Recent comments

Yes, Frank, it does. When speaking to a public servant who no longer serves the public and is acting vampiric the best language to use is vampire-speak. I would never use that language with you or other commentators. In this case the issue IS the VP and his immoral, illegal actions and I am attacking the issue here... not you or any other commentator.

My comment "this serves my point exactly" was not in reference to that quoted comment of yours, but in your insistence to personally attack other commentators rather than attacking the issue. Somehow you are not seeing the distinction. Attack the issue, not other commentators.

You misunderstand my past post, Dennis. I'm referring to attacking the personalities of the debaters. For instance, your saying that I disgust you. I disagree with your stance on Dick Cheney, but you don't disgust me. I think you're wrong about what I'm saying, but I'm not attacking you directly. I'm simply disagreeing with you.

As for those in public office, we as free Americans should always critique them and call them into question (read your Thomas Jefferson, your Thomas Paine or your John Adams for details). There isn't a thing I said in my Cheney post that doesn't point to that man's immoral and money-centric public stance. I don't know the man personally. I can only judge his position based on his actions. And man, his actions blow.

You also misunderstand my position on the office of the Vice Presidency. I have great respect for the office. It's Mr. Cheney that does not. He has done everything he can to abuse the public trust and his power in office and deserves immediate impeachment. In fact, impeachment isn't enough for a man who has committed treason during war time. There was a time when that called for more dire punishment.

Here's what's constructive in my post: People, don't believe in sound bites. A dragon showing up in front of the sheep's pen doesn't make him pro-sheep.

Here's what's problem-solving about my post: Let's actually start calling our public servants to account for their illegal and immoral actions and stop handing our public lands over to the highest bidders.

(PS. It is extremely ironic that those with historically the strongest vitriolic diatribes against the "other side" are always the ones who leap to the "you-have-no-respect" wagon when the other side argues back. It's an old tired political tactic and I'm here to tell ya the "other side" ain't gonna take it anymore.)

The email address Amy gives above is specifically for feedback on this issue:

This is the best place to address this (otherwise it winds up lost in the shuffle). There is actual accountability on a feedback to an EIS, so send in your comments!

Thanks, George! I hope all of us go on this!

Certainly, the tension between humans, between humans and non-humans, and the value judgments and rationalizations we make about all of those things will matter a great deal on our world view and our sense of parks management. If we don't believe in humans first, we still have to come to grips as humans deciding what we as humans ought to do, how to come to terms with our place in the equation (that's why I think that the wilderness purists are actually anthropocentric in many respects). If we do believe in humans first, we still must come to terms with the way everything else relates to us. We have to understand the boundaries and the rationale.

I don't believe that humans have any more intrinsic value than anything else, not as far as I have ever been able to prove to myself. Unfortunately, others who share my belief have sometimes not understood that anthropocentrism is a curse toward preventing humans from loving each other. Instead, they have sometimes created new hierarchies with human beings at the bottom. Then, we see racism and classism, especially, seen as secondary ills to the environmental ills.

One of the puzzles constantly in my mind when coming to a site like this or thinking of my own site on Yellowstone is whether it's possible to focus on such important ethical questions with only a parks-only focus or a Yellowstone-only focus, and of course, one can't get around the reality that these places are political realities, human creations, of places that seem to be created by acts of God (keep the historical sites alone for a moment). Yet, the more we learn, the more we realize the human component for the last many thousands of years of the human role in all of our national parks, the more we realize that humans continue to have impacts on the ecosystem within and without those places. That's the way it was; that's the way it is, naturally or unnaturally for better and for worse. We cannot parcel off questions to a place, to a policy unit, to a before or a present state. We are bound to consider the whole. Yet, at the same time, if we simply spoke of the whole, without reference to a place, we wouldn't be speaking about anything at all. We need focal points, experiential reference points, a tree here, a person there, a touch there, a smile there.

All of this is to say that however we take the value of humans and the value of what's not human (the romantics called nature the "not me"), which is in itself an important question, we have to realize that we cannot draw too many conclusions without also recognizing the relationship of the one to the other and the values implicit in that both at the macro and micro scale. To recognize that humans are not at the top or that they are worth something hopefully will not lead us to some of the conclusions we see (like that AIDS might wipe out most of humanity - forgetting who is hurt most by AIDS, like hoping that user fees will keep more people out of the parks - forgetting who that hurts most).

***

On a vision for the Centennial Initiative, I don't have one. There are far too many visions for a tomorrow we cannot control with too many variables. We don't need any more vision than our eyes provide for us; if we realize that our eyes aren't performing as well as we'd like, then life must be spent deconstructing the obstacles that have made us more interested in abstractions like bureaucracies and ownership rights. This isn't to say I advocate blissful ignorance of what government is doing, or what corporations are doing, or what people do in the name of abstraction (actually, quite the opposite), it is to say that I see them as obstacles to clarifying my relationship (smelling that lodgepole off the Grant Village employee boardwalk) with all that's "not me."

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

Hey Glenn
If you can get me a legitimate e-mail address for the BLM & the forest service I'll start a writing campaign and also get as many friends involved as I can. Thanks

Snowbird06
I don't understand why all the sudden "swift boating" of the NPS. As they would say in the corporate world...they were just disgruntled employee's!

This is what I'm talking about! This is why I love this site! This is the kind of information we can DO something about! All those who want to groan and moan about the state of the parks, here's something you can actually DO about it.

Email these bastards at the BLM & the Forest Service and (let's face it) the Bush Administration and let them know how misguided they truly are. Will it make a difference? I don't know. But when constituents start writing in, politicians begin listening. At the least, there will be someone accountable when the screw-ups begin rolling in.

Hell, Amy's just about written the email for you here... Just cut and paste and send. OR better yet, write your own version of it and stick it to the man.

It's one thing to write grumpy blogs about how terrible things are and how the government's crap. Well, the government is supposed to be us. Be an advocate for those who can't advocate for themselves... In this case, advocate for Mammoth Hot Springs and Old Faithful Geyser and Grand Prismatic Spring. They need your voice. Use it.

Here we go again, big-oil subsidiaries making another unwanted and unjust impact on "public" lands. Public lands, that's a joke in itself. Regardless, as long as energy companies continue to fund political agenda at the uppermost levels of government, we can expect to feel the environmental decline of this once proud, natural resource rich country. It's funny, with all the geothermal activity to be harnessed, basically for free, by the time these energy barons factor in the expense of transportation to the final destiny, since there is little local market for their services, if you think the consumer is going to be saving any money in monthly utility expenditures, you must have come from as far underground as the "new" energy source.

I don't know what national park site the two former employees who posted earlier worked for, but as a former employee of 7 different sites, I must say that I am shocked at the level in which you criticized management of the NPS. I'm sure that there are individuals, and even entire units, that are mismanaged, but to say that the NPS in general is the biggest threat to park lands is incredible. I worked with hundreds of dedicated, responsible employees who operated at the highest levels of fiscal responsibilty all while doing an incredible job protecting resources and promoting proper visitor use and appreciation. I worked in mega-parks and small parks. I worked in natural settings and historical settings. In no park did I see gross mismanagement and in every park I saw employees at all levels who did their jobs well. Bad employees and bad supervisors exist in any agency, but unless I lived 5 years of my life in a happily oblivious bubble those types do no dominate the NPS.

No, I'm not the NPS cheerleader for the day, I just don't want those previous comments to define NPS 'insider' opinion on the matter.

If the BLM thinks it is wise to even attempt to disrupt the plumbing of Yellowstone National Park, then the people in charge of BLM should be REPLACED IMMEDIATELY.

Yellowstone is an incredible place. The plumbing system has been proved in the past to be VERY fragile, and should NEVER be toyed with. There is a reason why Yellowstone was the first National Park in te WORLD. It is beautiful, unique, and ONE OF A KIND. We have very little understanding of how all the basins are linked together. It would be a travesty if something were to go wrong, and the BLM was responsible for OLD FAITHFUL suddenly stopping!

THINK about it, BLM! You could possibly destroy the best National Park in the world. Research the history of all other geothermal areas, and the impacts of drilling. This area is too fragile to play with for mere monitary reasons.

Stop before it is too late!

BLM "protective"? Are you nuts? This is the same agency, under direct orders from the Bush Administration, that has essentially turned the entire western landscape into one big drilling operation.

I do agree with your assessment that eventually the land will say "enough is enough". The Yellowstone volcano is already about 50,000 years overdue for it's 600,000 year cyclical eruption. Messing with the pipes under the engine can't be good.