Environment – Page 21 – The Edge of the Wood

Discovering dinosaurs, and other life forms

(Published in the Gettysburg Times, 10/25/2013)

The three-year-old took his dad and me to the zoo this week. The little guy is a chick magnet. Everywhere we went, he was so happy playing with dad, laughing and grinning, that young ladies 100 yards away were looking at him and smiling. Which caused them to look at me and smile because they knew I was with Peter, and Peter’s an obviously really cool little guy.

[pullquote]There’s something really great about watching a youngster discover new things, even – maybe especially – when he has no real idea what he has discovered.[/pullquote]

First it was a ride on the Metro to Washington, then lunch outside the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Peter loves dinosaurs, and he knows which skull is the Triceratops and which the T. Rex. He found a Pterodactyl, which he properly identified as a bird, and oohed over the monsters behind the glass of a miniature Jurassic Park.

Continue reading Discovering dinosaurs, and other life forms

Firing fossils: messy, expensive, and too often deadly

(Published in the Gettysburg Times, 10/11/2013)

Click thumbnail for full-size panoramic image

One of the highlights of a week-long conference I recently attended in Chattanooga, Tenn. was a bus trip a few miles north, to the Kingston Fossil Plant, one of 11 coal-fired electricity generating plants owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority. The plant burns coal to turn water into steam to drive generators to provide electricity to about 540,000 homes.

It also was the site, in the early morning of December 22, 2008, of a massive release of coal ash into nearby rivers and a lake. Without warning – at least without warning considered by plant managers, an 84-acre pile of ash broke loose to befoul the waters below – and above – the plant. The ash mass hit the Emory River with such force the downstream flow could not immediately absorb it, so the ash, and the river it rode, flowed backward several miles, and created “ashbergs” in the watercourse.

Continue reading Firing fossils: messy, expensive, and too often deadly

Electric buses, u-rent bicycles, and fish at the brink of extinction

Fellow SEJer and NPR reporter Karen Schaefer contemplates renting a bike to explore Chattanooga. I am returned home from a six-day conference, counting travel, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, during which I saw little of the city whilst I mingled with fellow recorders of “environmental” tales and observations. It was an informative sojourn, full of camaraderie and information, at least some of which we members of the Society of Environmental Journalists each hope will add value and color to our future musings.

But I was impressed, in what limited exposure I had, with the uncity-ness of the historic burg.

Continue reading Electric buses, u-rent bicycles, and fish at the brink of extinction

Fracking Pennsylvania: Flirting with Disaster

(Published in the Gettysburg Times, 10/4/2013)

Well before most Pennsylvania residents were aware of a natural gas industry north of the Gulf of Mexico, it was taking root in the Commonwealth. “Fracking Pennsylvania: Flirting with Disaster,” by Walter M. Brasch, is the story of that enterprise.

The narrative begins in 2000, when Mitchell Energy, with help from the U.S. Department of Energy, finally proved that extracting natural gas from shale a mile and-a-half below the state’s surface was a practical – read profitable – undertaking.

Continue reading Fracking Pennsylvania: Flirting with Disaster

Important questions blanket GMA’s quest to buy York water

Most of us only think about water when it doesn't run from the faucet (Published in the Gettysburg Times, 9/20/2013)

When the merits of “sustainable” growth are mentioned, the parts most often left out of the hype are more roads to maintain, more schools to build, more police, fire and emergency medical services to provide.

And more water to drink.

More water – two million gallons a day – is what some directors of Gettysburg Municipal Authority would have its customers believe they need to buy from York Water Company. Continue reading Important questions blanket GMA’s quest to buy York water

A new walking stick

Peavine bought himself a new walking stick. A dandy specimen it is, too – a really nice five-section telescoping stick with a compass on top. Each section is accented with, in his case, a bright orange ring.

He bought it, he said, because it came in orange. It also is available in black, blue, green, purple, red, gold and titanium, but as long as we’ve been hanging around together, I’ve never known Peavine to go for those flashy colors. Besides, orange is a good color in the woods because deer can’t see it. Continue reading A new walking stick

A little less black(top), please

First printed in the Gettysburg Times, 7/19/2013)

The TV reporter stands in Manhattan, NYC, telling us the temperature where she is standing is 97F. A couple blocks away, in Central Park, it’s only 92, she says.

What she does not mention is Central Park is an island of trees and grass. She is standing, sweating, amid pavement, buildings and motor vehicles together pouring rivers of heat into their already oven-like ambiance. Continue reading A little less black(top), please

Coal barons’ chronic affliction: Mumpsimus.

(First published in the Gettysburg Times, 7/12/2013)

While the nightly TV news blathers on about fires in the west and floods in the northeast, with barely a mention what might be causing the growing catastrophes, a battle of a different, though related, sort may be brewing in the Pacific Northwest.

Many roads in Pennsylvania, especially in the western part of the commonwealth, are lined with billboards touting efforts to keep jobs and blaming the EPA for regulating jobs out of existence. Many of us believe the claims. Either we know a family that has lost at least one coal mining job, or we watch the evening news that every now and then mentions EPA Clean Air regulations causing electricity generators to switch to natural gas. Continue reading Coal barons’ chronic affliction: Mumpsimus.

Welcome to Emanon

(First printed in the Gettysburg Times, 7/5/2013)

Life was good for many years in Emanon. Herons and osprey hunted the creek, and people generally enjoyed living here. There was a move to pave Main Street, but a rather vocal group claimed it would just allow drivers to go faster. Better to leave the potholes as sort of inverse speed bumps.

Far and wide, word went out that people in the town were friendly, schools were good, and a place to build a home was, relative to many bigger burgs, affordable. Development firms with offices in several states touted the jobs they would create for local workers who would build new homes for new residents, resulting in new revenue in town coffers from the new residents who bought the new homes. All would be beautiful and prosperous in the quiet rural air of Emanon. Continue reading Welcome to Emanon

Pa taxpayers subsidize King Coal, pull subsidies from new technologies

(This column first posted 12/30/2011 on Rock The Capital)
A report published this month says fossil fuels receive subsidies of about $2.9 billion a year from Pennsylvania taxpayers. It also says most of the assistance has been in exemptions, such as removing sales and use taxes from gasoline to make the fuel seem less expensive.
The result is state coffers take a hit while motor fuel producers maintain their profits. And hospital costs escalate, powered upward in part by kids and elderly with breathing problems – even those who don’t smoke tobacco.
Actually, the only reason tobacco use is noticeable is relatively few of us inhale cigarette smoke – way fewer than spend large portions of their days inhaling secondhand effluent from the clutter of rush hour people haulers, bumper to bumper, 5-10 mph, into and out of our nation’s large towns and cities. Continue reading Pa taxpayers subsidize King Coal, pull subsidies from new technologies

Bringing the Susquehanna to Gettysburg

When I was young, I lived on the shores of a lake of some 500 acres. The deepest part of the pond was, I think, about 80 feet – “The Hole,” my dad called it when he went fishing for quarry gone down to escape the too-warm surface water.

Around the lake were three year-round residences, and a few clusters of summer cottages. In winter, when the summer folks had gone back to town, two families remained; one was ours. The third year-round home was owned by a family who lived in town, spent weekends in Summer and none in Winter, and had enough money to make their summer cottage like their in-town home – large, with indoor “facilities.” Continue reading Bringing the Susquehanna to Gettysburg

Hammock therapy, what the resident nurse ordered

( Looking out over my toes at the passing wonders of nature First printed in the Gettysburg Times, 6/21/2013)

We have a new hammock, given us for Fathers Day by the Resident Nurse. It is a great place to spend a Friday afternoon, with Grady the Golden lying beneath, making sure I don’t decide to wander without him knowing.

Hammock therapy, the Resident Nurse calls it.

Atop a nearby fence slat, a robin chirps – if that’s what to call what she is sounding. She must be pleased with the worm hanging from her bill; with each chirp she pumps her throat and tail, putting her whole body into her celebration.

Occasionally, a member of the robin colony will pull a worm and just stand there quietly, upright, chest puffed, as though saying to her fellow wormers, “See what I’ve done. I bet you can’t find one as big!” Continue reading Hammock therapy, what the resident nurse ordered

On tearing down mountains and other barriers

(First published in the Gettysburg Times, 6/7/2013)

A college sociology professor told me the length of human experience is about 50 years. Any longer than that is “the way it’s always been.”

One might argue human experience has been shortening in recent years; we can hear that concept illustrated on the evening news nearly every night, as the latest storm or political catastrophe is declared the worst since time began. Consider that four Americans died in an attack on Benghazi, making it “one of the worst incidents that I can recall,” according former Vice President Dick Cheney. Continue reading On tearing down mountains and other barriers

Spring: time for passion and birth

(First published in the Gettysburg Times, 4/26/2013)

Outside my studio window stands Mary Lou, a dogwood tree now in bloom, given my wife by her fellow nurses when her mom departed the planet. A colorful variety of feathered creatures bath in the stream, then fly up to preen themselves dry in Mary Lou’s outstretched arms.

At least one of the shrubs surrounding our house has become, or soon will, a nesting place for a robin family. I think it already has because when I approach a robin on any other side of the house, it flies away. But on the one side, it merely hops a few feet, in a more or less straight line, it’s back pointed to the evergreenery where I suspect it has taken up housekeeping. I take that behavior as an invitation to follow, knowing full well I’m being led away from the future baby bed. Continue reading Spring: time for passion and birth

Happy Birthday to the Mighty Lincoln Highway

“It was 3,000 miles of rockin’ rollin’ highway, a million memories long and two lanes wide” – From the lyrics of “Old 30,” by C.W. McCall.

The Lincoln Highway turns 100 this year. Actually, it is about 3,400 miles, New York to San Francisco, and 28 of those miles are in Adams County, Pa., passing through Gettysburg, less than a mile from my home.

Former Adams County Commissioner Harry Stokes once told me the name reflected Gettysburg, and its downtown Wills House, in which the 16th president spent the night before delivering those few words the “world shall little note nor long remember.” Continue reading Happy Birthday to the Mighty Lincoln Highway

SGI-DCNR land swap: good idea or bad?

SGI min seen from Blue Ridge Summit (First published in the Gettysburg Times, 4/12/2013)

There is a commercial on television that makes me chuckle every time I see it.

A guy comes on to tell us his doctor had long recommended taking a vitamin supplement every day. Not just any supplement, either. A particular brand.

Then along comes a survey that verifies the doctor’s recommendation. It shows that a vitamin supplement really helps maintain good health. Not just any supplement, either. A particular brand. The one made by the company that ran the survey. And the fellow on TV says that’s proof his doctor was right.

One cannot realistically expect a business to say someone else’s product is more beneficial to humans and other residents of the planet, so excuse me if I’m reserving judgment on what a local company says about it’s need to expand, and how the planned addition to its operation will not be harmful to flora, fauna and water down stream. It’s not that I don’t believe the company; just that I’d like to see some information from an independent expert or two.

Continue reading SGI-DCNR land swap: good idea or bad?

Atomic States of America; a review

March 28, 2013 marked the 34th anniversary of the TMI meltdown.

Nuclear power is clean, government-regulated, and safe – until something goes wrong. In a 92-minute documentary titled “Atomic States of America,” co-directors Don Argot and Sheena M. Joyce trace the development of nuclear power – and what have turned out to be some of its attendant risks.

“The risk/reward is so different in nuclear power that one bad day at one facility can wipe out decades of good days at dozens of other facilities,” says David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer and Senior Member of Union of Concerned Scientists.

“The hundred tons that’s in the typical core can generate power for millions of homes for two years,” he said. “It is a very enticing technology.” Continue reading on Rock The Capital …

Spooning, exploring graveyards, and other spring pastimes

McClellan Cemetery, Black Horse Tavern Rd (Originally published in Gettysburg Times, March 29, 2013)

Spring is coming. The ice is out on my favorite canoeing pond, though some mornings I wake expecting it to be back. Grady the Golden and I are ready to go exploring.

At a recent Sunday morning breakfast with friends, someone mentioned going fishing, and catching “sunnies” to bury under the corn seeds. I recall similar days, sitting on a big rock I’d waded to from the shore in front of my home, dangling my feet in the water and having clouds of Bluegill Sunfish – sunnies – nibble my toes and eat my worms.

Mother declined including the fish in the evening repast. Too many bones, she said. I think most critters, including us and fish, have about the same number of bones, but those had a paucity of flesh surrounding them.

I’d read in a book that Indians used the fish for fertilizer. Continue reading Spooning, exploring graveyards, and other spring pastimes

If we knew what we’re eating …

Contains Potassium Benzoate, Acelsulfame Potassium, Phenylketoneurics and other more pronounceable chemicals (Originally published in Gettysburg Times, March 22, 2013)

Have you ever wondered what’s next in the soft drink line? A television commercial the other night had the answer.

Pepsi NEXT. With 60 percent less sugar – though less sugar than what, it didn’t say. Pepsi LAST, maybe?

I like carbonated water. I rarely drink sodas because a) I’m diabetic and b) I’m not sure what they use to replace sugar is better for me than the sugar it replaces. Your mileage may vary; I’m not preaching here. Still, it would be nice to now exactly what is in the stuff we eat and drink. We have gone a long time surviving on jokes such as, “I don’t eat anything I can’t pronounce,” but that’s not true, either. Trying to read the list of ingredients in, say, a loaf of bread can cause one’s eyes to tangle.

Continue reading If we knew what we’re eating …

India is not that far

Author's pen seeks to expose government secrecy

When I was considerably younger, I would swim out in the middle of the lake at midnight or thereabouts, lie on my back in the water, and float there, nearly weightless, looking up at light from so far away some of it had been reflected from stars that had not existed for longer than humans have walked on this planet.

Stars are interesting. Our sun is a star. They are responsible for all the elements that comprise everything else, including us. Continue reading India is not that far