So I was working on my testimony for the public hearing on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the solar farm proposed for Curry Road in the Albany Pine Bush. I drafted up some testimony based on my thoughts and then asked ChatGPT to make it sound like professional sounding testimony, no more the 3 minutes long. It really cleaned up my work.
Public Comment on Proposed Solar Project – Albany Pine Bush Andy Arthur – 15A Elm Avenue, Delmar, NY
Good evening. My name is Andy Arthur, and I live in Delmar at 15A Elm Avenue. I’ve recreated in the Albany Pine Bush for many years and have been a volunteer with Save the Pine Bush for over two decades — leading hikes, assisting with events, and providing GIS and data support.
I want to express my strong opposition to the proposed solar project within the Albany Pine Bush. While I fully recognize the urgent threat of climate change and support renewable energy, this particular project is not the right solution — nor the right location.
The proposed site would remove over 75 acres of land identified in the 2017 Albany Pine Bush Management Plan as essential for restoration and full protection. These lands are critical to building a viable preserve and support habitat for rare species, including the endangered Karner Blue Butterfly.
Solar facilities like this one can be sited in many other locations — on brownfields, rooftops, or marginal lands — without threatening globally rare inland pine barrens. We should not sacrifice high-value ecological land when cleaner energy options are already being added to our grid and existing plants continue to improve.
Building an industrial solar farm here would not only cause permanent ecological loss, but also hinder fire management and future preserve expansion.
If the project does move forward, I ask that two conditions be included:
That the solar site be dedicated to the Preserve once the facility reaches the end of its useful life; and
That 2772 Curry Road, which is not being developed, be added to the Preserve immediately.
Thank you for considering my comments, and for your stewardship of this unique and irreplaceable landscape.
Technically it starts tomorrow with no contact lens but I’m starting it today. I irrated my left eye when I slipped removing the lens yesterday so I definately can’t wear them today if I want my eyes to be perfectly healed before the big snip. Optometrist Edward Sissorhands already has my money, so I better be ready to stop wearing glasses come Friday. Maybe I’ll need cheaters eventually for reading but doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a necessity right away, and cheater are cheap and essentially disposable. I know in 2025, they don’t use scissors anymore to chop up your eyes, it’s done by shooting lasers into your eyes controlled by overpriced computers. But we don’t trust science anymore, because the scientists have all gone woke.
It’s a Tuesday. ☺️ Maybe I should go for a quick bike ride this morning, 🚲 as I have to drive my big jacked up truck to work 🛻 as it looks like rain tonight and I want to drive over after to work to the public hearing on the proposed solar facility in Albany Pine Bush. I’ll try to stick to script and not share my real thoughts on renewables for powering urban areas or how pro-natural gas I am, 📰 because otherwise I am sure I will be the quoted anti-solar, pro-natural gas voice in newspaper. 🦋 But I just don’t want them to cover the best butterfly grounds in Pine Bush with solar panels, when there is the rest of America. Did I mention that when I build or buy my house, I plan to do the off-grid thing, generating all of the electric energy with solar? ☀️ But no solar today, or at least not much as it will hopefully will rain. 🌧️ So not severe burn bans, as there is always stuff to burn up in woods. 🔥Having a sufficient battery 🔋 bank helps.
While there is some clouds 🌥️ this morning, it’s surprisingly pleasant 😀 outside this morning. I sure wish as hell that I could ride to work, 🚲 though that quick little ride through the cult-de-sacks of shit where all the woke people live with their Kamela for President signs and Gay Lives Matter signs, 🌈 was kind of nice. Not all areas of America can smell like cow shit after all. 🐮 I don’t mind gay people who own cows and have burn barrels. And I might have voted for Kamela, retrospectively after seeing what a shithead Trump 2.0 has proven to be. Maybe if I had gotten an earlier start, I could have ridden out Meads Lane to see REAL COWS but whatever. It is good to get some exercise even if I don’t get the twenty-miles or so riding in like yesterday. I don’t think it will be long after eye surgery that I will be riding to work again, at least one direction, weather permitting. 👁️ I just have to wear eye protection, maybe my yellow shooting glasses. That will look good riding through the projects on way to work, as I swerve around all the broke glass. 🍸 Lately the road has been so bad for having fragments of broke glass trash all over it. 📻 Been enjoying Hunter S. Thompson’s Rum Diaries audio book 🔉 while riding to work on my mountain bike. You know I kind of idolize Hunter S. Thompson.
Big pot of beans 🫘 cooking down on the stove. Second Half of the the four pound bag of beans is cooking down, I’ll freeze half and use the rest this week in various meals. It’s an excellent source of protein, pinto beans are very inexpensive and come in minimal plastic packaging easily turned into carbon dioxide. Healthy too. 🥩 I keep seeing ads for grocery-store steak on my blog, but I really don’t eat much meat anymore besides that occasional slice of locally-raised Berskshires bacon grilled up with lots of veggies up at camp. Maybe someday when I have livestock that I butcher myself 🐑 🗡️ I’ll eat more meat but it has so much saturated fat and plastic packaging that makes you obese. It’s like cheese, 🧀 used to be a big fan of it but not so much these days. As Joel Salatin points out, the best way to compost is to run it through livestock and turn food waste into meat and manure. 💩 Food waste in the burn garbage stinks and smolders so composting is best to return it to the earth. 🌎
Wearing glasses 👓 the next three and a half days. I really don’t like my glasses but they’re a necessity until the LASIK is done. Saturday morning the glasses are just trash. I was wondering if the the Lions club 🦁 takes unopened contact lenses, as while I used the bulk of them up I think I have several packs left over. I was going to bring them into the office 🏢 and leave them out, but who knows who has my prescription and I’d much rather help out at needy individual. I guess I could sell them, with the price of contact lens I’m sure there is a good market for them onto he internet. I didn’t mean to have a bunch left over – indeed that’s one of the reasons I put off LASIK but I also didn’t want to put off the operation that far into the future 🔮 as I didn’t want to run out in the mean-time.
Today marks two years of advertising on blog, 💵 which when the final book is written I have made $2,042 gross revenue from ads not including hosting costs and taxes. The blog contract is up for renewal next year, and I figure that will be like $600 or $700 for three years plus like $40 for the domain names each year I pay. I really should deduct those business expenses from my taxes, next year with the hosting contract due for renewal, 📜 maybe I’ll do that. I like being paid to rant on about how much I like burning garbage and smoking pot and gives me a chance to post my pictures and experiences as I capture and gives me an excuse to learn and exploit my GIS and data science knowledge. 🖥️ I enjoy it even without the revenue, but it also means the blog is no longer an expense but a money making property. This past summer, especially the last too months have been great, though once hunting season is over, there really won’t be nearly as much traffic or revenue until May or June when people get interested in heading back up to the woods to swat black flies. 🐜
There are those who were certainly not happy that I dare to praise some of Charlie Kirk’s positions on my blog the other day – noting his strong defense of the first and second amendments. They noted his contradictory stands – namely his suggestions that liberal professors be black listed, his racist remarks, his advocacy against climate action. All valid things to consider when considering one’s legacy.
I don’t think there is anyone out there who is completely agreeable. If such people exist, they only exist in one’s mind – a deeper examination would show all people at one level are deeply flawed. Kirk was a conservative, his views were very much of that orthodoxy. But not all conservative views are bad – they should viewed in context and weighted against the pros and cons of each position.
And when a man dies, it’s not unreasonable to highlight the good he has done for society – even if it’s an incomplete picture of who the man was. It’s not to say the record shouldn’t eventually be corrected for posterity but in the immediate time of loss it makes sense to be respectful and highlight the good and deemphasize the problematic in the immediate loss of the life.
Technically tomorrow the absolute last day for contacts but I think I’ll make today the last day just to be absolutely sure I have no eye irriation when surgery day comes Friday. Glasses Tuesday through Friday morning, but I’ll learn to live with them as come Saturday they’re just going to be scratched up trash soon enough to be turned into bright yellow flames.
But first I covered myself in fix-a-flat slime as I was going to swap back on the tube that got a leak before heading into work today. But somehow that didn’t work out as planned. I patched the tube over the weekend and put my spare on, and I was going to put the patched tire that had fix-a-flat already in it and put the spare back in my emergency bike bag but that didn’t go to plan as the patched tube refused to hold air. It’s a snake bite (pinch) flat and they’re not really practical to patch. That slime stuff usually works good – put a hole in the front tire over the weekend but the slime automatically patched it up and I topped it off this mroning.
So I added slime to the spare tube and put it back on the bike. Somehow the slime tube came loose and sprayed slime all over the kitchen, the wheel rim, the tire and tube. It was such a mess. I ended up mounting the tire multiple times, because first I wanted to use the tube that was punctured but already had a hole in it. But then I greased up the chain and trued up the wheel and rode to work. Beautiful day, bike rode pretty well, nice and quiet with all the grease, and I didn’t get covered with grease in the process. So that’s a good thing. And I want to be a farmer some day, or at least a homesteader and deal with more broke-down equipment. Bad enough with the bike and all the other shit. I guess you build up a pile of scrap metal and fill a hollar with debris.
Truth is what I need is new tires – – both front and back at this point — for my bike. I hate buying more rubber crap, only way to get rid of it is landfill. Not going to burn rubber, lol, shit stinks. Price has gone up too on bike tires due of course to the Trumpster tarrifs. More money, did I mention my rent is due to this week, as is my $560 car insurance bill and the $4,200 or whatever they want for the big snip of my eyes. I transfered the money over from saving and it’s pay week but still like fuck. Maybe it was good I didn’t spend so much money hanging out at Rensselearville State Forest this weekend rather then heading north. Weekend was over much too fast like always happens. Sucky teaty.
Looks like we are getting some of that much needed rain this week. Rain showers, which means clouds probably more then wet stuff, but after spending that time in Rensselaerville they definitely need the rain. More then 1/3rd of Myotosis Lake is dried up, most of the creeks are dry or have minimal flow. Want more rain before the next fire I have up in the woods. Fortunately I’m not planning on doing any camping this week as my eyes recover, though I might go apple picking with dad on Saturday, assuming that I can see and feel well by then. Then maybe the following weekend I’ll either plan my October vacation or do a weekend trip, or something.
With my improved vision, I probably will drive north the last night I work and set up camp in the dark. I really think my contact lens were what gave me so much trouble driving at night with all their irritation. Glasses were better except I found it was hard to read the speedometer while driving with them. Probably start out around Speculator. Then my thought is I will head up to Horseshoe Lake for a few nights out at Lows Lake, ride back to the ledge, then ultimately up to St. Regis Canoe Area to ride the new Adirondack Rail Trail and paddle around there.
Hundreds of people plunged into the Chicago River’s chilly waters on Sunday as part of the first organized swim in the river for nearly 100 years, a previously unthinkable act in what was once one of the most befouled waterways in the world.
About 300 people, some wearing wetsuits, jumped into the Chicago River for a mile-long looping swim on an early, overcast midwest morning, a feat made possible by the often unseen but crucial progress the US has made in the past half century in cleaning its rivers of toxic pollutio n.
before heading into work today. But somehow that didn’t work out as planned. I patched the tube over the weekend and put my spare on, and I was going to put the patched tire that had fix-a-flat already in it and put the spare back in my emergency bike bag but that didn’t go to plan as the patched tube refused to hold air. It’s a snake bite (pinch) flat and they’re not really practical to patch. That slime stuff usually works good – put a hole in the front tire over the weekend but the slime automatically patched it up and I topped it off this mroning.
Somehow the slime tube came loose and sprayed slime all over the kitchen, the wheel rim, the tire and tube. It was such a mess. I ended up mounting the tire multiple times, because first I wanted to use the tube that was punctured but already had a hole in it. But then I greased up the chain and trued up the wheel and rode to work. Beautiful day, bike rode pretty well, nice and quiet with all the grease, and I didn’t get covered with grease in the process. So that’s a good thing. And I want to be a farmer some day, or at least a homesteader and deal with more broke-down equipment. Bad enough with the bike and all the other shit.
I guess you build up a pile of scrap metal and fill a hollar with debris. 
I hate buying more rubber crap, only way to get rid of it is landfill. Not going to burn rubber, lol, shit stinks. 
Price has gone up too on bike tires due of course to the Trumpster tarrifs. More money, did I mention my rent is due to this week, as is my $560 car insurance bill and the $4,200 or whatever they want for the big snip of my eyes. I transfered the money over from saving and it’s pay week but still like fuck. Maybe it was good I didn’t spend so much money hanging out at Rensselearville State Forest this weekend rather then heading north. Weekend was over much too fast like always happens. 
Sucky teaty. 
Rain showers, which means clouds probably more then wet stuff, but after spending that time in Rensselaerville they definitely need the rain. 
More then 1/3rd of Myotosis Lake is dried up, most of the creeks are dry or have minimal flow. 
Want more rain before the next fire I have up in the woods. 
Fortunately I’m not planning on doing any camping this week as my eyes recover, though I might go apple picking with dad on Saturday, 
assuming that I can see and feel well by then. Then maybe the following weekend I’ll either plan my October vacation or do a weekend trip, or something. 
and set up camp in the dark. I really think my contact lens were what gave me so much trouble driving at night with all their irritation. Glasses were better except I found it was hard to read the speedometer while driving with them. Probably start out around Speculator. Then my thought is I will head up to Horseshoe Lake for a few nights out at Lows Lake, ride back to the ledge, then ultimately up to St. Regis Canoe Area to ride the new Adirondack Rail Trail and paddle around there. 
