Dear HCN,


I just received your latest edition of HCN and couldn't get the Burma Shave lines out of my head. I think bringing information like this up about our checkered history is important (HCN, 10/23/00: Dear Friends). A quick, easy-to-read sign is an innovative way to get the information across. The hard-hitting reporting that you all do with today's misdeeds is also important. I enjoy reading HCN, and since we don't get anything like this in our local papers, it's a great source of information.


Lately, my wife and partner has been battling politicians, grazers, snowmobilers, loggers, fed-haters, and just plain uninformed people with setting out management plans for the Little Pend Oreille National Wildlife Refuge as mandated by the 1997 Refuge Act. (By the way, Slade Gorton didn't help the situation at all. George Nethercutt was a great hindrance and has threatened to cut funding for refuges. Both voted strongly for the 1997 act. I don't understand where they are coming from, but I've learned that they are just being politicians ... talking out of both sides of their mouths.) I've tried to stay out of the fray, since I tend to get into trouble by acting on emotion. But emotion drove me nuts yesterday until I wrote this little poem down. I thought I would pass it along.

They came and plowed and grazed and drilled
It happened, all rivers were filled
With tons of silt and poison and manure
It persists, how can we endure?

I probably broke some sort of poetic rules, but I feel better now. Thanks. Bruce Kessler
Colville, Washington