Monorail, Airplane Noise and Geese

We Voted for the Monorail

Airport Noise is Too Much

What is it going to take for the Port of Seattle, the FAA and elected officials of our government to realize that we on Beacon Hill have had enough airport noise coming from SeaTac? We have been participating in the Part 150 study, have polled our neighbors, have written countless letters, organized petition-signing and waved our signs in your faces for years. WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH! Just about every day 220 large commercial planes fly over our community—this disturbs our thoughts, our sleep, our conversations, our play and our work, not to mention the long-term health effects from having this much noise and pollution dumped on us daily. It's time for the decision-makers in this region to get to it. The status quo is just not going to cut it and we want this problem resolved now!! How long do you think this community will be willing to accept the floatplanes, Lear jets, helicopters and military jets from KCIA; the various planes coming from Renton and the earlier problem described with SeaTac flights? We're tired of this degrading situation and it's time for a change! NOW! The various solutions have been described hundreds of times and it's time to use some of them—nightime curfews, steeper landings and take-offs, dispersion of flights and perhaps finding an alternative airport like the McCord Air Force base for a longer-term solution when we decide that bombing Iraq gets boring. And, for God's sake, can we please can the Blue Angels? That's just adding insult to injury!

People in the rest of Seattle. If you have a chance to speak to anyone at the Port, FAA or elected officials, please speak out on our behalf. This is an emergency situation and if you don't believe me, please come to Jefferson Park sometime and experience what everyday life is like here.

Albert Kaufman

Birds That Poop Should be Killed

Congratulations are due the city of Seattle as we reach a new level of cool, mechanical barbarity in our quest to remove annoyances from our busy lives. The killing of 1,500 Canadian geese, soon to be performed by well trained federal agents, logically follows in a society interested in life that's less of a nuisance and more in our image.

This is, after all, Our world. We run and manage it. I've heard people say that we can grow by being exposed to diversity, but let me tell you, we shouldn't have to put up with too much irritation. Gypsies and minorities irritate me also, and maybe they should be shipped out to camps! Doesn't the Bible say that we have dominion over the earth? When I look at all that we've created I have to wonder if we are not the master race.

What's interesting to me is that, in the ten years that I've been running around Greenlake, picking up trash and trying the beautify the place, the human detritus of paper and plastic we nonsensically feel we have the right to discard is far more of an irritant to me than goose droppings.

I have to admit that all summer long at Greenlake people are to some extent inconvenienced y the geese. What I've witnessed, however, is that these people use a little common sense. If they see goose droppings, they don't put their blanket there. Somehow this seems to work. People sunbathe all around the lake. I'd like to think that this has something to do with a raised consciousness that's willing to share the planet with other life forms.

The question I have for you, the reader, is what do you gain when you share the planet? And what do you lose when we bulldoze the planet into our image? The crying sound from a V formation of geese is a moving experience for most people. And regularly, as I jog around Greenlake, I se parents stopping baby carriages to show their children these calm, beautiful animals. I wish I was referring to human beings but I'm really referring to the Canadian geese. Unlike the dogs in my neighborhood who occasionally act as neurotic as their owners, and who take impressive dumps wherever they wish, geese are mild mannered creatures who emanate a certain dignity.

I hear complaints from people about robins waking them up at 4 in the morning. They should be killed. Swallows twist like dancers after insects and poop on cars where I live. They should be killed. Widgeons are a species of duck that regularly migrate into the Greenlake area, spending about 6 months there. They graze on the grass in their large duck herds and poop on the grass. They should be killed. Merganser ducks also migrate into Greenlake in late fall and then spend approximately six months diving for and dining on fish. They poop in the lake. They should be killed. Lots of beautiful cormorants sleep in poplar trees along the ship canal west of Fremont. They poop on the trails underneath that people walk on regularly. They should be killed.

The Canadian geese will go because killing other life forms to create a sanitized world has now become accepted policy.

Greg Wilson

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