friends, home to my own new garden (which will be 10 degrees colder when those trees are lost), and many other life-forms that can't speak up at "public" meetings and who depend on tree cover, will be irrevocably compromised in terrain where there are precious few trees left, and any new trees will have a terrible time growing, due to the almost continual buffeting winds and our new rabbit problem - people releasing domestic rabbits into "the wild" (illegal and destructive beyond belief).
In the vicinity of my new garden, built last spring/summer I have already seen cedar waxwings, anna's and rufous hummingbirds, goldfinches, western tanagers, garter snakes, tree frogs, all kinds and sizes of hawks, eagles, ospreys, pileated and downy woodpeckers, and much much more. I have heard several kinds of owls at night. Where will these creatures live without their homeland trees? What will hold stormwater and polluted road runoff from flooding in the lowlands, if not tree roots?
The Mount Baker Road Widening Project is at best, unnecessary. At worst, it's a long-term tragedy that will do immeasurable harm. Why is this being done? Supposedly, for safety and visibility on "dangerous" Mount Baker Road, which runs through a large category 1 and 2 wetland. Having lived here for 30 years, I can tell you that Mount Baker Road was a lot safer before Public Works's last project, the "truck bypass route" which many trucks don't use anyway. They made two promontory-type corners and don't have the manpower to maintain them so the visibility is terrible. There have been more serious accidents and fatalities, not less. The so-called trail is in a wetland and underwater most of the year; some parts all year long so people have to walk out in the shoulder-less roadway. Couldn't they have fixed the trail with a berm and flow pipes for a whole lot less money and carnage?
How does making this road into a highway where people can now do 70mph instead of 50, safer? Public Works refuses to acknowledge the part that excessive speeding, alcohol and drug impairment, and inappropriate cell phone use are the top contributors to accidents and fatalities. Their solution? Get state and EPA grants and keep the engineers employed and happy. SO... for the benefit of the few, the many must suffer. Same old tired song and I'm sick of hearing this discordant music. I'm mad and sad as hell.
Most of the trees on the North side of Mount Baker Road from Terrill Beach Road to Buck Park will be cut. The rest may not stand, depending on the treatment of the land by heavy equipment. The smaller trees protect the larger ones, as we can see by the sad example of the Mount Property Constructed Wetland Project, where the tall pines are drowning and being pushed over by the strong winds that prevail in Eastsound.
What do we stand to lose with each mature or maturing tree cut? How much water filtration do we lose? How many bird's nests? Tree frogs? Salamanders? Raptors? Bats? Beneficial insects? How much shade and shelter and windbreak do we lose? How much life does one tree support? Who speaks for that life, for all those lives? Are any planners and engineers asking these questions and will they take time from their desks and go out in the field, as gardeners do, and observe the life around them, over seasons? Over years?
What can you really say? How much broken-heartedness can a person take? How can that be used to make the world a better place; not by force but by gentleness? How can one turn fierce anger into an ally that will stand up and say "NO MORE CARNAGE?" I am now so cynical that I can understand why people just give up and decide to be selfish and "me" oriented. Bah. May as well just do art and garden and try to enjoy the few years or days we have left. But thoughts haunt: who will speak for the trees? For the next seven generations of humankind? For our great nieces or children or grandchildren?
If this blog had followers in numbers like facebook pages, then maybe some people would offer up solutions, ideas, prayers - because we need every one of us to stop going in this planet-destroying direction we are heading. Meanwhile, I hope we all take seconds and moments, as often as we can, make it our meditation and mindfulness practice to appreciate and give thanks for what is here and give that forth to the land, the waters, and their marvelous resident and migratory creatures. This earth needs to feel our love and thanks, now more than ever.
I have wondered what my purpose is in writing these blogs. Who reads them? Who are they for? What do they really offer? Is it just mental masturbation, a journal written in the dark inside a crumbling coal mine as the oxygen runs out? How can I "just think positive," and then what - forget about it all and disassociate? Who even wants to know or ponder what we're doing to the planet, since pondering it hurts too much? Who is actually looking for being part of solutions, rather than just complaining, and who is willing to take the time to co-create them, implement them, and stand firm and hold steady against those who would destroy everything, and not give up or give in? Who in town (mostly moderate to low income people) even has the time or energy to do anything but survive and hope they can feed their kids from paycheck to paycheck?
I've wondered how to get people interested in sitting through arduously boring meetings that effect nothing, no matter how many times we tell the engineers and governmental officials that we don't want the trees cut, and have our offerings of other less hostile solutions for the land rejected in patronizing smiles. And what does "educating" people mean? It seems twofold. We have to be mindful of what is happening around us, and acknowledge the consequences of our thoughts, habits, and actions; ie our part in it. And if we then want to change those things to do least harm, we have to find ways to step outside the paradigm of this dysfunctional matrix and create something from the best of every one of us, and we have to want it really badly - so badly that we're willing to stop blaming our differences and learn to co-create and see them as a strength and an opportunity to have more creative ideas than if we were all alike. Easy to say, harder to do.
Then there's the whole white-male cultural rules: Men aren't supposed to be sad or feel the feminine inside them. (ie "no sissies."). Women aren't supposed to be angry ("bitches.") Everyone should just think positive and read a new self-help book, take more prozac, and go to a therapist or the latest motivational speaker or new age guru. Heh.
Even while understanding the historical moment we're in right now - the working class becoming a serf population, the hold the powerful few have on us all - I am frustrated by the lack of involvement locally. What will it take for Eastsound residents to be engaged with their own homeland? I am also disheartened that those outside of town with more acreage, time, and money - whose lands our sacrificial-lamb-the-Urban-Growth-Area, protect, turn away from our difficulties here. How can they look away? How can they not claim their connection with us and this land and these waters - in the heart, the hub, the most vulnerable geographic and geologic place in the island? In all the ferry islands, probably, due to our sea level location and narrow bridge of land which gets hammered by all the wind we get here, Eastsound is the most vulnerable.
Then there's the social ramifications: I am livid when someone moves to a place like Madrona Point and "loves" Madrona trees, then cuts down a bunch of them to build their "dream cottage" and complains about our dances at Oddfellows, the one joy many of us low-lifer blue collar workers have, while saws roar and trees fall around us. How can they call the cops on a fraternal organization that raises money for kids' scholarships and does all manner of good deeds for the community through rental of their hall for social events; here long before these new breeds who want closed gated communities for the rich with multiple homes, most not even willing to spend a winter here with just the locals? Who ARE these people?
Soon Eastsound area will feel the long-term effects of the latest onslaught by Public Works which dovetails nicely with their new excessively-monied grant program called "roadside hazard mitigation project."(more about that in another posting).
My frustration with Public Works is that they plan, engineer, seem sincere and probably are, but go about it backwards. First they apply and get the grant money. Then they spend some (plenty!) of that money planning and engineering. Then they have open houses, which are not really open houses, since they're "telling" us what they are going to do. It's frustrating to watch the engineers plan and then consistently run out of money for monitoring and maintenance; the very things that would make the new "constructions" work. The job goes to the lowest bidder; it has to by law. Never mind if they are skilled or ethically qualified to do the best job they can do. It's all about the dollars. There are too few Public Works "blue collar" crew to do the work of the white collar experts! Now, how is that?
And very soon Mount Baker Road, home of some longtime island families and friends, home to my own new garden (which will be 10 degrees colder when those trees are lost), and many other life-forms that can't speak up at "public" meetings and who depend on tree cover, will be irrevocably compromised in terrain where there are precious few trees left, and any new trees will have a terrible time growing, due to the almost continual buffeting winds and our new rabbit problem - people releasing domestic rabbits into "the wild" (illegal and destructive beyond belief).
In the vicinity of my new garden, built last spring/summer I have already seen cedar waxwings, anna's and rufous hummingbirds, goldfinches, western tanagers, garter snakes, tree frogs, all kinds and sizes of hawks, eagles, ospreys, pileated and downy woodpeckers, and much much more. I have heard several kinds of owls at night. Where will these creatures live without their homeland trees? What will hold stormwater and polluted road runoff from flooding in the lowlands, if not tree roots?
The Mount Baker Road Widening Project is at best, unnecessary. At worst, it's a long-term tragedy that will do immeasurable harm. Why is this being done? Supposedly, for safety and visibility on "dangerous" Mount Baker Road, which runs through a large category 1 and 2 wetland. Having lived here for 30 years, I can tell you that Mount Baker Road was a lot safer before Public Works's last project, the "truck bypass route" which many trucks don't use anyway. They made two promontory-type corners and don't have the manpower to maintain them so the visibility is terrible. There have been more serious accidents and fatalities, not less. The so-called trail is in a wetland and underwater most of the year; some parts all year long so people have to walk out in the shoulder-less roadway. Couldn't they have fixed the trail with a berm and flow pipes for a whole lot less money and carnage?
How does making this road into a highway where people can now do 70mph instead of 50, safer? Public Works refuses to acknowledge the part that excessive speeding, alcohol and drug impairment, and inappropriate cell phone use are the top contributors to accidents and fatalities. Their solution? Get state and EPA grants and keep the engineers employed and happy. SO... for the benefit of the few, the many must suffer. Same old tired song and I'm sick of hearing this discordant music. I'm mad and sad as hell.
Most of the trees on the North side of Mount Baker Road from Terrill Beach Road to Buck Park will be cut. The rest may not stand, depending on the treatment of the land by heavy equipment. The smaller trees protect the larger ones, as we can see by the sad example of the Mount Property Constructed Wetland Project, where the tall pines are drowning and being pushed over by the strong winds that prevail in Eastsound.
What do we stand to lose with each mature or maturing tree cut? How much water filtration do we lose? How many bird's nests? Tree frogs? Salamanders? Raptors? Bats? Beneficial insects? How much shade and shelter and windbreak do we lose? How much life does one tree support? Who speaks for that life, for all those lives? Are any planners and engineers asking these questions and will they take time from their desks and go out in the field, as gardeners do, and observe the life around them, over seasons? Over years?
What can you really say? How much broken-heartedness can a person take? How can that be used to make the world a better place; not by force but by gentleness? How can one turn fierce anger into an ally that will stand up and say "NO MORE CARNAGE?" I am now so cynical that I can understand why people just give up and decide to be selfish and "me" oriented. Bah. May as well just do art and garden and try to enjoy the few years or days we have left. But thoughts haunt: who will speak for the trees? For the next seven generations of humankind? For our great nieces or children or grandchildren?
If this blog had followers in numbers like facebook pages, then maybe some people would offer up solutions, ideas, prayers - because we need every one of us to stop going in this planet-destroying direction we are heading. Meanwhile, I hope we all take seconds and moments, as often as we can, make it our meditation and mindfulness practice to appreciate and give thanks for what is here and give that forth to the land, the waters, and their marvelous resident and migratory creatures. This earth needs to feel our love and thanks, now more than ever.
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