Everybody knows Halloween is a fun holiday for kids, to get out, meet some of their neighbors and have a good time in the fall. Giving out candy when visiting neighbor’s houses inspires community and less of a fear of neighbors.
Too often today our society has become isolated from one individual to another. Halloween is one such chance to get back together, and spend sometime as a community talking to our neighbors. At least for one night a year, the people you live so closely to are not so isolated from your life.
I do not understand why the religious right is so anti-Halloween. It’s a fun holiday, one more about community then the worship of daemons or fears. It’s meant to peak one’s sweet tooth at least for one night, and enjoy some candy. Most kids do not know or understand why they dress up and knock on neighbor’s doors, but the sense of community it brings is invaluable.
It is more concerning how some adults choose to partake of this holiday. Some older people now want to join kids in the celebration of the holiday. These big kids, often go tricker-treating or have parties. But shouldn’t adults have enough community experience, and know their neighbors well enough to not need to celebrate the holiday.
There also needs to be a de-commercialization of the holiday. Too often, it’s easy to get a Halloween costume for $20 or $30 dollars from a store, in about any commercially popular character that you want. All made out of toxins, proudly imported by China. Reinforcing commercial messages, encouraging children to excessively consume.
All in all, this high-fructose corn syrup holiday is a fun diversion from our everyday life. It’s a great chance for our young to meet our neighbors, and learn that they are not the scary people that the mass-media so often portrays them to be.
I look around and take a step out in the brisk October weather. I never expected this month to come so soon.
It was so warm out. It felt like summer for most of the previous month. Certainly not early fall as many of us consider September to be. Yet, fall came and now we are well into it.
The color is poping up. But it’s not as clean yellow, red, or orange as we normally would expect. It’s been too dry to get the beautiful colors this year, so we are seeing more brown. And that brown is spreading all over from crops to the fields.
It was not an excessively dry September of August, as we had some bursts rains, and our early summer was wet. Yet, it still left many with smaller apples, less lush hay, and pumpkins that were not as big or attractive as they might have been other years. But that’s how it goes with farming.
We have to look forward to October and the beautiful weather it will bring. Leaves are still not at their peak and all the crops are still not in. Frost is still a few weeks away, particularly with our warm weather. But clear skies are on the way. So enjoy your October.
Politicans and many environmental adovates are always discussing the need for more efficent cars. They note that a 20 MPG car uses 1/3 more fuel then a 30 MPG car if driven the same amount of miles.
But why do we have to drive so far? As a nation we are always traveling further and further. Indeed, while are cars are much more efficient then decades ago, we end up using more gasoline as we drive further. Nobody wants to give up their travel or going on vacations. Nobody wants to be prevented from going to the woods or being able to drive where-ever and whenever they want to go. It’s nice to be able to hop in our cars and go to the stores on the weekend or whenever it’s convenient.
Yet, there is a type of driving that nobody enjoys, yet so many are stuck with doing. This type of driving is commuting. There is not much freedom or enjoyment in driving back and forth to work—the same way—fighting traffic. There are times I like to take my truck to work, such as when I need to leave early to stop and get things on the way to or from work. But I also enjoy mass transit. Not only does it save money it also saves time and allows you to relax as your transported to work.
It is enjoyable to use mass transit—when the system works. The new CDTA buses are relaxing, a perfect place to relax and listen to your headphones or work on your laptop while you are transported to work. Yet, for many of us good mass transit is hard to come by, with buses running infrequently to major destinations. If your not using your car or truck all the time for commuting, then you are skipping all of those carbon dioxide and toxic emissions. Your fuel economy of your truck doesn’t really matter one way or another for occassional use.
Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to watch the gay marriage debate in Assembly several times on the computer. Its always fascinating to watch how passionately people will debate an issue that they have no stake in themselves nor do their district has no stake in it. There is no (significant) economic benefit or cost to gay marriage. It doesn’t deprive anybody of their rights or restrict what they can do in their back-40. It really doesn’t do much at all.
So why do people really care? I don’t understand.
The same-sex marriage bill indeed is only a single page long. It simply replaces man and women with person in the definition of marriage in the domestic relations law. It also states that no person can be denied the right of marriage simply because of their gender, and that no church or religious institution must preform any marriage. Not a big deal.
The critics of gay marriage are right in saying that many gay couples engage in behaviour that is quite strange. Yet, there are many other gay couples that are quite happily living together, living the American life like most other Americans. There are certainly gays living in suburbs, gays who own farms and ranches, and gays who live in the city and work for big corporations. Most of them are totally normal except for their choice of a partner.
People often fear what is different. They might even believe that what is different is having a negative impact on their lives. People need to do their own thing, and just ignore what other people are doing. Indeed, it seems the people who complain about the smell of cow shit are no better or worst then those who complain of gay marriage.
There are certain industries in our country that we as a society believe should be private. These include the production of materials and physical products. Services such as telephone and cable television service we also agree should be private but highly regulated by government to ensure that they are affordable and reliable.
In contrast are those services that would otherwise not be provided for by the market or are indivisible, are generally believed best handled by the government. This includes public assistance for the needy, and ‘free’ highways to drive our cars on. We also have government provide services or facilities at low or no cost that we believe better serve our society. These include state parks for recreation, and libraries for learning.
Trash disposal doesn’t fall nicely into the categories which make up things we generally consider government services. Solid waste disposal is clearly a divisible service — you throw away a specific amount of trash. We are more then willing to pay for this service as nobody wants rotting garbage around, nor do they want to smell smouldering toxic trash in a city. We also don’t generally believe that government should be encouraging the generation of waste.
Trash disposal should instead be highly regulated, but private service. Waste disposal is an industry fought with problems. Waste can pose a variety of environmental threats as it can contain many toxins and other dangerous materials that when released to the environment can cause problems. Particularly with the mass-collection of solid waste this can be a serious concern.
Having government in the business of disposal of trash is a clear conflict of interest. It is difficult for government to regulate other governments, even when there are laws in place to do so. There is immense political pressure from various levels of government not to regulate, along with lobbying at levels unseen with private industry. An industry lobbyist can say a regulation hurts their bottom line, but they aren’t as convincing as government saying a regulation hurts themselves.
Governments also have tools like eminent domain and immense political power to sit landfills where they are unwanted. In contrast, private industry must find a community willing to site a landfill before they can build one. They must convince a local community, that the benefits of dumping trash on their land exceed the consequences of dumping. Governments often do not have to do that.
There should be no cap on the price of disposal of solid waste or cap on tipping fees at landfill, instead it should be whatever the market will bear. Government should set high standards for landfills, and enforce them. These standards will raise the price of trash disposal, and will encourage large generators to find alternatives to land disposal or incineration of waste.
Recycling and waste reduction should be aggressively promoted by government. If a government feels that disposal of waste should be a public service, then they should be in the recycling business, collecting recyclables and finding the most profitable way to beneficially use them. Government should show that recycling saves money, and requires less regulation then disposal. While recycling can and often does produce toxins, it’s a superior alternative that can reduce both energy use and costs to the public.
We all agree that landfills are troubling neighbours and can be quite polluting. It doesn’t make sense for government to be subsidising them. We don’t have governments selling alcohol and tobacco, then why should we have government selling landfill space? Landfills and incinerators should be privately owned and highly regulated.
“There never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do when you find them.”
— Jim Croce, Time in a Bottle, 1973
The song, Time in A Bottle was release posthumously to Jim Croce’s death in a plane crash. In many ways the irony of this song made it particularly sad. A romantic love song, those lyrics have particular meaning outside of a relationship.
These lyrics stress the fundamental problem of time — it’s unlimited until you find a use for it. By the time you find the meaning in something you are doing, it’s too often on it’s way out. Certainly that was true for Jim Croce, whose death came as his singing career was only starting to reach to a pinnacle. It’s also true in our lives.
They say that man has a remarkable ability to destroy what he loves the most. By the time one has found his real passions, others have already taken it up and used or abused it. Or we might no longer have time in our lives to do the thing that we really wanted because we got committed to doing other things.
We have to constantly be evaluating our world around us and searching for our passions. We can’t be afraid of our changing selves, and embracing the world. We must do what we believe in, and be the change that we see needs to be done. There simply is no time to be afraid as if we pause our dreams will go up into smoke.
I spend so much of my life looking at mountains. I’ve spent most of my life living in the mountains, but that’s not what fascinates me the most — it’s the distant mountains. I stare and stare, looking south at the Catskills or looking west towards the many hills in Schoharie County or the Taconics to the east. Or up in Plattsburgh, it’s the Adirondack Mountains to the south and the east, and the Green Mountains to the east.
Mountains are just piles of rock pushed up by the glaciers. When your up in them most of the time they aren’t particularly special. They usually have lousy soil for farming, and it’s difficult to build buildings on them. They are good places for timber and wild life, and for those tough enough to try their hand at farming them.
There also is a human element to mountains. People work to conqueror them. They try their hardest to farm them, to climb them, to build highways up and over them. Sometimes quite unsuccessfully. As humans, it’s our job not only to conqueror but to protect them. We sometimes do a good job at that other times it left to their rugged terrain to protect themselves.
None of that ends my fascination with mountains. They are just so beautiful as those big blue hills in the distance, tinted that color for the atmosphere. Mountains always are something that are calling you to explore and at the same time, reminding you how truly small you are in comparison. They also are a challenge to climb them and do something bigger.
I spend most of my time in the mountains. But there are always mountains where I’m not on or that I have not conquered. There always are distant hills unexplored. I will go there some day, and I will climb them. I will see more how mountain people live, how the farm and embrace the land. Yet, for now I will just look into the distance.
