That’s an interesting thought. The United States Senate has two senators for each state, while the US House is propotionally represented. While an urban state like New York State recieves 29 representives, we only get two senators, a rural state like Vermont recieves only 1 representive and 2 senators.
In theory, that would mean a rural state like Vermont, Wyoming, North Dakota, or even Iowa would have have a disproptionate impact on the legislation through the US Senate. While it’s true that such states have more of a voice in the US Senate, it’s not clear rural residents get more representation in the US Senate.
Why not? For one thing, US Senate districts are larger. Much larger, typically covering whole states. The problem is that by representing complete states, every senator represents both urban and rural areas, and in most states, urban populations outnumber rural portions of states.
If any thing, urban consituencies have more power in the US Senate then the US House. There are representives in US House Districts that are predominately rural, in contrast to even rural states, where population is dominated by urban centers — such as Burlington, Vermont.
This table is based on the data in the Catskill State Land Master Plan. I believe most of these sites are tent or lean-to sites, some fairly far back in.
Horsehoe Lake has several campsites along, as does the dirt road beyond it for a ways.
The best roadside campsites go fast on the lake, but you can always camp on the less desirable campsites, then check out Bog River Flow, and tent camp up there.
I have been thinking a lot lately about the High Gas Prices and what they mean for summer plans. I typically enjoy traveling by doing roadside camping in the Adirondack Park and other public lands, so one of the biggest costs in my experiences is gasoline.
I knew gas prices might be high when I bought my truck by spring time. They often are highest around election time, only to fall back down to lower levels after election season. This summer is no exception.
So I was thinking about what this all means…
1) Planning longer trips and fewer shorter trips. A lot of the gas is consumed driving back and forth to destination. Far less gasoline is consumed when one is at their destination.
2) Chose to spend longer time in one destination. Usually when I am on vacation I tend to rush to one place to another, consuming a lot of gasoline.driving from one place to another in the Adirondacks or wherever I may be. Why not pick a campsite, and spend more time enjoying the immediate landscape?
3) Avoid idling as much as possible. Hopefully with the deep cycle battery on my pickup, I will be able to keep idling to generate electricity for camping to a minimum.
4) Consider campsites that have as much nearby as possible to do. Possibly choosing campsites near a lake for paddling — like the Wakley Dam Campsites at Cedar River Flow or any of the campsites along North Lake in Adirondacks.
5) Realize that gas costs really haven’t gone up that much from last year. While gas may cost an additional buck an gallon, that still only means an additional $20-$30 per trip, if the plan is drive between 400-600 miles for vacation. If your already spending $60-90 for your trip on gas, what difference is between that and $80-$120. More money, but if your having fun, so be it.
6) Not Skipping Things on Trips Because of Gas Costs. In my view it’s pretty stupid to not spend an additional $10 in gas, if have already burned through $40 in gas to get to your destination. If there is something worth seeing, you got to do it.
7) Finally, just not worry about it. If I am on vacation, just put the gas on the credit card. I will worry about paying it down when I get back home. Things are going to cost what they cost, and I don’t really care much one way or another.
The other night, I was an event when the speaker lamented the modern era with all it’s problems and how much fun they had in the “innocent” 1960s. My thought was that’s pretty darn unfair.
Why shouldn’t we — the young — be able to have some fun like they had in “olden” days, and wait to be ultra-conservative and have no fun like the old folks?
One of the claims sometimes made is that previously industrialized or man made landscapes can not ever be reversed into wilderness. It is claimed that once man touches a landscape, mines, farms, or timbers it surface, it can not ever revert back to a natural status.
The reality is that is far from that.
Man made works, while remarkable, quickly start to fall down and revert back to a more natural status, quickly after abadonmnet. Certainly man is powerful, can move large mounds of earth, and bring materials from far away. Yet, as soon as man walks away, plants start to grow into cracks, water erodes roadways and causes buildings ot fall apart, and animals start to return to recolonize a land once dominated by man.
Fragmentation and private inholdings can make it more challenging for abandoned lands to revert back to wilderness. Any attempt by man to upkeep man’s works, will prolong their existence. Man can fight the natural forces through his active stewartship of his products, and through design, but he can not stop nature’s processes once underway, by simply standing on the sidelines.
Buildings make take decades to fall in and rot away in soil. The lost of old growth timber might take hundreds of years to be replaced. Eroded soils, rock cuts might take thousands if not million years to be disolved back into a truly natural state. Yet, still man’s battle against wilderness is only temporary at best, for once man takes his hand of wilderness, it only starts the long path into wildness once again.
Census Block Equivalency – A list of census blocks in each district, generated by the commerical GIS program (such as Mapitude) used for redistricting.
Metes and Bounds – A legal description of each district, used in resolving court disputes over district boundaries, and assisting board of elections on where to put voters whose property might be crossed by a Census block
If you planning on making a map, Metes and Bounds won’t be particularly useful. Computers don’t understand english very well, they need numbers and lists. In contrast, the Census Block Equivalency is very useful for mapping things.
Every year, the Census Bureau puts out series of ERSI Shapefiles known as TIGER/Line. You can download TIGER/Line for any state and county in the United States from their website. They provide many different shapefiles and layers such as a Highway, Faces, Edges, and County Subdivision layers, however the one you will be most interested for making district maps is the Tabulation Block (tabblock) layer.
You can use these files in the free program known as Quantum GIS or QGIS. While this tutorial will not explain the ins and outs of QGIS, this should get you started on making redistricting maps.
The Tabulation Block Layer is the file containing all of the Census Blocks for a particular county. A Census Block is the smallest unit of population gathered by Census Block, and consists of all bordering features (bounds) — roads, rivers, shorelines, along with all imaginary lines (metes) — town lines, village lines, other lines drawn for statisitical purposes.
Each Census Block has a number, that is a subdivision of the Census Block, County ID, and State ID that it resides within. For example, the Governor’s Mansion in Albany is located in Census Block 2000 in Census Track 23.00 (zero padded to 002300) in Albany County (Federal Information Processing Standard — FIPS ID: 01) which is in NY State (FIPS ID: 36). County subdivisions are not applied to Census Tract Numbers, as they may in some cases cross county subdivisions, as is the case of smaller districts.
You put those numbers together to get the GEOID — which is the key used for redistricting block lists and most other block-level census data. The Governor’s Mansion is located at a block with a GEOID 360010023002000.
36
001
002300
2000
State ID
County ID
Zero Padded Census Tract Number
Census Block Number
The block list you get from a redistricting commission typically is in Database Exchange Format (.DBF) or Comma Deliminated Format (.CSV) which are both openable by common spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice Spreadsheet and GIS programs like ArcGIS or Quantum GIS.
This is taken from the LATFOR State Senate Proposed Districts (January 2012) DBF file. It shows you that the Governor resides in Proposed Senate District 44. Across the river in Census Block 4010, Census Tract 524.03, in Rensselear County (FIPS ID 83), NY State (FIPS ID: 36) is located in Proposed Senate District 43.
360010023002000
SD44
360010021002008
SD44
360010021002004
SD44
360010021002001
SD44
360830524034017
SD43
360830524034010
SD43
Download the TIGER/line “Tabulation Block” Shpaefile file for the district you are interested in. You will want the 2010 version. You can download a state-wide tabulation block file, however that is not recommended as the next step will be impossibly slow on most computers. You may also want to open the .CSV or .DBF file in your spreadsheet program and cut out the county you want to speed things up.
You will then want to open up the file in Quantum GIS. You will get a nice map of the county you downloaded, showing all of the Census Blocks.
From there, go to the Vector -> Join Attributes submenu.
Make sure that the Target vector layer matches the Tabulation Block Shapefile you wish to join against, then set Target join field to GEOID10 .
Select click Join dbf table and select the DBF or CSV file you wish to join.
Change the Join field to BLOCK or whatever the GEOID is titled in your redistricting block file.
Enter in a location to save the Output Shapefile
Click okay.
Then wait. A typical county will take 10-40 minutes to join on my 5 year old laptop; your computer may be quicker. If you have a dual processor machine, go on to doing other work in other programs. You will end up with a map that looks like this (stylized for your enjoyment). Each block will be assigned a Senate District (in this example).
Halfway there. Now you need to “dissolve” each Census Block into it’s larger political district. Go to Vector -> Geoprocessing Tools -> Dissolve . Set the Input vector layer to the file you previously joined. Then set the Dissolve field to the field containing the district number — such as DISTRICTID or whatever it is named. Enter a name to safe the file. Click Dissolve.
Outputed will be a Shapefile containing all the political districts in the county you joined and dissolved. This will take 5-20 minutes on my laptop. Other data may exist in that file, such as Census Block number, however at this point that data will be invalid, as only the district number is accurately preserved in such a join. All other data will be picked at random, so delete those columns.
I hope this is helpful. If you just want the Proposed State Senate or State Assembly Districts you can download them from Center for Urban Research. These are the same data, joined using the above process by somebody with a much faster computer. I have also made up a Shapefile containing the Albany County Legislative Districts using this process.
