Current weather    • Scattered clouds   • 54°     Scattered
clouds  Cleaning up the neighborhood  Alaskans need to stop
trashing each other in ongoing debate over salmon  Posted:
Sunday, May 27, 2001  Now that the snow's gone, we're left to
confront our trashy habits. The shoulders of our roads reveal
the litter accumulated over the winter months. And we can't
blame the tourists; we who live here year-round are guilty of
dumping garbage and rubbish on each other. But no permanent
damage is done -- the civic-minded among us will clean up the
mess, and we'll all appear neater than we really are.  There
are, however, more ways to pollute a community than by littering
the highways with trash, and I'm talking about the way we trash
each other in all the rhetoric surrounding the salmon wars. Name
calling, satire, sarcasm, disdain, contempt, ridicule and scorn
are far more destructive of community spirit and a lot harder to
clean up than are pieces of paper on the roadside. It's time we
clean up our conversation.  R