Opinion
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- Written by: James BlueWolf
Over the last decade, I have achieved some notoriety for writing letters to the editor that could charitably be described as somewhere between preaching and diatribe. My true intent has generally been that of education however, like most opinionated adults, I have served my own ideals and agendas with little apology.
Though I probably will continue in this fashion in other articles – this time I will hold myself to questions that are of importance to Lake County residents. The questions I pose will, I hope, stimulate reasoned and comprehensive discussions of issues important to the future of our county.
What concept of growth or progress should we accept? If the traditional western model of continual population expansion, construction and development is to be accepted, how can we escape the eventual overcrowding, destruction of rural agrarianism and degradation of our natural resources that inevitably follows?
What are the qualities of Lake County we cherish the most? What makes Lake County special besides the personalities and energy of its citizens? If we value the open space, the trees, birds and animals that share it with us and give it character, how can we protect their future?
If it is the quality of our water; the lake, creeks, springs and wells that sustain us, what can be done to absolutely insure their quality and abundance?
If it is the soil that holds the seed of our sustenance should modern systems fail, what can be done to insure that enough remains open and available to agriculture to provide food or fuels for our future survival?
If it is the quality of the air, purest in the state, how can we demand that every aspect of our development and lifestyle preserve that purity?
Should we decide that the preservation of the previously described natural resources be a priority of commitment, these questions set the boundaries of other questions.
As a small rural community, can we reasonably expect the same levels of service and maintenance that larger cities provide or will we instead embrace and be proud of our rural nature, understanding the economic limits to public services that our priorities will sustain?
Do we continue to widen our streets and highways for the inevitable obsession of additional automobiles or do we make commitments to a myriad of forms of public transportation for our workforce, as well as senior and disabled citizens?
Can we keep our communities from spreading uncontrollably until, in some far future, they grow together to create one continual town that encircles the lake? What can be done to grow them internally so that each is its own self-contained community that holds all the necessary elements for its citizens so they are not required to drive elsewhere for necessities?
If we commit to controlling our growth and development, how can the businesses that depend on that growth continue and prosper, or must the concept of mushrooming profits that define “progress” be redefined to allow only the best and most respected to survive? What type of new business growth could contribute to a “green” and “organic” and more “self-sufficient” Lake County?
How can we begin to treat the epidemic of drug and alcohol abuse sickness that affects so many of our citizens? Could a commitment to the arts, music, entertainment, family agriculture and education contribute to gatherings and community spirit events to promote that healing?
How will we encourage growth in businesses or technologies that provide a living wage and how can we restrain the price of land and homes so that our own children can afford them, rather than seeing them purchased by higher income urban refugees looking for investment properties?
These are just some of the questions we need to discuss. What are your opinions?
James BlueWolf lives in Lakeport.
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- Written by: Lake County News Reports
Did you see Al Gore’s frightening new eco-film, “An Inconvenient Truth”? He said he “invented” the Internet, not long ago. Now, he’s passionately ringing a global-warming alarm bell. Greenhouse gases are increasing, he warns. Polar caps are melting. Rising oceans will flood coastal cities. Millions will suffer and die. The film is so popular among liberal Democrats Gore is thinking about running for president, again. Many Democrats will vote for him because neither he nor they recognize real dangers to the planet.
Gore is not wrong to want to be a watchman for the world and see danger ahead. He looks, however, in all the wrong places. The globe is spinning towards disaster and the sky really is falling in but not because of global warming. The real danger to nations and planets is, and always has been, human character that turns sour. One witty comic said not long ago, “We have seen the enemy and he is us.“ Most people laughed. A few sighed and cried. Those who lamented know human charity and kindness are melting away like snow on the sunny side of a mountain. Hearts are hardening like brass and turning cold like ice. Faith in the world is waning like the moon in its fourth quarter. More and more, world leaders are behaving like beasts in the jungle. They hope to kill before they’re killed. Gore would do better if he aimed his distress signals at mushrooming moral blindness.
People with eyes to see hope Gore will make a film about the real dangers to planet earth. Unfortunately, he walks in darkness. It was Gore who personally led the assault on family values when he was vice president and later a candidate for president. He permitted an out-of-the-closet lesbian to give a keynote speech at his Democratic convention. Militant homosexual activists played a big role in trying to get him elected. He recruited “save the abortion clinic feminists” to help him campaign. The destruction of the family is a real threat to the planet but Gore doesn't get it. Children who don’t have mothers and fathers are a worldwide catastrophe.
Readers remember it was Vice President Gore who supported President Clinton when he introduced the world to oral sex and semen-stained dresses. Adultery is a worldwide plague but Gore kept his mouth shut when Clinton had affair on top of affair.
Secular history has proved many times over good character builds strong nations. Gibbons’ “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” shows how moral decay brings them down. Biblical history tells the same story with a divine variation. Genesis reports a violent world brought to a watery grave by an angry Spirit who looked for justice and found none. Revelation reveals another corrupt world will be destroyed by the same August Spirit in an unquenchable fire. This is the global warming that should alarm Gore and his aficionados.
Darrell Watkins lives in Kelseyville.
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There are a thousand or more solutions to global warming, to pollution and to the exhaustion of resources. Spiritual, scientific and political outlooks can meet and merge in a rational preservation of our common earthly environment.
What is the single stumbling block? It is not greed or corruption, it is not ideological, it is not even war or a race for world domination ... all these are consequences of a central problem of unsustainable growth. As long as economies must keep growing in order to exist, human civilization will act as an out of control bacteria on the body of the earth, eating its way into annihilation.
This growth is not new. The North and South American continents were invaded by Europeans (mainly English, French, Spanish) who had exhausted their State coffers continuously waging wars against each other, and were desperate to find new sources of wealth. They spread and colonized the world as predators seeking sustenance for their empires.
Early America expended west, betraying every treaty signed with native nations, because it could not sustain itself in the east, and wanted gold and other resources. Communist China overtook Tibet for the same reasons.
Today the few indigenous lands, including Indian reservations in North America, remaining in possession of their original occupants are once again targeted by this global predatory civilization in its never ending hunger for resources, and the air, the water, the soil we all depend upon to live are increasingly toxic, as this absurd civilization not only consumes its way into self-destruction, but produces and discards its way into poison.
Without a return to a sustainable way of life, which must include clean technologies and the development and protection of local economies, humanity is doomed, as would the passengers of a vehicle without breaks ...
Opportunistic corporate and banking interests do reap unreasonable profits from this wild ride, but they are not really in the driver's seat, as no one will escape the final crash, which will not be a "divine punishment" but the extremely logical outcome of our now universal refusal to understand that all life is connected, that natural laws and the natural order can neither be ignored nor overcome, that we will ultimately all eat, breathe and drink our trash, our chemicals and our poisons.
The engine that drives this global civilization is indeed a belief that we exist as separate entities, without any real or relevant connections with a nature we incredibly perceive to be made obsolete by technology, and that nature itself is chaos, disorganized, spiritually meaningless, composed of bits and pieces of physical "stuff," of unrelated and competing elements that remain as separate in the real world as they can be made to appear in the laboratory.
In other words we confuse the map with the territory, and are apparently extremely surprised when the poisons we pour into the air, the water, the land show up in Indigenous mothers' milk in northern British Columbia or Alaska (in supposedly pristine environments), and saturate our bodies.
This technological civilization, which claims to be founded on reason and calls itself superiorly intelligent to all other cultures, is, then, dismayed to find out that, in spite of all the power and knowledge it struggles to acquire to become the master of nature, whenever it spits in the air, the spit does fall back on its face!
Raphael Montoliu lives in Lakeport.
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- Details
- Written by: Dot Brovarney and John Koetzner
By all accounts, Mendocino College’s first-ever LitFest is an unqualified success! Approximately 400 people attended the Friday evening and all day Saturday events on June 1 and 2. Credit goes to many, beginning with the Community Foundation of Mendocino County, which awarded the Friends of the Mendocino College Library and the College its “Arts for our Future” grant to plan and implement this new literary program. Besides providing innovative arts programming, grantees were charged with creating business partnerships and drawing visitors to the County. Extraordinary exposure from the press in Mendocino, Lake and Sonoma Counties helped create the draw to our event.
Mendocino LitFest is a wide-ranging literary arts program bringing together established and emerging authors, and small and regional presses with interested audiences. Mendocino LitFest provides a time and place for workshops, readings, discussions, book signings and publication sales. Participants to this first festival came from throughout Mendocino, Lake, and Sonoma Counties and others traveled from Eureka, the Bay Area, Gilroy, Sacramento and as far away as Santa Monica.
Besides the support of the Community Foundation and the Friends of the Mendocino College Library, we would like to acknowledge the major support of the Ukiah Daily Journal and David Smith at Nine Trees Design. Also, major contributions by Ken McCormick at Visual Identity, his associate Ken Coburn at Global Interprint, and Jay Young at J Design resulted in a beautiful Litfest book publication, “Small Mirrors,” which is available at many Mendocino County bookstores and the College bookstore. We received critical additional support from these businesses: Frey Vineyards, Mendocino Book Company, Tom Liden Photography, The Law Office of Susan Sher, Myers Apothecary Shop, Tierra, Sanford House, Local Flavor and Hampton Inn. Kudos also to staff at these agencies whose strategic contributions were key to our success: Mendocino Transit Authority, Americorps, California Conservation Corps, and the City of Ukiah.
We also would like to thank all our presenters, our book vendors, including Gallery Bookshop, Cheshire Books, Four-Eyed Frog, and Mendocino Book Company, and our food vendors.
Last but not least, a very special thank you to the many volunteers who dedicated time, skills, and their creative energy to accomplishing this innovative program and running it seamlessly.
Dot Brovarney
John Koetzner
Mendocino LitFest/Mendocino College
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