The Blue Voice

Monday, November 07, 2005

Beauty is Not Optional

“The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with clasped hands that we might act with restraint, leaving room for the life that is destined to come.”
Terry Tempest Williams

This is a photo from a spectacular photgraphic collection on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by Subhankar Banerjee. Please look at these photos; send them to your friends. Send them to your members of Congress. They are sublimely beautiful glimpses of the place that Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska (an oil drilling enthusiast) calls empty and barren. Mountains, tundra, caribou herds, snow geese, lakes, autumn color, delicate spring flowers in the snow, native people and their age-old ways of life.

This beauty speaks for itself. Banerjee has brought things I will most likely never see close enough to deeply touch my soul. We cannot let this place be ruined. No amount of oil is worth this. The areas of oil extraction on the North Slope have had some 500 oil spills since that area was opened. Let's leave this one untouched.

Start here, World Without Borders, to read about Banerjee, then click on the photograph to go to the ANWR page. Many resources to access there, or if you are in a hurry, you can go directly to the photos here, Arctic Refuge Series.

"The Arctic Refuge belongs not to the multinational corporations and their minions in public office but in public trust for our inheritors; indeed, for all mankind around the world."

--Peter Matthiessen, from "In the Great Country," in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land

posted at 11:15:00 AM by marigolds2

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