The Rattlesnake Hill Wildlife Management Area is a 5,100 acre upland tract, situated approximately eight miles west of Dansville, New York. Roughly two-thirds of the area lies in southern Livingston County, while the remaining third lies in northern Allegany County. The tract was purchased in the 1930’s under the Federal Resettlement Administration and is one of several such areas turned over to DEC for development as a wildlife management area.
The area is appropriately named after the Timber Rattlesnake, which may be occasionally found in the more remote sections of the “Hill”.
The area offers an interesting blend of upland habitats such as mature woodland, overgrown fields, conifer plantations, old growth apple orchards and open meadows.
The area is inhabited by a variety of game species and is open to public hunting. The white-tailed deer, wild turkey, ruffed grouse, grey squirrel, cottontail rabbit and woodcock are found on the area. An occasional snowshoe hare may be observed adjacent to thick creek bottom brush or conifer plantation habitats.
A number of small marsh units have been developed and provide limited hunting for waterfowl. Some of the area’s furbearing species such as mink, beaver and raccoon may be occasionally viewed at these marsh units.
FYI. If you have Python installed and you need to decode base64 from an email you got forwarded to you, this may be more able to decode it the base64 that’s part of coreutils.
No more riding home from work. Turning that brass desk lamp on at four o’clock each day, watching as it gets dark outside from my office and coming home to my dark apartment. Cold, long evenings.
A lot of people don’t like after the leaves fall off the trees and the woods gets a palette of browns and grays. But I do as I like how so much more light filters down to the forest floor and the interesting shadows made by the hills and hollows with the low sun angle.
I wonder if made some kind of ranking to become a prime potential victim of scamming or there has just been a uptick in scams lately but I’ve gotten hit hard with obviously scammy material targeted directly at me.
Fake Facebook Dating profiles that match my interests perfectly for dating, even friends with one of my friends who is known to let anyone be her friends. I am thinking this is a romance scam.
Creepy fake text messages from my bank alerting me of fraudulent withdrawals with a tinyurl.com link to what mostly is a fake login page to my bank
Creepy fake text messages saying my package has been undeliverable with suspecious links
The later two have me a bit more worried as I had a legitimate bank fraud alert relating to my web hosting purchase earlier in the day and package undeliverable messages came around the time my bike light was going to be delivered. Makes me wonder if my phone has been hacked with some kind of Spyware, or maybe it’s just scammers carefully monitoring my blog and social media platforms – or maybe just dumb luck. I know a few years back when my truck broke down, and I posted it on social media, shortly thereafter I got one of those fake login scams in my text messages. Who knows!
The Isreal – Hammas conflict reminds me a lot of what you read in the history books about the Indian removal and creation of the Indian reservations in America. White European settlers with their early industrial revolution produced superior weapons that rolled over the unfamiliar countryside and took the land long settled by the red men – the Native Americans and forced them onto undesirable lands, the reservations. The red men fought back bravely with what they had, occasionally uprising and engaging in terrorism against the white men, but ultimately because of disease and the overwhelming power of the American colonists ultimately ended up signing away their rights and giving up much land that they had once farmed, hunted and lived on.
Isreal has long had a similar relationship with the Palestinian people. Many Isrealies are driven for a passion to recover their religious homeland, an ideology of Zionism similar to that of the American settlers and manifest destiny. Both are an ideology of hubris, a grandeous delusion built on superior military force. Religious ideology – fundamentalism in the form of the Jewish or Muslim faith – is fine but one’s religion should be private moral code not an excuse to bully or remove the Palestinian people from their homeland.
Like the white men taking over the red man’s land when a group has no practical way to lawfully to fight back, their option really is only to engage in the unconventional war tactics – namely terrorism and war crimes against civilians. As they said about the Viet Cong in the United States, “those commies never fight fair.” Isreal is responding with their own series of war crimes, starving Palestinian civilians from food, energy and water. Not unlike how the United States engaged in war crimes both against the red men throughout history, or more recently in Laos and Cambodia.
If there was adults in the room known as the globe, both the Israeli and Palestinian leaders would be rounded up and tried for war crimes. Bombing and kidnapping Israeli citizens who aren’t leaders or military people is disgusting and immoral. But likewise imprisoning Palestinians in their communities, cutting them off from food, water and energy – while bombing their towns is morally repugent too. Killing the opposing side is not the solution. Compromise and peace is.
First we need peace. Stop bombing and bullying both the Isrealis and the Palestinians. Then we need to hold leaders on both sides accountable for terrorism and war crimes. Not civilians even if they are sympathic towards the fighters. But actual leaders. Then we need to find a two state solution where both the Isrealis and Palestinians are free to create their own forms of government that uphold their own values that allow for the free movement of people and goods. There needs to be borders assertian that everyone agrees upon, with both sides losing a bit. We need democracy in both the Israeli and Palestinian states.
Pennsylvania does a much better job at preserving the history of the Civilian Conservation Corporation with signage of old camps and facilities, preserved old buildings and monuments. You almost get the impression that it is chapter of New York’s history that is to be forgotten.
But then again, I think conservation is at best an after thought in New York. But it’s always been that way – much of the state land is forest preserve – which is a decidedly anti-conservation concept.
Over the years I’ve written many essays I’ve never posted here. Some of them are ideas that are under developed, others are things forgotten. Sometimes I just want to wait to post commentary on an issue once it’s fully played out. But over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to post more, post some things written long ago, because I think they are either relevant or quite interesting for people to read.
