by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster
John Fund never disappoints me. In this instance he states that the National
Park Service was founded “Last week,” meaning in 1920. But the founding date was August 26,
1916. Fund then defends John Muir, an
action with which I agree as I was aware after dodging service in the Civil War
in Canada, he eventually discovered First Nations people were like everyone
else.
Certainly, Muir would have objected to burning out the Miwuk,
the First Nation people of Yosemite, in 1869, much less when the National
Park Service burned out the last Miwuk living there, Jay Johnson, in 1969. The Sierra Club said nothing.
I interviewed Johnson at his home in 2017. That is what he said, and he was there.
The National Park Service also continues to stall on the
decision the Miwuk be allowed to have land for their use in Yosemite
Valley. Last time, the NPS demand was
that the Miwuk conform with building codes.
How do you do that when the whole point is recreating their living
heritage? I follow these amazing
idiocies on our newsletter, IMAGE.
Was Muir appropriate on all issues? No. But he would have gotten that one
right. This raised the question of how
we identify those who should be reassessed.
We need to add the National Park Service as well as the
psychopath who founded the government agency, Stephen T. Mather. Mather represents a fond ideal for elites as
he never earned an honest dollar in his life and managed, with much assistance,
a century long cover-up. Mather was the
consummate self-dealer, first in the private sector then moving
up to Federal. Do you imagine the Sierra
Club was unaware of the facts? Not
credible.
Did the National Park Service object to the taking of the
Hetch Hetchy? Nope.
A read of the books
written by former rangers reveals much disenchantment, and to this we must add
a dialog on how to allow people to apply proven approaches to preserving the
environment while making our wild places visible to millions. Do you think government should be
involved? I vote NO.
Note there was no objection voiced by the Sierra Club
in 1969, either; Muir died in 1914.
Fund’s article was, as usual, filled with evasions and quotes
from others since he really knows little about anything. His career in journalism came via hiring to
limit and manicure what we think. This
was noted during his internship at Evans and Novak in 1983. They decided he was perfect for the Wall
Street Journal.
The assertion Muir, an outspoken Preservationist, ‘founded’
the Sierra Club is a fiction marketed by the people who carefully hide
behind the scenes, an early chapter on how the Elites manage what we know. It
was their families who were responsible for incorporating the Sierra Club
in 1892. Charter
Members No, it was never
intended to be a club for hiking. And
those early High Trips were an extension of the High Life those people have
grown accustomed to after raping the environment in California to extract their
fortunes.
Muir was a Preservationist; most of the founding members of
the Sierra Club were Conservationists.
These same people, today, are the elitists who buy NeoCons
like John Fund.
The
Sierra Club persuaded Muir to become the President but he occupied the office;
others controlled the operations. The
organization was started to ensure real estate interests and the emerging
elites, descended from people Muir despised, mentioned in the Fund article as,
“The white population, the people who were invading — the
frontier types, the miners — he thought they were uncouth, savage, brutal,
dirty, given over to alcohol. His (Muir’s) writings are full of those
descriptions.”
This characterization was mostly
accurate. But those being described,
most of them white, are the progenitors of the elite’s of San Francisco
today. Pelosi, Brown, Getty and Newsom
are just four of their descendants.
Where did you imagine the ‘elites’
came from? They learned their ethics and
humanity from their parents, who had thoroughly demonstrated their values.
It is not the ordinary white
population who came up with the idea of enticing Muir to head up the Sierra
Club, an earlier generation of the uncouth named handled that; their
motivation was to either shut Muir up, or, get him to support obtaining the
Hetch Hetchy Valley as a water supply for San Francisco. Failing that, they needed to control him
while this was handled.
When the time came, and they knew it
would, Muir needed to trust them. This
worked perfectly, they had been glamping together for years.
The short story goes like this:
The San Francisco Earthquake and Fire
takes place on April 18, 1906. Due to
the incompetence of these same elites, the first disaster gains in magnitude
because no thought has been expended on preparing for any disaster at all. The dumb idea of using dynamite to blow up
buildings, spreading the fire is carried out with elite hires in charge.
To date, no one knows how many people
died of the earthquake, an act of nature; and how many died of elite
incompetence.
The first thought in the minds of the
elites was not relief for those left without food or housing, but, “Hey! Now we’ll have the political clout to get the
Hetch Hetchy!”
Muir had previously resisted the
attempts of Gifford
Pinchot, the first head of the Division
of Forestry, appointed by President William McKinley, in 1898, to
persuade him to the position of Conservationist, meaning, “we keep it until
we want to use it, and sooner rather than later.” Muir would always be a Preservationist,
meaning, “We leave it as God made it.
Look and leave.” There are
longer definitions but those will do for now.
Pinchot’s family was in the lumber
business.
Note that the Sierra Club
began describing Muir as a ‘Conservationist’ as soon as he was safely dead in
December 1914, and the campaign to grab Hetch Hetchy barely waited until the
fires had burned down in San Francisco.
Muir was galvanized into action. He lectured, wrote letters, argued, and did
all in his power to stop the theft of Hetch Hetchy.
But the elites were ready; the Sierra
Club had been founded for this moment in time.
Muir spoke to true believers, the public,
and small groups across the country. One
man talking, no major media. But the
decision hinged on the coming election for President. Woodrow Wilson had promised to give San
Francisco the Hetch Hetchy – if he won.
The elites of California delivered
the state for Wilson.
My grandfather, Arthur C. Pillsbury,
was a Preservationist. He first met Muir
on board the Harrison Expedition in port in late 1899 and took a photo of Muir.
This was published the next year, credit
to Pillsbury, in Camera Craft,
a journal on photography launched in early 1900.
The two shared a passion for Yosemite
and for the flowers. In 1909 Pillsbury
went into rapid action mode and made the first nature movie; he began showing
it to groups in Yosemite by 1910.
Pillsbury offered to make copies for Muir to use with his lectures to
bring in larger audiences. But movies
were not yet respectable. William Colby,
executive director for the Sierra Club and Muir’s ‘assistant’, thought it
unwise to use movies. He was also unenthusiastic
about having Pillsbury’s photos used in Muir’s upcoming book. Muir held firm on this, however. Pillsbury’s photos were used for, “The
Yosemite.”
A wonderful gift had been arranged
for Muir; in honor of the insights and inspiration he had provided. An anonymous benefactor had arranged a trip
for Muir; it was like a dream come true for John Muir. The Benefactor, who insisted on remaining
anonymous, had planned a trip for him first to South America for a journey up
the Amazon, and then on to Africa. These
were places he had wanted to see all his life.
And if that did not kill him, well it would be too late to stop
them. Muir was right that the Sierra
Club had all well in hand, but he was wrong about their plans.
The elites were salivating over the
idea of municipal water and private electric power galore and the money that
would flow into their coffers from taxes, power, and water. And all it took was destroying the Hetch
Hetchy Valley, the other Yosemite within the National Park.
Muir took ship in Brooklyn, NY Leaving in August 1911, effectively cutting off all
communications on what was happening at home in America. When Muir stepped off the ship on March
27, 1912, he learned the Hetch Hetchy had been lost.
Muir died in a Los Angeles hospital
on December 24, 1914, his heart broken.
Muir’s memoirs of his trip would not
be published for decades, and The Yosemite would not be republished for
a half century. And when it was, the
Pillsbury photos were not included.
Pillsbury had demonstrated the power
of film and the elites had experienced the impact. He was a problem they knew they would have to
eliminate.
The effectiveness of film was proved
by Pillsbury in 1912 when he showed his newly invented and filmed lapse-time
film of wildflowers. From seed to death, the gathered Superintendents of
all the National Parks viewed this at their annual conference, that year held
in October. They immediately voted to
stop mowing the meadows for fodder for their horses. Seeing the film persuaded them.
The National
Press Club viewed one of Pillsbury’s films in October of 1915.
By 1919 Pillsbury Picture Company
nature films had been licensed for global distribution by Pathé, Universal and
Paramount. Motion pictures had proved
their power. In 1926 he was asked to
make a presentation to then President
Calvin Coolidge and 70 of his closest friends at the Willard Hotel banquet
room.
But this article is not about dumping
icons; it is about being more discerning about which icons should be dumped,
and why.
Today we are divided Left and Right
but the squirrely things we are encouraged to argue about are intended to keep
us busy fighting each other and ignoring the elites who continue to reduce us further
into absolute serfdom.
Therefore, you need to take a hard
look at what you think you know and revise your assessments. Fund’s article artfully evaded the real
issue, and that is what you should remember.
Fund always injects more issues to divide; never mentioning the truths
which bring us together. That is his
job. Always note the difference between
what people and ‘organizations’ say – and what they do. It matters.
