Canyon News Desperately Searching For a Reporter To Cover an Assignment 100 Years From Now
Posted by Joe Buff on Jul 16, 2004, 21:07
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Writers should
never go on vacation.
Certainly not to a
place like Yosemite, where 4,000,000 tourists from all over the world come to
see the spewing waterfalls and granite mountains, 3,000 year-old sequoia trees
and wild animals.
Im sitting on the
second story balcony of my Yosemite Lodge room reading the New York Times for
Saturday, July 3, 2004, and Im astonished to find a full page article with
photos in the A section about the rededication for the second 100 years of the
LeConte Memorial Lodge, in Yosemite. Im intrigued. The New York
Times is covering a Sierra Club dedication ceremony in Yosemite?
The V.P. of the Sierra Club, Bernie Zaleha, the Superintendent of the
park, and other dignitaries will make speeches.
The hoopla is in
full swing with music and demonstrations. Kimberly, a park ranger,
is pounding acorns in bedrock mortar with her daughter, while her husband,
Ben, also a park ranger, is making and playing a flute. Theyre all
dressed in1904 garb, including Dr. Bonnie J. Gisel, the Leconte Curator, who is
wearing a ground-to-neck black dress. Bonnie gives me the royal
tour of the gray granite building near Curry Village.
The lodge was built
in 1903 by the Sierra Club to honor geologist Joseph LeConte, a University of
California professor who was one of the first scientists to join and support
John Muirs theory of the glacial origin of Yosemite Valley. The
lodge served as the first visitors center from 1904 until 1916, when the
National Park Service took over Yosemite. I signed the scroll
as Joe Buff-reporter for the Canyon News. The scroll will
be put into a time capsule, along with my picture, which will
be opened 100 years from now, on July 4, 2104. Bonnie needs
volunteers and contributions for the lodge and can be reached at 209-372-4542,
or E-mail, leconte.curator@sierraclub.org. This is a great opportunity for
people to become a part of a historic service.
But heres the
dilemma: Canyon News needs a reporter to write the story 100 years from today,
when the time capsule is opened. (Dont get ahead of me
here.) If our reporter is 30 years old in 2104, that means we
need someone born around the year 2074, a mere 70 years from now.
By 2104, Canyon should be a daily with 4,000,000 subscriptions, so we are
searching for that reporter. Send your ideas to Canyon News.
Yosemite is a place
for everyone, especially family and kids. It has everything from hiking and rock
climbing to swimming, (tame) boat rafting, horseback riding, bicycles, camping
out in the tents at Curry Village for $20 or the Yosemite Lodge for $150, to a
starter room at the world famous Ahwahnee Hotel, home-away-from-home to
Presidents and royalty and celebrities, with a starter room rate at
$850. You can visit the Ahwahnee and eat with celebs in the
famous dining room. See the online photographs below.
Im thinking about
that 3,000-year-old tree that has been alive since before Christ was born.
What if this tree could talk? I start babbling into my
mini-tape recorder, banging away on the laptop, outlining a techno-thriller
novel about a tree. I lay awake at night wrestling with the
plot.
Im sure glad
vacation is over because Im worn out, struggling with my new tree novel and
trying to find a reporter for 100 years from now! Writers
should never go on vacation!
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| Curry Village tent |
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| Yosemite Indian Museum |
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| Yosemite rock climbing-beginners class |
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| Sequoia tree |
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| Bark tent |
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| Le Conte Dedication Ceremony |
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| Pounding acorns |
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| The famous Yosemite waterfall |
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| Ahwahnee Dining Room |
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