Your Dirt Is Someone Else’s Silver

Judging the past is a treacherous and slippery slope.  We are what we are according to the times that we live in. Customs and cultures change. Religious beliefs swing like the pendulum on a grandfather clock. Styles of dress were recycling long before it became politically correct to recycle. The ways that we walk, run, talk eat, sleep, work, play, exercise, think, breathe, and express ourselves is in a constant flux.

With all of that in mind, one of the things that triggers my wrath is when someone writes  or tries to pretend like they know how terrible the Coeur D Alene mining district was in the early days in the primitive ways that they mines, processed the ore, dumped waste, and did their business. It particularly gets me going when someone from Spokane or Coeur D Alene has an attitude about my home area. Without that “dirty mining” CDA and most of Spokane would not exist today. Dirty mining money built the Paulsen Building in Spokane Dirty mining money built most of the palatial old homes in Spokane and CDA , Dirty mining money along with dirty timber and logging money made the Inland Empire what it is.

Were mistakes made? Sure they were. But the way business was done was normal for those days. There was not an EPA to dictate how business should be run. There was no thing as waste management. Please, before you condemn any action from history, remember that we are the product of out times.

 I salute the early mining companies and the early miners, loggers, and mill workers. Dirty work? Sure it was. But it was honest and it actually produced something instead of just consuming something.