Starbucks Cup #144, Beth Israel Deaconess

a venti today. it was necessary, plus I was feeling particularly inhuman this morning.

The Way I See It #144

Human beings often seek to find
pristine, uninhabited locations
where we can relax and enjoy the
natural beauty of our surroundings
However, it seems that every time
people find such a destination they
inevitably try to turn it into the
place they fled. Development and
destruction of the environment are
so often the consequence of
population. It's as if we just can't
help ourselves.

--Susan Boggia
Clinical social worker and
Starbucks customer from
Leonia, New Jersey.

Seriously why is the world like this? I hate going on vacation and being just as stressed as I was at home because I'm surrounded by direct TV, Internet connections and yes, Starbucks on every corner. What ever happened to the quiet wild places people longed to flee to? They're become rarer and rarer, it makes me worry that they will disappear.

A few weeks ago, I was working on a group project where we were trying to come up with an effective ecological model for saving the desert tortoise. I joked that we could have sponsors for each shell section, with the larger ones being more expensive. We laughed about it for a long time, ha ha corporate animal sponsorship, but the more I thought about it, the more it terrified me. Is that the only way our parks and quiet wild places are going to survive? As it is, our national parks are barely surviving. The next time I visit Yellowstone am I gonna see a buffalo with a sign "brought to you by google.com!" or "sponsored by the New York Times"??