 "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve." - JRR Tolkien Good Friday Morning, It's the end of the (normal) workweek and the weather is, once again, stellar. If you can get out this weekend look for blueberries which are ripening all over the county. A good place to go is on the red-blazed Charcoal Burner's Trail in Fahnestock State Park just off Route 301 though almost any open ridge in the area should work. They're a great anti-oxidant. If you've got $30,000 laying around here's a good way to spend it. An Ohio company called Myers Motors has an all electric, one seater, three wheeled vehicle in production right now. Though the vehicle (it's classified as a three-wheel motorcycle, not a car by most states,) will only get you about 40 miles on a charge, it will get you there at 76 miles an hour. When you're running chores around town I'll bet your doing about 30-35 miles and spending ten dollars on gasoline. But that car, the NmG (for "No more Gas") will run about $200 in extra electricity costs each year which is a lot cheaper than the gasoline you'd be using. Learn more about the vehicle here. And, it's cute. I mean, really cute. You just want to have one to pet. The Journal News reports this morning that the county is looking at a site on Ludingtonville Road for the long-overdue Senior Center. The site, the location of an old hotel that overlooked Drew Pond, was once proposed as a possible site for the Eastern Putnam County YMCA. But the lot proved difficult to work with, containing extensive wetlands and an old dam that needs repairing. Let's see how the county deals with this. On Sunday, get yourself up to the Muddy Cup coffeehouse at 305 Main Street for a free showing of the HBO film, "Hacking Democracy". This 82 minute HBO documentary investigates allegations of election fraud during the 2004 U.S. presidential election. A group of concerned citizens and watchdog organizations, investigate voter machine hardware and software security holes in systems used in numerous states including Ohio, Florida and California. With the help of a computer programmer, a demonstration is given on how easy it is to change the numbers tallied on Diebold voting machines. The show starts at 2PM and is hosted by Dutchess County legislator Joel Tyner. If you're planning on attending the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN this year, be prepared for the normal protests and demonstrations that accompany such events. But, unlike the intentional mayhem that ensued in NYC during the 2004 conventions, in which the NYPD locked the city down tighter than an airlock on the Space Shuttle and arrested anyone who wasn't dressed like Pat Boone or Billy Graham, then dragging them off to an oil and grease covered bus garage for three days, St. Paul claims they're going to be more open. So open in fact, that they've decided to allow the route of a massive anti-war protest to march in front of the convention center and then onto a dead end road. Yeah, 50,000 angry Americans marched into a dead end with no place to go. The mind reels at that kind of planning. But it only gets better. See, the weekend the Repubs chose for their dog and pony show is the same weekend as the MN State Fair and there isn't a porta-potty available within 500 miles. Yes, they've planned their convention just like they've planned the war against Iraq. Only one way in and no way out. The Democrats are not off the hook either. In Denver, police are allowing demonstrators a spot where you'd have to stand on top of the convention center in order to see them. Needless to say in both cases the courts are going to be busy. At least you can get out of Denver. The government has found a new way for Corporate America to get out of performing safety upgrades to facilities and cleaning up pollutants in the environment. It's easy: just lower the dollar value of a human life. There's more in the last story below the fold and it's worth a read. If you're planning to attend Greg Ball's fund raiser tomorrow on a farm in Patterson, don't forget your blaze-orange safety vests and your guns. NRA members get in for $50 while the rest of you have to shell out $75. I do expect we'll have a better crowd for the Garden Party here at the Asylum where guns aren't required, hip boots will be replaced by sandals and the farm animals won't be running scared. Enjoy your weekend! - County-owned site considered for senior center in Kent
- Town building ban imposed (Poughkeepsie)
- Invasive mile-a-minute vine wreaks havoc on our woodlands
- Three New Falcons on Mid- Hudson Bridge
- Kent Duo Host Benefit for Invisible Children
- School's 'Teacher of Year' uses river as a resource (East Hartford, CT)
- An American life worth less today
County-owned site considered for senior center in Kent Susan Elan The Journal News Putnam officials want to evaluate a county-owned piece of property in Kent, the site of a former hotel, to determine whether it could become home to a long-hoped-for senior center. The county Legislature's Physical Services Committee approved a resolution this week to authorize spending as much as $50,000 to study the site, off Ludingtonville Road. The nine-member board is expected to vote on it Aug. 5. The 49-acre parcel, which includes Drew Lake, is near Interstate 84 and the Patterson border. Putnam has owned it since 1994. "The site is gorgeous, and there's the potential for additional land," said George Michaud, Putnam's director of real property, who described it as complete with swans, stone walls, the remnants of tennis courts and a former gravel driveway that remains dry despite nearby wetlands. Read More Town building ban imposed 9-month stay slows dorm plan By Michael Valkys Poughkeepsie Journal Residential construction in some parts of the Town of Poughkeepsie will end for at least nine months - likely delaying Dutchess Community College's plan to construct a dorm complex off Cottage Road in Fairview. The town board unanimously approved a nine-month moratorium on residential construction in institutional zones, which includes property owned by Dutchess, Vassar and Marist colleges, as well as Saint Francis Hospital. A total of 940 acres townwide would be affected. The measure approved Wednesday allows the board to extend the moratorium two times, or an additional 18 months, if necessary. Supervisor Patricia Myers said the moratorium is needed to give officials time to review potential effects of development in institutional zones throughout the town. Read More Invasive mile-a-minute vine wreaks havoc on our woodlands Bill Cary | The Journal News Called the kudzu of the Northeast, the wildly invasive mile-a-minute vine has established a firm foothold in the Lower Hudson Valley in just a few years. It joins Asiatic bittersweet, wild grape and porcelain berry as the latest non-native vines to wreak havoc along our parkways and in our parks and woodlands. To keep the mile-a-minute vine from spreading to parts of Westchester and Putnam that haven't seen it yet, two volunteer weed pulls will be held this weekend, at Ward Pound Ridge Reservation in Cross River on Saturday and at the Mianus River Gorge Preserve in Bedford on Sunday. The rain dates are July 19 and 20. The weed pulls, sponsored by the Mile-a-Minute Project of the Hudson Valley, run from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 to 5 p.m. at Ward Pound Ridge and from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Mianus River Gorge. Read More Three New Falcons on Mid- Hudson Bridge Three baby peregrine falcons chicks have a new home on the Mid-Hudson Bridge. Wildlife biologists recently visited the bridge to place leg tags on the chicks and monitor the perch. Mother and children were pronounced healthy and in great shape. The name Peregrine means "wanderer," and northern-nesting Peregrines are among North America's long-distance migratory species, traveling as much as 10,000 miles a year. Peregrines mate for life and usually return to the same nesting spot each year. The state Bridge Authority provides nesting areas on each of its five spans for Peregrines. The Peregrine Falcon is the fastest bird on the planet in its hunting dive, soaring to a half mile or more, then diving at speeds in excess of 200mph. The top speed recorded for a Peregrine dive is 242.3mph. Read More Kent Duo Host Benefit for Invisible Children In 2003, Bobby Bailey, Jason Russell and Laren Poole, college students from San Diego journeyed to Africa with the idea of making a documentary about the horrible living conditions of Ugandans residing in displacement camps. Their documentary Invisible Children has won international recognition and acclaim. In the film, the American students focused on Uganda's children as they struggle daily with the very real possibility of being kidnapped or killed by rebels in the Lord's Resistance Army. The 60-minute film follows packs of children as they travel on foot at night to nearby hospitals where they spread their blankets in corridors hoping to study before going to sleep. Today, the film is the cornerstone of the Invisible Children's Movement, a non-profit grassroots organization started by Russell and dedicated to raising the world's awareness of the plight of Uganda's children. Recently, two Kent residents, Andrew Vlad, 20, and Leah Rogers, 19, decided to help the ICM by hosting a benefit rock concert. "It was Andrew's idea," said Rogers, a sophomore studying Costume Design at SUNY Purchase. Rogers has known Vlad since they attended Carmel High School together. She is the Youth Liaison to the Board of Directors of Arts on the Lake. Read More School's 'Teacher of Year' uses river as a resource By: John Karas Teacher Jill Wnuk believes middle school is not just about math, science and social studies: It is also about helping them discover what is really important in life. "At this age," she explains "the kids are so 'all over the place.' They're growing up. So we really try to not just teach them subject matter, but also teach them about how to take responsibility and how to make a difference." So, just before the school year ended Wnuk's students donned rubber gloves and picked up garbage bags and trekked down to the banks of the nearby Hockanum River which winds its way around the bend behind the school. The tally after the day-long campaign: 30 bags of trash - cans, cardboard, plastic, bottles, boxes and even some corroded lengths of pipe that looked suspiciously like an old football goal post from back in the day when football captain and quarterback John Larson was helping his EHHS Hornets score touchdowns on the old high school field at what is now the town's middle school. "This is our second time cleaning up along the river," related Wnuk. "It's part of an environmental Read More An American life worth less today By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Thursday, July 10, 2008 (07-10) 23:14 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) -- It's not just the American dollar that's losing value. A government agency has decided that an American life isn't worth what it used to be. The "value of a statistical life" is $6.9 million in today's dollars, the Environmental Protection Agency reckoned in May — a drop of nearly $1 million from just five years ago. The Associated Press discovered the change after a review of cost-benefit analyses over more than a dozen years. Though it may seem like a harmless bureaucratic recalculation, the devaluation has real consequences. When drawing up regulations, government agencies put a value on human life and then weigh the costs versus the lifesaving benefits of a proposed rule. The less a life is worth to the government, the less the need for a regulation, such as tighter restrictions on pollution. Consider, for example, a hypothetical regulation that costs $18 billion to enforce but will prevent 2,500 deaths. At $7.8 million per person (the old figure), the lifesaving benefits outweigh the costs. But at $6.9 million per person, the rule costs more than the lives it saves, so it may not be adopted. Some environmentalists accuse the Bush administration of changing the value to avoid tougher rules — a charge the EPA denies. Read More | |