Wednesday, June 10, 2009

There's nothing wrong with conflict

Our town has a very nice equestrian center... It has a big rodeo sized arena, a couple of round pens, a warm-up arena, and a dog park. The really great thing about this facility is that it was totally developed by a private club, the Trailseekers of MV, with donations of both material and labor. As a founding member of that club, much of the labor has been provided by me. I worked many, many concerts at the Blockbuster Pavilion selling beer to those who had already had too much beer to raise money. I have planted trees, cleared rocks, raked dirt, and whatever else needed to be done so that the equestrians in this community will have a place to do their thing. Now one of our own club members (a real b#$%h) has taken action to exclude one of the organizations that use the part, the Roy Rogers Mounted Shooting team. They have been paying to use the arena for their monthly practice. The reason? The noise scares her dogs!

My first reaction to this is so? I live next to a fire station. The fire sirens hurt my dogs ears and the howl. So? I try to teach them to at least howl like real wolves, not yap like they are a bunch of Pekingese. The 4th of July celebration fire works scare the crap out of both my horses and my dogs. So? I put the dogs in the house and give the horses extra hay so they are eating and ignore the loud sounds. But this hag, who is fortunate enough to live a few streets away from the equestrian center instead of in the middle of the city like me, screams so loud that the city sends out people to poll her neighbors... Must be at least 10 of them. And now access is limited to what is essentially the groups of which Ms. Stick-up-her-butt approves. Parks & Rec, already facing budget deficits, must fore go the fees from this organization. In addition those of us who enjoyed watching the show and hoped, one day, to participate in that activity are unable to do so.

What is really irritating is the Trailseekers were approached by the city for their opinion and they declined to take a stand because the issue was brought up by a "private citizen". No matter that that citizen holds a seat on the Trailseekers Board or that there are very few people in the club that can stand to be around this lady for more than a few hours. Their failure to take a stand has resulted in a loss to other members of the club. My pet name for this club is the Sissy Girls Horse Club, mostly because they don't like to climb big hills, go very fast, or otherwise venture outside of the arena. But it's also because of things like this... They, like a lot of people, practice continual conflict avoidance. They will do anything to keep the peace and in this case keeping the peace has resulted in a loss to us all!

1 comment:

  1. stick up her butte - don't you love to blog. hey you haven't visited my blot yet.

    ReplyDelete