Print Media...Chromium on Dead Trees

Print Media...Chromium on Dead Trees; the leaves have spoken! From my backyard with that four years old oak to the forests over our streams, to which we fish, that rustling of the leaves may be but the wind whispering through the leaves but to me, that rustling of the leaves are but the trees speaking to me! They are speaking in unison with the wind in shouting out of the “Lorax” principal, yet only a few can hear them. We, in the digital print media, are the voices to those who have no tongues; the Lorax Factor. The Clean Water Act of 1972 and CERCLA of 1980, Congress granted legal rights to natural resources; hence the Lorax Factor was born! This means that trees and other natural resources have rights to exist and that we should be entitled to speak for them and to present their claims in court, if unheard. In a legal sense, this would mean that trees do have standing, no pun intended. All of this nonsense is all because of the introduction of the code word “sustainability.” Under this pretext of law, a government or NGO may sue for damages; "natural resource damages" provisions of these laws, entities can sue for compensation for injury to natural resources—on behalf of those resources. In doing so, they are acting as "trustees" for natural resources, not suing in their own right as themselves and the law requires that all recoveries be spent on the resource itself; it cannot spend natural resource damages, on anything except as a or on behalf of that resource for that resource. I wonder if our planets trees will go on strike and take print media to court? I would hope not as the Lorax Factor or principle was originally article character, from a Dr. Seuss book, The Lorax where Lorax stated again and again, "I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.” Did the Lorax predict the future or did Dr. Seuss listen to the rustling of the leaves; as “the leaves are speaking!”

All my long life I loved the feel of books in my hand. This week in Saint Petersburg, Florida, there will be a gathering of antiquarian book sellers from all over the world, gathered together with wares ranging from thirteenth-century manuscripts, in all their golden glory, to maps of the latest combat theaters where the art of warfare is plied as it's been for millenarian. Maps once hand-drawn with ink made from nature are today rendered in pixels, but the art of the book and the feel of printed communications has, and I hope never will be, lost on me but with that said; at the value of a good read, must we still kill trees? The 21^st Century, a digital age, a time when being “sustainable” should really mean something, not just a code word for something else. Manuscripts and books to maps; skins of long-dead animals inked with what appears to be the same red ink that comes from the Bic I write notes with. All of this, through time, mixed by men, indistinguishable from the alchemists that populated the same whiskey bars in the same time 200 years ago. I have a book called The Words and Mind of Jesus Christ. Written in the inside cover are the words "Pledged as warrant to the landowner Mrs. Oliver Wilson in the Year of our Lord 1634." Pressed in letterhead at the base of the page, where the writing indicated the value of a single book, we're the words "Printed at the Peacock in the Poultry near the Thames River. The book was worth the rent and board for the student's year in school, and had been printed by a company that felt its brand was worth putting on the book's front matter. I can feel the student's hand scratching that ink on the paper from a quill pen. I can see it, feel it be part of this work of art.

While growing into a life where books - reading, writing, and ultimately publishing them - would be an important part of my professional career, I have also been a pure, died-in-the-wool magazine subscriber. For heaven's sake I still get Bonnier Corporation magazines in my mailbox.

That said, I know the value of books. They last. You can hold them. In the case of textbooks in classrooms, where desktop real estate (real real estate, as in the form of a physical desk) is at a premium, they can fold, and do not take up monitor space. If you are learning to use software, the book you are learning from has to stay out of the way of the program you are learning. Books that work on i Pads or tablets are cool, but regular books are still the top choice in the colleges and classrooms but magazines in this new digital age, are but another story. I have yet to see an advertisement from environmental groupers like PEW, and EDF, and the Ocean Conservancy in my American Rifleman or the books to which I read but they are found in publications put out by Bonnier AB. According to their Vision: To continuously reinvent the art of publishing, they need to step back and listen to the leaves as for now, it would seem, they cannot see the forest for the trees! Just as, PEW, EDF, and the Ocean Conservancy are spending a great deal of money to "save" the earth, at the expense of mankind. They are part of a global secular movement that vilifies me, if I have faith in an invisible but (to me) very real God, yet treats "Mother Earth" as if she was theirs to rule. I know how truly conscious I am of the environment. I live in it. Unlike the Energy Secretary that testified before the House that he doesn't even own a car. How can he feel my pain at the pump?

I do own a boat. I do fish. I do clean up after others that were on the water before me. Those organizations, and the magazine they use to supposedly reach our community, spend a lot of time on another thing besides saving mother earth. Related, but ideologically used as a cornerstone. That is the concept of "Sustainable Fishing" or "Sustainability". The word has become the mantra of the progressive, anti-free-market globalists. Their core ideology says that everything has to be sustainable. So I have a couple of questions for the Magazine media:

• When are you going to get sustainable? You create your magazines by pressing chromium inks - a toxic and eternal pollutant - onto paper made from dead trees.
• What is up with that?
• When are you all going to stop killing trees and go digital?
• And if you go digital, will your magazine be free of charge, like all other content is on the world wide web?
  
  
  
• And why do you take money from organizations that are clearly a anti-fishing in their actions. Perhaps not in their words, or in their ads on your expensive pages, but why take money from them that will help them reduce our access to the water, increase closed seasons, and that support placing an increasing number of target species on the endangered list?
  
  

Be our community, or be part of the problems facing our community; being concerned and know how to say no in taking their Sustainable money, and stop killing trees. Get over your special self; the world has gone OpenSource. If we care about our earth, we need to stop putting poison in dead trees and charging money for the waste product and stop supporting people who want us off the water and watching the nature channel instead, like a couch potato. I really do see now what Lorax was saying; in fighting for their rights, we as intelligent keepers to our planet, should embrace this digital age, as it speaks out for the trees in read me and save those tall skins a standing for all to enjoy. Books, I hate to say, are but a relic and should be an antiquarian ware for collectors world-wide. Much akin to Jules Vern's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, an underwater craft that carried people for the protection of mankind, science-fiction at its best! Who would know it to come true, like a Dr. Seuss book, The Lorax, where Lorax stated again and again, "I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.” Did the Lorax predict the future or did Dr. Seuss listen to the rustling of the leaves?

To How many people reading this believe that paper, a by-product of trees is no longer needed to fulfill your need to read, now that it is all available on the internet by those who care? Sign the petition in showing your support of our trees. Will it make a difference? That depends on how many of you tweet it up and get this ball rolling. With enough signatures, publishers in print may just sit up and notice, saving a tree to an entire forest and too the story, still gets told but this time with NO CHROMIUM ON DEAD TREES: Sign the petition and pass it on..............................

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