Second post (3) above should read (3 - continued).
And, then, the point about how a straightened road can also let competition's products in, as well as products out - that's a pretty good point, isn’t it? So, to complete these thoughts, isn’t "sustainable" considered the wave of the future? In the previous millions of years, it's proved out to be a pretty good choice. And on a related subject. When paid writing is called "journalism" and defended as speaking for itself, those who are critical of its quality should not be vilified simply for pointing out where it's lacking. Answer their points with more thorough or correct information, if needed, but when you stray off into opinion or "defense", well, you protest too much. And I have to wonder, why should people be mocked who, to be heard, have to make time to write for free in the middle of the night, for not having time during their day jobs at other trades, often multiple, to sit at a computer and write? Let alone not have acknowledged that they don't get paid for their own valuable hours of research or sharing of real life experiences. No one should be mocked for not being up to educated standards of classic writing ability; for their sharing of real life, and their sometimes very wise observations and questions in their own vernacular. Do you also denigrate people who speak English with an accent? It's a living language, and some of the richest writing comes from those who can barely spell. NCJ not only has ink by the barrel, but by the kilobyte. Thank you for getting news out there that people need to know. Shame on you for being sarcastic and condescending about someone doing their best to tell the truth with the resources they have.
An economy with diversified small and locally sustainable businesses can absorb losses of some small businesses employing a few at living wages. But an area's economy can't absorb the blow of a big loss to the tax base when a big business moves, or takes a big hit, and the big loss of jobs for low-paid workers living paycheck to paycheck with no retirement or savings, and also can’t afford the inevitable call for aid from the county when larger scale job loss, compounded by lost tax revenues, occurs. Accept that where you live will never be a wealth machine, at least not in dollars. Admit it, nobody owes you a living, and if you can't get financially rich here like you pictured, or can't fancy yourself a hero by building a growing pyramid of of jobs with your name on them, have some humility and accept that. Don't act like you should be able to alter the landscape repeatedly, always taking "just a little bit" more, for the sake of jobs. As long as there are “more” jobs, the population will keep growing, so more things will have to be cut down and cut up - to provide "jobs". It's an endless downward spiral, and only juvenile rationalizations support the idea that there are simple one time solutions here to keeping more people employed and really fix it forever or even for the foreseeable future. Jobs and growth are going to be some kind of problem no matter which way you look at it - and how much long term physical damage can you do to “solve” that? Why keep doing all this damage? There’s a lot more of value than dollar bills here. Ask native people who keep on seeing things dug up, cut off, and dammed, and have seen these schemes boom and bust, leaving ever bigger scars behind, and ask other people who've been here a while, even 2 or 3 generations, who may live hand to mouth in the woods, the hills, the coast, and on the farmland here, but can see the value of what’s all around us. Admit to the sophisticated notion that jobs have to do with the real carrying capacity of the land. Insisting on going the direction of continually throwing that out of whack will destroy it all in the long run. So, "Environmentalist", "conservative", whatever. Call yourself whatever you want, it's really what you do that's who you are. Want to build a business empire? Move yourself to a busy port or the center of some existing cloverleaf on a superhighway, rent yourself a big industrial building, and put in conveyor belts. Don't set yourself down in the middle of a one of a kind place that's going to be hard to get to at 70 mph, and start cutting "low impact" holes in it, after starting your ‘one of a kind’ business, to make your life a little bit easier, get your “product out there”, “employ more people”, and all those other justifying buzz phrases. Christ - look at what you've got. It can be fragile - don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs because you can't see what the gold really is.
After reading these articles and comments that followed them, I'm wondering - Instead of continually trying to create larger and larger businesses whose collapse or decisions to move to another area can endanger the economy of a whole community (look at large mills and logging operations in the 70's, or further north, Boeing and Microsoft and the way the entire Puget Sound region is hostage to those businesses' rises, falls, and threats to move - or east to the same in Great Lakes and other industrial cities...), instead, why not be smart and channel these chunks of change towards support for small, local, diversified businesses who've made the decision not to keep expanding and expanding to survive. Not so easy? Well, then work at it. Small, locally based businesses who capitalized on what this area already has helped bring the Arcata-Eureka area back from economic collapse in the late 60's and 70's. Make the decision to keep expanding and expanding, and you have to bring in materials from out of the area, such as milk for goat cheese - and reduce your bottom line to remain competitive - find cheaper workers, find bigger trucks. Businesses who go that route will look to the taxpayer to fund things like road expansion for less expensive materials from out-of-the-area businesses, and to pay for social services to pick up the slack for increasing numbers of minimum wage (and below) workers, in addition to less obvious supports. And, many of those ever expanding businesses will likely also have to spend lots with more experienced out-of-the-area PR firms to hang on to the special marketing cachet of small and local, when they're really not anymore. And the markets for many of these expanding businesses' products can be fickle and unpredictable. Despite attempts at forecasting, nothing’s for sure, and the bottom can fall out tomorrow. One current example: Growing's become a big and expanding business, successful, ironically, because of the remoteness of the area, and the bottom can fall out of that when it's legalized, regulated, taxed, and then co-opted by out of the area corporations, possibly in very short order. (But, if that happens, at least crime will go down.) "Jobs" is how paycheck to paycheck indebted working people often must make their decisions. But the unkindest cut is from those who would pretend to have those people's interests at heart while they destroy the landscapes around them forever, for creation of "jobs" that often barely pay a living wage and often pull the rug out by disappearing when working people can least afford it. Those large scale “jobs” that do at least pay minimum wage are often not sustainable in fluctuating state and national markets, and are often subject to rapid and permanent decreases. (Although, to be fair, there are one or two growth industries that seem to keep people employed in the service sector. Just ask Crescent City, and Camp Pendleton.)
Thank you Priscilla, for the information on significant spiritual history and basic biology that was characterized as flabby cliches and factual errors. The more someone does that sort of thing, the more shabby their credibility becomes.
I heard this story when i was very young, from a neighbor born in Eureka in the 1870's. She had picked up beads and baskets from the ground on Indian Island. She had walked about there as a young girl, and said they were "all just lying there, on the ground" many years after what had happened. She looked down and shook her head quietly when she said this, and said the killings were supposed to be because of raids in the hills by Indians, but like your story says, that they weren't even the same tribe, and that the men from the island were mostly gone in a hunting party, and all the women and children were brutally killed. She told me the story, but people didn't talk about it here then. "...a great bleakness of spirit settled over the land." That was the feeling. There was a mournfulness here, on First and Second street, along the bay, in the abandoned Victorians and patches of woods. Thanks for this, Mr. Rohde. Good job, you guys, it's great how you keep telling the stories of all the people, not just from then, but about Native people now. It's just if you don't understand the Native people a little, and the ranchers, the dairymen, the millworkers and loggers, the fishermen, and also the labor movement, you might not really know Humboldt County as well as you could.
Re: “Redemption Value”
AmeriCorps was founded in 1994 when President Bill Clinton signed the National and Community Service and Trust act into law. The program built upon the VISTA program, which had been in place since 1965, according to the AmeriCorps Web site. http://www.americorps.gov/about/programs/vista.asp