I recently came across a hot pink flyer that had been inserted into the Channel Town Press, the lower Skagit Valley's weekly newspaper. It was authored, supposedly, by local scribe and psychic cosmonaut Tom Robbins, and there are just enough hints within the text for me to believe it's true. (La Conner is, BTW, a smallish hamlet in the Skagit Valley where Robbins has lived for decades.)
Read on....
“The Selling Out of La Conner
La Conner is not growing. It’s being grown. Grown artificially and needlessly, without any vision, wisdom or imagination.
Here’s a question for those local residents who support this imposed urbanization. Are you proud that a relaxed rural village that once was something genuinely special; that had character, individuality, historic charm, natural beauty, artistic temperament, community spirit, and yes, soul, is being systematically turned into a replica of downtown Kirkland, just another one of those sterile dime-a-dozen shopping destinations (all tootered-up and puckey-wucked) that dot the coast from White Rock, B.C. to the Mexican border?
Are you proud that you’re being manipulated and played for suckers by predatory developers and their sweethearts in government? Are you proud to meekly surrender a nourishing and authentic quality of life – and that of your neighbors and descendants – so that a handful of entrepreneurs can fatten their wallets at your expense?
Are you proud that your mayor and his cronies appear poised to increase our population by 20 to 50 per cent (think about that the next time you’re stuck in line at the post office) with no regard for the impact that explosion will have on infrastructure, traffic, crime, health, classrooms, privacy, pollution, noise, tradition, and your personal taxes. (In his scholarly book Better Not Bigger, Eben Fodor cites a plethora of facts and figures that demonstrate when small towns act to broaden their tax base their financial problems actually dramatically increase. One result is higher taxes.)
If you believe this kind of suffocating growth is “progress,” we have some Enron shares we’d be happy to sell you.
Save La Conner’s Soul –
Tom Robbins,
secretary/treasurer”
PS. These are photos I took at a Robbins reading of "Villa Incognito" at the UW's Kane Hall a few years back....
tom robbins
1 comment:
viva tom!!
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