Howard Copelan, Publisher
Howard Copelan, Publisher

Granted there is not much out here in the Great Basin but what we have we should be able keep.

Las Vegas wants our water, environmentalists want to keep us pristine and mustang people want to keep feral horses alive to experience the “WONDER OF THE WEST”.

Sometimes they get together over lattes at Starbucks and talk about how to run things way out in our middle of nowhere because obviously we are too dumb to think for ourselves.

We really wish they would bother someone else in some place else.

While there aren’t many of us in this Great Basin there are enough diverse opinions and enough well meaning people to come up with a pretty good policy for managing our own natural resources and preserving our own history.

And we are also polite about it.

We have covered enough town meetings to know that even after a long and spirited debate everyone will abide by the majority’s decision. There might even be a bit of hand shaking and perhaps a round of drinks for all sides.

We certainly know better than some old foggie in Portland who thinks preserving every foot fall of his great grand dad’s trek through the middle of our nowhere is a holy crusade. Or by a vegan tree hugger who believes that we all should go back to the new stone age. Or some yahoo in Beverly Hills who thinks its just swell that mustangs roam the range in their wild state as long as they are fed and watered by people because if they aren’t they will die.

We have a suggestion:

LOOK IN YOUR OWN BACK YARD!!

We don’t need saving, we are doing just fine.

Yes it is a little colder than say LA but not as cold as Boston. Both cities were also once pristine wilderness until someone decided to put a city on them.

Perhaps that is a good project for your leisure time.

Return Manhattan to its natural state.

Turn off Las Vegas so little children can see the stars at night.

Of course those projects would be very hard to do and might inconvenience your soy latte hours.

Fighting to keep the Great Basin “great” feels good and no one pays for it.

Except us.