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Ken Burns "National Parks"

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sauronsfinger
Post subject: Ken Burns "National Parks"
Posted: Sat 03 Oct , 2009 5:46 pm
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I have been watching the excellent series from our best documentary filmmaker Ken Burns on the American national parks system. It is very inspiring as well as just plain informative. I recently visited three of them - Yosemite, John Muir Redwoods and Alcatraz and the experience was incredible. A TV series like this reminds all of us just how important it is to have a commons for the people to enjoy and not let pure greed and capitalism deny out grandchildren their natural birthright.

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There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. - John Rogers


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laureanna
Post subject: Re: Ken Burns "National Parks"
Posted: Sat 03 Oct , 2009 6:43 pm
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You visited Alcatraz and Muir Woods and didn't visit the Bay Area B77 contingent?!?!?

:bang: :bang: :bang:

But I digress ... Yes, those are fantastic places. I've been listening to a little bit of the series (the TV is in the next room). I used to camp in Yosemite for weeks at a time, back when there were far fewer people doing so. Now I visit briefly twice a year (one of 3 million to do so) and am still in love. My cell phone wall paper is the pic of Yosemite Falls that I snapped this spring. I sigh every time I see it. I have also visited Hetch Hetchy, the "twin" to Yosemite Valley, that was flooded long ago for a hydro-electric/water supply system. It was a treasure lost before the National Park System was in full swing.

Muir Woods is the last little enclave of primeval redwoods, saved by a lumberman when people were just starting to see the value of leaving things as is, rather than exploiting them. When I think back to my childhood home, built entirely of redwood and knotty pine, and filled with teak and mahogany furniture, I do feel some guilt. But at the time, the resources seemed limitless.

Alcatraz ... well, I have a different feeling about that one. I visited on a high school field trip. I was the last one in line, when each of us in turn looked inside the "hole" used for solitary confinement. Some prankster closed the door on me, and being old and rusty (the door) it took a while for me to get out. Meanwhile I got to experience the small space of utter darkness and despair, and wonder about the men who spent days or weeks in there. (As an aside, I've since heard stories about Alcatraz from a friend of my father's, who worked there as a guard.)

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