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