Disclaimer
PRESS RELEASE TO THE
MEDIA, JANUARY 25, 2003; WRITTEN AFTER THE RELEASE OF 200 BABY SEALS ONTO
A STATE LANDFILL
Due to the recent activities
of semi-militant environmentalist groups, the authors of Our Land, Our
Literature, a website dedicated to academic research, have decided to
distance themselves from such mischievous activity. We are in no way related
to these miscreants, and wash our hands of their actions.
The original plan for the project
had been to create a resource people could turn to when they needed useful
information on Indiana writers, the environment, or both. Instigating
guerilla assaults on industrial sites was never our intention, and it’s
hardly fair for the public to expect us to take the blame for the acts
of a few rogue individuals. We don’t condone these actions, nor
have we ever.
While certain sick individuals
might have found jamming potatoes into the tailpipes of three hundred
vehicles parked in the lot of a nuclear power to be amusing, we refuse
to take a stance on it. We are not a political entity, nor do we have
any desire to be.
We appreciate that the media
is looking for someone to blame, but the finger of accusation should be
directed towards the persons who derailed a freight train loaded with
toxic waste rather than a group of students who quietly gathered and disseminated
information in hopes of creating an academic resource.
Furthermore, there has never
been any indication of a direct link between these activists and our site.
Certainly some of them have run into it during their research, but you
can’t hold us accountable for that anymore than you can hold a search
engine responsible for sending them to us. The public is so desperate
for someone to lock away in order to protect themselves against another
week long power outage that they’re attacking the innocent.
Perhaps the questions that
should be asked sound more like this: What are they fighting for? Why
are they fighting? No reasonable individual would paintball the windows
of the home of Mike Powers, head of the Indiana Logger’s Association,
after reading an article about the life of George Eggleston. Whatever
is inspiring them, it must be something else, something moving enough
for them to find the time and energy to herd 200 baby seals into one place.
We submit, though this is
strictly speculation, that they have been moved by the same thing that
has touched the hearts of Environmentalists world wide, regardless how
they execute these beliefs. It is the same thing our students felt when
they saw the Indiana Dunes for the first time, watched the sandhill cranes
settle dance in a field under the full moon, or caught a glimpse of clean,
untouched forest.
* * *
Their minds quiet. Their breath
slows. Their jaw drops, enough to make the words they whisper almost audible:
“I didn’t know
it could be like this.”
by Alex Mattingly
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