Maria Burks Has The Coolest Job!!!!

This lady has the coolest job. She's the first Commissioner of the National Parks of New York Harbor Boy, would I ever love to meet her.

At the very least I think I am going to have to write her a letter asking if she's considered that kayaks are worth looking at too. Since we're out there already & everything.

Frankly, I'm still a bit steamed about some friends of mine who were blithely considering doing a so-called "commando camping" expedition - in the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge a while back. "Commando camping" is kayak slang for using an unauthorized site for overnight camping & I have mixed emotions about it in general but on this one my opinion is that's just wrong, wrong, WRONG, I think that a wildlife sanctuary should be treated with more respect than that -- especially around here, where the population density is so high & places where birds can go about their business without us bothering them are so rare -- oh man, I can't start into this, I actually have work to do today, had a couple of quiet weeks here but that's over now. Anyways, I think that if the park service would do something like open their campsites to kayakers - maybe working with the Hudson River Watertrail Association to develop something even - that would cut down on the temptation to camp on those tempting but fragile islands in the bay. Or else do a publicity blitz giving reasons why that can't be done -- we're not talking about people with bad intentions, just a little blissful ignorance, a little education might do wonders.

This is one of the threads of this too-big-for-one-post issue I've been feeling driven to write about. I just haven't been able to because I have been too busy & it's not something I want to do an off-the-cuff thing about.

But the article's really interesting.