green things

[timepiececlock]

So I was looking up bio pages on Ayn Rand for a mini-report I'm doing on famous women. I've read parts of Atlas Shrugged, but to my shame I ahven't finished yet. It's slow, difficult reading, and I keep getting distracted for long periods of time. I like it, but haven't finished it.

While looking up articles, I ended up reading this one, which mentions Rand, but is actually by someone else, and goes into the Big Evil Lie that apparently is environmentalism.

Dude, maybe because I've grown up in a very Democratic state in an area chock full of liberals that have fouled my young mind with early environmentalist propaganda, but the article just made me laugh. I love whales, I love trees, and I having been several times as a youth to some of the only places on Earth you can still find giant Redwood trees, I simply can't take seriously anyone who says environmentalism is a joke.

We had a guy come visit us for Thanksgiving the year before last who was from Kentucky. He came up with my brother from the Naval base in San Diego. And you know what he wanted to do, when we asked him? He wanted to see Redwood trees, because he never had before. He wanted to go to a Northern California beach, absorb all the scenery he could.

When I was visited DC and Virginia last September, I spent forever it seemed just staring out at the psychotically green hills.

There's two young people, raised in entire different areas of the continent and country, and we both wanted the same thing when we visited other places. Absorb nature. That means something.

That tourists flock to Yosemite National Park every year (and god it's so funny listening to them talk about their expectations of California) to see the landscape and environment, means something.

That I've been down to LA at least 8 times and at each visit swore I'd never live in that city because of smog, means something.

Now, Ayn Rand was doing her philosophy half a century ago, before environmentalism had become the reality that it is today. I wish I knew when this article was written, so I could frame it with my response. But I don't.

But it still makes me think about oil drilling in Alaska, and extinct animal species, and a host of other things.

Makes me stare at George Bush's lips moving pointlessly on the tv screen and wanna say aloud, "Dang dude, what's wrong with you? Who doesn't like trees anyway?"

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[rashaka.livejournal.com]

There was also my ickiness with the female lead being raped by the male lead and liking it--blah blah author's prerogative blah blah psychological complexity blah blah artistic choices blah blah--but I don't feel much like re-reading it.

I've never read The Fountainhead. But that's a take on rape I've never believed or cared to read. Oh well, can't judge until I've read it myself.

Good luck with winning that contest. ;)