Recent comments

The following is the text of an e-mail message that I have sent to Senators Murray and Cantwell and Representative Dicks, all from the state of Washington:

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I assume that by now you are aware of the AP newspaper article "Just whose Olympics are they?" by Curt Woodward, Published Sunday, Aug 12. If not, you can find it at

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003832748_olympicbattle12.html

The article documents another example of aggressive, abusive behavior on the part of the United States Olympic Committee in its overzealous "protection of its trademarks". Specifically, USOC is leaning on an individual whose greatest transgression is to publish a pamphlet entitled "Best of the Olympic Peninsula". You would think that anyone with an IQ higher than, say, my dog's, would understand that the Olympic Peninsula has nothing to do with the Olympic Games.

Clearly the USOC wants to have complete control of the use of such terms as "Olympic" and "Olympus". I resent that, being someone who lives on the Olympic Peninsula and daily sees the Olympic Mountains (weather permitting).

I pass this comment on, just in case you might be interested in doing something about the matter.

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I also sent a copy of this e-mail to the USOC (media@usoc.org, ), with the added comment: "For my part, I do not plan to contribute to the USOC in the foreseeable future. It wouldn't surprise me if a number of other residents of the Olympic Peninsula feel the same."

It's not the proximity to the venue that car campers are seeking, for the most part, it's the experience of NOT staying in a bed every night, with conveniences like institutionalized food, gift shops, over-crowded walkways and the ever present hunt for the almighty parking spot close enough to the lodge to enable one to lug in the suitcases without the associated hernia. Camping, whether it be backcountry, short backpacking treks, or dispersed in the national forest (or BLM lands) will continue, and maybe even thrive if the lands nearest the parks evolve towards total commercialism. And the further ones gets away from the development, the better the experience at the park will be, albeit slightly less convenient.

Having raised my children with tent camping, which included a small open campfire (this is no longer available in most campgrounds now) each night upon which to bond with hot dogs and marshmallows roasting. I still enjoy getting out of the urbs as often as I can. Age has caused me to shift from a tent to a hard body due to creature comforts. Cost of storage has caused me to sell the hard body and I have begun utilizing in park lodgings. At the Grand Canyon South rim a "historic cabin" at Bright Angel is under $70 a night, a motel type room in the wooded area at Yavipi is just over $100, and it offers Air conditioning. The North Rim has "fronter" cabins $100 and motel type lodging tho the price becomes beyond my budget.
In most cases the lodging at the parks is within reason if you compare to a Holiday Inn or the like. At Yellowstone, there are reasonable acomidations outside of the park. Also the Forest service rents remote cabins (several miles off the main road) I have enjoyed the seclusion of one of them near Flagstaff, AZ
If I use the tent I now have difficulties moving and enjoying the parks, If I use a cabin or room I can get around the park and really enjoy the of our natural wonders. As our population grows with seniors, empty nested, a few well located (blended in) cabins or rooms are a great thing .

Thanks for letting us know what the bill will entail. It was a noble effort waged by Mr. Funkhouser and we all do appreciate his hard work. My most heartfelt condolences go out to his family.

He will be hard to replace.

One more story lagged in on this today. As a grassroots organizer, 200 is no insignificant number for an impromptu protest; we would be very happy with that number for a local protest here (even though more people live inside just the city of Washington than in all of Wyoming); given the summer population of Jackson, this represents about 1 in a 100 people there; in DC, that translates to about 6,000 people (and actually more than twice that given the metro area and visitation - which I took into the Jackson figures). Only once did we as local anti-war organizers (as opposed to national organizers) get that kind of percentage, and that was at the counter-inaugural in 2005. This is something else altogether. There are a lot of advantages organizing outside of Washington - too many to go into right now - but on Cheney's home turf in front of his home, that's not an insignificant barometer of how upset people are in the Jackson area.

It's interesting that there was an anti-war theme to this as well; you don't see an environmentalist theme. One of the problems in the various movements opposed to the Administration is an inability to communicate and organize across issues. Even so, if I were on the ground, I bet I would have seen an interesting cross-section of interests. Yet, at the organizing level, something else is at work. Whoever these organizers are, they have money we never had to be able to put full page ads in two Jackson newspapers.

There are a lot of interesting subtexts; I wish I could have been on the ground to experience the ins and outs of it because it's a whole world of intrigue and politics unto itself. One paper said that one of the co-organizers is in fact a Republican. But, you can get little sense of the organizing process from a newspaper and whoever served as group spokesperson. These groups can have all kinds of organizing means and ways of dealing with the media. Given the speakers and the march process, it seems like it lended itself to a more mainstream approach (an effigy of Cheney may seem radical, but the same event had Democratic office holders speaking) - anyhow, I could speculate and comment on and on. It makes me excited to get involved at some level either with a group like this (if it is viable and open) or with a different affinity group working in solidarity.

8/14/07 Protesters show up in force near Cheney home (by Whitney Royster Casper Star-Tribune)

Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World

I think he comes into the administration at a good time -- a time when the president is attempting to polish up his legacy and Kempthorne is there to wave the flag on his behalf. There's only so much the head of the Interior can do... he or she is basically a puppet of the president with some limited ability to package and present it with his or her personality. That being said, I was present last December when he addressed the crowd at Antietam on a very cold evening during the battlefield illumination. The power went out on the loudspeaker system and he kept on going without hitch. Turns out he had a great-great-grand-somebody who fought on that battlefield and it was a rather moving speech especially with no amplification. Kinda made me feel like I had stepped back in time to the Civil War days when someone of importance stepped up on the soapbox and gave a speech there on hallowed ground, with all the onlookers inching closer trying to hear what he had to say. I enjoyed his speech very much.

-- Jon

That is a very good question, Kurt, as are all of your questions, and I must admit to not having all the answers. As far as federal law goes (i.e., endangered species), state, regional, and city parks must abide by these statues. If scientific management in national parks could be decentralized, it would come with long-term benefits. For instance, some have noted the current administration's propensity to censor and suppress science, and with land management and funding depoliticized, those practices would be effectively ended.

Another good question. In urban parks or parks close enough to urban centers, local authorities could assume many responsibilities. Large, remote parks would present different challenges. One possible answer is for each park to hire and/or train their own protection rangers.

I assume there are experts with more concrete answers and plans, and I shall continue to research various views and ideas.

Thank you for your questions; they merit serious consideration.

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Reform the National Park Service!
http://NPS-reform.blogspot.com

I used to think of this website as being similar to "my house", and that you all as readers and commenters are guests at a giant party I've assembled to talk about parks. As host of this party, if I didn't think you were being fair to another party-goer, regardless of your political stance, I had deleted your comment. This didn't happen often. In the last month, other than spam (comments advertising porn, etc), I have deleted no more than 5 comments total. These were comments, that in my opinion, were designed with the single intent to illicit angry retaliatory comments -- flame bait. I don't want that at my party, and as host, I didn't think other guests wanted that either.

But this weekend, it dawned on me, this isn't MY house! As Kurt and I have said from day one, this site was built to promote community, to be a virtual commons for folks to read and share with others on somewhat neutral turf. It wasn't until this weekend that the mind caught up to what my fingers were typing, which is, it isn't up to ME to decide what is appropriate speech in these commons, it is the responsibility of the community itself. As Smokey Bear might say, only YOU can prevent flame wars. If someone lobs flame bait in your direction, do everything you can to ignore it, or respond in such a way as to remove the targeted anger from your reply.

This weekend, I logged in and was prepared to delete comments with speech like "you leftists are disgusting", "the VEEP can hold target practice [on you leftists]", "[the leftists] need to move to ... some third-world hell-hole", and suggesting that the "Islamofascists" should burn in the "fires of nuclear hell". The political stance doesn't offend me. I would have had the same desire to delete these comments if they had been targeted at "right-wing nut jobs". What seemed clear to me, is that these comments were coming from a very angry place. Why so angry? Was it at the remarks made earlier in the thread which ended with "Shame on you, Dick Cheney. Stay in your cave and leave the parks alone"? It was a comment that perhaps I would not have made, but one which I didn't find so offensive, but clearly others did.

So, that's when it hit me, that the comments left on this site are not about what I find acceptable or unacceptable, it's about you. Perhaps someday I can build a way for members of the NPT community to vote on the value of comments, similar in fashion to reviews left on Amazon or comments on Slashdot. It would be a way for the community to put its weight behind the opinions of particular comments that matched its own.

This means, as editors, Kurt and I are going to use a lot of care before hitting the delete button from here on out. We may contact individuals "off-site" if we feel a flame-war is in the works, and, for the sake of the site, we feel it needs to be brought under control. But, otherwise, we would ask simply that you consider the views of others, and that you treat them with same respect you would like to see in return. It may be just a pipe dream, but that is the type of community in which I'd love to participate.

In Zion they had a similar situation several years ago when the contract for the Zion Lodge (also held by Xantera) came up for renewal. There were many in the local community and in the NPS that were suggesting that the Lodge should be closed and the buildings converted to another use, possibly into a training center or used as housing and office space for employees and volunteers or maybe all of the above.

The original reason that the Zion Lodge had been built by the Union Pacific (talk about your benevolent corporation) in the 1920's was that there was no lodging or food service available in the nearby pioneer village of Springdale. Today the situation is far different with the town having a wide range of lodging and restaurant options which rank it right up there with Salt Lake and Park City in the quality of both in the state of Utah. It was felt, by many, that the original reason for the Lodge had ceased to exist and that it was now unfairly competing with local businesses with a big helping hand from the federal government.

The Lodge was also known as a place that was notorious for its criminal activity and the shady character of many of its employees. These concerns were pushed aside as Xantera was able to appeal directly to the Utah congressional delegation for the needed political muscle to continue to operate their low quality business in the heart of Zion Canyon.

Locally the Lodge is a joke and no one in Springdale would ever steer a visitor that way when they know that they could sleep or eat at other, much better, venues in town. It does, on the other hand, keep the green & gray police officers busy busting Lodge employees for meth sales, assaults and larceny. One particular year in the late 90's it accounted for over 40% of the felony arrests in the park. It's certainly been good for justifying an increase in law enforcement spending at Zion, but really not much else.

"As long as politicians control park regulations and funding, certain groups (including corporations) will pressure the government for preferential treatment and our parks will suffer." I agree Frank.

Thanks. I was just wondering because I'd like to know what the promoters of the bill consider "abusive" and what is deemed reasonable.

Beamis,

I don't have full details on the Baucus bill yet. The "worst fee abuses by public land agencies" is quoted from the WSNFC email notification of Rob's death. I would suspect that it has something to do with fees collected under the FLREA, but don't know for sure.