Dear Tweeters,

All due respect to Boeing--I much prefer their planes
to the upstart Airbus--but the guys in the suits there
at the Renton plant are wrong. I feel sorry for the
security men who have to "follow orders" and act on
the mistaken directions given to them by the suits,
but in the end, they, too, are part of the problem.

So are the guys in the security trucks who hassle me
every so often at March's Point, when I "point that
camera [actually a scope] at the refinery."

I will never forget my first day trip out of Santiago
de Chile, during the tyranny of Pinochet. I was
astonished to see signs with pictures of cameras on
them--with broad bands of red slashing across the
cameras. No photography! I was of course no longer in
a free country; photographing a mountain pass or a
beach constituted a threat to the dictator's power.

I will resist temptation to rant and rave--certainly
not saying that security guards are carabineros, much
less Nazis.

It is, though, a slippery slope we are on here, the
precise one that the founding fathers tried to stay
off.

Sure, we birders need to use common sense. It is worse
than futile to hassle right back at a security guard,
because then we birders can do nothing but lose, lose,
lose in the bargain.

However, we can write our lawmakers and express our
disapproval of the whole "red alert, yellow alert"
state of mind into which we have fallen during the
past five and a half years of benighted rule.

"No pointing cameras at buildings" indeed!

The political act, and some patience and humility in
the face of what is after all a brazen interference
with our pursuit of happiness, might be about all the
average citizen has at his disposal.

Respectfully yours,

Gary Bletsch



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