The Appalachian Trail got a big publicity hit when South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford claimed to be hiking the 2175-mile “People’s Path.” Ironically, he went missing on Naked Hiking Day, a tradition occurring on the summer solstice (though not mentioned on any of my calendars). While he probably was walking around naked, it wasn’t on the Appalachian Trail, which only reaches Argentina through a stretch of the Luv Guv’s imagination. Favorable Fallout: scandals like this are publicity you can’t pay for. Next year on Naked Hiking Day, expect twice as many naked butts joggling down the trails.
Hiking
Appalachian Trail, Mark Sanford, Naked Hiking Day, Summer Solstice
The soul of the earth lay not in the land, but in the heave and fetch of a pristine ocean. Our oceans should be revered, and above all, inviolate. The week’s worst affronts:
• In Panama City, Florida, boat captains and anglers are attacking bottlenose dolphin with guns and pipe bombs, to keep them from taking fish right off the hook, and from feeding off the undersized fish that by law must be thrown back into the ocean. A federal agent who has investigated reported attacks on dolphins said no one really knows the extent of the problem because so many confrontations likely occur 20 to 30 miles offshore in deep waters. ”That far out the bodies are never going to wash up on shore,” said Allan Coker, who works with NOAA’s fisheries law enforcement office in Niceville, Fla.
• A huge algae bloom in Tampa Bay now stretches more than 14 miles and could soon start killing fish, as it did last year when a similar bloom killed puffer fish, stingrays, blue crab and other species. Algae blooms like this one are usually caused by pollutants washed into the bay during rains, then jump-started by a heat wave.
• In Halifax, in sewage treament plant has shut down, causing untreated sewage to flow into the harbor. The beach is now strewn with Tampon applicators, condoms, and diapers, causing the Halifax Water Commission to launch a radio advertising campaign urging people to stop flushing these items down the toilet – a lesson for all of us.
• Justice Served: The manager of the Weeki Wachee Springs State Park known for its world-famous mermaid shows has been fired after employees complained that he had sexually harassed a mermaid.
Oceans
algae bloom, dolphin, ocean, pollution
Pico Iyer, a writer much admired by JadedTraveler wrote about the top ten things to do in a strange country, posted on CNN Travel. But we think when he got to number nine, he was grasping for ideas. His suggestion? Go to McDonalds. He writes: The food is cheap and semipredictable, of course, but it’s all the ways in which the place is surprising that you will take home with you. What else are we looking for in travel (and in love and in life) but a tasty mix of the strange and the familiar? In my more frenetic travels, I always considering stopping to eat more a necessary pit stop than a pleasure, like going to the bathroom. I’d just head to where all the locals congregated, which was usually a McDonald’s. (The real New World Order isn’t political, it’s a Big Mac, order of fries, and a Coke.) But I’d still cringe in embarrassment. You shouldn’t eat at places where you have to apologize to the stranger next to you, as one American confided to me in Berlin: “I never eat at McDonald’s at home, but I’m in a hurry.” These days, I only go to the Golden Arches because my Dalmatian really enjoys ordering off the dollar menu. McDonald’s saving grace: this institution has taught the world to clear its table before leaving.
Eating
Eating, golden arches, McDonalds, Pico Iyer
The Supreme Court has denied the petition to prevent Arizona Snowbowl Resort from making snow from treated sewage water on Arizona’s San Francisco Peak, a mountain that 13 Native American nations hold sacred. Crux of issue: does residual human waste desecrate land deemed sacred? Construction may start soon on a pipeline that will pump treated, reclaimed water up the mountain from a treatment plant in Flagstaff, which is key to the resort’s expansion plans. “To Native Americans, desecrating the San Francisco Peaks with wastewater is like flushing the Koran down the toilet,” said Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr.
TAKE ACTION: Contact Congress & the Obama Administration and urge them to take action to guarantee protection for Native American Religious freedom.
Arizona
Arizona, Flagstaff, Native American, Navajo, San Francisco, San Francisco Peak, Sewage
Seeing Angkor Wat on the July cover of National Geographic Magazine brought back memories of a trip to Angkor Wat two years ago. I went expecting an exotic, off-the-beaten-highway place deep in the Cambodian jungle. Yeah, I know, about as naive as Bush’s foreign policy experts. For someone who used to be an anarchist, I’m now very much in favor of regulation, at least when it comes to preserving one of the great treasures of the human race.
[flv:AnkorWatTourism2.flv 480 260]
Asia
Angkor Wat, Cambodia, Preservation
[flv:atlastailingspile.flv 480 260]
The Moab Tailings Pile, a legacy hump of radioactive debris leftover from the uranium heyday of the 1950s, has for years been left alone, a sleeping monster. But its location on the shores of the Colorado River — the spigot of the American West — demanded it removal. In a move eerily reminscent of sweeping dust under the rug, the pile is being moved, truck-load by truck-load, thirty miles away. Once disturbed from its decades-long slumber, does it pose a risk to those of us living closeby? I didn’t think so, until one windy day…
Uncategorized
