Hello Journal, hello any readers who still might meander by this abandoned mine of a journal. I sent a link to this post of mine on The Blue Voice, and she loved it so much I thought I'd put it here in the hopes others might see it. I've been posting heavily over there on the issue of the Refuge and the budget bills in both House and Senate. The House's dropping drilling in the Refuge was a big step, but the battle is far from over. It's still in the Senate bill, and once the House gets a bill together in some form, there will have to be a reconciliation between the two. Keep up the pressure on your members of Congress, let's defeat this proposal entirely. And I thank you.
Post from The Blue Voice
Beauty is Not Optional
“The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with clasped hands that we might act with restraint, leaving room for the life that is destined to come.”
Terry Tempest Williams
This is a photo from a spectacular photgraphic collection on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by Subhankar Banerjee. Please look at these photos; send them to your friends. Send them to your members of Congress. They are sublimely beautiful glimpses of the place that Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska (an oil drilling enthusiast) calls empty and barren. Mountains, tundra, caribou herds, snow geese, lakes, autumn color, delicate spring flowers in the snow, native people and their age-old ways of life.
This beauty speaks for itself. Banerjee has brought things I will most likely never see close enough to deeply touch my soul. We cannot let this place be ruined. No amount of oil is worth this. The areas of oil extraction on the North Slope have had some 500 oil spills since that area was opened. Let's leave this one untouched.
Start here, World Without Borders, to read about Banerjee, then click on the photograph to go to the ANWR page. Many resources to access there, or if you are in a hurry, you can go directly to the photos here, Arctic Refuge Series.
"The Arctic Refuge belongs not to the multinational corporations and their minions in public office but in public trust for our inheritors; indeed, for all mankind around the world." --Peter Matthiessen, from "In the Great Country," in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land
