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“Frankly, I think our Planning Board has ruined Route 6 as it is. It isn’t a pretty street anymore. I’ve seen beautiful places go.” - Regina Marini
Good Friday Morning,
It's going to be a hot one today so all those nice, neighborly rules apply. Check on the elderly, make sure your outdoor pets have shade and plenty of cool water... you know the drill.
Last evening's dinner here at the Asylum consisted of a salad made entirely from the garden. Lettuce, radishes, oregano, basil and young carrots. The pasta had sauce canned from last year's tomatoes. This year's tomatoes are already fruiting and if the deer would stop eating the zucchini I'd have some of those by week's end. Hows your garden doing?
There's a Members Event at Arts on the Lake this evening at 8 but if you're not yet a member of that organization you can show up and become one on the spot - and you'll be happy you did. There's more information about all that here.
 Three Putnam towns are now Lalor free. Add Putnam Valley to Carmel and Kent. Where's Philisptown, Patterson and Southeast in all this? Does anyone know? The last time I drove down Route 9 and 9D those signs were as thick as crabgrass.
Today marks Bill Gates' retirement from Microsoft. (I'll bet he'd send me to the Water Expo in Spain. Anyone got his number?) Regardless of whether he does or not, millions of techno-nerds know that that the most famous of their own got his start as the stereotypical pale, pimply faced kid in a garage and will hold a moment of silence in his honor. They won't turn their computers off, however, that would be going too far. They'll just stand in front of their screens for a moment silently cursing Vista and wishing for DOS 3.1 to make a comeback.
I remember those exciting early days of the home computer revolution and had my first BBS up back in the late 80's running on an IBM XT. A little later I had the honor of creating and publishing the very first all electronic newsletter, ModemNews. Here's a blurb about it from 1993 bearing one of the first uses of the term "E-Zine":
"There is also an E-zine called MODEMNEWS, which used to be a nicely laid out ansi magazine. It used to come as one .EXE file, which when ran, would display the entire contents of the mag in spectacular ansi graphics. The (ansi) ads in this magazine were truly fascinating...
This was back in the day when a 1 megabyte hard drive weighed the same as a small car. Back in the day when my first modem was a 300 baud unit made with spare parts duct-taped to a piece of cardboard. Based on my experience with Verizon's DSL service these past few weeks, I ought to dig that sucker up - it's faster and more reliable.
I'd also like to thank all those who wrote about yesterday's News That Matters and feel encouraged by the outpouring of support for the Domestic Partner Registry Putnam County residents have shown over the past few days - but the battle is just beginning. I don't know if there's a public comment period beyond the hearing held this past Wednesday but even if there isn't it cannot hurt to bring the case directly to Mr. Bondi's office and encourage his passage of the bill by Tuesday. Please put together a short note and send it by fax (if someone has the County Executive's email address please send it along!) to his office at (845) 225-0294.
Well, enough of all that and enjoy the weekend. Here's the news:
- Sale of Farm to Developer Is Under Way
- Putnam Arts Council sets deadlines for grants
- Rye leaf blower ban stirs 2 calls daily
- For Mayors, Fuel Cost Presents Opportunities
- From: Fossil Fuel Whack-A-Mole
- Bird Family Tree Gets Re-Write
- One in five gay people suffer hate attacks
- The Station That Dared to Defend Carlin’s ‘7 Words’ Looks Back
- Dems Who Flipped On FISA Immunity See More Telecom Cash
- Poughkeepsie Journal Editorial: Carlin's work went far beyond 7 words
- Mars and Saturn Get Together
Sale of Farm to Developer Is Under Way By NANCY HAGGERTY
BALDWIN PLACE
ON a hot and humid afternoon recently at the Mahopac Farm here, two domestic geese shared swimming space with a Canada goose in a tiny pond bordered by weeping willows worthy of an artist’s canvas.
Nearby, two goats stood on picnic tables. A family visited a small, adjoining playground and its two ponies. A statue of Lenin, more than 10 feet high and once the property of MGM, towered feet from two pigs lounging underneath a nearly six-foot-tall statue of a camel.
The sign at an entrance to this 33-acre property on Route 6 reads: “The Mahopac Farm. We Grow Smiles.” For years, that has been the case. But now the property, which once supported a playhouse, a country store, a museum and a petting zoo that still exists, is being sold for commercial development.
The proposed 300-acre project would continue the extensive changes along the Route 6 corridor, to the dismay of some residents. The developer behind the proposal is Paul Camarda, of Ridgefield, Conn., who has been building in Putnam County for two decades. Mr. Camarda is in contract to buy two last pieces, the farm and an abutting Mobil station.
Under his plan, the farm would become the site of a Whole Foods supermarket, a bookstore, a restaurant and 3,000 square feet of retail space. The other acreage would include a Target store and 300 town houses and apartments, as well as, in a village setting designed to encourage pedestrians, 150 apartments and corporate, hotel and retail/restaurant space.
Mr. Camarda said it would take 5 to 10 years to complete the development, called Union Place.
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Putnam Arts Council sets deadlines for grants The Putnam Arts Council has scheduled its mandatory seminar dates for those who wish to apply for 2009 grants. Funding is awarded each year for projects in all art disciplines that take place in Putnam County and are open to the public. Two re-granting programs are offered each year - the Decentralization Program of the New York State Council on the Arts and the Putnam Arts Fund supported by Putnam County government.
The application deadline is Sept. 19. Pre-registration is required for the seminars: July 16, Tilly Foster Farm, 4 p.m.; July 22, Desmond Fish Library, 5:30 p.m.; and Sept. 4 at Tilly Foster Farm, 10:30 a.m. Appointments may be made if these dates don't work for applicants. Dates and times of seminars are subject to change.
For information and to register, visit www.putnamartscouncil.com or call the arts council at 845-278-0230.
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Rye leaf blower ban stirs 2 calls daily Theresa Juva
The Journal News
RYE - Nearly a month after the city's leaf-blower ban went into effect, police are responding to at least two complaints a day for the dust-kicking, noisy garden tools.
Before the ordinance, police received only occasional calls about leaf blowers - usually when more than one was being used on a property, Rye Lt. Joseph Verille said.
"It's certainly an additional task for officers to respond to it," Verille said, noting that an officer must catch someone using the leaf blower in order to issue a summons. The Police Department is keeping a list of homeowners and landscapers who have been warned.
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For Mayors, Fuel Cost Presents Opportunities June 24, 2008
Municipalities, many already running unhealthy deficits, are facing a new world of cost issues in the face of increasing fuel prices. Most municipalities use fuel on the large scale, with various administrators, surveyors, building code inspectors and other city officials zipping around the city to conduct their business. As cities are looking for solutions to fuel prices, they could be thinking too small.
Mayors that met at the United States Conference of Mayors discussed the results of a survey of over a hundred municipalities, 90% of which said that they had changed operating procedures to minimize fuel expenditures. The result have been soft measures so far. Mayors have been encouraging their staff to carpool, visit sites that are near each other at the same time, encouraging staff to take public transit and turn off the lights when a room is empty. Budgets for 2008 seem to have been built on $2/gallon gas and soft measures are inadequate unless cities want to go the way of Vallejo (municipal bankruptcy).
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From: Fossil Fuel Whack-A-Mole However, today the shine is off the Studebaker. Levitt & Sons has gone bankrupt. A victim of overreach and the sub-prime mortgage crisis. What’s left of the Detroit auto industry is hemorrhaging cash as they scramble to survive in a $130 per barrel, SUV killing world. In an effort to save our vast investment in suburbia and our automotive lifestyle major auto companies and a few entrepreneurial startups are designing and beginning to promote plug-in hybrid, all electric, compressed air, and hydrogen fuel cell cars as the answer to rising gas and diesel prices.
I have to question whether we will just transition painlessly to the next generation “power train” or will this new autopia be a game of fossil fuel whack-a-mole before we have to face up to to the unsustainable reality of suburbia? In the short term the answer is a tentative maybe as we navigate the two decades between today’s emerging crisis of peak oil and tomorrow’s crisis of peak coal.
Read the full article
Bird Family Tree Gets Re-Write AFP
June 26, 2008 -- A five-year project has revolutionized scientific thought on the evolution of birds and the results are so surprising that now even the textbooks will have to be rewritten, a study said Thursday.
"With this study, we learned two major things," said Sushma Reddy, lead author and a fellow at The Field Museum in Chicago, Ill.
"First, appearances can be deceiving. Birds that look or act similar are not necessarily related. Second, much of bird classification and conventional wisdom on the evolutionary relationships of birds is wrong."
The results of the largest ever study of bird genetics are so widespread that the names of dozens of birds will now have to be changed, says the study to be published in Science magazine.
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One in five gay people suffer hate attacks John Carvel, social affairs editor The Guardian,
Thursday June 26, 2008
One in five lesbian and gay people have been victims of homophobic aggression over the past three years, a survey of hate crime will reveal today. Their experiences range from beatings and sexual assault to persistent harassment and insults, often from neighbours and workmates.
The charity Stonewall commissioned YouGov to carry out the first comprehensive national survey of homophobic crime, which analyses the experiences of more than 1,700 lesbian, gay and bisexual people. The poll found that 12.5% had been the victims of a homophobic crime or incident over the past year, and 20% over the past three years.
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The Station That Dared to Defend Carlin’s ‘7 Words’ Looks Back By GLENN COLLINS
As the encomiums for George Carlin have rolled in from stand-up legends, celebrities and scholars, his death at 71 has also been noted at a diminutive, iconic and iconoclastic radio station in Manhattan, WBAI-FM.
Its broadcast of the comedian’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” became a landmark moment in the history of free speech. In a 1978 milestone in the station’s contentious and unruly history, WBAI lost a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision that to this day has defined the power of the government over broadcast material it calls indecent.
“It’s a bad time here for us because George Carlin was part of the family,” said Anthony Riddle, the station’s general manager. “I think all the producers are dealing with it in their own way,” Mr. Riddle said, some doing commentary and others running archival material, including a bleeped-out version of the “Seven Words” routine.
The 1978 ruling, often termed “the Carlin case,” was actually called Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation, and turned on a 12-minute Carlin monologue called “Filthy Words” that appeared on a 1973 album, “Occupation: Foole.”
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Dems Who Flipped On FISA Immunity See More Telecom Cash By Chris Frates / The Politico
House Democrats who flipped their votes to support retroactive immunity for telecom companies in last week’s FISA bill took thousands of dollars more from phone companies than Democrats who consistently voted against legislation with an immunity provision, according to an analysis by MAPLight.org.
In March, the House passed an amendment that rejected retroactive immunity. But last week, 94 Democrats who supported the March amendment voted to support the compromise FISA legislation, which includes a provision that could let telecom companies that cooperated with the government’s warrantless electronic surveillance off the hook.
The 94 Democrats who changed their positions received on average $8,359 in contributions from Verizon, AT&T and Sprint from January, 2005, to March, 2008, according to the analysis by MAPLight, a nonpartisan organization that tracks the connection between campaign contributions and legislative outcomes.
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Poughkeepsie Journal Editorial: Carlin's work went far beyond 7 words Of course, George Carlin's legacy always will be tied to those "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television'' and the subsequent Supreme Court ruling on those naughty words. But it was Carlin's everyday observations - those casual musings and the way he phrased them - that embodied his memorable career as a comedian. Carlin, who died Sunday at 71, leaves behind treasures of humor that will be handed down from generation to generation.
Consider his observations on, well -stuff - and people's propensity to collect things and have a hard time parting with them.
"That's all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time.''
Carlin found humor in most things, including the scrambled way we sometimes communicate: "Why do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?''
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Mars and Saturn Get Together By Joe Rao
SPACE.com Skywatching Columnist
posted: 27 June 2008
7:00 am ET
Two bright planets will approach each other in our evening sky during the next couple of weeks. They are Mars, which was so brilliant during the Christmas season of 2007 and has since diminished dramatically in brightness, and Saturn, which has adorned our evening sky since midwinter.
Both worlds are now visible about one-third of the way up from the western horizon as darkness falls.
And as a bonus, located between these two planets is the bright star Regulus, in the constellation of Leo, the Lion. Yellow-white Saturn, shining sedately at magnitude +0.4, is located above and to the left of Regulus, while the much dimmer Mars appears below and to the right of Regulus. At magnitude +1.6, Mars has now fallen to the rank of second magnitude and appears only one-half as bright as Saturn. Regulus, meanwhile is roughly midway in brightness between the two planets.
On this scale of brightness, smaller numbers represent brighter objects.
If you watch the sky carefully through the next two weeks, you'll be able to take note of the changing positions of these two planets and nearby star, relative to each other.
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