Monthly Archives: March 2009

The glass is half full, The paper mill is closed for good!

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The glass is half full – the paper mill is closed for good!

Some good news- depending on how you look at it- comes from the dreadful economy:

By MIKE ECKEL, Associated Press Writer Mike Eckel, Associated Press Writer – Fri Mar 13, 11:47 am ET

MOSCOW – For decades, it spewed chemicals and foul effluent into the pristine waters of Lake Baikal in Siberia.

For decades, environmentalists pushed for its closure, calling it a shameful blight on the world’s largest fresh water lake.

Now, 43 years after its construction, the Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill is closing for good in a breakthrough for Russia’s environmental movement, which many believe began with the long battle over the factory.

The owner, Kontinental Management, said Friday that the plant, which temporarily halted production in October, will not restart operations, for financial and technological reasons. Shareholders, which include the federal government and the struggling industrial conglomerate Basic Element, will meet in coming weeks to decide exactly what to do with it, the company said.

“Unfortunately, time is already up for the (factory) and the plant will be never be able to resume production,” the company said in a statement posted on its Web site.

“It’s good news, of course, though it wasn’t completely unexpected,” said Marina Rikhvanova, a veteran activist who heads the environmental group, Baikal Wave. Continue reading →

Happy Birthday, Valentin Grigoriyevich Rasputin–born 15 March 1937

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Happy Birthday, Valentin Rasputin!
Valentin Rasputin was born March 15, 1937.

from “Siberia, Siberia”:

“The normal concept of beauty fits Baikal least of all. What we take for beauty is an impression of a different type, like something that hangs above the horizon of our sensitivity, No matter how often you’ve been to Baikal, no matter how well you know it, each new encounter is unexpected and requires effort on your part. Each time you seemingly have to raise yourself to a certain height again and again in order to be on the same plane, in order to see and hear it.
Not everything, as we know, has a name. It’s impossible to give a name to the regeneration that occurs in people when they’re near Baikal. There’s no need to remind anyone that for this to take place a person must have a soul. And here stands and looks around, is filled with something and carried off somewhere, and can’t understand what’s happening to him. Like a fetus in it’s mother’s womb, he passes through all the evolutionary stages of human development and, spellbound by the ancient, mighty unfolding of this miracle, he experiences the timeless tidal feeling of the powers that created humankind. ….”