Posted by John Nichols on August 17, 2003 at 18:47:19 from 165.91.199.202 user Mcneacail.
In Reply to: Re: Conservation of Environment : Another tack posted by Dan Lind on August 16, 2003 at 00:38:30:
Times Past:
It is very easy to fall into the habit of thinking that people's actions in the past should be measured against our modern standards, when in reality they were judged acceptable at the time. Here I am not thinking of moral human things but actions against the environment.
It is only in the 1960's that Diane Fossey (??) argued in the National Geographic that we should not hunt Gorilla's or preserve their hands as waiting room objects de art. I heard on an NPR radio show (yesterday) that New Orleans had a very popular downtown Sunday market in the 1930's that sold amoungst other things parrots and monkeys. The 1930's Northern Yankees objected not to the markets themselves or what they sold but that it was held on Sunday..................... Perth in Western Australia is still a dead place on Sundays.
AR at least sent the monkey to Zoo for the holidays, and we would not have the Missee Lee story without the monkey. We could not let poor seamenship sink the boat now could we................................ Heaven forbid that horror. Anyway we had had that story in SD.
(For the kind soul who said I would love the ML story if I reread it, you are correct, although I fail to believe that CF could not have navigated the boat thru the stream on his own.)
AR's characters cleaned up after themselves, and they basically followed reasonalbe wood craft skills which is a lot more than one can say of some modern campers.
My point is simple, we may never fully agree with AR and we can debate the minute details for years, but at least we are no worse of in our lives for AR having written the stories.
PS: Tent pegs do not work in sand - having camped in sand one uses sand or rocks to hold the side of the tent out, the last time I did that it rained all night and we got soaked and the time before we got eaten by sand flies. Unless the tent pegs are car axles - which are a bit heavy to carry.
John