[at-l] Cell Phones - Yawn

[jbullar1 at twcny.rr.com (Jim Bullard)]

At 02:53 PM 6/28/2004 -0400, RoksnRoots@aol.com wrote:

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>Honest people would recognize that "purists" designed, built, and maintain 
>the
>AT.

Balderdash! If they were both "purists" of one mind, why did MacKaye and 
Avery have a falling out over the building of the trail? Haven't you read 
the history of the AT's creation. It is rife with disagreement. Even 
MacKay's concept changed somewhat over time. The largest debate was over 
whether it was primarily a recreational trail or a preservation project. 
There were many people involved in it's creation and they all had their own 
agendas. I'd be willing to wager that even among today's maintainers there 
are different reasons they do the volunteer work to keep it going.

Honest people recognize that it takes cooperation and tolerance to create a 
project the size of the AT and that you can't get that by being an elitist, 
suggesting that those with different motives/viewpoints are not worthy 
because they don't see things exactly as you do.

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>
>            I'd like for the respondents to articulate how cell-phone
>promotion on the AT serves ATC's "wildness" or "remote & detached" objective?

What ARE you reading? It can't be posts on AT-L. No one here has said that 
cell phones should be promoted nor have they said cell phones serve 
wildness. If that's what you read, you need new glasses. All I've said was 
that they don't destroy wildness except in the minds of those who are 
hypersensitive to the presence of them. I've also said we should be 
focusing on keeping coverage from extending to wild areas (i.e. no cell 
towers on mountain tops please). I *thought* I'd been pretty plain about that.

>Or how ridiculing, shunning, or calling "off-topic" those who point it out 
>does? The
>real cost is at the mental level.

Now just who ridiculed cell phone users by saying that are too frightened 
to go into the woods without their phones. All I said was that notion was 
nonsense and if you can't see a cell phone without your hike being ruined 
you need to look inside yourself to see why. Nobody *makes* you feel 
anything. You choose your reactions to others. You are always going to 
encounter people who see the world differently. If you expect to change 
them, you are the one with a problem.