January 07, 2004

• Coming up in this series from the Washington Post - Hummer Drivers Fume at How Much They Spend on Gas; The Loneliness of My Tropical Island; When I Cut My Domestic Staff From 10 to 8.
• I study frog vocalizations, and I have gotten calls by city people who moved to the country and complain about the frogs calling in the spring keeping them up. One woman wanted to know how to poison them. I wanted to zap off to pay a visit and do some mental reprogramming with a very large axe, but just called my friends in the conservation department to pay her a visit and ask her a few questions about threats to dump toxins into wetlands.
• Ten-acre density, applied stupidly, is little better than three-acre density for preserving open space. In the Methow Valley, we have some large ranches downvalley that have been sold and platted into a tessellation of "ranchette" plats; I dread the day that a series of ticky-tack tract mansions covers that part of the valley floor. Upvalley where I live, we should be able to preserve more of the rural character of the valley, both through planning and some fortuitous just-in-time conservation easements. Elsewhere, the local land trust fights a rearguard action. I strongly recommend Dealing with Change in the Connecticut River Valley: A Design Manual for Conservation and Development to anybody interested in this topic. Light pollution from scared city folks chasing away the bugbears of night is a pet peeve of mine, too. Though to be fair, it isn't just city folks: many locals keep those god-awful mercury vapor lights burning.
• There you go with your crazy ideas about "pre-planning" and "holistic thinking" Goetter. What are you trying to do? Have a win-win situation or something?