Another pile of my brothers, over at Elk Falls, just got told to, "Fuck off! We don't need you assholes no more," by their bosses. If I am still keeping count, and keeping count is getting easier and easier every year, that leaves 29 mills operating on the coast. There will probably be less than two dozen sawmills still sharpening their saws by year end. It is a motherfucker of a situation. Those of us who remain feel like the last of the West Coast Whalers, scanning the horizon for something to kill, but seeing only the approach of bad weather and David Suzuki.
Oh well - the forest industry's loss is the dope industry's gain.
5 comments:
I am an ex steelworker and an ex auto worker. It worked out just fine. Then again I was young. The woman who cleans my teeth is from Toledo, Ohio. Her husband was third generation at Jeep. When he lost his job they cried all of the way to California. Now they think it was the best thing that ever happened to them. Then again, I'd prefer to make my own life transforming decisions rather than have them made for me by some asshole I'll never meet. I agree with the commenter who liked the pictures you've been posting. Who are the ladies with the numbered hats? I liked the tight rope walking logger. The ladies are probably something totally Canadian, that only an idiot, not only from the States, but from California, wouldn't know about. Yeah well. I'd be an ex coal miner if I could have found a mine to get laid off from.
Whether you are a faller who cannot make his truck payments any more or a mill owner wondering what his ex-wife is going to make of the news he cannot afford to send his overfed kids to the quaint fascist school in Europe you fell in love with when you visited Bitburg a couple summers ago after all, you have to roll with the punches.
The ladies with the numbers on their hats picture was taken at last year's Royal Ascot meeting in Windsor. I'm not sure but I think they are promoting Britain's lottery.
Don't mean to split hairs but I do not want to offend any loggers: the tight rope walking logger is in fact a boomman risking his life by balancing himself on a tugboat's tow rope. Boommen are some of the most agile drunks on Earth. That photo was discovered in the Archives of Canada.
Boomman. Sorry. All of you forestry industry guys are just 'loggers' to us tree huggers. Sometimes rolling with the punches is not so easy if they've got you pinned to the ground and they're mass stomping you. That's what being in Detroit felt like. It was a city of 2 million, now half a million. Even the suburbs are abandoned. I had a few talks with the late Judi Bari, the IWW and Earth Firster. She was an environmentalist, but she was not anti-logging. She was supporting radical reform of the industry. She wrote a pretty good song about a logger who didn't want to work in a bed and breakfast or a winery. You're lucky the dope industry is relatively relaxed in BC. Around here, in the woods around here, it's run by Mexican gangs. They've been bringing in illegal aliens, and paying them shit. Driving out the old hippy growers at gun point, and running meth labs alongside their growing operations. Ugly shit. On the other hand, it was ugly to watch the North Coast hippies turn racist. Everything was beautiful so long as it was 'our kind of people'. The world is a funny old place. Keep writing brother.
Been a while since I have seen Judi Bari's name. Her heart was in the right place - the government always hates that.
Our dope industry has its inter-racial flashpoints as well. We have only just begun shipping in tens of thousands of Mexican farm labourers. It will be interesting to see how they fit into the Big Picture.
jon--
Has it really gotten so bad.
Heckfire - if I could move to, say, Redway (at least the Redway of my mind and long ago visits) I'd do it in a second.
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