Environmental Assessment: Asian Longhorn Beetle: Bethel Ohio

To anyone interested in this fight -- yes, that should be you, if  it isn't -- the Environmental assessment has been prepared, and the officals want to hear from you. They are seeking opinions from the public. Please read the report thoroughly -- it will take a while and multiple readings -- before deciding your stand. But please, do take a stand. Do make your voice heard. The report can be read here: http://www.bethelalb.com/ALB-OH-ClermontCounty-2012-EA.pdf

Now, they are not promising that they will act on what people tell them. They are a government organization which means essentially that they will infer everything and promise nothing. But they are asking for opinions. Let's give them that much.

This is important to everyone, although it is most important to the people of Bethel. It is their trees that are being eradicated. (Not the beetle.) It is their properties being destroyed, it is their countryside being laid bare for flooding and wind erosion. It is their small hometown being turned into a hot spot.

The numbers are hard to comprehend, but there are people gifted with the ability to put the concepts into words. Bill Skvarla, beetle activist, offers this example:  If the street tree in front of the Midway Theatre is the only tree in Bethel that has a beetle, every single healthy uninfested host tree in the entire Village will be destroyed according to USDA's EA-Alternative B.

Imagine that.
Imagine if your home town had to be denuded of all its tall shady trees because a tree in the town part of town had a problem. Would you like that? Would it seem reasonable to you to lose all the shade on your house because someone a half mile away had bug holes (and maybe-probably bugs) in one of their trees?

This is a problem for everyone, not just Bethel. If the government can do this to us, they can do it to others. Maybe the excuse won't be the Japanese long-haired beatles. Or green borers. But There will be something,
I promise you.

And you will have to suffer it, because allowing this without a fight sets a precedent. A precedent of government takeover of your private property. A government takeover of your community's landscape. A government takeover of your right to stand up and say "No!" to the chainsaws and bulldozers.

Read.
Research.
And speak out and speak up.



http://bugs.clermontcountyohio.gov/ALB.aspx;
http://www.agri.ohio.gov/TopNews/asianbeetle/;
http://clermont.osu.edu/news/asian-longhorned-beetle-found-in-ohio-osuextension-offers-information-hotline; the APHIS ALB plant pest page
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/plant_pest_info/asian_lhb/index.s
html.

Why not "Go Gently"?

More and more people are mindlessly chanting"Do not go gently" as if there is some special virtue in fighting on endlessly and senselessly, and futilely, as the end is, at some time, inevitable. It seems as if the only thing that matters is to fight, never mind quality of life or even if there's any reason to fight on.

Now, I am not advocating a 'not fight' attitude, either, although there are some who will read only that message in what I say. In fighting the good fight, who decides what is good? And does the 'good fight' refer to weapons, or attitude, or intelligence, or exactly what? What makes the fight good?

I'm not saying that anyone should just quit. No one should go without trying. But I am in no one's head or heart or soul -- I don't know what their struggles have been. I don't know that they didn't fight. There are reasons to lay down the weapons.

Is no one allowed to become fatigued? If someone chooses to go to sleep, are they chickening out by going gently? If one has struggled all life long, is it a requirement to continue fighting, even though the only fight is to keep fighting?

What of terminal illnesses? What if it's all been done, but the disease remains?

No one knows what anyone else's fight has been. They may think they do, they may have seen this or that part of the fight, but they don't know. They can't know. There's truth in the saying that we all die alone.

The "Do not go gently" has become so ingrained in our culture, that hospice workers and other death attendants have to advise people to tell their loved ones "It's okay. You can go." Without this permission from their loved ones, people will stay beyond their need. They will suffer. They will endure. They will fight on, although the time of succeeding has passed.

When I go, I hope that I do indeed go gently. I would not want my family, my children to have to watch my death throes, maybe for years and years. Maybe even my body living on long after my Presence has gone from it.

When that happens, this will be my prayer.

Now I lay me Down to Sleep.
A Peaceful Passing let me keep.
I will 'go gently into that good night'
I have finished with the fight.