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Not to get too far “afield” from health commentary, but I just have to tell you about this:
If a pending plan for “donor recognition” gains approval from the Bush administration (and outward indications are that it will), our glorious and pristine National Park System might soon be cluttered with billboards, giant inflatable soda bottles, snack-food banners, and God knows what other kinds of cheesy advertising.
Yes, you read that right: The faces on Mount Rushmore may soon be complemented with giant inflatable fists with cans of Coke or Coors’ beer in them — and from its viewing area, “Old Faithful” may soon be perfectly aligned with a champagne bottle on a low-mounted billboard from Moet et Chandon or Dom Perignon
Well, maybe it won’t get to these extremes.
However, if what is now happening in our national forests is any indication, it’s all but certain that the natural monuments in our nation’s great National Parks will soon be surrounded by pitches and promotions of one type or another, according to a recent release from the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
The pending National Park plan is similar in scope and intent to a new U.S. Forest Service policy. That policy opens a “special event” (races, festivals, contests, etc.) promotion loophole that allows corporate advertising along its roads, in view of its landscapes, and within ski resorts and water-sports areas
What’s really offensive about all this is that the new policy, which I’m all but certain became permanent this past spring, overrules many state and local restrictions on the advertising of alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and other things (prostitution?). Under the new rules, all a corporate sponsor need do to secure a chunk of this virgin advertising real estate is donate enough money – and get the rubber-stamp approval for their “event” from a Bush administration appointee.
Somehow, I don’t think this is what Teddy Roosevelt had in mind when he dedicated those millions of unspoiled acres as a place where nature remains unsullied by commerce and politics. I also don’t think Ansel Adams’ historic photograph of Devil’s Tower would have been enhanced if a Pepsi-cola banner were flapping from the escarpment’s summit.
And speaking of messing around with Mother Nature to our detriment
(Last) Dances with wolves
Wardens from the Pennsylvania Game Commission knew a Westmoreland County woman was keeping live wolf hybrids in an enclosure on her property. In fact, they’d answered multiple complaints about the animals. But since she’d registered them as “mixed-breed dogs,” the officers’ hands were tied – such animals fell outside their jurisdiction.
However, “dog” implies a certain degree of domesticity. And the dangerous, wild-spirited animals that Sandra Piovesan was keeping clearly didn’t qualify. The pups these animals dropped she called “wolves” – and sometime shortly before the morning of July 17th, they very likely proved it to deadly effect
According to an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, Piovesan’s daughter found her mother’s badly mauled body inside the animals’ enclosure after she paid the elder woman a visit to investigate why she hadn’t made it to a breakfast date they’d arranged. Sources cited in the article claim the victim was drawn to the animals by her Indian heritage, and that she refused to accept that she may be in any danger among them.
Authorities removed the body, and at the time of this writing, are still trying to find out definitively if Piovesan was the victim of an attack – or if she was only gnawed on subsequent to some kind of fatal medical emergency while in the pen. That possibility would be pretty remote, however, since the “dogs” in question were so aggressive they had to be killed before medical personnel could safely retrieve the body.
Sad though this is, it just goes to show why messing with Mother Nature’s wild children often just doesn’t pan out. Reminds me of that surfer-dude-looking unemployed actor who got himself and his poor girlfriend eaten by grizzlies a few years back in Alaska (of course, they lionized him in a documentary – it’s called Grizzly Man)
He was a delusional idiot, too.
Never crying wolf about the “laws” of nature,
William Campbell Douglass II, MD
