This is a photo of two 13 year cicadas that I think is cool. The one on the left has hatched and has matured, while the other has just emerged and is still white, hanging on it's shell. Isn't nature awesome! This photo was taken on May 19, 2011, in our front yard, as the 13 year cicada outbreak was just beginning. The piece of wood is a wheelbarrow handle. Wasn't the cicada hatching an awesome happening this year!?
At least a few people on the Sunday News Shows brought up the fact that if we cut federak spending now we are only going to make the economy worse. The thing that is so disappointing is that the democrats somehow allowed the republicans to take charge of the main issue of the day politically.
The issue that is going to hurt Obama and the country the most is the high unemployment rate. And cutting federal spending right now is probably not going to help that. In fact, it probably will have the opposite effect. And the debt, while a problem, isn't way out of control. In fact, even though interest rates on treasury bills and bonds are at historic lows, they keep selling out everytime the U.S. offers them. Does that sound like people with money are worried about the U.S. debt?
And it is the unemployment rate which is the key to so many things. It is the key to Obama's re-election, to the rebounding of the economy, to getting the prison population down, to environmental improvement, and on and on. And now it appears that Obama is taking a high stakes bet that private business will respond to his debt deal and open up their big cash stashes and start hiring. Maybe so, but it's a gamble. Big business wants a republican president. They would give them more breaks. So it's hard to imagine that big business is going to rescue Obama and the democrats.
I don't know much about the details of the deal that supposedly has been cut to spare us default. But all indications are that the republicans bullied most of the concessions out of the democrats. We'll know more in the next few days.
RACE had accomplished an incredible feat - forcing the U.S. Forest Service to withdraw all of it's ongoing timber sales, even if it turned out to be temporarily - simply by pointing out to the agency how they were breaking the law. It was an amazing feat for a rag-tag group of pretty much unfunded, unaffiliated local primarily rural residents.
But selling the national forest's trees and having them logged is just too deeply ingrained in the culture of the Forest Service, and there was no way they were going to rest until they got their timber sales program back functioning. Their legal team must have analyzed that the best way to do that was to put out the sales individually. It is worth mentioning that some of these sales were already "sold." Now isn't it an amazing concept that a few people in an agency can "sell" trees on publicly owned land, even though most of the public doesn't want them sold?
I can say that with some confidence because there has been a number of polls taken in the past by credible polling organizations consistently found that the public didn't want their national forests logged - especially if it cost the taxpayers money, which it almost always did. It seems pretty beyond absurd to me that an agency could be authorized to have our national forests sold and logged and not even make money on it. But that's the reality - then and now.
And in spite of the resolutions from the counties, a petition campaign that was growing daily, (eventually collecting 16,000 some signatures opposing clearcutting on the forest, which was a clear indication of the local southern illinois sentiment about logging on the Shawnee) and the protests of RACE, the Forest Service pushed ahead with getting those timber sales going. It is the consumate example of how the Forest Service doesn't know much more than selling and logging our national forests.
Instead of being punished for their years of one page findings of no significant impact for dozens and dozens of logging projects in some of the oldest forests on the Shawnee. We know that they targeted some of the oldest hardwood stands on the Shawnee because that was documented in a presentation by Max Hutchison at a RACE meeting. Hutchison, a naturalist from Belknap, Illinois, was one of the primary scientists that were did the Illinois Natural Areas Inventory. The inventory was the first such inventory in the country, and became the model (for better or worse) for the nation.
In Hutchison's presentation, he stated that they had identified different types of habitat and tried to find the best, most undisturbed examples of that habitat to put in the inventory as natural areas. He pointed out that they had preliminary methods for identifying where they thought these areas might be. When it came to old growth hardwood forest in southern Illinois, many of the best stands appeared to be on the Shawnee, as one might imagine. However, when the researchers actually went out to the identified stands to ground truth their paperwork, when it came to the old growth forests on the Shawnee, they had been logged.
Can you imagine that? The Forest Service went out and targeted the oldest, most natural stands of trees on the Shawnee before they could be protected. Wow! That really shows where the agency culture lies - in the cutting of trees not in the protecting of natural areas. Oh, they will tell you now that was then and this is now, but it's still the same in my opinion.
But that's just an aside as to what we were up against. I can't remember just how long it took for the first timber sale to come out. It wasn't that long - probably a month or months. It was called "Town Hall." Town Hall was an isolated block of forest up near Ava, Illinois. That's a long way from where I live. Nevertheless, I and others were determined to try to stop Town Hall from being logged. That would me to an experience that I guess would change my life - or at least have a big influence on it. That experience was filing suit against the Forest Service in federal court representing myself trying to get an injunction to stop the logging.
To be continued
We watched the speeches of Obama and Boehner tonight. They were both campaign ads for the most part, but Obama, as president, rates a much longer speech. Not sure if that is such a good thing but that's how it is. I'm amazed that the networks gave him another prime time slot, but it would be hard to explain to their minority viewers and advertisers if they were perceived to be giving Obama a cold shoulder. So, they shrugged theirs and gave Obama his prime time.
One of Obama's strong suits is his speechmaking. In fact, it was a speech, the one at the Democratic convention, that catapulted him into national prominence. And while he didn't get fired up like he can on the campaign trail, he did give a very natural speech. It was like he was talking off the top of his head even though he had to be reading off teleprompters. That is a great skill, and Obama is hard to top in relation to his contemporary politicians. There isn't a speechmaker anywhere near his talent in all of the federal government that I know.
And Obama's got the best of this argument. How can the republicans want to cut people of modest means that rely on the government for basic survival when the richest keep all of their current privledges? Even if that isn't exactly what they mean, that's how it is coming off, and that is going to kill their party in the long run. The simple facts are that there are a lot more people that are just making it than those that have it easy financially.
Those of us who are barely keeping up - we see our basic expenses keep going up while our incomes are at best staying even and probably going down. At the same time, the super rich are getting richer. They have all the advantages of the life of comfort and privilege with little responsibility to the rest of the country that don't have the same comfort and privilege. When there is such a disparity in wealth with a very very small percent accumulating huge amounts of wealth while most of the people are just getting by, is it reasonable to expect that if there is a situation where everyone is supposed to chip in to help the whole country, that those with the most to give wouldn't be asked to give? It's pretty much beyond absurd.
And so we come down to the dueling speeches. It's pretty amazing that the networks gave Boehner 5 minutes to respond to the president. I'm not sure I remember any presidential speech, other than the state of the unions, where the minority party has been given that status. But hey, I'm all for it. I think it's great. It's an admission that the so-called "fairness doctrine" was right afterall. And hey, wasn't it the republicans that killed it? And while we probably won't find out, I bet they were out there begging the networks to give them time to respond, arguing "fairness." Dang, they are such hypocrites. But let's reinstate the fairness doctrine, regardless of what the loud mouth limbaugh says. But tomorrow the republicans will be against it again. So predictable.
I thought that Boehner made two flippant shrugs of his shoulders, which he probably couldn't control and which is why they were so telling, which will hurt him with independents. But the main flaw in Boehner's response is that he didn't try to address Obama's point that in order to be fair, the rich should be asked to help too if the poorer of us are going to asked to sacrifice.
And this thing about the deficit being so bad that it is an imminent threat to our security? Who else is saying that besides a few republican politicians? Not any credible economists. Sure, we can't keep going like this forever with deficit spending, but Obama didn't invent deficits, and if Bush hadn't wrecked the eocnomy Obama may have been able to get away with not having to try and stimulate the economy. But of course the republicans have opposed everything that Obama has tried to do, even when he agrees with the republicans. It's the most cynical and really evil political behavior that I have seen in my life. And Mitch McConnell is probably mostly to blame.
It's hard to know how the public will react. We will get some reaction tomorrow morning on the morning news shows. But my guess is that the pressure is racheted up on the republicans. Let's see if they dig in and push this further toward the abyss, or they start to negotiate in good faith. I kind of doubt if they will. As I have written before, I think that a substantial number of these newer republican congressman want to the government fail. They want chaos, they want survival of the fittest. They think that they can benefit from that. But most of the country won't. The fact that they can't see that blows my mind. They must think that the nation will be behind them, but in my opinion, that is bad judgment. We will see, won't we?
Yesterday morning, I had WPSD-TV, the NBC affiliate out of Paducah, on. Well, actually, I wasn't really watching it, I was preparing produce for delivery. But I did have it on. An ad came on. I remember two young girls selling lemonade. I wasn't really paying attention until the very end, when one of the girls said, "please don't raise the debt ceiling." That caught my attention.
Since then I've read up on it, and it is one of a number of ads on both sides running. But this one is particularly egregious - in fact it is sick in its thinking, in my opinion. To exploit two young females and make them say something that they have no clue as to what they are saying is beyond the pale.
These republicans, and you can go down the line now and they all are now saying it, act like the entire national debt is the responsibility of Obama and that raising the debt ceiling is something that has never been done before. And they certainly forget to mention that the raising the debt ceiling is necessary to pay for appropriations that congress has already passed. And they forget to mention that the constitution of the US guarantees the "full faith and credit" of the U.S.
In fact, the national debt goes back to the beginning of the country. We borrowed money from France (thanks to smooth talking Ben Franklin) to pay for the revolutionary war. And this current line of credit goes back to before Reagan. In fact, the debt ceiling has been raised routinely president after president, republican and democrat, for many decades. Why now are the republicans out to bankrupt the nation and cause havoc? Could it be because there is a black president? Something to ponder.
Many credible economists point out in the public debate that the national debt, while a long term issue, is not that bad yet. In fact, in my opinion, the facts bear that out. The U.S. puts up debt for sale through Treasury bond and bill sales, and even at current incredibly low rates, it all gets bought up. That is the ultimate proof that the debt isn't that bad yet. And many economists say that we need more spending from the government to stimulate the economy. Obama thought that, and started to go that way, but he couldn't get the republicans to help him with anything, and a less than adequate stimulus only helped the economy stabilize, but not recover.
The one monkey Obama has on his back is his vote against raising the debt ceiling when he was senator. That was foolish, but he says it was a mistake and he did it knowing that it was a symbolic vote and that the debt ceiling would pass anyway. But these republicans seem to want to ruin the U.S. They seem to want the markets to go down, and great instability to be introduced into the financial system. I think they just want Obama to fail, period, no matter what. That's a losing strategy, and the republicans are going to find themselves a permanent minority because of it if they don't come to their senses in the next few days.
Rural Thoughts would like to welcome back Tater. http://www.ruralthoughts.net/?q=node/162 , http://www.ruralthoughts.net/?q=node/215 , http://www.ruralthoughts.net/?q=node/236 . She is back writing about issues relating to environmental issues affecting her potato community.
Tater has been on maternity leave raising her offspring Spuddy. I know everyone has been wondering where she's been. Spuddy is now old enough that Tater can get on with her mission. Spuddy's dad is sharing in his upbringing, by doing his earthly best to give Spuddy a fulfilling organic childhood. Please stay tuned for news from Tater's point of view. (translation by Kristi Hanson)
I have to say that I am always skeptical of a lot of the reporting I hear from what might be branded as the "mainstream media," but this latest thing just about takes the cake. This former reporter, Sean Hoare, is identified as the main informant whose testimony helped to break open the almost successfully covered up "phone hacking" scandal that is rocking Britain and is about to spread to the US.
A lot of the mainstream press is saying that this scandal has blossomed like few have. It's being compared to Watergate. And if that plays out, then David Cameron, the current PM of England could be taking a dive. Already some of Scotland Yard's biggest dude's have resigned or been embarassed, top governmental officials have stepped down, and even the super-rich Murdoch clan has been embarassed, had to testify, and had to fire some of their favorite top people.
Now it is reported that Mr. Hoare has died in his home. And guess what? It has been reported all over the US and so I assume across the world, that the police are reporting that the death is "non-suspicious." Can they be serious? Just the fact that this particular dude died inexplicably in the middle of this scandal which he helped to trigger IS suspicious, period. PERIOD! Geez. What do they think we are, dumb? No doubt we have all chewed on our share of lead paint chips as children, and breathed plenty of mosquito spray, but come on, our brains aren't that stupid.
One just has to wonder how a "news" entity could print something like that with a straight face?
Kristi and I went down to Nashville Sunday - I played again at the Bluebird. My brother Cary came down again. We did a really nice set. We have a nice video of the performance, and I hope to get it edited and put on YouTube sometime soon.
While we were there, yesterday afternoon, we went to the Frist to see their Andy Warhol exhibit. Kristi and I have been Andy Warhol fans for a while - and that was reinforced by our visit to the Andy Warhol museum in Pittsburgh several years ago. So when we saw that there was going to be a Warhold exhibit at the Frist - one that emphasized his connection to "music and dance" we thought that was cool, and wanted to see it. But what we saw when we got there we weren't prepared for in the least.
The show was incredibly deep in Warhol works - covering a long span of his life - from the 50s until his death. There was much more and different works than what we saw in Pittsburgh. Kudos to the Frist and the curator. And the show, while having a frequent theme of Warhol's attraction and influence by and on music and dance, it was much more than that. This is a show that anyone interested in the 60s and how that culture developed and influenced the nation should try to see this show.
There were a number of interesting facets to the show, but they had a great collection of some of Warhol's more prominent illustrations, from his earliest days as an illustrator. And from those beginning times as a illustrator, he had that flair, that independence, that originality that stuck with him throughout his career. For example, Warhol illustrated a number of programs and posters for musical events, including prestigious classical music performances. He illustrated a lot of album covers. And his illustrations were awesome.
They also had a lot of his films, which were playing non-stop in various rooms. I can't say that I'm prepared to sit down and watch hours of Warhol films, but the great thing about his films is that you watch 10 minutes and get the feel. And the feel is that Warhol didn't want you to get sucked into the concept of "normality." And that was good advice.
And then there were the portraits - the silkscreen prints that were also painted upon. Besides his Campbell's Soup cans, which are his most famous works, and which were well represented in the Frist show, his portraits are his second most identifiable pieces. And while, when we went to Pittsburgh, we saw a number of his most famous portratis - Marilyn Monroe, Mao Tse Tung, and Elvis, in this show, there were a number of his portraits which were incredible but didn't get a lot of publicity, like Mick Jaeger, Lisa Minnelli, Robert Rauschenberg, and others.
In addition, there were a number of issues of his inter-VIEW newspapers. I had never seen one before. These were very influential in celebrity circles, in those days. And the covers were Warholesque portraits of some of the biggest celebrities of our day.
Then there was the display about his work promoting the Velvet Underground. They developed a happening, which he called something like "The exploding plastic inevitable." It became one of the hip things of the time. It included music, lights, and just not acting normal. It also propelled Lou Reed into his position of influence in the pop rock field. There is a lot of memorabilia from those days.
Oh yeah, and then his hanging out with the Stones early on. And I guess he hung out with John and Yoko. Geez, the guy was hanging out with everyone that someone like me thought was influential in those days. And he was without a doubt a big influence on them.
One of the most memorable things in the show was a quote posted in which he supposedly quoted his mom talking to him. It went something like this - "don't be pushy, but always let people know you are around." That kinda became his mantra. He strived to have a presence bigger than his actual persona. And he did that - perhaps better than anyone else that has ever lived.
Andy Warhol, who the conversatives have tried to brush off as out of the ordinary, and many in the mainstream have tried to paint as someone who completely manufactured his celebrity, was so obviously so much more than that. He was a genius that found his place in the world and had great influence on the culture - which continues. His death, like those of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and others, remains a mystery. "They" may have tried to do him in, but his influence is obviously only growing. And I'm glad.
All the republicans now have a mantra - whenever they say the word "taxes" they put the phrase "job-killing" in front of it. For example, "we must cut the budget, without those dastardly job-killing taxes." Heard something similar to that in the last several days? I have, ad naseum.
You know the obvious problem with that? The Bush tax cuts have been in place for many years, and we have sustained high unemployment. In fact, Obama, against the better judgment of his party, actually extended those tax cuts recently. So where are the jobs? If tax cuts are good for employment, why aren't we all just rolling in the dough with our dream jobs?
And where is the mainstream media in pointing this out? They should be questioning the republicans about this everytime they say it. But they are a bunch of chickens. The press better be careful, of they may befall the same problems that ol' Rupert Murdoch is facing.
"Job-killing taxes?" How about some followup?
The combination of RACE's public campaign in opposition to clearcutting in combination with Mr. Woods' letter was enough to break the Forest Service. They sent a letter in response to Mr. Woods letter in which they announced that they were suspending all the timber sales on the Shawnee National Forest. It was an incredible moment for a grassroots, poorly funded, organization like RACE. We had actually brought the Shawnee National Forest to it's symbolic knees, in spite of their coalition with the Sierra Club, Illinois Audubon and others. These groups were quiet on the sidelines waiting for the plan amendment promised by the settlement. This victory was RACE's and RACE's alone, and people in the Shawnee counties knew it.
But the battle was just beginning.
To be Continued.
After the settlement agreement actually got signed, the main goal of RACE was to fight the "interim timber sales" which were provided for in the settlement agreement. But it was a real David vs. Goliath. Not only did we have the Forest Service, one of the largest agencies in the nation, against us, but we had our former ally, the Sierra Club against us also.
In fact, the Sierra Club was touting the agreement as the best thing since sliced bread. At the time, Kristi and I were Sierra Club members, and so after the Chapter newspaper came out proclaiming the settlement agreement as basically saving the Shawnee national forest, I wrote a letter to editor of their publication pointing out that the settlement agreement wasn't perfect - that it in fact included the "interim timber sales," as well as other things that were less than good. Unfortunately, that letter was never printed in their paper.
Ironically, years later, at a meeting at Jean Graber's between Kristi and I and Sierra Club negotiation Jim Bensman at the Graber's Warbluff farm (before it became the Audubon Sanctuary) - a reconciliation meeting leading up to RACE and Sierra Club becoming co-plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the new plan arising out of the settlement agreement - I brought up to Bensman the fact that my letter had never run in the Sierra Club paper even though we were members, and he opened up his briefcase and produced the original letter - which had been hand written. He admitted being the main censorer of the letter.
RACE was moving forward with their work, however, regardless of the Sierra Club's position on it. This is where RACE obtained the one page environmental assessments, Finding of No Significant Impacts, and Decision Notices, which were identical year after year, except for a different list of timber sales that were going to be sold on the Shawnee that year. We had learned enough about environmental law to know that this was bogus. We thought that this might be an avenue for us to challenge the "interim timber sales."
In the meantime, a movement arose out of Pope County totally unrelated to us which was opposing the hardwood clearcuts on the Shawnee. Two men, Steve Hudson, who is currently a county commissioner in Pope County, and Kendall Buchanan, a horse back riding advocate, were the leaders of this movement. Like most of us, they had had one of their favorite areas, Reddick Hollow, clearcut badly. Other places were scheduled. Kristi and I met with them numerous times to discuss strategy and to let them know what we were doing.
RACE basically picked up on their petition, and one of our strategies became to go to county boards in the Shawnee counties and try to get a resolution passed opposing clearcutting on the Shawnee. There was a lot of consternation in the rural counties about the Forest Service, and very few people liked the large clearcuts in mature hardwood forests. It was a drag on the counties anyway - logging trucks using rural roads wears them out faster, without a doubt, a bill the county had to pick up. If the roads got too bad or scenic areas got messed up, fewer people would come to the counties to visit, and local businesses would be the ones hurt from that.
We thought we could get resolutions opposing clearcutting from a number of these county boards in the counties which contained Shawnee National Forest, and we did. A resolution from the Pope County board doesn't phase the Forest Service in the least. And one from Hardin or Alexander Counties didn't phase them either. And resolutions from all 3 of those counties wouldn't do much phasing of the Forest Service. So while we were picking up positive press on what was a grassroots movement, which was helping us overcome a campaign by the Forest Service and industry to paint us all as radicals - outside the mainstream, we weren't anywhere near budging the Forest Service.
In addition, these same county boards would not have approved a resolution that said that there should be no timber sales, even of hardwoods, on the Shawnee. Most of them were quick to say that "selective" logging was ok. At one time, although rarely, logging revenues on the Shawnee kicked up federal government payments to the counties. Some commissioners thought, erroneously in my opinion, that the logging receipts were good for the counties, and supported logging on the Shawnee. But, at the same time, they did not support clearcutting. RACE thought that clearcutting was the immediate issue, and our initial advocacy focused on stopping that.
We did get the Forest Service's attention, though, when, after getting a number of resolutions, maybe 4 or 5, from rural county boards, we approached the Jackson County board. This was the home of Southern Illinois University, which had a forestry department that was squarely with the loggers, and they didn't want to see the county board pass a resolution opposing clearcutting, because they were still trying to sell the idea that clearcutting the forest was good for it. In reality, I think that what they were doing was supporting a revenue stream that was used to hire graduates from their forestry school - and one of the most reliable up to that point was the Forest Service's timber sales program.
In any case, it became very contentious. Many important professors on our side, like Dr. Paul Yambert, and Dr. Robert Mohlenbrock, wrote letters supporting us. The resolution had to go through the Jackson County board's committee structure, and slowly but surely it passed it's way through the board, and then passed the whole board. It was a major victory for us, and the Forest Service knew their plans were in trouble.
At the same time, we had discovered that in the past, all of these timber sales had been approved with the one page environmental assessments, finding of no significant impacts, and decision notices, accompanied by a list of sales which was changed every year. I believe that we wrote the Forest Service a letter asking them to reopen these analysis because of new information. They had to be nervous, but they resisted.
But one day we were contacted by an attorney in Benton, Illinois. I can't remember how the contact was first made, but he was interested in what we were doing. His name was James Wood, and he had an office, with a partner - I can't remember his name, but Mr. Woods referred good humoredly to he and his partner as "the democrat and the republican" in that order. He had an office on the 2nd floor of the Wood building on the corner of the square in Benton. I know that over the years, there has been on ongoing movement to save that building because of its historical significance, but I don't know what the current status is. The building certainly played a part in all of this.
We convinced Mr. Woods to write a letter, on his letterhead, to the Regional Office, pointing out that these one page EAs, FONSI's and DNs were bogus, and that all of the outstanding timber sales approved with these documents should be withdrawn. I think there were 10 or so sales. This scared the hell out of the Forest Service, because they were operating so illegally. Unfortunately, Mr. Woods name inadvertantly got given to the press (not by me, but by one of us) and it ended up in print. He had asked that for now to be kept out of the press, and he dropped us because of that. However, his arrow was already in flight, and it hit it's target perfectly.
To Be Continued
I am coming to the conclusion that some of the republicans - enough to actually control the party at the moment - want to see the government shut down, or go broke, or just to cause havoc and wreck the system. They hate the current government so badly that this hate outweighs any sense of patriotism or support. In fact, they think it's patriotic to cause governmental upheaval. And so I am beginning to think that perhaps Aug. 2 will come and nothing will be done and there will be some kind of serious financial event. I don't think anyone is going to be able to predict what form it will take exactly, but it will be something that will touch the world, I'm pretty sure of that. Just look what concerns about Greece has done to the world markets.
But I still think that in long run, the people will blame the republicans, because right now people don't want intrasigence - they want cooperation. Obama seems to be pleading for it - and, as he says, at the risk of being shunned by his base, but no matter what he does, the republicans reject it out of hand. That's the perception anyway.
Obama may be the first president re-elected with high unemployment.
And what is this stuff Boehner was saying today? Not to tax the "job creators?" What job creators? Bush and his "base" (some call you the elite) promised us jobs from his tax cuts for the rich and look what happened? It caused all kinds of economic problems, but the one thing it didn't do was create jobs. So what is Boehner basing that statement on? Certainly not history or reality.
Of course, most of the talk was on the budget deal. There was a lot of talk and not much said besides the blather that is continually repeated. Basically, what the pundits are saying is that neither side can muster enough votes to get their preferred alternative through, but that they aren't willing to discuss meeting halfway.
I've already written about this, and I think that in the long run, the republicans will be hurt the most by it, because it looks like they are being intransigent. I think Boehner suspects this - that his instincts tells him this could happen, but there isn't a lot he can do about it.
It is so cynical of the republicans to block every move that Obama is trying to make, even when he is trying to support what they want, and then criticize him cause he can't get anything done. It's about as politically low down as it gets. But Obama hasn't helped himself when it looks like he's too quick to take a bad deal.
I'm sure that there will be some really trying times if there is a temporary default by the U.S. But time never stands still, and how it will play out in the long run is anyone's guess.
Actually, I thought Joe Glisson should have been president of RACE. I thought he would be a better president of a larger organization like RACE, but he preferred to not have that position. He was very gracious and supportive of me, and I was honored. I didn't have the charisma or ability to charm people that is often helpful when you are a leader, but I had a good political intuition and understanding of government in general, and the history of having been through the last several years, including the settlement negotiations. But I relied on Joe, and many others, for courage and dedication. Of course, Kristi remained my number one advisor, and her insight was different from mine, but very sharp. Between all of us, we covered a lot of ground.
In the meantime, Kristi and I had received, on behalf of ACE, a form from the Sierra Club saying we agreed with the settlement agreement and giving them the authority to sign for us. The Sierra Club never saw that form again from us. I did hear at one time that there was an attempt to fabricate one of those forms as supposedly coming from ACE. Apparently, it didn't get very far. I've never seen it myself, but I wouldn't doubt it. I think Ned Fritz's advice for us to file a Notice of Separation saved us.
There were other groups that had signed onto the appeal with Sierra Club and ACE. I can't remember them all, but I know that the Illinois Audubon Society and McHenry County Defenders were two of them. They didn't participate much in the negotiations - they left it up to Sierra Club to represent them.
We planned a rally at John A. Logan college at the same time as the signing ceremony for the "settlement agreement" was planned. The Forest Service really played it up, as did the other participants, which included not just the Sierra Club, but Illinois Audubon, the Illinois Dept. of Natural Resources, and the others. All of the participants were invited to make a statement. I was really surprised when they agreed to give me 5 minutes to address the group of settlers, but I took it. There was lots of press there, and even the regional forester, Floyd Marita, was in attendance. That was the first time I had met Marita, or any regional forester. A regional forester is a very powerful man - one of 11 in the U.S. It was at that first meeting when we had a very blunt conversation which ended in him saying "go ahead and sue me." I just bet he came to regret giving us that advice!
It was a brutally hot August day. My recollection is that it was over 100 degrees. There were dozens of RACE supporters, but all except Kristi and I were kept out of the settlement signing ceremony. In retrospect, I'm sure that was illegal. In fact, my recollection is that security kept the RACE rally out of the building entirely. Dick and Jean Graber had come in support. These were retired folks, and Dick wasn't in that good of health. It was truly torture to make them stand out in 100 degree weather on a paved parking lot. But that's what they did to us.
I went in and gave my statement. I said that "business as usual" on the Shawnee National Forest was over, and that a new era was going to happen in which the environment would matter and that the public would have a strong voice. I then left the room and went back outside to join my friends from RACE. Soon, the press started trickling outside. One interesting thing happened to me that I remember - Paul Donahue, who at that time was a reporter for WPSD-TV, the NBC affiliate out of Paducah, KY, interviewed me. I was giving these long detailed, explanations about what had occurred and why we were out there. He smiled and advised me to just give a short, overall explanation - that long, detailed explanations didn't work on TV news. I guess he could tell that I was quite inexperienced at this, although it wasn't the first time I was on TV over the Shawnee - that was on KFVS, the CBS affiliate out of Cape Girardeau, Mo. Mike Shue saw a letter to the editor I had written to the Southern Illinoisan newspaper about the gridball spraying, and was curious about what was going on. He actually came to our house and interviewed Kristi and I. The Donahue interview was the second. Donahue's advice was advice that I have remembered thoughout the many times that I have been on TV over the Shawnee issue.
To be continued
Not only during this time period did we meet and start to work with folks from what we called the "west" side of the Shawnee - particularly Joe Glisson and Jackie Turner, Bill Cronin and Mindy Harmon, and others, but we also were befriended by Richard (Dick, as we all called him) and Jean Graber. Dick and Jean were retired ornithologists from the Illinois Natural History Survey. They, like their friends the Stannards, had moved to Pope County to places they had bought after they retired. Both the Stannards and the Grabers were highly regarded in the academic world of ecology, having worked for the University of Illinois and the Illinois Natural History Survey.
We actually had met the Stannards first, through the Paducah Audubon group. Dr. Lewis Stannard was a well known entemologist, and had been an outspoken advocate for protecting natural areas. In fact, his work with Dr. George Fell, was instrumental in having the Illinois Natural Areas Protection Act passed into law. Lewis liked Kristi and I because for one thing, we loved Pope County and had been dedicated enough to the area to actually buy land and move here. He also liked the fact that we were working to protect land, and he did not like the direction that the natural areas protection movement was going - toward more and more heavy handed management and less appreciation of allowing natural processes to be the major force on wildlands. He particularly did not like the rush to subject much of the public lands to prescribed burning. He had studied the impacts of burning on small insects that lived in duff habitat, and found that some species either didn't repopulate or didn't repopulate very quickly after a burn.
The Stannards had told us that we would have to meet their friends the Grabers, who were about to move down to Pope County full time. We were looking forward to it. They had a great reputation as ornithologists, but we would come to learn that their reputation didn't come close to describing just how knowledgable they were (well, in the case of Jean, still is) about the birds, plants, reptiles, insects - all aspects of our environment.
One day in 1987, Kristi and I were out working in the yard. We heard a car pull up and stop on the gravel road out front, and I walked toward the path through our hedge in front of our house. As I approached the path, a small but intent woman who I had never seen walked through the hedge path and, seeing me, approached. She asked "are you the ones trying to stop the BT spraying in Oakwood Bottoms." That's a whole other story, but the fact is that, yes, we were the ones. Not knowing who this person was, or whether she was for us or against us, like most of the other "environmentalists" in Southern Illinois, I hestitated to speak, but finally said, yeah, we were the ones. Much to my surprise, she pulled a checkbook out of her pocket and said that she wanted to make a donation to help us, and wrote a $50 check to ACE. After that, we became good friends. And, by the way, the Forest Service did squander untold taxpayer dollars spraying thousands of acres of Oakwood Bottoms with BT to kill forest tent caterpillars. We hadn't learned to file lawsuits yet.
So as the settlement negotiations over the Shawnee plan ground on, the pressure for us to accept "interim timber sales" become progressively more intense. The Sierra Club seemed intent on having an agreement. Besides having the Forest Service agree to recommending all 9 of the inventoried "roadless" areas on the Shawnee for "wilderness study," the most that the agency could do in promoting the areas for congressional designation (something that we had insisted), the main concession that was being offered was that the Shawnee would change their "primary" timber harvesting method from clearcutting to "group selection." The volume of timber to be cut annually from the Shawnee was substantially unchanged, and the definition of what "group selection" meant was clearcuts up to 2 acres.
This was unacceptable to our group. But we tried to continue to work with Sierra Club and the other appellants, who weren't particularly active in the negotiations. But the real straw that ended our staying together with the Sierra Club was when they agreed to language in the settlement establishing a "study" to identify 286 miles that could be suitable for Off Road Vehicle use on the Shawnee.
The Off Road Vehicle interests actually had an appellant - a commercial pilot from the Chicago area, Al Englehardt. Mr. Englehardt liked riding his ORV in the Shawnee with his son. In fact, he said that "it was better than Disneyland." And, he had filed an appeal of the plan. I can't remember his issue. But the ORV groups figured out pretty quickly that Mr. Englehardt was their path to involvement. Before long, he was the face of the entire ORV movement on the Shawnee.
They so badly wanted the settlement agreement to include Off Road Vehicle trails. Ideally, they wanted trails designated by the plan, so that the day the plan was signed, they could out and ride. (Not that they weren't riding now - it's just that we had figured out that all ORV use on the Shawnee was illegal - and there was way too much of it - and we were making noise for enforcement. The ORV riding interests wanted to do as they please on the Shawnee and not have to worry about it.
We were at an impasse. And it was a little hostile. But we had been so badly impacted by wild, illegal off road vehicle use in our neighborhood that we knew if it ever got legal, would become intolerable. We were determined to do what we could to keep that from happening. Kristi was adamant about it.
Finally, there was a showdown one night. It occurred after either an all day and night or an all two day and night negotiating session. It was later in the evening. Things were tense and raw. Some language had been drafted up based on the total number of available roads and trails on the Shawnee that could potentially support off road vehicles - at least according to the Forest Service. I remember Mike Spanel, long time Shawnee wildlife biologist (at that time a wildlife biologist mostly managed white tailed deer) sitting by us on a table in the back of a large room, having retreated, while others worked to agree on language that would sooth Mr. Englehardt and his folks and maybe Sierra Club. It wasn't going to sooth us.
The language, which ended up in the agreement, and which a little research could find the exact language, but I'm telling this story off the top of my head, was basically that there were 286 miles of travelways that could be eligible for off road vehicle use, and that the Forest Service would do a study to see if they might want to "designate" any. A "designation" would require another process - a "site specific" environmental study and public review.
Sierra Club thought that language would protect our interests, because we could fight any eventual designations through that process. We told Sierra Club that we believed that if a number like that got into an agreement, that it would be almost impossible to beat back every attempt at designation. We weren't going to agree. By this time, the groundrule to have to take tenative agreements back to your organizations had been lost in the fog of war, so to speak. Things were being said and written down as if it were gospel. As the evening ticked on, nerves frayed, visions of slimy salamanders were being had, and pressure mounted, the working agreement ended up having the language of the study of 286 miles of off road vehicle trails.
As we more regularly reported back to people that had become very interested in this, as I mentioned before, the calls for us to not agree became fervent. We told everyone that the agreement was going through, regardless of what we thought or said. We agreed with those calls not to agree, and we never did sign anything saying that we agreed to anything. (what a sentence!) Near the end, we asked for advice from Craig and Charlene, Jan Wilder, Joe Glisson and Jackie Turner, Bill Cronin and Mindy Harmon, Dick and Jean Graber, Corinne and Pete Whitehead, and others. We were all very upset that this was going through, and no one seemed to know if there was a way to stop it.
I thought of Ned Fritz. Ned had come to our area, and Kristi and I had been his host, in his tour of national forests in the midwest as he was writing his second book. We spent a wonderful day with Ned, and we established a friendship that would last until he died. I did have his phone number, and knew that he was an attorney. I knew that he had a lot of experience with national forest things. So, I phoned him, and got to talk to him.
He remembered me, and was very warm and friendly. I explained to him that we were in an administrative appeal of the Shawnee forest plan with Sierra Club and some other appellants, and that we had entered into settlement negotiations which had been ongoing for months. Basically, I said that Sierra Club wanted to settle and we didn't, and Sierra Club was going to sign a settlement and we weren't, and was there anything we could do. He didn't hestitate. he said, "oh sure, just file a 'notice of formal separation' of your appeal from Sierra Club and the other appellants with the Chief - do it immediately. That's exactly what I did. That document exists today. I actually got a letter from the Chief's office acknowledging it later, after the settlement had been signed.
In the meantime, Sierra Club agreed to the terms of the settlement agreement, as did the other parties. The Forest Service planned a huge event - a signing ceremony that would serve as a public relations booster as they launched their campaign for a new forest plan. It was held in late summer at John A. Logan community college, in Carterville, Illinois.
The settlement agreement contained the 5 "interim timber sales," plus the study of 286 miles of off road vehicle trails. By this time, the opposition to this settlement had grown. Meetings of local residents concerned about the clearcutting on the Shawnee, which we were involved in, were getting bigger and more frequent. At one of those meetings, after the signing ceremony was scheduled but before it had taken place, Joe Glisson proposed that a new organization be formed that was a combination of the work that we had done with ACE, on taking it regional. That, he proposed, would make it RACE, and RACE would be very appropriate name because were in a race against time to save the areas that were going to be logged on the Shawnee.
Dozens of people present at this meeting were excited, and approving. Joe proposed that I be elected president, and there was approval of that. Our first order of business was to deal with the settlement signing ceremony.
We started the settlement talks by driving to Springfield, Illinois to meet with the Forest Service to discuss "groundrules" of the talks. When we got there, it was just us, the Sierra Club folks, and the Forest Service. We learned that a mediator, Ty Tice, from the northwest, had been contracted by the Forest Service to chair the proceedings. Personally, I don't care how "objective" a mediator thinks they are, they know who signs their paychecks.
The groundrules meeting didn't amount to much - a wasted drive to Springfield. Fortunately, gas wasn't nearly as expensive as it is now. The one groundrule that was meaningful and which Tice had a hard time enforcing in the end was that negotiators that represented organizations would not be held to any agreements until they had time to take the proposed agreements back to their organizations. Another I remember is that we couldn't discuss the fact that the Forest Service lost money on their timber sales. We set the next meeting for Harrisburg, Illinois, the location of the Shawnee's supervisor's office in about a week or so, the best of my recollection.
So we showed up for the next meeting in Harrisburg, and low and behold, the place was crawling with people. There were logging company representatives, loggers, off-road vehicle riders, mining company representatives. Some of them had appealed the plan, some had intervened, and some just were there. I guess the Forest Service had been on the phone a lot between the two meetings.
At that meeting, the logging company representatives got the floor early on. The company with the biggest influence was East Perry lumber, a Missouri lumber exporting company that coveted the big trees on the Shawnee. In fact, their spokesperson was a guy named Brian Unnerstall. Mr. Unnerstall had just recently at that time left his job as a forester for the Forest Service on the Shawnee and gone to work for East Perry. Can anyone say "revolving door?"
Unnerstall got up and said that if there weren't continual timber sales on the Shawnee, that a hundred or more jobs would be lost. It was great theater. It scared the Sierra Club folks. The Sierra Club was already the "enemy" in the rural counties that had many of the most scenic areas, biggest blocks of forest, and oldest trees, as well as depressed economies. Being "blamed" for job losses in these counties was something that the Sierra Club wanted to avoid. And us too. Only we were living the depressed economy of the rural counties, and thus, had a bit more legitimacy speaking up for a different kind of economy. And we pointed that out during the proceedings.
It all made us uncomfortable, though, because while we didn't believe that not getting to cut on the Shawnee was going to be that big of deal to the region's economy, we knew that the issue could be demagogued - and it was. It probably would mean timber prices going up and more cutting on private land, and that seemed a better option to us. But money talks. And, the talk of the need for continued timber sales while we were negotiating became a main early topic of discussion, and remained that way through the entire settlement negotiations. The only thing that rivaled it as the negotiations continued was the infamous 286 miles of Off Road Vehicle trails. That comes up a little later.
I guess it is worth it to note that later, when we started looking into how the Forest Service actually sold their timber, we discovered that the Forest Service's attempted "compliance" with the National Environmental Policy Act (the federal law that requires environmental impact statements for "major federal acctions) was a one page Environmental Assessment, a one page Finding of No Significant Impact, a one page Decision Notice, and a page stapled to those three with a list of the timber sales for the year. Now, by comparison, they often take many hundreds of pages to make a Finding of No Significant Impact for one individual project. This comes up later in the chronology of events.
The fact is that the Forest Service was, in the 60s and 70s, and still is, but with a lot more eyes on it, selling off prime timber from national forests in sweetheart deals in which taxpayers had to ante-up to cover the costs, not including the environmental ones. They were used to doing this little public scrutiny. They did this routinely, never mind that it lost money.
And so when Unnerstall got up there in the crowded room and talked about having to have timber sales in the interim - what was going to be called, creatively enough, the "interim timber sales," I think the Forest Service was just of the mind that this is how it was going to be. And to be honest, there was a governmental agency institutional coersion that had some effectiveness that persuaded even strong, progressive environmental organizations like Sierra Club that timber sales were somehow inevitable on national forests - beyond challenge in an existential way. That wasn't just locally either - it was a national phenomenon.
We were soon faced with the question of whether or not we could accept "interim" timber sales. At first, they didn't have the specific sales, but I think some volumes were bantered around. Then they came out with specific areas to be logged - Those were Town Hall, Fairview, Possum Trot, Alcorn Creek, and Quarrel Creek, to the best of my recollection. There was no way that ACE as an organization would accept that. There was a lot of pressure though. And I think that there was a general expectation between the Forest Service, the loggers, and the Illinois Dept. of Natural Resources, that ACE was not something that would stand in the way of their plans. They were right for the moment.
These negotiation sessions went on for half a year or more. Sometime not that far into it, but not right at the beginning, we met a lady, Margaret Hollowell, from Bloomington, Illinois, representing the Illinois Audubon Council. Margaret told us that she had heard that a controversy was brewing in southwestern Illinois over logging in Cave Valley, one of the prime warbler areas on the Shawnee. She mentioned Joe Glisson's name. It wasn't long after that we drove over there. We communicated what was going on with us, and eventually, we established a good working relationship.
Joe came into the proceeding as they were already going. He hadn't known about the plan at the time and appeals and now the settlement. But through us, he could be involved, and likewise, we could be involved in what he and his neighbors were doing to try and stop the clearcutting that was occurring rampantly in their neighborhood - right out in plain sight. It was a good fit at the time.
Joe and all of the western Shawnee folks, wanting to learn as fast as they could what was going on and maximize their influence, saw immediately that it was in their interest to stop or at least seriously slow down the proceedings so they could get caught up on everything and be on equal footing. We were their best tool, and shared their belief that it was best slowed down or stopped, although we were in the middle of it all and finding it difficult if not impossible to control.
While all this was going on, the president of the Illinois Sierra Club, Evan Kurrasch, who, with Jim Bensman, was the Sierra Club's negotiating team, started behaving strangly during negotiating sessions. She was obviously flirting with the Shawnee Planning Officer, Sam Emmons. There were cute jokes, faces, notes, signs, and Kristi and I talked about it frequently when we were away from the proceedings, but no one said anything to us.
One day, during crucial negotiations, probably having to do with Off Road Vehicles, Ms. Kurrasch was having problems keeping her composure. My recollection is that Bensman asked for a caucus, and he and Kurrasch and Kristi and I went into this closet in the back corner of the Pruitt-Harris building in Harrisburg, where she proceeded to break down crying, never saying exactly why. It was obvious to us that our side had big problems and we weren't being told what they were.
We never were to find out why until we learned that Mr. Emmons had split up with his wife (and there were children is what we heard) to live with Ms. Kurrasch, and if I'm not mistaken, marry. I have to admit to being shocked when I heard this, because it wasn't mentioned at all during the negotiations, although all of the things I mentioned aboved were ongoing. Talk about a conflict of interest on both the Sierra Club and Forest Service's part!
Can you believe that? The Sierra Club state president and one of two negotiators for the state Sierra Club started having an affair with the Shawnee Planning officer during "settlement negotiations" in which there were co-appelants, and none of the co-appelants were ever notified of any conflict of interest? That should be enough to nullify the entire proceedings in my opinion.
To be continued.
Way back when. I guess I can say that about 1983. That was the year that I first saw helicopters dropping white balls on pine plantations in the Shawnee National Forest near our property. After a little research, Kristi and I discovered that the white balls were not snow, nor confetti, nor ticker tape. They were an herbicide called "Velpar" in the form of "gridballs." Don't you just love that word, gridballs? Brings all kinds of things to mind.
We hadn't been notified about the spraying. The Forest Service officials we contacted afterwards told us it was perfectly safe, but we were to find out otherwise. It's not safe at all. It's a very toxic material. A trip to Metropolis, Illinois, to an open office by our then congressman Paul Simon, expressing our concern about what the Forest Service was doing, is what got us started in our national forest management "activism." Our beginning attempts at organizing lead us to an SIU zoology teacher, Dr. Ann Phillippi, who advised us to start a local organization, which we did - ACE - the Association of Concerned Environmentalists. This was basically us, our neighbors Jan Wilder and Craig Rhodes and Charlene Brown, and a friend Lou Coots. We started putting out a newsletter. Our organization became a real entity.
This has lead us down many a winding road through the mountains and hills, but the particular path I am going to wander down the memory of today regards encounters with the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club dates back to the days of John Muir, who they claim is their founder. John Muir, luckily for us and for him, lived in a time where a person could wander the country and actually find untouched natural areas - wilderness. He loved these areas and thought they should be protected from exploitation and development. The Sierra Club was an outgrowth of his travels, observations, writings, and activism.
And let's not kid around here - Sierra Club is a large national organization that has a multi-million dollar budget and wields considerable influence in our nation's political discourse. It has a pretty high name recognition, and the full support of the Sierra Club in a campaign can often times push it over the top.
When we first started being active in national forest management, we were lead to the Sierra Club. Of course, we had moved down to the bowels of one of the most rural, highly forested counties in southern Illinois, where being an "environmentalists" (I never liked that word) was unheard of, and the Sierra Club was the enemy because they were trying to "lock up" the forest through "wilderness" designations.
The Sierra Club was happy to have someone advocating for the environment down in the rural counties. Up to that point, environmentalism was the domain of Carbondale, southern Illinois' college town. And we were happy to have the powerful Sierra Club on our side. (so we thought)
The first big project which brought Kristi and I together with the Illinois Sierra Club was the first Shawnee national forest land and management plan development. This occured primarily from 1985 - 1987. We were still learning about national forest management, but we had learned that they were developing their first plan under the National Forest Management plan.
The Sierra Club's main contact person at the time (and still, actually, having been entrenched in the position for so many years there doesn't seem to be anyone else) was a young man named Jim Bensman. Jim handed me a Wilderness society publication at a public meeting sometime in the early-mid 1980s entitled "How to Appeal a Forest Plan" which I found very useful. We ended up working with Bensman and the Sierra Club in appealing the Shawnee Plan.
The Sierra Club insisted on writing the appeal, and we let them. We could have done it though, as we had already successfully appealed herbicide projects on the Shawnee, in effect, shutting down their program. And Mr. Bensman did a fine job of the appeal. But, instead of deciding the appeal, the Forest Service requested that we enter into negotiations with other appellants and intervenors to try and resolve the appeals outside the formal process. We all agreed that would be ok.
To be continued
We watched both Wimbledon finals - yesterday and today. In both matches there was no doubt about who was the best player of the day.
In the women's match, Miss Kvitova played an excellent match and beat Ms. Sharapova badly in straight sets. I thought that she looked like a female Nadal, returning difficult shots with winners, hustling, just playing great tennis. But after today's match, she looked more like a female Djokovic than a Nadal.
I know there have been more than one female wimbledon finalist that never did reach that kind of level again - thus thwarting any predictions of upcoming greatness. But I would be surprised if Kvitova ends up being a flash in the pan. She just was too good - too solid, and it appears she is an upcoming force to reackon with in women's tennis. Why did NBC take John McEnroe off the women's final though? Whether you like him or not, his insight into tennis is deep and he is by far the most interesting tennis commentator that is on TV. The women's final broadcast lost something with his absence.
In the men's match, for the most part, Nadal just wasn't in the match. Djokovic did have a let down in the third set, and Nadal did take advantage of it. But Nadal made errors that he usually doesn't make, and faltered at key times. He simply was beaten, and soundly. It happens.
Nadal will have to learn to concentrate harder if he is going to compete with Djokovic. Both players showed amazing ability to return very difficult first services by their opponents. Both players served well. There were some amazing ralleys, and incredible shots, as you would expect from a Wimbledon final featuring the one and two ranked men in the world. But in the end, Djokovic was superior, and Nadal has to settle for being number 2 - for the time being. We'll see if it continues.
This is a beautiful full moon rise a few weeks ago as I drove home. I had to stop and get some video and photos.
As predicted, Mitch McConnell came out of his meeting with Obama and continued to say there couldn't be any agreement on the deficit if it included any revenue increases at all.
I continue to think this is a bad strategy. He is painting himself into the corner. The Hill blog is reporting that Sen. Schumer is now making public statements that McConnell is blocking a deal on the deficit simply because he won't talk about new revenues - not even closing tax loopholes to big corporations. http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/168773-schumer-mcconnell-is...
If the senate fails to raise the debt ceiling on time and there is some economic turmoil, I think McConnell and the republicans will get blamed. They really took it on the chin during the government shutdown with Clinton, and yes, McConnell was right there helping to mismanage the republican position. And now, history stands poised to repeat itself.