More from my book

Image from Gold Seal Foods

More from Carl Safina.

To put this in context, he is talking about how over-logging is damaging the salmon population in the Pacific Northwest. In essence, trees keep the soil rooted. Dirty, muddy water clogs riverbeds and inlets, where salmon lay their eggs. If the water is dirty it cuts of much needed air and nutrients from the growing eggs and salmon.:

"The globalization of markets is one of the biggest prolbems I see," he says. He explains that in the Indians' original, very local economy, the feedback between the resource and the user was felt very directly as food or starvation. As we have moved to a more regional economy, then to a national, now to a global economy, those feedback loops have first lengthened, then disappeared. "The companies are no longer tied to regional areas or local communities. The markets creating demand certainly are not. Local loggers and fishers still have direct and personal ties to regional resources, but when the corporation cuts all the trees around those people and moves its logging operations elsewhere--perhaps Borneo or the Philippines--it continues to feed the same market at a profit." In a sense, it uses people as fuel.

Jim continues, "It's always seemed a real irony for me that the political party that most touted families also touted the global economy that has devastated families in our local communities. The two are totally incompatible. When communities no longer control their resources they no longer control their destinies, and they become caught in these boom-and-bust cycles that demolish families. Throughout the history of logging, the owners have treated the loggers like crap. Yet when it came down to it, the loggers supported the owners."

Jim says that around the now depressed town of Forks, the owners could have logged on a sustained rotation forever, but they boomed and busted. Coos Bay could have supplied the local mill for eighty years--two working lifetimes--and then be ready for the next rotation, but the owners logged it all off in twenty years for export. The companies have the money earning interest, but the loggers are out of work. (pp. 184-185)

Events & things

Image from United Palace Theatre

Image from The Worker's Institute

* Last night, King Kong Radio Theater in the West Village. This awesome, original play ends July 8th. Basically it's the story of King Kong done Radio Theater style with sound effects and the players acting multiple roles. Harkens back to times when you actually had to use your imagination.

* Tonight: Richard Hell and Christopher Wool at the Strand. "Richard Hell is a musician known for his image and his facility with words; Christopher Wool is a painter who first became famous for his words. The two are friends and they have collaborated on the creation of a series of gorgeous word images. These provocative, funny pictures comprise the content of their beautifully designed and printed new book, Psychopts. Barry Schwabsky, a poet and a frequent writer on art for The Nation and co-editor of Artforum's international review section, will moderate a discussion with the artists."

* Just announced: Sigur Ros will do two more shows here in NYC in September at the beautiful United Palace Theatre. AKA angels sing beneath gilded lights. I'm going. Are you?