Trail: Dangerous Redefinition of Reality

You Call This Trail? No wonder nature has gone down the tubes...

photo © Lewiston Sun Journal / Daryn Slover

Look no further than how warped today's society has redefined everyday words and you will understand easily how we have created this mess we are now calling our home planet.

The photo caption reads:

"Rail enthusiasts walk along the 3/4 mile Ricker Farm Trail during a dedication ceremony in Lisbon on Wednesday. Work on the trail began one year ago and the trail head is located at the Lisbon Community School. The Ricker Farm Trail begins where the Papermill Trail ends, for a combined length of one and a half miles. Ricker Farm has been in the Ricker Family since 1860. Members of the family attended the ceremony with 96-year-old Alice Ricker cutting the ribbon. Plans are already in the works to continue the trail on both ends, said Justin Liudvinaitis, chair of Lisbon Trails."

As someone who has worked closely on"trail" issues for mountain biking access, I have seen first hand how this definition of trail has been redefined for the benefit of real estate developers and opportunists of all walks to suck up federal money for preserving nature and churn it into business for sand & gravel companies and their associated mafias of legal thievery. It has become a big joke, and the grant takers are truly rotten wolves with big capitalist sheep smiles on their faces as they rip down your favorite nature spot and pave a "trail" through it, all to get access to and permission to develop these areas in the first place. Add a trail, and all of a sudden you are eligible for federal funding for your go-nowhere cul-de-sac disconnected development of future disconnected Americans who haven't a clue growing up in some fantasy land isolated in a section of woods.

I wonder if they will someday name a development (oops, almost used the Olde American English 'neighborhood') after Ms. Ricker? Alice Ricker Way. I wonder if she really thought it would turn out that way? Developers really have a peculiar sense of humor... especially around the dinner table when they're serving glazed old lady.

Nobody seems to notice, or to care about, or to be able to stop, this outright fraud of man and nature enabled by a semantic metamorphosis, and popularized by hippie-do-gooders operating from the back pocket of Joe Steamshovel.

Can't you see what they are doing to our world, to our lives, re-defining the meaning of what was once a secluded dirt shortcut through a wooded area? Have you not seen the condos stacked three-deep in the woods behind everybody's back yards? No, those weren't always there.

This is worse than a dude in a suit who at least makes no pretenses about wanting to eat you for dinner. Are we headed for a pre-corrupted, out-of-the-box future government of Ecocrats, Republi-Greens and Hipsterpendents? Or are we already there?

Think higher, Portland!

A Ritz Carlton erects into the fog in City Center, White Plains.

White Plains, NY - They have a Wal-Mart here, right in the city center - with the parking ABOVE the building! Now that's intelligent land uses that corrupt little Peetown could take a lead from.

Sure go ahead and shit on Wal-Mart, while Cabela's in Scarborough and others strip down our oxygen-producing, CO2-reducing evergreens, and maples, and birches and spruce... Particle pollution reports in mid-winter? People are in such denial about their surroundings: because they choose to continue to exploit for their own greed, or under the excuse of "Igottaffedmyfamily!" Cop outs, all of you. No excuses. Whatsoever.

Developers must love it because they can get away with mao-wing down lumber to sell, while installing inexpensive tarmac to accommodate their customers. This is because it's cheaper to build than a parking garage above a store, that's for sure. But who's letting businesses get away with this? At whose expense quality-of-life-wise? You got it! Our city planners in Greater Peetown are selling us all up the river, and urinating on our heads as we float by! And, LAUGHING all the way to the bank, I suspect. Wonder where all that cost-cutting savings goes?

These companies ought to be paying for the cost of creating environmentally-sound development, not our children's lungs, in a state with one of the highest rates of asthma and lowest air qualities in the nation.

Solutions are all around us, but our population for the most part is blind, and does anybody take a look around past the Kittery toll booth? Don't let the travesty called Massachusetts get in your way of looking further into this country and elsewhere (not that it's all any better, just parts). And don't rely on your elected and appointed officials to do the right thing. You see the results of this thus far, right?

It's all about money, isn't it? Why is not the Maine Mall multi-level like any other intelligent mall development in an era of "sprawl"? And we accept this? Why is Target not on Level 2? Circuit City? Who benefits from this land misuse?

Oooooo! Big Bad Wal-Mart: actually helping our environment with sensible land use in White Plains. Hey, no uglier than the parking behemoth going up about six feet from the road and a step away from the "new" waterfront at Fore & India streets.

City Council sold out Portland decades ago when perhaps its connections to personal business interests in a cow pasture in SoPo were chosen over Riverside or elsewhere to build the Maine Mall (thanks so much J. Donald MacWilliams and crew wherever you are - or was he the only dissenting voice on this? Can anyone refresh me on this one?). What a door-opener for more of the same, and look at the crappy environment we live in. It's pathetic. Travel to a real city with some level of grace and class and you tell me. Or do you even notice it any more? "Well, compared to where I come from, and I lived in Bauuultimore..." Ugh.

Years ago I spoke to a particular city councilor about building a network of walkways a la Minneapolis to encourage commerce in a frozen economy, this was poo-pooed (pun intended and you know who you are) as "unfeasible". Yet, when Owen Wells or Maine Med wants to put a walkway over a street, gee all of a sudden it's soooo do-able! Hmmm.... I smell skunkie!

Take back your city and state people, because the Massholes and then some are arriving in droves and they don't seem to care much for trees and such, as they continue to breed like rats and run around exclaiming "Oh, that's cheap!" at supermarkets and real estate offices. Ya, cheap to THEIR bank accounts, and incomes that don't exist in this governor-less state. They used to just stay for a few weeks in summer, piss and boat around Sebago, dump their trash in the woods, laugh at us with condescension, and go home. Now they're here year-round! And then they wonder why nobody likes them. From the looks of it down here in New York, they don't like them either.

Truly, shame on all those who have sold out and continue to sell out our once-beautiful city and region while making in excess of 100-grand a year while all our young people struggle for rent money! Portland is a shanty town if you look around the nation and world at real cities and towns. Portland is a joke, people! And all you newcomers' love affair will soon end when the realities of the tax schemers begin to sink in, and your stocks continue to sink down. You've been had, folks. Sucked in with the appearance of a cutesy-town, living in a La-La Land while young men and women die in the Middle East protecting your right to rape the environment and billow blackness into baby lungs. And while elderly and lower-income residents are strained like spaghetti and forced out of their homes by tax and food rates among others. Sick. Sick. Sick.

A Building Grows In Portland