Atlantis. Photo: WPPilot
Maybe it’s the time of year, but I’ve been in the mood to rant lately. Here’s something else that set me off. Maybe I should stop reading newspapers….
Below is the URL for a story in our local paper about a mega-resort most of you have probably already heard about: Atlantis, on Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
I visited Paradise Island waaay back before Atlantis was built. It was a slightly sleepy, slightly tacky place, ok, but a bit too touristy for my taste. But now, from the coral has risen a 3,400 bed resort, with not one, but three casinos.
I get that some people like to gamble and that they might want to do it there, but here’s what I don’t get: a gigantic aquarium and waterpark ON THE OCEAN!
People bring their families to this overpriced theme park and the kids have a blast on the manmade attractions, while just outside, the ocean, with its fun waves and beautiful fish and endless wonders – all free – takes a backseat to the pricey artificial creations at the hotel.
Why?
Digging RI 
We’ve lost our way. Senseless destruction and ignorance about our natural world. I too ask why.
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But it just gets worse. What can we do to stop this destructive trajectory?
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Add me to your rant club. It’s ever thus: Beautiful places attract rich people who figure out a way to make more money from the beautiful places, too often making them ugly. Count in that number the once-simple sandy beaches of the Gulf Coast in the American South. Why? indeed.
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Money, greed, power. The usual reasons. Such a bummer to watch it happen, though.
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Gaudy things seem especially wasteful and destructive, especially when they’re devoted to greed.
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So true, CJ. And Thoreau’s words are poignant to say the least.
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After I read your post, dn, I read this one from another of my favorite bloggers, Eddie Two Hawks. I think you’d really like his posts, a photo and quote everyday. HIs quote today is from Thoreau on primitive nature: http://eddietwohawks.wordpress.com/2014/02/09/primitive-nature/
“I seek acquaintance with Nature, to know her moods and manners.
Primitive nature is the most interesting to me. I take infinite pains to know all
the phenomena of spring, for instance, thinking that I have here the entire poem,
and then, to my chagrin, I learn that it is but an imperfect copy that I possess
and have read, that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and
grandest passages, and mutilated it in many places. I should like to think that
some demigod had come before me and picked out some of the best of the stars.
I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth. All the great trees and beasts,
fishes and fowl are gone. The streams, perchance, are somewhat shrunk.”
words: Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
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