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Fool on the Hill

(July 9, 2009)  Editor:

This just in — “Rebranding Humboldt” (June 25)? Yes, it’s a whiff of Ferndale dairyaire. So 19th century, to try once again to overpower the more relaxing odors of the Mateel (“South to whose north?” the poet namer wrote).

Get with the program, dudes. I for one am burnt out on hearing that timber is the number one economic engine of Humboldt, followed by tourism, fishing, dairy, etc. Why are you all still lying after all these years!? Marijuana has long and far been the main economic engine of this county — where do you dudes live? Are we wasting money on the Office of Economic Development, or do you also believe in Bigfoot? Come from Roswell, do you? Look, you are trashing all that Headwaters Fund money!

Why can’t we step outside the fantasy life that has dominated this county’s demise? Do you really think this can become Hollywood North? Or that some international company is going to send its ships to Eureka so a decrepit railroad can carry them to the Bay Area where the ships could have easily gone in the first place? That such senseless ideas seem to have some currency demonstrates there is a glut of fools here, both Democrats and Republicans, and they freely get their views into newspapers.

So let’s take a serious glimpse at that elephant in the room. It’s the big fat one. This is the industry that put Humboldt County on the map of human consciousness, more than a hundred of your Offices of Economic Development ever could have done. It started for great reasons: Humboldt naturally grows great outdoor weed. Legal or illegal, it always will. But will it fade away, since MJ is grown from Alaska to Puerto Rico? No. We have the industry and the priceless reputation. And like the famous race horses of Bluegrass Country, which theoretically could be raised anywhere, we have developed the essential local infrastructure necessary to a thriving industry. We have the legions of trimmers, the potting soil depots, the sales opportunities. This is Humboldt’s future! Get with the program, dudes!

So a far-seeing county government would act to protect against mislabeling of other-grown product as “Humboldt Homegrown,” just as the regions of France protect their wines and cheeses. A far-seeing county would police on behalf of a healthy industry, by heavily punishing those who dump their crankcase oil or carry guns. A far-seeing county would not ignore its main economic driver, but would find suitable ways to obtain tax dollars from it and would sit down and find out what the industry needs and what its problems are. We’d work together.

Hey, it smells a lot better than your pulp mills and other bullbleep. Try it, what have you got to lose? And gain? Clearly it’s not the so-called “dumb hippies” that can’t handle the numbers. Or the truth.

Robert “The man who walks in the woods” Sutherland, Ettersburg

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