Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Sustainable-yard committee offers sanity to code-enforcement decisions

http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2008/08/05/news/080608fzsustainableyards.txt
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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You grew up in the swamps of Louisiana and now you are a prairie nut?
What is so special about all this? Why not make everyone mow their grass until it turns brown in August?
I hope it rains this week and we get some quick growth and a chance to mow again. I love mowing. I have $1,700 invested in a mower. I have to use it, regardless of the price of gasoline.
That natural yard stuff is a commie plot! It ain't American!

August 7, 2008 at 12:44 AM
Anonymous said...

Aubunique knows his stuff. Did you follow his column in the 1970s into the 90s?
I worked for the game and fish commission during the time when he covered it for the newspapers.
I have seen him give thumbs up before a vote and he would always get at least 4 or 7 votes to pass or deny a plan.
He loses most everything when he speaks before the council and planning commission. But that is because they haven't read what he writes.
When he was in Little Rock writing for the Democrat and later for the Gazette before they combined, everyone interested in the outdoors paid attention to what he wrote.
He says he isn't a biologist but he pays attention to biologists and supports their recommendations, unless there is a reason that a scientist's opinion isn't the most important opinion on a given matter. He generally favored the biologists' opinions, but he listened to the hunters and fishermen and landowners and recognized the importance of their opinions when it really mattered. Probably prevented some really bad commission decisions over the years.

The only person more powerful at commission meetings during that time was Carol Griffee. She wrote a history of Game and Fish and was always right on in her analysis of what the commission did. She didn't get the automatic vote from some commissioners that Aubrey did, but a lot of them have said in later years that she was always right and that they were sorry for not voting as her opinion suggested.

August 16, 2008 at 11:59 PM
Anonymous said...

This sounds like these so-called journalists weren't following the journalists' mandate to be objective.
Are you saying this is acceptable behavior or is it undue influence based on the size of the ink barrel kept by the writer's publisher?

August 17, 2008 at 12:02 AM
Anonymous said...

What about Joe Mosby? Isn't he the only one still writing an outdoor column? He writes well and seldom offers a controversial opinion.

August 17, 2008 at 12:05 AM
Anonymous said...

Joe may have kept his career alive by staying out of the controversy and doing the objective reporting plus a little cheerleading for interesting things that people would agree are great!
Aubrey and Carol probably won't live to the age Joe has achieved already because they took on the big shots and won a few while losing more. I hope Joe will be writing for years to come.
By the way, Aubrey and Joe seemed to be best friends starting in the mid-70s when Joe took over the Gazette outdoor beat and Aubrey started an outdoor column in the Northwest Arkansas Times.
They occasionally traveled together and covered a lot of events that no one else covered in the early days of the B.A.S.S. and Bass'n Gal tournament circuits.
Griffee never touched that stuff. She was the pure environmental writer. She really was an impartial writer when it came to a news story. But, by doing investigative reporting and reporting more thoroughly than anyone else, she often influenced events. When the public gets all the information, government can't get away with much that isn't fair and equitable or scientifically correct.
I havent' watched lately, but a few months ago, Carol Griffee was still appearing on a statewide government-discussion show with a panel of journalists. Check channel 13 this morning to see whether she might be on TV still. Her comments are based on knowledge-based opinion, not on prejudicde or assumptions about facts as presented by the spin-doctors of the politicians and public officials.
She isn't in great health, but if anyone can clarify the issue between Game and Fish and the governor's office on overseeing the gas-drillers and getting the Game and Fish Commission to spend its share of the profit on protecting the environment during this critical period, Griffee would be the one to do it!

August 17, 2008 at 12:29 AM

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