FutureFail - By Name.

Amanda Park says you don't live here.

Why should we leave any Olmpic Peninsula town out of the public shaming? 

Today is the turn of Amanda Park, Joyce, Clallam Bay and Hoquim - and Forks. Like you're fooling anybody.

Merrill and Ring says you don't get to enjoy living here.

They've certainly deserved it. Loggers all over the place are - in barely-disguised language - saying that anybody else who makes a living here off beauty and the future needs to bow down to the logger as the only person who deserves to live here. 

Rayonier - a Florida company - says "Screw you."

Greed, theft and short-sightedness are supposed to live, over beauty and hope?

Hoquim celebrates decades of destruction.

Oh, go to Forks for any festivals and watch them puffing up their chests over dead trees on trucks. The loggers hate the Twilight fandom - they absolutely hate hate hate that ANYBODY might make a living from health and air and beauty. Are they aliens from another planet? Do they breathe ammonia? Nature seems to scare the hell out of them. 

And here's Hoquim, all proud of itself for its traditional Masculine Roles - all based on Everything Is The Enemy and Everything MUST bow down to Our Superior Race. Bison, wolves, First Nations, forests, rivers, prairies - it was ALL put there for us to rape rape rape. What? I didn't make that up. I just had a woman at the food bank tell me we're supposed to have "Dominion" over the earth. She's going to get a fucking big surprise as her grandkids go under the stamping engine of Mom Nature - who is no gentle, giving parent, but a monstrous, integrated spaceship - and them what don't fit in get sent out the garbage chute. 

No, you're not going into the New Frontier of outer space - you can't keep the atmosphere going on this one. Hell, to keep shelter, food and water in place to survive, we all have to work ourselves to death now. In outer space, you and your grandkids will do nothing but fix vacuum links.

I plan to at least be one of the ones who say "We told you not to do this." No "Good German" for me, thank you.

FutureWin - FutureFail

In the future, those who have a whole forest NOW shall survive.

In the future, those who are clearcutting their forests NOW for short-term gain shall fade and die. 

First, here is the link for articles about the Olympic Peninsula, which is well into FutureFail.

Now, here are FutureFails - and, if we can find them, FutureWins.

First, a link to a FutureWin - Dryad's Rest, which has 30-year-old forests on 59 acres of woods. the healing has begun. Right now, they're struggling with predators around their goats, because the clearcutting is driving animals into their woods. They've realized these animals are refugees, and Dryad's Rest is an Ark.

FutureFail, with clueless human.

Here is a FutureFail. A photo taken in Amanda Park, Washington, of an antique person who has killed a mature predator, modeling himself on a culture hero who took government money to wipe out "vermin" species (with "vermin" defined as anything not on a leash to us). This is probably a refugee woman. These days, everything on the planet is becoming a refugee from us.

Amanda Park shows there is hope.

BUT - here is a FutureWin, and it's in Amanda Park, too. One of the Timberlands Libraries in Amanda Park. The logging industry funds libraries on the peninsula, no doubt believing their workers and readers will become logging clones (loose evidence makes one think the North Olympic Library System only hires from logging families). However, what happens when people can actually read and communicate? Go past the downtown, where the antiques are, and just go here. It's beautiful, and the librarians are lovely, intelligent people. I scared them a bit when I blew in as an Angry Betrayed Daughter of the Pulp Industry. It didn't hurt that one of them was a comics fan, and I run the Clallam Bay Comicon.

More to come! Clallam Bay and Joyce, get ready for a big smack in the head. You earned it.

They Just Can't Help Themselves.

Over time, I've been writing articles about how "forestry" handles forests. Mostly, it's been to get my own pain out of my system. I grew up in a logging and pulp world, and - well - that's never going to heal (You'll find a bunch of those articles at the end of this post. They've got email and youtube and all sorts of other links in them).

But the logging companies just couldn't help themselves. It's not enough they destroyed the Pillar Point Rec Area, taking down a big-leaf maple tunnel (and here's the document on who signed off on that); it's a slap in the face of the people who live here.

Now they've finally had to come right in between neighborhoods in a small town, in a full-blown clearcut in Clallam Bay.

Look, I know I can't stop all the horrible abuses in the world. And I could have survived, if just a little nature was left, here and there. I could have driven through clearcuts if Pillar Point had been there as a little relief. But what do I do now? If I just stand back this time, another company will be around the point next year, cutting down trees with eagle's nests in them, on a cliff, with no concern that a slip cliff would come down on the homes below. They just had to keep poking, didn't they?

Mother tree.

And I can make this pronouncement. Anybody who doesn't go in and rip out resources, the people who do say we have no families; it's an obvious insult. Or simply poorly thought out. Don't think so? Well, look at these signs. That's what they posted for everybody to see. And I want to know who paid for that expensive print run. And since they're about activities on State lands, I get to ask, under freedom of information. Well, I do.

Look, sooner or later these logging companies are going to go after me and try to make me take down these posts. Because they really, really, REALLY can't help themselves. I'll post any paperwork or emails I get from them. Because, as Mr. Manning and Snowden taught us - we all have to stand up. If nothing else, logging companies are starting to feel sorry for themselves. They don't have to; they can cooperate and grow up.

And while we're at it, here's the kid's tree house. It's in a big double Douglas Fir, grown from an older nurse stump.

Kid's tree house.

It's a "mother tree" - the basis for the fungal network that stores and feeds

water and nutrients from the big central tree back into surrounding trees. Logging companies are busily chipping down trees into toxic products that make us sick, and putting them into from materials in foods to materials that outgas in homes for years. It's all planted firmly in the 1950's, when All Chemistry Was Good. It's doubtful "forestry science" even knows what these big trees do, or what it means. And if the people involved do - more shame on them.

Mother tree root base

It's not the 1950's any more. It's 2013. Mature, learn, study. And don't be like the guy I just had a conversation with, whose only protest against "wilderness" was that the logging companies wouldn't let people come in and cut firewood from the slash. The guy was a former dairy farmer, and when I tried to tell him that burning what was left back into the soil was the only - token - form of fertilizer these companies could manage, and even made the connection to his fertilizing his corn crop, he just didn't get it. He wanted some little thing, all for himself, and he can't see past that.

If nothing else, being allowed onto forestry land - even a "wilderness" compromise - to thin dog-hair stands for firewood

Destruction of old growth in Audubon area

Are they drinking? Serious question.

would contribute to the health of a forest. Forests have lived with humans for thousands of years, and on this continent, the management was far better than it was on my home continent. A forest can take some thinning and underbrush burns and food-harvesting. It can't take every single tree, large or small - and especially large - being chewed down to the earth every 30 years - with no replacement of thousands of years' worth of nutrients. It just can't. We already know this from Easter Island, Scotland, Ireland, and most of the middle east and the Mediterranean countries. They blew it.

Speaking of blowing; we evolved with trees. They make the level of oxygen we need, and sink the level of Co2 we need to be removed. They are our lungs and our cooling system. What is wrong with us? Is it really so important to pay for machinery to destroy our life support to pay for machinerty to... well, we all know what a vicious cycle is.

I'm going to hand this on to the next people who might do something about it. The Sunsets West co-op in Clallam Bay is where to go to start the networking for people who just tired of an old, broken, poorly-planned system, that has every possibility of simply bringing on the great human die-off faster. 

Good luck folks. You'd better run in the long run, because the future of human life - and any other life - on this planet depends on it. We're all in this together, whether we like it or not. It's work and do, or die. This time, it's your life.

And read ANYTHING by Jane Goodall. I think she's the only sane person left. 

Now here are the articles and links:

Alders aren't Native?

Pillar Point Rape 

More Clearcut Dancing

Come Help Us Save This Place

Logger Covers His Face 

There Are Trees In Your Salad Dressing

Well, At Least We're Talking

Logger Covers His Face

Behind county facility, in watershed

I'm not making any judgement comments, but here's today's report:

In the Quarter Store today, a worker was poking fun at her sister-in-law as an activist.

Another woman said, "I saw 18 logging trucks on the road today."

This is basically a photo essay. The cutting is going on right behind a town that is trying to revive a tourism/media/entertainment industry. The cutting probably has not taken wild-life repercussions into consideration, near a town.

The driver said, "I wanna know why you're taking my picture!"

I answered, 'Don't have to." This is an unpaid photo essay, by an American citizen.

The company is cutting on either cheaply-purchased land, or forestry land. The driver said this company was Rayonier. Rayonier has worked to recover other riverside by the Clallam River. But - Rayonier's Real Estate offices are in Florida.

Does that look like selective logging?

Merrill and Ring has already accidently exposed their intentions toward the scenic route. An expensive sign campaign for "working forests" MIGHT be a real-estate scam, but I have no further information; it just looks like monkey business. Merrill and Ring cut down all the timber on the highway in Pillar Point, a State Park.

The whole operation has a real "Get it Before It's Too Late, as fast as possible" feel to it. It's cutting directly into tourism-viewing areas, seeming to concentrate on it.

Cutting toward the stream and swamp

Local children feel hopeless up here about their future, but are launching anti-bullying campaigns, especially in view of the recent suicide of a child who - according to local stories (not verified, but repeated) felt his future was blocked. 

The generation that supports clearcut logging isn't helping the future generation, nor do they seem to care. The do collect large scholarships for the kids - but it's almost as though they're massaging their consciences. High school graduation classes are down to a handful of kids, while the parking lot of a local apartment complex is the center of kids waiting for their drug dealer - and drug use is about repressing pain.

If they have a future, a real one, that isn't just selling off the place and moving to condos in Arizona, as a developer would offer, the kids will have to do that themselves, with help from the better among our generation.

Selective logging based on a 500-year cycle - and it has to be 500 years, because forests aren't corn fields - must be the future. They're down to producing chipboard, and if you've ever had to deal with wood, you'll know how bad it is, now.

These trucks are very expensive, take a lot of tree money

As the English said, after WWII, trying to rebuild with their forests gone: "You can't get the wood, you know.

Why would the driver be reluctant to show his face?

Transition Port Angeles is trying to rescue the local communities and make life better and more sustainable - but ARE they addressing the resource crash? And it is crashing, or will, if these practices continue as they are. 

It's not 1895, folks. It's not even 1954. It's 2013 - and don't let it become just another place that ate its resources and turned into more concrete or empty grasslands. 

Scotland had a forest. The Middle East and Greece were forested. Easter Island were forested. But not any more. We can destroy forests, and they don't come back, or if they do, they're ghosts of themselves, and their wildlife is gone.

And I'm from Everett/Mukilteo. Let's just say that what happened up there gave me a case of PTSD that makes me unable to ignore a place where I see the same practices - where I once saw the large park tree a couple of truckers stole to try to get on the tv show "Axmen." This place has eagle habitat - including nests along the cliffs, rivers and roads. The eagle may not be an endangered species any more, but taking away their habitat would be a good way to jump-start the status. Silver lining? Or 30 pieces of silver?

We can live in a forest - or we can live on Easter Island.

Letter I just wrote to Rayonier Hunting:

"Hi! I'm contacting you because the Rayonier Timber doesn't have an email contact, only phone, and this might be a message more along your line.

Rayonier Timber is clearcutting right into a stream area, right behind a town, with eagle habitat along the river. In the past, clearcutting near towns has driven out the resident cougar, with subsequent human/animal interactions that proved lethal to the animal.

The town is Clallam Bay. A photo the area can be seen at http://www.sekiu.com/

The point you see on the left of the picture, on the cliffs has at least two live eagle nests, and is a nesting area for other base population predators, especially along the Clallam River and another wetland stream, where eagles regularly fish and share the area with other fishing birds and animals, including otters, both river and sea.

With timber sales to Japan up in the area, just checking to make sure Rayonier knows about the habitat, and the repercussions involved in cutting that close to a town. Use lines get fudged when there's cash to be collected; a major park tree was stolen up here by unaffiliated loggers to try to get on the tv show "Axmen."

And I do fish, and enjoy a bit of venison now and again - but no hunting or fishing can survive habitat collapse, especially along a wildlife stream. This is also an Audubon area, which holds out a future for local kids in tourism, which benefits from the same forest conditions as hunting. We've recently had a suicide of a promising young man, and other kids are using drugs to repress pain. They need help for a real future.

I write as growing up in the tree-pulp industry in Everett/Mukilteo - that didn't pay any attention to its resources.

Donna Barr
CC to Transition Port Angeles"

More Clearcut Dancing

Follow-up to the Pillar Point cut, which seems to have been part of a "salmon-stream clearing" project.

On the way up the west coast of Washington State, so many - MANY - well-printed signs about the "Olympic Land Grab."

First of all, it's another expensive print run. Which organization or corporation is paying for the printing and distribution? Who's got the money?

Secondly, logging interests talking about a "land grab" are practicing historical projection (Look in the mirror, folks).

On the Hoh river salmon-stream clearing project, a crane was vandalized, evidently by "environmentalists," as a local paper has it. The red spray paint referenced clearcuts.

The Pillar point cut goes quite a ways into the woods and along the highway. A chance for somebody to pick up some trees under cover of a state project? The same on the Hoh river?

Did the highway 112 cuttings finally set off a reaction? Again, asking and wondering. These things seem to be linked. Maybe folks are tired of the lungs of the planet being slashed down to make chipboard and to wipe our butts with.

Oh, and down by Chehalis, ran into some fellow born-in-Everetts, but they bragged about living in that forest-failed armpit for 50 years (never getting out?) and put down "kids today" who "don't want real wood," but replace sawdust board cabinets every five years.

And where, pray tell, are said kids supposed to get "real wood?" Hire Dr. Who to run back in the Tardis a half century or so and bring some back? Please. Do get out and THINK once in a while.

All Those Nasty Trees Gone

Pillar Point on Highway 112 used to be shaded by big, nasty, old trees.  As you can see, the local lumber company has opened up the other side of the road, so you don't have to look at all those horrible big-leaf maples, Douglas Fir and hemlock any more.  

This is on the Scenic By-Way.  Merrill and Ring logging knows that "scenic" means teaching the iggernant citifolks what a Workin' Forres' looks like.  Tourism ain't got no money for the local economy, of course. The sooner all these in-the-way trees and fish are gone, the sooner the owners can sell to a developer and turn the place into someplace the citifolks can live.