Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Lets Grow Peas

At Home Magazine ~ May 2008

There’s a slick real estate magazine called At Home that between the real estate ads features human-interest stories or nature articles that are usually pretty informative and fun to read. So why do I always feel a little queasy when I read it? I guess its stuff like this that gets to me…

Shielded from storms by three mighty mountain ranges and almost completely protected against rough ocean waves, San Juan County is the Northwest's gem where a softer winter comes later and spring arrives earlier."

Hmmm, guess they weren’t around here the last time a Nor’easter ripped the roofs off. Or maybe they just didn’t feel like mentioning it. Naturally they want to paint a rosy picture of something they are trying to sell. Myself, I love a good power outage.

When Chief Seattle said that the earth does not belong to us I don’t think he meant that it belongs to real estate developers and rich people from somewhere else. This is not an economy that benefits everyone. I know the fishing industry is dead but couldn’t we go back to growing peas or something?

1 comment:

  1. I have a tourism marketing book that talks a lot about the health of local economies. Some tourist economies are very healthy and some are not. The ones that are the most healthy are the ones that have a high "multiplier effect" a high multiplier effect is where the money that comes in from the tourism keeps on getting recycled in the local community and has a very low likelihood of being exported out of the community. If all of our bed and breakfasts and hotels used produce from the Farmer's market and purchased artwork from local artisans and saved their profits into local investments instead of off island banks we would have a much higher multiplier effect. Our islands are definitely turning into a Martha's Vineyard style destination.

    Wesley
    www.DestiCam.com

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