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If you’re walking on the Riverside Trail alongside the Boone & Crockett Club, you can very easily spy names of founding members and supporters on bricks that make up the base of the grizzly statue. Of course there’s ol’ Teddy Roosevelt (founder) but right underneath him is a brick for Madison Grant who was president of the club after TR. He also was the preeminent eugenicist in the US in that era (which is saying a lot). His book “The Passing of the Great Race” was an instrumental book for the Nazis - Hitler supposedly referred to it as his bible. Teddy Roosevelt was also a huge fan and lended his endorsement calling it “a capital book; in purpose, in vision, in grasp of the facts our people most need to realize.” So, yeah, fuck Teddy Roosevelt.

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Those B&C founders were quite a collection of white supremacists, weren't they? It boggles the mind ... and explains the bumpers stickers on the cars of some of the employees there too, I think. Or at least that was the case when I used to spend a decent amount of time down there.

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Thank you, Chris. Your words never fail to move me in some way. Much love.

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Thank you, Mara.

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Many of your recent posts have moved me, alerted me to new people, honored friends and made me realize how you have expanded your reach and activism. You and your readers have so much to be thankful of and for.👏💕

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Thank you, Barbara. It is good to hear from you.

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I just love that poem so much. ❤️

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It's one of her best, IMO.

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The poem is lovely. Your words, as always, are powerful and welcome.

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I love this and the poem was beautiful, I look forward to reading more when my copy arrives. I am so ready for a reckoning with place-names--and YES to the parks being returned. I wish more people understood the history, and that Muir and Roosevelt's 'conservation' was based on displacement and removal of Indigenous people. Can't imagine the hundreds of war criminals, slaveholders, and horrible white men that so many places are named after. This was the headline this week in Anchorage: https://www.adn.com/politics/alaska-legislature/2022/03/03/alaska-lawmakers-were-considering-a-proposal-to-rename-the-glenn-highway-it-turned-into-a-debate-about-torture/

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Wow, that article really has a little bit of everything in it, doesn't it? Oof.

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omg i know. it encapsulated everything wrong—and why pragmatism and neutral is never just. ugh.

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Hi Chris,

Yes! Definitely rename the Arch!

Congratulations to Mara!

The photograph of your family is wonderful. There is a story in each of those faces. How great it must be to know so much of one’s familial origins and history!

Sincerely,

Melissa

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Thank you, Melissa.

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I learn something new from you every week. Thanks.

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TR was a prick.

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Such a prick.

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On the basis of that one poem, I'm buying Mara's book. ❤

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You won’t regret it.

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I learn so much from you. I am so glad I subscribe and pay you for your expertise.

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Thank you, Sheeby. And thanks for reading.

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You keep alienating people through your writing and I'll keep reading. :).

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Ha ha, thanks.

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Thank you for introducing me to Mara. Wow. And moving post, as always. Thank you!

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Thanks, Emily. I think you'll dig her work.

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Thank you for the poem, so beautiful, read with my toast and coffee before I start a day's work here (in Sydney). I will buy her book. Hmmmm...just back from trying—she doesn't post to Australia! But there are other ways :)

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Hopefully the Australia thing is just temporary.

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my favourite indie bookstore in Sydney can order anything

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Wow, that poem.

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I know!

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