Dear Communities of Columbia and
Clatsop Counties,
I am writing this letter to you from
the year 2019. I know we all think that is impossible but in a
quantum universe...well, things happen. Suspend your disbelief for
the length of this essay because I have good news to report. The
results of your community efforts over the last 7 or 8 years have
been nothing short of miraculous! What began as an auspicious trend
of corporations shipping fossil fuels through your communities has
taken on a new and creative paradigm. The Bakken Crude is long
gone...unfortunately, as of this writing to another community
elsewhere. But take heart! Representatives of your community are
helping that community recover their local control as I speak. The
global climate change has increased as predicted. but many, many more
people across the globe are reversing the trend of corporate control.
The new hope is that the world-wide effort toward local sustainable
food sources will actually create a new feed back loop to absorb
carbon from the air. Your community has been no small part of that
trend. You should be proud!
In 2014 Clatskanie and Goble joined the
Rainier and Scappoose Communities in creating organic, locally grown
Farmers Markets. These markets flourished. Working with the cities in
between the existing market at the time, new markets were developed
in St. Helens, Deer Island, Columbia City and Westport by the year
2015. Clatsop County Between Knappa and Astoria joined the other
groups by 2016. This effort began what is now in 2019 called the
Fresh Food Corridor. At this writing The Fresh Food Corridor on
Highway 30 has proved to be one of the biggest tourist attractions in
Oregon. Folks leaving the Portland metropolitan area for weekend
travel to the coast in Astoria have been flocking through these
communities buying local grown and crafted products all along the
way.
The farming proved to be so much more
profitable to the communities and their local businesses than the
shipment of fossil fuels which proved to be so dangerous and
detrimental to communities that the choice was clear. Farming
prevailed. But the railroads themselves turned out to be a huge asset
after all! Currently, there are several passenger trains a day that
follow the farmers markets up through the Fresh Food Corridor
dropping tourists off for a few hours allowing them time to shop then
they just catch the next train to the next market along the way to
Astoria. Trains are also going the other way back to Portland so
tourists can catch a train to say, the St Helens Market, spend a few
hours then turn around and get home by dinner to cook their delicious
organic food purchased in the Fresh Food Corridor! The trains are an
important part of this corridor because it relieves car traffic on
Highway 30 and many of the folks in Portland who don't own cars use
mass transportation. This Fresh Food Corridor is so popular and
profitable that other communities all over the U.S. and Europe are
now copying it as model for attracting sustainable business and
tourism of their own.
From my vantage point here in the
future I say a resounding THANK YOU! Thank you for sticking together!
You created an amazing vision of what the future could be. A future
that our communities could be proud of and you made it happen. You
worked together and helped each other. There were disagreements but
you resolved them and made better choices. For your efforts and hard
work you now have a community independent of corporate control. Thank
you all for creating sustainable businesses based on healthy locally
grown food that doesn't depend on fossil fuels to grow or deliver it!
We are now less dependent on food being shipped in and, in fact,
other communities need you to help provide food for them. I am
humbled by the unity you showed over these years and I hope the
future “we” can continue to be as much of a community as the past
“we” became!
Here's to an amazing future...I'll see
you all here soon!
Tracy
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