SAVE DONNER SUMMIT

Suggested Reading/Viewing

	What should be mandatory reading for anybody who cares about mountain communities is "Downhill Slide, Why the Corporate Ski Industry is Bad for Skiing, Ski Towns, and the Environment", by Hal Clifford. This is a well written, well researched book on how publicly traded corporations gained control of America’s most popular winter sport during the 1990s, and how they are gutting ski towns, the natural environment, and skiing itself in a largely futile search for short-term profits in an industry (skiing) with flat or declining customer sales (skier days), and the disneyesque, fake, cookie-cutter villages that they think will lure the existing skiers from one resort to another while locking out the local resident and business base. It should be available at your favorite bookseller.
	A video called Resorting to Madness: Taking Back Our Mountain Communities has been produced by local Olympic Valley (Squaw Valley) CA Coldstream Creative which seems very much based on the Downhill Slide book and has commentary by Hal Clifford. Screenings are scheduled at various locations and more information or a copy of the DVD can be ordered from Coldstream Creative.
	At the beginning of the first Royal Gorge presentation in March, Todd Foster held up a book and declared it provided the philosophical justification for his development. The book made it clear, he said, that the children of the nation are being deprived of nature. This is, indeed, an important book, although it is absurd for Foster/Syme to use it for justification of destroying nature and creating fake 'nature centers'. For an excellent commentary on this see Bill McGuire's Last Child in the Woods vs Foster/Syme.

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