The effort to giveth away our resources and in the same motion taketh them back made the bill even more unworkable. At last, near the end of the session in May, the bill died a quiet death as a midnight bell struck for final considerations and it still had not come up for a vote. I ordered a pot of gumbo from the Palate to celebrate. “Timber Bill Dies in House,” we headlined in a last triumphant story; and set one citizen’s testimony up inside a box, in fourteen-point boldface: “Veneer plant a shortsighted use for this great forest. We’d be cutting Sampson’s hair and giving it away.” The whole episode fascinated me; for once, there was no “party line” of attack on this bill. It truly was a case of citizens leaping to the microphone with a variety of reasons why it should die. I did not see a mob of greens vs. a mob of developers: it was a crowd of individuals, some of whom saw eye to eye on nothing else. Their testimony brought out the complications hidden in a proposal that had initially seemed so simple to its author.
What do You think about Correcting The Landscape (2009)?
