I don't think I have any quarrel with Wolfgang about taking care to preserve monuments, or with the idiocy of people with so-called "spiritual" agendas helping to destroy what they worship. Most Christians would not pick away at St. Peter's or Canterbury Cathedral so they could be reminded of their own holiness! (Though they make up for it in the less destructive but still unsightly marketing and buying of crosses and statuettes - and over time, wear away the stones.) Perhaps it is the way that ancient monuments are more in tune "with nature" that makes these types think they can cart bits away as if they were merely stray rocks. (Their own trappings seem to me to verge on the ridiculous... and not at all in tune with nature, which requests that we not call attention to ourselves.) However, a slight nit-pick with the often-cited agenda of preserving things for "our grandchildren." As a childless person with many childless friends (who has nonetheless loved other friends' children), I'd rather be concerned about doing something because it is right, because it preserves beauty or helps the environment, or because even in THIS generation, I would like to enjoy clean water, clean air, an ecology in balance, and (for that matter) my taxes being spent on healthcare and education rather than armaments and paranoid government programs. Why are children more worthy of decent health-care than the aged or middle-aged, so that we set up minimal care programs that end at age 18? Yes, they need a good start, but don't we also need a good middle... and a good end? Is the experience and vulnerability of the old less important than the innocence and vulnerability of the young? When our now-governor Schwarzenegger began chanting "for the children" to get elected, I! cringed. And now that he has been elected (and I don't envy him his impossible task), he has spearheaded cut-backs that affect both "the children" and the rest of us. Whether for ourselves or our descendants, the need for preserving both natural and man-made beauty remains. (I almost quoted Tolkien here, that virtue is not one thing for Men and another for Elves!) However, there will be no monuments for "our" grandchildren to inherit (and no grandchildren to inherit it) if the ecological crisis overwhelms us. If only the cost of pollution were factored into prices, how much our consumer habits might alter (and we might welcome windmills, as our ancestors welcomed smokestacks that made goods cheaper!). In any case, better that "my" view be altered by windmills (until less obtrusive technology comes along) than maintain a clear view of darkening skies and polluted bays Peggy Stone

Amen, Peggy! Charlie in Washington state ----- Original Message ----- From: "Peggy Stone" <PeggyStone263@msn.com> To: <ORCADIA-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2004 11:37 AM Subject: [<orcadia>] For our grandchildren > I don't think I have any quarrel with Wolfgang about taking care to preserve monuments, or with the idiocy of people with so-called "spiritual" agendas helping to destroy what they worship. Most Christians would not pick away at St. Peter's or Canterbury Cathedral so they could be reminded of their own holiness! (Though they make up for it in the less destructive but still unsightly marketing and buying of crosses and statuettes - and over time, wear away the stones.) Perhaps it is the way that ancient monuments are more in tune "with nature" that makes these types think they can cart bits away as if they were merely stray rocks. (Their own trappings seem to me to verge on the ridiculous... and not at all in tune with nature, which requests that we not call attention to ourselves.) > > However, a slight nit-pick with the often-cited agenda of preserving things for "our grandchildren." As a childless person with many childless friends (who has nonetheless loved other friends' children), I'd rather be concerned about doing something because it is right, because it preserves beauty or helps the environment, or because even in THIS generation, I would like to enjoy clean water, clean air, an ecology in balance, and (for that matter) my taxes being spent on healthcare and education rather than armaments and paranoid government programs. Why are children more worthy of decent health-care than the aged or middle-aged, so that we set up minimal care programs that end at age 18? Yes, they need a good start, but don't we also need a good middle... and a good end? Is the experience and vulnerability of the old less important than the innocence and vulnerability of the young? When our now-governor Schwarzenegger began chanting "for the children" to get elected, I! > cringed. And now that he has been elected (and I don't envy him his impossible task), he has spearheaded cut-backs that affect both "the children" and the rest of us. > > Whether for ourselves or our descendants, the need for preserving both natural and man-made beauty remains. (I almost quoted Tolkien here, that virtue is not one thing for Men and another for Elves!) However, there will be no monuments for "our" grandchildren to inherit (and no grandchildren to inherit it) if the ecological crisis overwhelms us. > > If only the cost of pollution were factored into prices, how much our consumer habits might alter (and we might welcome windmills, as our ancestors welcomed smokestacks that made goods cheaper!). In any case, better that "my" view be altered by windmills (until less obtrusive technology comes along) than maintain a clear view of darkening skies and polluted bays > > Peggy Stone > > > ==== ORCADIA Mailing List ==== > To unsubscribe from the Orcadia mailing list, send an e-mail with the word > 'unsubscribe' in the message body to orcadia-l-request@rootsweb.com > >

Peggy. Your thoughts are beautiful. Wish more people thought as you do. I particularly enjoyed your note on Arnie Swarzenegger. I'd like him more if he would trade in his 13 Hummers, averaging 10 miles per gallon, for something representative of a future in the California environment. Perhaps a volkswagon, or a horse, or as California and the central west run out of all water, a camel may be a futuristic trendy choice. I can tell by his films he is a naturalist and a pacifist at heart. As I typed this I noticed the War and EGG in sWARzenEGGer. Seems like an internal conflict going on there, war and eggs, death and birth. Could be a theme for his first post-governorship movie. He was at least elected, as opposed to Mr. Bush who may not have been. But hey, up here in Canada, were just nicely getting into our first Civil War, French Against English you know. We move a little slower in the cold, I guess. Anyhow... Well, you know, it seems a perfectly viable thought that protecting and preserving the stony symbols of Orkney's past need not be an insurmountable task. When visitors "misbehave", rules are normally put in place, and there evolves a sort of protectionist embalming such as exists in most museums where artifacts are displayed, or in the case of architecture of the historic ilk, sensible restrictions are applied when behaviour patterns demand it, or when preservation is called into question. So we rope off George Washington's study from the tour groups, and put his pipe in the china cabinet, locked. I have faith that Orcadians, great stewards they be, will look after the rocks, cairns and structures. However, there seems to be a vulnerability in remote areas with respect to modern day threats which have wreaked havoc in more populous areas, which threats don't seem to matter in isolated areas. We see this all the time in Canada's far north as in Russia, tucked away out of the eyes of all including the media, in roadless lands where few people live or visit. Out of sight, out of mind, perhaps. Trends establish in this global village, where more "stuff" is better. More stuff, more trash , more money, more stores, more cars, more gas, more pollution, more corporate rape, more exploitation, more heiferdust from presidents committed to patronage, blah blah blah. More jobs, more income, more taxes to pay more welfare. What a trip! Peggy, could it be that the appeal of Orkney, after all our historic ego-fluffing family connections, is that sense of disconnection from some of the ills of the world which you so eloquently wrote of? I'm convinced that the structures identified, are valued and their preservation is an Orcadian priority. However, when I see photos of the Orkney dump, without being too unduly critical and in my ignorance, I do wonder. Is there an impermeable base? Is it contained to the site? Is there a plume and monitoring for one? Is it as sleepy and sleezy as most north american landfill sites in remote areas? It sure as hell is front and center. Maybe it is "perfect" and all my fears are unfounded. I wonder if you can smell it from our old farm, just down the road? The location of that dump for me is a heartstabber! And the idea of sucking oil out of the Orkney ocean never really appealed to me. It turns a pristine nature into the downside loss payout of bad luck in a dangerous game of poker, where the only winners are huge faceless international corporations, students of Marshall Mac and franchise merchants in the global village monopolizing and dominating wherever they can. If sharing was a Marshall Mac concept, the modern day recruits missed that item......avoid it entirely. Corporations aren't "sharing" in south and central america and africa, they are stealing. I see from your interesting thoughts that you are a post war boomer. Me too. And as my years flip by, I get the sad feeling that we in North America are miserable repeating failures insofar as our stewardship role is concerned in keeping healthy the lands we stole from the first nations people. We are trained to think optimistically, but the reality is that in a very very short period of time we have irreversibly spoiled one of the greatest and most naturally productive land masses on planet earth. Now we're working on ruining the world's air. That war in Iraq was a nice contribution, aside from the issue of it's validity an American cause. The challenge to educate our youth of all our blazing failures is not a high priority for educators, so as we did, current youth will have to grow up and evaluate what they see and smell and hear and eat and touch and feel, through their own processes. That can take a lifetime. Who said, "We get too soon old and too late smart?" I get the warm feeling that long after my ashes are interred in some lonely place, fertilizing an acid-hungry blueberry bush or a cedar seedling, things won't be much different in Orkney, unless one of those oil rigs lets go. The dump will grow, as will the population, but the hard life that bad weather dishes out will keep the immigration and emigration at a maxamum, and two hundred years from now, one of Sig's offspring will be a university student, giving summer tours of the rocks and caves we are worrying about, and contemplating a deserved future contributing proudly in a world we can only dream of. Meanwhile, I'll be probing the dump there, and unless the glass milk bottle is returned to glory and "plastic around everything" marketing is curtailed, it will swallow up more acres, replacing dark peaty soil with all the trash that comes from being trained consumers. Hopefully these things we speak of can turn in a positive direction soon. Time nor tide stands still for no man. Hope the weather is better out west. -30 here for too long!.......Stephen P.S. An old friend of mine ( he's creeping towards eighty) bought a condo in Los Cabos on the Mexican Baja, in the early mid eighties. He bought a local 1960's VW Microbus painted in a pastoral desertscape, complete with cactus, sand, a rattler and a Tequila sunrise. It was of California origin, hippy dynasty. In this small pioneerish project, a little guy approcaed Betty, my friend's wife, and asked if she and Jack her hubby, would like to come to their barbecue party at the condo pool. Betty thought the gut was a jerk, and as well his partner. Turned out these denied hosts were Danny diVitto and Arnie! Arnie loved the V.W. It had Texas Longhorns hung above the windshield, and a horn that played Dixie. n Saturday, January 17, 2004, at 11:37 AM, Peggy Stone wrote: >