Are you watching Ken Burns’ National Parks documentary on PBS?<\/p>\n
Not sure I can recommend it.\u00c2\u00a0 Having established his formula, Mr. Burns continues to repeat it.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s got old images and experts you’ve never heard of.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s so busy being exhaustive, so busy getting it right, that sometimes it seems he’s completely forgotten about the audience.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the first rule of entertainment, you’ve got to keep the audience enthralled.\u00c2\u00a0 If people change the channel, get up and walk out, then you’ve screwed up.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t have to play to the lowest common denominator, but you must stir something inside in the viewer, stimulate and manipulate him to the point where he looks forward to experiencing your art.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the mark of a good book, it calls out to you from the nightstand.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t wait to get home and read it.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas this National Parks show sometimes seems like a chore.<\/p>\n
But it does have some stars.<\/p>\n
There’s Teddy Roosevelt, a larger than life President who’s shrunk a century on.\u00c2\u00a0 A walking contradiction, a conservationist who lived to kill, TR was the anti-Obama.\u00c2\u00a0 He didn’t care what Congress said, he kept establishing national monuments.<\/p>\n
And then there’s Teddy’s new buddy, John Muir.<\/p>\n
Touring the country, going 14,000 miles in eight weeks, Teddy sends Mr. Muir a mash note.\u00c2\u00a0 Tells him he wants to experience Yosemite with him, and only him.<\/p>\n
Alas, this proves untrue.\u00c2\u00a0 Muir spiffs himself up, buys a brand new suit, but he’s just a cog in the entourage.\u00c2\u00a0 Until they get to the Mariposa Grove, where TR stiffs his handlers and those throwing a party in his honor to sleep under the giant redwoods with the founder of the Sierra Club.<\/p>\n
They wagon it up to Glacier Point, overlook the Yosemite Valley sans handlers and onlookers, even get caught in a freak snowstorm, which Teddy considers to be such an exquisite experience that he calls it the best night of his life.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve been caught out at night in a snowstorm, a regular camper would find it depressing.\u00c2\u00a0 But spending most of his time in D.C., TR is thrilled.<\/p>\n
Teddy and John maintain a friendship.\u00c2\u00a0 Akin to that one between Elton John and Ryan White.\u00c2\u00a0 They come from different worlds, but they’re buddies.\u00c2\u00a0 But Teddy ultimately lets John down, he doesn’t prevent the damming of the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Northern Yosemite, to provide water for San Francisco.<\/p>\n
Progress.\u00c2\u00a0 It can’t be stopped.\u00c2\u00a0 Or can it?<\/p>\n
Well, not exactly progress.\u00c2\u00a0 Muir referenced the dollars.\u00c2\u00a0 He didn’t trust corporations.\u00c2\u00a0 He felt they’d rape any land in pursuit of profits. Kind of like Niagara Falls.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody’s goal was to prevent another Niagara, where privateers dunned tourists, ripped them off and established scabs on the landscape.<\/p>\n
But it was not only Niagara.\u00c2\u00a0 Arizona wanted to exploit the Grand Canyon.\u00c2\u00a0 Yup, for mining, for tourism.\u00c2\u00a0 When TR made it a National Monument, the state freaked out.\u00c2\u00a0 But as Stewart Udall says on screen, you wouldn’t find an Arizona citizen today who wouldn’t be in agreement with TR.<\/p>\n
Point being, do you let businessmen have their way, is that the best way to serve Americans and the land they live upon?<\/p>\n
Somehow this has become the mantra of the country.\u00c2\u00a0 We need fewer regulations, business is self-regulating.\u00c2\u00a0 But this documentary is testimony to the opposite.\u00c2\u00a0 Sheepherders wanted to utilize the Yosemite Valley, the buffalo was almost extinct, killed for hides and heads.\u00c2\u00a0 Feathers and complete birds became fashionable in hats and the flying creatures in the Everglades almost went extinct. Eventually the government protected them too.<\/p>\n
To go to Hetch Hetchy today is heartbreaking.\u00c2\u00a0 The valley is under two hundred feet of water.\u00c2\u00a0 Why?\u00c2\u00a0 Progress.\u00c2\u00a0 A century later you become an instant environmentalist, this dam needs to be torn down.\u00c2\u00a0 We can get water elsewhere, but we can’t replicate this natural wonder.<\/p>\n
This is one of the few battles John Muir lost.\u00c2\u00a0 He almost single-handedly started the conservation movement.\u00c2\u00a0 An itinerant Scotsman, he fell in love with the landscape, eventually married a rich woman, but she set him free to pursue his dream, he was only happy in the mountains.\u00c2\u00a0 He wrote about his experiences, his dreams, and inspired the public.\u00c2\u00a0 To come see for themselves and to take his point of view.\u00c2\u00a0 He didn’t do it for the money, but for the soul.<\/p>\n
Landscapes inspire.\u00c2\u00a0 As does music.<\/p>\n
I don’t want to hear one more person talk about P2P, that they’re being ripped off.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re looking at it from the wrong perspective. Instead of worrying about their pocketbook, let’s start thinking about the listeners.\u00c2\u00a0 Why establish a wall between this elixir and the hoi polloi.\u00c2\u00a0 Just so corporations and stars can get rich?\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Technology provides a medium for all to have access to music.\u00c2\u00a0 This is what corporations and so-called artists are fighting.\u00c2\u00a0 Let’s work from the reverse.\u00c2\u00a0 How do we make music accessible to all.\u00c2\u00a0 Seeing that that makes us a richer society, and that by having everybody infected by sound money ends up raining down anyway.<\/p>\n
John Muir was right.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to be suspicious of those with dollars.\u00c2\u00a0 Left alone, they’ll ruin everything.<\/p>\n
The RIAA ruined lives, forced people to drop out of college to pay their outrageous fines.<\/p>\n
Lily Allen frolics in Mediterranean resorts while listeners live a life of drudgery in the equivalent of mines.\u00c2\u00a0 But the audience must be bled dry to support an industry that refuses to acknowledge technology.<\/p>\n
But throngs of those serving wrong are no match for one serving right.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, John Muir didn’t win them all, but he won many more than one.\u00c2\u00a0 The British government, the French, will never succeed against those fighting for access to all.\u00c2\u00a0 Just one person can establish a P2P site.\u00c2\u00a0 You can drive trading further underground, but you can’t eradicate it.<\/p>\n
New models are the future.\u00c2\u00a0 Streaming of all to many.<\/p>\n
Let the past be prologue.\u00c2\u00a0 Fight for what’s right, not what’s expedient.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re a richer country when everybody is included, when there’s not a separate class keeping desirables for themselves, throwing crumbs to the lower classes when time sees fit.<\/p>\n
Music has been Niagara.\u00c2\u00a0 It needs to be Yosemite.\u00c2\u00a0 Armed with computers the public is protesting just like John Muir.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re right.<\/p>\n
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