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| SNOW DAY |
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| DEMOCRACY BEGINS HERE |
The crunching sound of the ferry plying through the ice as it traverses the partially open path to LaPointe on Madeline Island is easily heard now when walking Bayfield’s hillside streets. We will try to take time and make arrangements to give a first-hand account of the trip before the ferry stops running.
I presented the annual Tree Board report to the mayor and council late yesterday afternoon and it was well received. The Tree Board volunteered approximately 500 hours of time in 2010, planning forestry programs, dealing with the public and watering, fertilizing and pruning young trees, of which we planted fourteen last year. My job as volunteer forester is to coordinate activities and offer professional advice, particularly on hazard trees, new species and varieties of street and park trees, and other technical matters. We also announced the award of a $5,000 matching grant from the DNR to update our computerized tree inventory and develop the initial stages of an Emerald Ash Borer response plan.
I have always enjoyed being involved in grass roots community activities, where one has the opportunity to relate on a personal basis to government. That is one of the things I find so tragic about the events in Tucson; all the people involved were local and were interacting with their governmental representatives on a personal level. To destroy that close interaction between citizen and government is to attack democracy and our constitution at its very roots, creating fear and distrust between the people and their representatives. Whether such attackers are sane or insane, they are anarchists in the Nineteenth Century mold, belonging to no political party and having no political philosophy other than to destroy civil society itself, and those who seek to profit politically when such tragic events take place ally themselves with the anarchists in the destruction of America. Stand up, speak out, take part!
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