Bellicose Bumpkin

I’ve seen this falsehood-as-fact repeated enough times that I thought I’d mention it. In the most recent Gazette, a letter to the editor stated that the BP oil spill catastrophe in the Gulf was the fault of liberals and environmentalists. The rationale for that bizarre statement is that protests of land-based drilling has pushed it out to deep water. This is so frighteningly mis-informed that it simply staggers the mind.
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People are drilling in the Gulf and elsewhere because THAT’S WHERE THE OIL IS. As a self-proclaimed environmentalist I would stop ALL drilling land based and otherwise and mandate a switch to green technologies. Ocean based drilling is no more palatable to me than land based. But all that is beside the point. The fact remains that environmentalists have nothing to do with the Gulf spill. That disaster is all about the oil industry, lack of proper regulation, and an environmentally disastrous form of energy – fossil fuels.

I’ve been doing research for a Gazette column on creative uses of town own land. I’m thinking of things like community gardens, sustainable farming, education, and other things – many of which are already being done by the Soule Homestead.

I’d welcome any thoughts you have on this topic. I’m looking for ways that Massachusetts towns can do something constructive with their land that might benefit the public and might even help defray some of the cost of maintaining the land.

On a partially related topic, this email came in today from the Soule Homestead. It was asking for people to print out and post this flyer about the upcoming Massachusetts Organic Gardening Workshop Day.