Alison, I don't think anything is wrong with your posts. You do what you gotta do and if you have any doubts, let it burn. BURN!!! It's always fun.

Oh yeah, and as Alison pointed out to me, my email said Pam and I are having a party the 28 of May, when it is in fact the 28 of April. I'm sure you all figured that out anyway but it's a good excuse for me to mention the party here too, for the benefit of those people whose email addresses I do not have. So if you didn't get the email:

Party April 28, meeting at my house 7:30, drinking continued on Whyte Ave later. (so call me if you're gonna be late, so I can tell you were we are). There will be cake!

I'm going to respond too, Alison, because you asked us to.

Firstly I wouldn't say you are the token environmentalist here. Certainly you are the only one crazy enough to try and do this as a living, but I think most of us here try to do things that may minimize our impact on the environment in ways that are big and small. I do think you are the only angelicizing (sp?) environmentalist here, but that's a different thing.

Where I think you, and many other environmentalists do themselves and their cause a disserve (though improving tone would help a lot too) is that they fail to consider the neogiation that people need to undergo to minimize their impact. Everything that humans do has a negative impact somewhere. Eating, shitting, even breathing. And there is a huge gap between us now and us being sustainable. Huge enough that I would say it is uncloseable within our lifetimes. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try. But we all need to do things that make us enjoy life, and if Jeremy's is mountain biking, then I think we need to respect that. Mine's horseback riding despite the fact that it's a money (and therefore resource) pit, I waste a ton of gas driving back and forth all the time, and barns aren't exactly careful where they dump their wastes. And horses piss a lot. There are burnt out fields all over Gorsline (some in places where birds nest). I do think it's really important to educate people about their impact their preferred activies have, it is also really important for activists to remember that what people do with that information is completely outside your control. People won't change unless they want to, and that too is outside your control.

A good example of this is the girls I ride with. They have some ideas that are pretty different from mine. They all vote Conservative, none of them bother recycling, they drive big goddamn cars everywhere, think women should stay at home, hate gay people, and don't think people should get divorced, ever. (they don't all think all of these things (they did all vote Conservative though)). And there's nothing I can do about that. If it comes up in conversation, then I'll share what I think and why, but only ever once. What they choose to do with that is totally up to them and I try to not judge them for choosing to ignore it (and I make really sure they never know I am judging them, when I can't help it.) Anything else I try to do to change their minds (I think) is rude and, ultimately, counter-productive. I do more good by making them all leave their empty pop and water bottles in the corner and taking them in myself.

Having said all that, Alison, I do really respect a lot of the things you do and try to do. You've made me more aware of environmentalist-y things that I probably would never have heard of otherwise and I appreciate that. But I do think sometimes, and your response to Jeremy was one of those times, you do need to distance yourself from the choices that other people make.

I would love to welcome Spring - because we've been having this wonderful weather
However i fear, that sometime before the end of may, we will have a dump of snow.
But as for now, i must welcome this beautiful weather.

AS for this weekend goes:

Friday night - doesn't seen to fit a lot of people schedules, so the 7pm soccer is off. However, if you want to come over and relax around 8:30pm or anytime there after, feel free. And if we have a bunch of people, maybe we can go play some midnight basevall or soccer or frisbee.

SATURDAY- Soccer, 4pm. I think that is the plan so far. As for location, I was thinking Quad because then people could study, and then realized it will probably only be Jere and I studying there. So i have decided on Hawerlak(sorry, i know i can't spell). By the big Parking lot, where we usually meet to play.

Everyone OK with that?

Did I say "light-hearted"? Because I meant "annoying as fuck."

Ok, first off, I fixed those two posts. You may now, as the kids say, "knock yourself out." (Although for future reference, as eric found out earlier, I respond much better to 'honeybunch' and 'shnookums' than I do to 'sucking' and 'like hell'. Just a suggestion.)

Secondly, I'd like to point out that, while we all have opinions, ideas, and beliefs that we hold dear, attacking people is not the best way to go about convincing people of your belief. And, to be fair, alison, while a lot of misinterpretation has been flying around here lately, it's tough to misinterpret what you wrote there as anything but an attack on Jere. You may not have meant spirited, or even to attack Jere per se, but it sure reads that way. (Not to generalize, but this does seem to be one of the roadblocks environmentalists run into when discussing these kinds of issues. Skipping to a vitriolic tirade about how wrong people are is unlikely to convince them that you're right; it's more likely to drive them in the other direction.)

The flip side, of course, is that we do dump on alison on occasion. (The most recent example I recall involves feet, and eric, coincidentally.) Maybe it's because we see her more often here and less often in person, or because she's actually voicing (sometimes unpopular) opinions here (rather than, say, trying to just take both sides of an issue, and crack wise at the same time), but it does happen. I know I have taken part in ganging up on her and others in a similar way, and for all those cases, I'd like to apologize. I do feel I owe an apology in this vein to Pam, not only for what happened last Friday, but for my grumbling thereafter.

Now, because I have trouble leaving stuff on such a serious note, because I love repeating previous posts, and because this is the first thing that came to mind when I was thinking light-hearted, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring...

paras, login is sucking for me. how often do I have to log in? every post? every re-submittance? I logged in for those last two, but like hell can I access them...

okay, so I know I'm alienating everyone. I hope in time that you'll forgive me for my idealism and jerky comments. I also hope in time that I'll cool down and stop being such a jerk here, and also stop flying off the handle so much.

but at the present time, I think I've said some things that, while they are not popular, need to be said - especially with regard to my preceding statement. and maybe I am just that crazy hippie environmentalist, and maybe I deserve to lose friendships over what I feel are core statements. but I'd also like to think that I can say some stuff like that - to point out where we all need to improve (me too) and not get rained on, because we're all okay with eachother enough to be able to do this. Or am I stepping beyond the confines of our friendships into those icy waters reserved for comments about religious or political ideaology?

Let me know. because, if that's the case, maybe I should just disappear for a while and figure out how I am to behave around all of you in order to preserve these friendships that I do value - incredibly. relationships are two-way streets (at the very least) and if I'm failing terribly on my side, let me know.

** please read the caveat at the bottom. I wrote the following with a particular tone (or collection of tones) in mind, and it won't come out via just text. but you all probably should know this stuff, so I'm not going to just say it to Jeremy. I know I'm the token environmentalist amongst us - or at least it seems like I am some days - and I try not to preach, I try not to drag any holier-than-thou attitude into my conversations, because I'm not. I'm just as bad, if not worse, as anyone else. But sometimes things have to be said. So feel free to read this, or not, but please read the other double-starred statement at the bottom too.



Thanks Jere for taking me down a few notches, though I still stand by what I said. When ski hills were put in, they did environmental impact assessments (eia) for the effect all the infrastructure and the winter use would have on the area. They didn't do any eias for summer use, because they didn't anticipate summer use - who would've thought it was going to be a popular thing to do back in the 70's? So, now they're using ski slopes in the summer, and there is impact; impact we haven't categorized, expected or planned for. There's a whole lot of difference between skiing over powder over a marmot burrow and cycling straight over the burrow, and that hasn't been looked at. Often ski slopes are in prime montane habitat, and montane habitat isn't the most resilient stuff when it comes to disturbances. And often the justification for why ski slopes are okay to build in sensitive areas (e.g. the recent Marmot expansion, and all of Kicking Horse) is that they won't be used in the summer... and it turns out that they were wrong, they are being used year-round.

I mean, hell. Do what you want. Have a blast on the single track, tear up the river valley, enjoy nature, but don't go out on the ski slopes for cycling if you don't have to. There are a lot of already used (and not paved, and not destroyed). Areas that are great for mountain biking, replete with jumps, drops, hills and all else. Maybe it's just me, but I'd like to think that people are interested in keeping at least some areas in fairly decent condition for the sake of preserving habitat and wildlife. Plus, bears move upslope in the summer - it's cooler and there are fewer people up top - and when you bike on the ski slopes, you're up there with them - at greater risk of encounters, and you're destroying their food - which may cause them to move lower down and closer to where everyone else is hanging out. sort-of a twofold risk.

It's like the coyotes in Calgary. Why are coyotes attacking children so much right now? Because their habitat has been destroyed and the kids are feeding them. the kids are feeding them. where do you get off shooting coyotes when you're the whole reason they're out and attacking humans in the first place? - the parallel comes in the whole bear thing. They're up high in the summer, where humans typically aren't. but when humans move in, disturbing them, destroying their food and creating a ruckus, bears move elsewhere, and often that's into areas lower down (because what else do you do on a mountain when the top's not suitable?) where all the humans have settled or are spending their recreation time hiking, biking, golfing and whitewater rafting etc. (not that I'm at all for golf courses in the mountains etc.) [plus, grizzlies are only in the mountains because we pushed them off the plains. they're not mountain bears. they're supposed to be living on the prairies, hence the gigantic claws for swatting at ant nests and digging down for goodies. - black bears are forest bears, grizzly bears are plains bears] We've already done so much, shouldn't we leave them something?

Sure, it's hypocritical for me to jump on you, Jeremy, because you choose to do this one thing while the rest of your lifestyle is awesome - you're fit, healthy, you cycle everywhere and you're an incredibly positive individual - but you're not the only one who does this stuff. And at the rate that all the rest of everyone is destroying all the rest of the habitat around, pretty soon all we'll have left as refugia for wildlife are the upper slopes of mountains, and I just think it would be wise to leave something the hell enough alone.

but maybe that's because it's not something that directly affects me, and maybe I should just shut up for that reason, just like every other place out there that doesn't directly affect me, from tuna fishing to collecting mahogany to capturing rare birds for pets, and I should just let everyone keep doing what they're doing and let them deal with the consequences, because I probably won't be alive when it all comes crashing down upon us. So, perhaps in the future I'll stick to things I do and I will be directly affected by like dealing with excess paper use, driving cars, using plastic bags and containers, electronic devices, battery recycling, synthetic and non-organic fabrics, eating meat, suburban sprawl, buying non-locally produced food and a whole host of other things. I just thought it made some sense to keep people out of the areas that aren't already totally destroyed. but hell, we're in Alberta, there isn't anything left that hasn't already been touched, so why bother?




** okay, so yes, it's mean; yes it's cynical and incredibly bitter at times; yes, it's really shitty to do this to your friends; but it's wholly true: we're destroying pretty much everything. And I'm just as complicit as anyone else. but you've got to start somewhere, and you've got to do something. What better way do I have than to tell you point blank that biking on ski hills is bad news? I hold people who litter in very low esteem as well, it's not just one thing. but often I give people who enjoy the outdoors the credit of having at least some understanding of how important the natural environment is, and that their actions may be harming it - maybe I'm giving some people too much credit (and I don't mean you, Jere). I don't want you to give up everything that you love about life and being in the outdoors, I just think we all have to be mindful of the impacts we are having. It's like the idea of Leave-No-Trace camping: picking up everything you brought in with you, and packing it all out; you can still go camping, but it's responsible camping. And I think we need to apply that sense of responsibility to every other area of our lives, especially those that intersect with the natural environment. but maybe that's just me.

I've got bigger problems than being in the same room as pussy and getting caught with my pants down.