I’d like to thank Commissioner Foss for coming up with a label I can finally live with. After decades of living and working in Montana, Idaho and Washington, working in the fishing industry, the logging industry, having my own nursery and restoration business, searching for my true identity, I’ve tripped over a lot of handles people have tried to hang on folks like me that just didn’t seem like quite the perfect fit. “Veteran”, “hippy”, “redneck”, “environmentalist”. All of them lacked that certain zing I craved in describing my peculiar path upon this planet.
Thanks to Ms. Foss, though, I can now lay that burden down by proudly accepting her labeling me as a “poor man’s extremist”. I never would have thought of it myself, and it’s got that zing, it fits my many moods and it also actually means something, unlike so many things people have called me – and the many, many folks like me in this neck of the woods – in the past.
Speaking of which, Suzy’s facts aren’t straight. The folks who showed up to that meeting objecting to this commission’s haranguing of state and federal employees just doing their jobs was far more than “a very small minority” and the Forest Service supervisor didn’t say what Suzy said she said. It’s unfortunate, to say the least, that a county commissioner would dismiss whole groups of county taxpayers in a published letter like that.
But never mind. I really just wanted to thank her for the “poor man’s extremist” label and I’d like to recommend that anyone else feeling slightly out of place in these tea-soaked times try it on. It feels just right, at least for me.
Bill LaCroix
Victor