Alaska Gold Rush

Last night while drinking a magnificent barley wine from Deschutes Brewery, I watched this new show on Discovery. It got me fired up enough that I'm thinking about contacting Discovery to ask them what the hell they were thinking. It's about this group of family and friends that heads to Alaska with 5th wheelers, and loads of heavy duty construction equipment. They rent a piece of land for the purpose of digging for gold. I know the land owner can do what he wants but my inner tree hugger gets pissed off that these knuckleheads are constructing makeshift buildings, and digging random holes in the ground all day long in order to try and strike it rich. The most agitating part for me though was the fact they were concerned about the large number of brown and black bears that were just coming out of hibernation and wandering into camp looking for food after a tough winter. They shot one of the black bears. None of the bears were "menacing" as they said they were. I've had bears closer to my front door and they meant no harm. The young kids were walking around with juice boxes and food and leaving them lay around. Then the "adults" were shooting at/killing bears that simply followed their nose. Real nice job Discovery.

In all my years of working with troubled adolescents...I've learned that, generally, even people that are very good at that job have a particular kid that it's harder for them to work with. For many it's the sex offenders/predators. For me it's always been the kids that are into animal cruelty. Lighting dogs on fire and that sort of thing makes it much more difficult for me to maintain an open frame mind while working with that type of kid. Seeing suffering is very hard for me. Don't know where it came from but it's there. It's even harder when it's at the hands of a jackass.