SYNOPSIS
A collage of knowledge, experience, and wisdom that was absorbed throughout
the author’s 40-year career with Forestry in California. The author
shows how citizens, especially those living in rural areas, are affected
by the often-blundered decisions of a non-elected Fourth Branch of government
that resides over the land. These decisions are meant to be positive,
but they are made without careful study or expert testimony being reviewed.
Consequences of these decisions include:
Hundreds of miles of streams being damaged through stream cleaning projects;
a man fined $3500 for moving tadpoles from his backyard pond; the northern
spotted owl fiasco hurting rural communities; a man owing $750 in fees
to move a few dead logs off his own land; four firefighters dying as a
result of being refused access to water from a river inhabited by protected
fish.
These are just small portions of what you will learn from reading the
pages of Rest In Peace Rural America.
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AUTHOR BIO
Born October 27, 1943 in Willits, CA, the author has spent his life
living and working in rural northern California. School and family activities
provided a good life. His folks worked hard to provide a middle class
life style and promoted athletic and outdoor activities with friends.
At an early age if forced to choose between fishing and going to a matinee,
he chose fishing and proceeded to learn every creek in the Willits Little
Lake Valley and beyond.
Graduating from Willits High in 1961, he went to Humboldt State College
in Arcata, CA, on scholarship, majoring in Forest Management. The author
learned about the real world during this period. His father lost his job
of 40 years and became disabled after a fall during his sophomore year
of college. Money became very tight. Scratching out small scholarships,
working jobs, one friend-of-the-family loan, and a committed mother resulted
in a college degree in January of 1966.
While some guilt is still felt, classification of 1Y due to bad eyes
on draft papers meant no Viet Nam for the author.
Next came 29 years as a private industry forester for the Crawford
Lumber Company sold to Georgia Pacific Corporation to spin-off Louisiana
Pacific Corporation. The job was a good one, and the author was able to
experience and learn things most foresters and rural folks never experience
and learn. Working hard and directly confronting problems moved the author
into higher management levels, but being direct could have been a factor
in being let go when middle management purge occurred in 1995.
As a consultant forester, the author was able to further his knowledge
of forestry and the rural situation. Having been raised, lived, and worked
in Rural America, being married since 1971, raising four kids, having
gone through some tough times, and having confronted inappropriate actions
and thinking, the author has developed a simple, real world way to describe
and fight to keep the good things that are unjustifiably being taken away. |
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