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Neighbors from: Need your Help Please

Started by kathleen, November 09, 2010, 03:33:09 PM

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luise.volta

I think you are right, Seasage, and there are places corporate decay won't reach in your life time. I'd start researching and move! This nightmare is not retirement...it's just that, a nightmare. I'm so deeply sorry. Sending love...
Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible. Dalai Lama

kathleen

Here is the update on the industrial park moving into my neighborhood:

I received a communication this morning informing me that the real reason to allow it is to keep families out, that there could be "40+ children or more" if a housing development came in.  Therefore we should allow toxic noise, diesel air pollution, decimation of wildlife, and destruction of a mountainside instead.  We won't have to spend money on our school system.

My thoughts and emotions on this right now are far too hot to write.  I must wait until I calm down before saying more. 

Except, I can't resist, isn't the writer so lucky that people did not take this tact when she was young and being raised in a family?  Now, she wishes to keep others from that experience in this community. 

Kathleen


luise.volta

Terrible, Kathleen. (She's probably 10th generation. As I have said, I would sell and run for the hills.
Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible. Dalai Lama

luise.volta

I am so touched by all of this. I think for some of us the home (as in house) becomes not only a symbol of who we are and what we are about but it can also become an extension of that...the container of it. I have examples of that in my own life that I won't cloud this thread with but I can feel the intense energy here.
Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible. Dalai Lama

Pooh

Oh Kathleen, what a horrible situation.

Isn't it amazing how our memories and histories become so tied to an object or place?  I had a wonderful childhood, spending countless hours of my youth at my grandparents.  I drove by their old house for the first time in 20 years right before Christmas, to show my DH and we had to turn around and go back, because we passed it.  When I finally located it, it was so changed and nothing was the same.  They had taken great pride in that house and yard.  They were poor, but everything was always neat.  Now it was run down, siding falling off, yard grown up...etc.  I cried as we sat staring at it, devastated while my DH comforted me.

It took me a few minutes to realize that it didn't matter about the house.  My memories and stories are in my head and they will remain with me always.  I can close my eyes and still see how the house was, so it doesn't matter what it is now.  It is now just a house, in my memories....it will always be a home.

So Kathleen, although devastating and painful, I am with Luise.  I would move.  You can be totally right, but politics in a town are very hard to defeat.
We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us. -
Joseph Campbell

seasage

Quote from: kathleen on January 10, 2011, 01:26:31 PM
Here is the update on the industrial park moving into my neighborhood:

I received a communication this morning informing me that the real reason to allow it is to keep families out, that there could be "40+ children or more" if a housing development came in.  Therefore we should allow toxic noise, diesel air pollution, decimation of wildlife, and destruction of a mountainside instead.  We won't have to spend money on our school system.

My thoughts and emotions on this right now are far too hot to write.  I must wait until I calm down before saying more. 

Except, I can't resist, isn't the writer so lucky that people did not take this tact when she was young and being raised in a family?  Now, she wishes to keep others from that experience in this community. 

Kathleen

I am aghast that anyone would even voice an idea such as that.  I simply can't imagine what goes on in someone's head when s/he can state with a straight face that they are saving your community from children and the expenses that go with such an awful pestilence.  Where do we derive our morality in this country? 

I love to watch BookTV on CSPAN on the weekends, and this past Saturday I found a very special author who addresses the problem of public perception and public morality.  http://www.booktv.org/Watch/11851/The+Honor+Code+How+Moral+Revolutions+Happen.aspx
Appiah, who is a Princeton professor, talked about the ways in which society decided that slavery was wrong, that female genital mutilation can be stopped, and other moral revolutions.  It made me start to think about the moral revolutions we need in our own country and to ask myself what (if anything) I can do to contribute to the cause.  I began to realize that writing/preaching/complaining about the environmental cost, etc. was not the whole answer - if indeed it ever was any answer at all.  I began to see that we need to always discuss the morality of our actions in order to change how society thinks.

And with that in mind, today my own response to this reporter would focus on the morality of children vs. a gravel pit. 

   

kathleen

I have been wonderfully amazed by the eloquence of your responses, and your caring.  I have been touched by your outrage and it has emboldened me to continue without desperation or fear.  I am so grateful.  It has focused me away from my nearly-terminal rage at my situation, to the caring others can give.

Luise, I was really taken by your observation of the intensity of this subject and the responses.  It made me glad.

I have a gift:  I'm a newspaper writer with considerable experience as a reporter.  A reporter's talent has to be to "smoke people out."  So, I was able to get this municipal official to put her discriminatory view against children in writing.  I then contacted the next highest up town official and informed him, without using names.  He sent back a snappish reply full of fear:  the town "insurers" were glad this was not an official "vote" of the commission on which I serve but any anti-child position of any "municipal official" is "reprehensible."  Fine.  They are on the run!  They are fearful!  And they should be.  Because a lot can happen with media coverage and I've already formulated a possible plan for that.

Here's a little portrait of me which helps in my reporting work: I am diminutive, with a good smile people trust, and especially a very soft "good telephone voice," one friend said; my cousin who has known me since we were two months old says it is a "sexy" voice on the phone.  I have fooled many a tough lawyer into giving away the farm with my little voice which, by the way, still makes me sound fifteen.  It's also a gift.  I have "smoked out" so many fakes that I have won writing awards for it.

My husband and I have won two major, similar battles in the past, one which cost a town $700,000 in a tax judgment for a plaintiff we supported who had been severely discriminated against.

So right now, we've opted to fight.  We may very well, as we did before, opt in the end to leave.  But not without a fight.

I have questioned myself carefully as to whether or not I'm up for yet another fight "at my age."  Insomnia won:  I won't sleep anyway, so why not engage?  I can quit anytime.

As I write, my husband is at a board meeting expressing the formidable results of his three days of solid research, point by point.  We shall see.
Perhaps the lid will come off of all of this.

I understand, Laurie, your leaving your home; you shouldn't have had to; but I know why you did.  We took that option once and didn't regret it in any way.  This is not my home in the deep sense of your attachment, so in that sense I have already left it.  I can leave it anytime, that is, if I can now sell with a gravel pit in my back yard.  But to not speak out against such injustice is wrong.  We may go down, but we will go down fighting.  I am still so sorry you had to leave your home and that this happened to you; you have written about this before.  But, I get it.

Luise, you live in the Pacific Northwest.  Portland, Oregon, has the toughest noise and other socially conscious laws in the nation.  Seattle and environs are only a dream where I live; I have been in your area and it is pure love.  It is gorgeous and wonderful, but my children live here.  Can I really leave them to go so far away?  I don't know.  I want to be near them, just as I wanted to be near my family of origin but was thrust out by my husband's career decisions.  I would love to live where you live, and I understand so much your feelings about my situation based on your geography.  But the some of the country isn't like your heavenly place.  It's hard and mean and not congenial to change.  It's inbred with fear of "outsiders" and retribution of them for trying to make change.  I can live with that. But I'd rather not.

Again, I am astonished at the intensity and wonder of your replies.  Seasage, I have checked out your link and it's great and will watch in entirety; I, too, am a great fan of BookTV.  I so much appreciate your consideration of morals in this society and the approach this author from Princeton has taken.  I could not agree more.  What have you decided to do about your home near the gas threat?  I thank you for your notes and for that link.  It's positively inspiring.  I read your post out loud to my husband, particularly the last, great quote:  what's in a reporter's eye, a gravel pit. vs. children?  I'm telling you, we could go to town with that.  You are so, absolutely, right on.  I love, revere, admire, the entire idea of morality restored in this country, specifically and generally.  Thank you for your heartfelt commentary.

So, like the aftermath of any body-blow news, it's getting a little better. 

We really do become a family here.  It's amazing, since we have never met.  I got a letter today from my pen pal in England; I was increasingly anxious about her husband going thru surgery, as uncharacteristically I had not heard from her in several weeks; I felt so much relief to know he go thru it OK.  I have never met her!  Yet we are sisters---as you begin to feel to me.

Always, thank you, back soon,

Kathleen

Pooh

You cry, we cry.  You laugh, we laugh.  You fight politics, we scream the WWU war cry!   YA YA YA YA YA YA YA YA YOOOO!!

That's how we roll....   ;D

I know that every area and state is different, but here, if there is water involved, the Army Corp of Engineers have to do studies on flood issues and such before changes can be made.  They might have something to help you?  Don't know if that is true in your area, just throwing it out there.
We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us. -
Joseph Campbell

kathleen

Thanks Pooh.  A long day today of researching this from all sides.  Remember when we talked about fight-flight, and you understood exactly what it was?  I'm in it. Either stay and try and defeat this, or leave.  Doesn't leave much room for serenity either way.

We already checked on the Corps of Engineers and it's our understanding they only do this for federal properties but that could be wrong.  Do you have info to the contrary?  This is a piece of private property being sold to a private corporation (it's impossible to get info on them.  They are not publicly held.)

Love ya,

Kathleen

Faithlooksup

Remember Kathleen, it only takes one person to make a difference.....be that person.

kathleen

Thank you, Faith, yes, I'm working on it.  Sent a long letter to the head of selectmen and head of planning board, researching other options.  By now you know I've got a little talent with writing and I zeroed in on a scenario from another town destroyed by this kind of action, including figures I got of actual drops in property values (one home started at $250,000 and after the trucks rolled, five years later was sold for $90,000)

By now I've gone through the stages:  the first hard flashes of rage, an incredible week of insomnia and heart palpitations, the bargaining stage---trying to figure what we could do to stop it---and now am in a depression.  At least the anger is gone and in total exhaustion I slept finally last night.

I have learned this is, as Seasage knows, going on all over the country.  Here is the corporate modus operandi:

Select a town without deep pockets for your industrial wasteland.  Plan carefully behind closed doors.  Try to bull through your proposal around Christmas, when people are preoccupied or away.  Hire a slick lawyer who doesn't care about spending the rest of eternity in hell for planned, blatant lies and the destruction of a community.  Bring along a sexpot female lawyer to distract the men at the hearing.  (In our case, the blonde just sat there and never said a word.  I did, however, stare at her for a long time and finally when she met my gaze, she looked ashamed.  It told me a lot.)

You need to be a corporate con artist/sociopath who cares nothing for children, the elderly, wildlife, or the values your country supposedly is built on.  You probably already have many millions from your rape of other communities but of course that is of not the slightest concern.  After all, your dumb fat son is sitting next to you in the hearing, yawning as the townspeople express their outrage and fear, and since he is not the brightest bulb on the tree (all he wants is to get home and watch sports tv) he will have to be provided for.  You are hideously bald, beer-bellied, and cadaverous yourself, so you probably figure it's your right to get back at the world for that and for producing your lump of lard son who probably doesn't do anything but play video games.

Indicate in every possible way that if your proposal is not accepted and permits not granted, you will use your pathologically thin-nosed, horse-faced lawyer to litigate and wipe out the town coffers.  This, as you know, adds more fuel to the bonfire of fear now burning throughout the town.  Secrecy will permeate and citizens will look at each other with suspicion, as you know.  This also inspires the very worst emotions in people and will help to fragment public opinion.

You do this because you do not believe in God, the American Constitution, any rights of others, or the future of this country.  It's all about you and now and what you can get from other people's hard work and honest sacrifice to earn what they have.

I spoke to a lady lives directly near the coming industrial park (I call it that snappishly, they don't like that claiming a gravel pit is not that at all.  Ha.)  She was a single mom like many on our list; she is 60, has no retirement, and depends on her job until she dies.  She already has considerable noise from the road and told me she probably will not be able to withstand the constant truck noise to come.  She said there already is a home near the site in foreclosure and hers will be "worth nothing" if this happens.  What in this world has our country come to, to repeatedly allow this scenario to occur?

That's pretty much what is happening here.  It's a cautionary tale.

I'll keep you posted, thanks again to all for the great support. 

Kathleen


Faithlooksup

OK, Kathleen,  being you are a writer, would it be possible for you to write an article regarding this matter in your (town/city) newspaper????   Write a "long" article, take it in to your local news paper office and ask them to print it.....Freedom of speech, or have we lost that too????

Just throwing this out into the cosmos~~maybe and maybe not.....but it sure is worth the try.

cremebrulee

Kathleen
I cannot tell you in words, how much I admire your stamina and successes...you go girl...

It is very very diffcult to go thru something like this....however, your do diligence will pay off, I'm certain of that...

Best of luck girl...

and yes, you cry, we cry, Pooh is absolutely right...

remember, your an amazing woman!!!!!

Pooh

Sorry Kathleen, somehow I missed your question.  I know they are federally ran, but I thought they helped everyone.  I could be totally wrong as I was working for 911 when we used them several years ago.  Their website shows public help on some issues. 
We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us. -
Joseph Campbell

Pen

Kathleen, I've given up on PMing you, so I'll give you the info from my neighbor here:

1. Establish when the rock company got a permit to operate in your area. If you bought your property after that date you may be eligible for a refund since no one disclosed that information to you.

2. Establish lack of need for the product. That was the biggest help in our fight; our part of the state was facing a building slow-down and really didn't need the gravel that would be produced.

3. Environmental/historical impact reports are critical! Get as many professors to analyze and write up their findings.

4. Keep bugging the powers that be by mail, editorials, letters to the editor, and most importantly a presence at all governmental meetings regarding the project. They must let you know when these meetings are although they will try to do as much as possible behind closed doors. Don't let them.

5. Attend meetings of every community organization you can from Girl Scouts to PTA to Kiwanis Club and so forth. Present your concerns with a focus on what will affect your audience the most so you can gather signatures on petitions and bodies to help you fight. We focused on highway safety being jeordized due to increased truck traffic on our highways and through our little towns. Once the county commissioner understood exactly how much big truck traffic there would be she fought with us and helped turn things around.

6. It took 6 years to close down our project; they got sick of fighting us. The company (a huge world wide corporation with a hooty bird as its logo) still owns the land so we may have to fight again, but for now it's all good.
Respect ... is appreciation of the separateness of the other person, of the ways in which he or she is unique.
-- Annie Gottlieb