I started this blog about one year ago with the idea of writing up thoughts on the Washington Landscape from observations I make while working and traveling about the state combined with some research I am doing on various aspects of Washington State landscape as well as ideas that just bang out of my head. A few months ago I added tags to the posts to break the posts into general categories. In some cases posts receive multiple tags such as a recent post on Crescent Beach on Orcas Island.
One area that I have not posted much on explicitly is policy. Every now and then a post will have policy as a secondary issue and it is tagged as such. Often the policy issues are simply a way of understanding how policies influence the way certain areas have developed or not developed and those policies are from many years ago.
More recently I have delved into an ongoing policy issue regarding coal terminals. I hope I can bring a different angle on the issue based on my research or experience with public policy. I try as much as practical to be neutral on policy matters. In the case of coal terminals I have not expressed my own views on coal terminals and large scale shipping of coal overseas on this blog. I simply think fleshing out some of the issues are well worthwhile both for the proposed Longview facility and the potentially proposed Cherry Point facility. Understanding landscapes means sometimes you have to delve into how policies develop. Hence, I thought a perspective on PR campaigns was warranted for the Cherry Point coal terminal because it is actually taking place currently and may influence policy. I hope to bring more of that sort of policy posting in the future. For those that know my past political ventures, it is not as though I have fear of offending anyone on policy matters, but I do not want that to be part of this blog.
However, I may at times take noxious newspaper editors to task. Editorials that can not get their point across without disparaging community members or getting the facts right deserve opinions aimed at them - They should know better.
The other aspect of this blog I have enjoyed immensely is "meeting up with" the geology blog world. Very good for my professional development and learning and I hope that a few of my geology posts do the same. I do enjoy that the most read post I have done was on eskers. I post I wrote on Sumas Mountain and landslides over a year ago was viewed 60 times yesterday - Is someone doing a class project somewhere? Another post I wrote on pronghorns started getting lots of reads a few months after I wrote it. That caused me to get curious as to why and I found that Yakima Nation had released pronghorns on the Yakima Reservation.
Anyway I hope regular readers continue to get something out of this, and for geologists I hope to have some contributions in the near future.
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2 comments:
I don't get up to Washington very often, though I have worked there some in the past - it's nice staying in touch with that part of the world through your blog. Glad you plan on continuing. :)
Thanks Silver. I appreciate your role in the geo blog world getting geos connected. And you keep my inner Nevada happy with your various ventures and geology.
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