Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Movie this Friday!

Spread the word - movie this Friday at LTCC!

Resorting to Madness: Taking Back Our Mountain Communities

When: Friday, Feb 23rd at 5:00 pm
Where: Lake Tahoe Community College Theater
$5 donation requested

This Friday, Sierra Nevada Alliance will sponsor the South Lake Tahoe premiere of a new documentary film called Resorting to Madness: Taking Back Our Mountain Communities.

This film addresses the impacts of the modern ski resort industry on mountain communities and environments. Including footage and interviews from dozens of ski areas, experts and concerned community members throughout North America, the film reveals some disturbing trends affecting mountain resort towns and offers up suggestions to protect and maintain mountain environments and communities.

Following the film will be a brief discussion about the future development plans of Heavenly Ski Resort, what the alternatives are and what the community can do to get involved. One of the filmmakers will be present to answer questions about the film.

For more information contact Sierra Nevada Alliance at 542-4546 or info@sierranevadaalliance.org

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Darren Campbell, who helped facilitate the recent place-based community sessions here in Tahoe, showed his film “Resorting to Madness: Taking Back Our Mountain Communities” at Lake Tahoe Community College Friday night. The first email went out for the show on the Tuesday before the show. Some people reported getting the email from 15 people. There was a story in the paper Friday, and 100 people turned out to watch. At 5 p.m. on a Friday night. That’s pretty good. That’s very good. It tells me that people in Tahoe really care about tuned in and care about what’s really going on. It also tells me that there is a very connected conscious community in our midst, at most an email click or two away.

Tahoe people get that Lake Tahoe is an incredibly special place. An amazing place to live. Tahoe people want to live fully and thrive here, but still leave Tahoe healthier and restored for their children, grandchildren and friends. They want the REAL triple bottom line:

Community – Places to gather and get to know one another, have fun, worship, sing, dance, act, paint, raise kids, celebrate, commiserate. An affordable place to live. More neighbors that vacation home renters.

Economics – Locally Owned Businesses doing well by doing good…. Serving fair trade coffee, selling stimulating books, serving organic beer, selling regional organic produce, hosting homegrown music, playing music, renting kayaks, installing solar panels, running eco-resorts, serving yummy burritos. From the Ground Up, local funky Tahoe flavor, money re-circulating in the community, jobs that pay dignified wage, enough to work a reasonable number of hours to allow plenty of time to play in the mountains and be with our friends and family.

Environment – Alive. Harmonious. Quiet. Peaceful. Tahoe restored to the clarity of the late 1960s. Think about it.

Which brings us back to Darren’s movie. Ski resort after western ski resort town is shown to be suffering from the same maladies – housing prices driven out of sight, locals having to leave for nearby communities, local businesses closed while Disney-like ski villages are erected, where former local business owners now are tenants, paying large fees to far away executive suites responding to the demands of hungry shareholders. And wildlife, streams, rivers, lakes, mountains, meadows, forests under duress.

On a related note -- I wrote a piece today about Heavenly and the North Bowl, which I will post next. The most important thing to take action, get involved. TRPA is voting on the issue this Wednesday, Feb 28, at the TRPA office in Stateline. The public forum starts at 10:30 a.m. At stake is the impact of Heavenly’s construction over the next 10 years, which will increase its footprint on the public mountain by 20%. At stake this year is whether a new lift will be built through, or around, an old-growth stand of red fir trees in the North Bowl of the degraded Edgewood Creek watershed.