Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (53 page)

•
Sleep?
Hill slept under a tarp in a three-season sleeping bag the first year. The second year, she was given a winter sleeping bag and a bivouac, a tent-like shelter that wrapped around the bag.

•
See at night?
Candles were her primary source of light after dark. She also had a headlamp, but that required precious batteries, so she rarely used it.

•
Communicate with the outside world?
At first, Hill only talked by yelling down to her crew when they came with supplies every few days. Later she was given a radio phone powered by solar panels connected to two motorcycle batteries, an emergency cell phone, a hand-cranked radio, a tape recorder, a digital camera, a video camera, walkie-talkies, and a pager.

•
Keep from going crazy?
Hill had roommates at first, other activists who stayed for days or weeks at a time. After they dropped out, she had visitors—journalists, fellow activists, and, on a few occasions, celebrities, including Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, actor Woody Harrelson, and singer Bonnie Raitt. But most of the time, she was alone. She immersed herself in books, educating herself about forestry and environmental issues. She listened to radio shows and talked to experts about slope erosion, watershed analysis, and timber-harvest plans. She spent hours reading about a variety of topics, from sustainable logging and northern California history to Charles Hurwitz’s financial dealings. In the end, Hill’s treetop studies earned her an honorary doctorate in humanities from the New College of California.

THE END IS NEAR

After she broke the 100-day tree-sitting mark, Julia “Butterfly” Hill suddenly became a public figure on a national level, bringing tremendous visibility and sympathy to her cause. Money began to pour into the environmental groups filing suits against the Pacific Lumber. Not only was the company hemorrhaging money trying to defend itself in court, it was losing the public-relations battle as well: Political figures from Senator Dianne Feinstein all the way to President Clinton joined the chorus criticizing Pacific Lumber.

A year into Hill’s sit, the California State Legislature passed a bill to protect the tree but not the grove. “Even with the new protections,” Hill told a reporter. “Luna and the slope she stands on will be destroyed under the Headwaters Forest Agreement and Habitat Conservation Plan, along with hundreds of other steep, unstable slopes and thousands of acres of virgin and residual old growth. The government once again has turned its back on the local residents and the endangered species that it is required to protect.”

Japanese politician Matayoshi Mitsuo believes he is Jesus Christ. He has never won an election
.

During Hill’s second year, Pacific Lumber began to offer its own concessions. P.L. representative John Campbell regularly talked with Julia from the bottom of the tree, attempting to negotiate a settlement. But he wouldn’t guarantee that Luna’s grove would be spared after Hill came down, so there she remained. “My bottom line is protection in perpetuity for Luna, and a substantial buffer zone around her to protect her fragile ecosystem.”

Finally, on December 18, 1999, Pacific Lumber/Maxxam Inc. signed a preservation agreement and deed of covenant to protect the giant redwood and a 20-foot buffer zone around the tree. After 738 days, Hill had won her battle. She climbed down Luna, and her feet touched soil for the first time in more than two years.

STILL STANDING

Today Luna remains protected, at the center of a grove stretching 200 feet in every direction. Because of its isolation deep in the forest, the grove isn’t really a tourist destination. However, members of a nonprofit group called Sanctuary Forest regularly visit to ensure that the promises made by the company are being kept. As for Pacific Lumber, the firm filed for bankruptcy, Hurwitz and Maxxam Inc. pulled out, and in 2008 a new company—whose majority shareholder is the clothing chain The Gap—was created with a corporate mission to log using sustainable forestry practices.

Hill became a motivational speaker and wrote a book about her adventure. She also co-founded a nonprofit group that trains small groups to work toward social change. At last report, Hollywood is making a feature film about her two-year adventure.

But at her core, Julia “Butterfly” Hill will always be an activist. “When you see someone in a tree trying to protect it,” she said, “every level of our society has failed.” In 2002 she joined a protest outside of Occidental Petroleum’s offices in Ecuador to stop construction of an oil pipeline through the Amazon rain forest. “The little gringos have been arrested,” said Ecuadorian President Gustavo Noboa, “including the old cockatoo who climbs trees.”

There are urban “ghost towns” in Detroit—entire city districts that have been completely abandoned
.

LOUD NOISES!!!

The world’s so damn loud we can’t even hear ourselves complain!

B
ACKGROUND
The 20th century was by far the loudest hundred years in human history. Since the Industrial Age took full swing in the late 1800s, life has become louder and louder. Very little has been done to curb noise pollution, despite overwhelming evidence that prolonged exposure to excessive auditory stimuli adversely affects learning abilities, concentration, and stress levels in humans and even in wildlife. Without any real support from state or federal governments, some local municipalities have come up with their own noise-violation procedures. Some examples:

RECORD TIME

In
Uncle John’s Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader
, we reported about Paul Sacco, a Colorado judge who sentenced teen noise violators to a few hours of listening to Barry Manilow music. In 2009 Sacco expanded his catalog of music-as-punishment to include the
Barney
theme song and an hour-long marathon of the Styx song “Come Sail Away” as sung by
South Park’s
Eric Cartman. The tactic may be catching on. When a Miami Beach driver was caught blasting 50 Cent in his Jaguar at 5:00 a.m., Judge Jeffrey Swartz sentenced him to two hours of the Verdi opera
La Traviata
. (Reportedly, it turned the offender into an opera fan.)

TRAIN IN VAIN

There are very few problems dire enough to make citizens
volunteer
to pay a tax increase to get them fixed, but that’s exactly what happened in a neighborhood of Vancouver, Washington. Residents got tired of the loud train whistles that blew every time a locomotive came through. “You can’t even talk on the phone,” said one local. So they asked the city government to erect barriers to keep cars off the tracks when the trains are coming—thereby eliminating the need for the whistles. Officials said no; they didn’t have the $1 million it would cost. “Fine,” said the residents, “Then
we’ll
pay for it. Raise our property taxes. That whistle is driving us crazy.”

The Japanese have a theory that beauty is imperfect and changeable. It’s called
wabi-sabi
.

GOING CUCKOO

The residents of a Phoenix, Arizona, neighborhood complained to city officials about the bells of Cathedral of Christ the King Church. They chimed on the hour, every hour, every day, every week. “It makes us feel like captives in our own homes,” said one citizen. Officials finally put an end to the siege: They took the church’s bishop, Rick Painter, to court, where he was sentenced to probation. From now on, if the church bells ring on any day but Sunday, the church will be fined and the bishop will go to jail.

WITCHY WOMAN

It wasn’t the bonfire in her yard that prompted Brenna Barney’s neighbors in Waukesha, Wisconsin, to call the cops—it was her incessant chanting. Barney is a practicing Wiccan, and she was performing elaborate rituals “in celebration of the New Moon.” When the police arrived, Barney fought back (which led to a resisting-arrest charge), arguing that they were violating her religious rights. The cops disagreed. So did her neighbor, Vicki Denova, who defended the 911 call: “To be honest, your choice is your choice as long as you’re not affecting other people.”

REVENGE OF THE NOISE-MAKERS

In the middle of the night in May 2009, Marsha Coleman of Salem, Oregon, couldn’t sleep because of the loud party going on next door. So she went over and asked the neighbors to
please
keep it down. Bad move: After she got back home, some of the drunken revelers showed up on her porch and banged repeatedly on her door. Frightened, she called 911. A deputy rushed to Coleman’s house and was in the middle of taking her statement when they heard another series of loud knocks on the door. Then they heard a slurring voice yell, “This is the Marion County Sheriff!” The deputy opened the door and found one of the partiers, 32-year-old David Bueno, whose party ended right there, as he was arrested for impersonating an officer and disturbing the peace.

For more people and machines driving us crazy with their incessant noise, cover your ears and head over to
page 409
.

When an earthquake hit LA in July 2008, the first “news outlet” to report it was Twitter
.

TEEEEEEEETH!

Stories about those little, white, hard things that grow in your head
.

W
HAT’S IN
YOUR
WALLET?
In March 2009, a customer at a Walmart in Falmouth, Massachusetts, was looking at a wallet he was thinking of buying when he unzipped one of its pockets—and found 10 human teeth inside it. Since there was no blood on any of the teeth, police could not use DNA testing to identify who they belonged to. A Walmart spokeswoman said it was an “isolated incident.”

PULLING STRINGS

A young girl had a loose baby tooth, so her parents tied a string around it…and attached it to a remote-controlled car. Mom then sent the car flying cross the living room and—pop!—out came the tooth. The parents filmed the event and put it YouTube. It has since been viewed more than 270,000 times. (The little girl, it should be said, was unharmed and seemed to get a kick out of the whole thing.)

WE’RE PRETTY SURE IT WORKED

In September 2009, Darrel Vandervort of Lakehurst, New Jersey, was arrested after he pulled several of his teeth out with a pair of pliers—and sprayed blood around a female friend’s apartment. Police said Vandervort was trying to frighten the woman.

PEARLY WHITES

Are you bored with your boring old jewelry? Of course you are! And that’s why you should get some new pieces from Australian jewelry designer Polly van der Glas, who makes rings, pendants, and necklaces—decorated with human teeth. “I have been collecting hair, teeth, and fingernails for years,” she says. “They line the shelves of my apartment in beautiful jars.” Prices go up to about $690 (U.S.) for a sterling-silver ring…with four large teeth sticking out if it.

PCs infected with software that allows hackers to control them remotely are called “zombie computers.”

MIGHTY MOUTH

Japanese researchers announced in 2009 that they had successfully implanted the jaws of several mice with “tooth seeds,” which later grew into mature, healthy teeth. The seeds were made up of cell tissue programmed with genetic instructions for growing teeth, and, the researchers said, the discovery could one day lead to growing replacement teeth, and perhaps even organs, in humans.

HOT CAPS

Seattle resident Shane Carlson was arrested in January 2010 and charged with several break-ins of cars, homes and dental offices. Carlson had been stealing old teeth from the offices, police said, and selling the gold fillings and caps he pried from them, netting up to $10,000 per robbery. The thefts had been going on for months, and police were only able to identify Carlson when someone found a bagful of teeth—roots and all—on a Seattle sidewalk, and forensic investigators found Carlson’s fingerprints on several of them.