Tag Archives: Mount Weather

AT&T’s uphill battle – to put a long pole on a short hill

AT&T SCHEMATIC OF 155 FOOT MONOPOLE

AT&T SCHEMATIC OF 155 FOOT MONOPOLE

AT&T won no friends in Western Loudoun with its earlier shuffle on the topmost ridge of the Short Hill Mountain, shaving off trees and tunneling into the mountain, day and night, so secret, that almost everyone was convinced it was the “guv’ment” up to its old tricks, and the “data center” that AT&T claimed it was, had more to do with Mount Weather, the designated bunker for well placed elite government workers in the case of a nuclear attack, and that AT&T’s project was most certainly something other than a data center; the questions remain unresolved.

Emboldened by the local government’s seeming pliability, AT&T is now demanding a special exception to erect an 155 foot hi-tech shaft monopole on the crest, the very top, of the Short Hill Mountain.

The community is gathering its forces to give our public officials a spinal implant and to stop AT&T, on the merits, and based on the County Ordinance, from erecting this 155 foot monopole, and setting a bad precedent for projects on the crest of the mountain. Continue reading

The disposable planet – and its people

jonflan-blueearth - 1As a people, we are suffering the twin insanities of our Chief Executive, Mr. Donald Trump, who has insisted on pursuing two separate paths that promise to destroy our planet and ourselves.

First, our “Commander in Chief”, and another mad world leader from Korea, improvised a bullying chest-beating duet of world-shattering war threats, from the slippery edge of an existential precipice, promising to hurl nuclear fire upon the world, and to kill countless innocents.

Second, our “Chief Executive,” Mr. Trump, belittled every other nation in the world and refused to honor a hard fought international agreement on climate change that the United States had signed.  Mr. Trump also dismantled air and water safeguards and denied that humans have in any way caused the planet to heat from fossil fuel emissions.

Each of us is a furnace of life, warmed within a sheaf of skin, at 98 degrees Fahrenheit, with a strong will to survive.

But too many of us defer to leaders, trusting them to do what’s best for us and the world’s survival when we now know they are doing nothing of the sort.

Our leaders take the corporate contributions of fossil fuel predators and vote their way, insisting that we not trust our senses that that’s what they are doing, even as they do it at the cost of our health and safety and survival.  In the bargain, they stall cleaner, safer renewable energy sources. Continue reading