Susquehanna-Roseland...sounds like a local version of "Dancing With The Stars". We love to see our favorite personalities in situations out of character, challenged and doing well, as they vie for our calls to come back for another show. I am hoping today that you will phone in your feelings on Susquehanna-Roseland so we can see our New Jersey power brokers dance to a new tune.
When Governor Christie's transition team made its recommendations to the incoming administration earlier this year, endorsements included backing the PSE&G Susquehanna-Roseland project. Of course, the expertise of PSE&G President Ralph Larossa as a member of the team contributed to this biased overall view of New Jersey's priorities....but it stinks to high heaven that this giant power line dinosaur is going to smash its footprints over mountains and watershed of Northwest New Jersey.
New Jersey is the country's most populated state. We have more people and more horses per square mile than anyone else in the fifty states. This should imply that we treasure that balance of humans and wilderness that have made us so unique. If you were take Rt. 80 west to the Delaware Water Gap, the highway drops down to the Old Copper Mine Road. You have to wait for the stop light to go to green because the one lane road hugs dripping fern-studded slopes of the steep river bank. You are now in the Federal Recreation Area, dating back to the fifties, when local residents were driven from their lands (some homesteads dating back to the 1600's) for the controversial Tocks Island Dam. That dam was eventually considered to be a bad idea but the Government kept the land anyway. About 7 miles later you come into Milbrook Village, nestled at the foot of two mountains, left to birch clusters of Flatbrookville, and right at the rhodendrons up the hill to Blairstown.
This is the beginning of the gigantic power line project. It comes in from Pennsylvania, where contracts have already been let to Valmont Industries to make the steel portions of the towers. I looked up the construction implication for these projects and it looks like each tower will require a twenty to forty foot concrete base . Can you picture a concrete delivery truck, with its revolving drum loaded with its sloshing load, climbing up these mountains? Well, the power companies blast and tear out gouges of mountain and make thoroughfares up, up, up to where they can safely unload. And then the 195 foot towers will be placed atop these piers. The tallest proposed tower will be 240 feet high at Lake Denmark, as per a March 28 article in NJ.com by Mark DiIonno.
PSE&G tower building is not for the faint of heart. The PSE&G website, under frequently asked questions, states that "electric and magnetic fields are present wherever there is a flow of electric current, whether in wires in the home, electrical appliances, or power lines. Electric fields are produced by the voltage or electrical pressure in a wire and are present even if an appliance is turned off, as long as it is connected to a source of electric power. Magnetic fields are produced whenever there is a flow of electric current through a wire." Present PS&G towers range from 65 to 80 feet high and carry 230 kilovolts. The new towers will carry 500 kilovolts and that could be why they have to be so high.
What they don't tell you is that there is statistical evidence that seems to link electromagnetic fields to leukemia, brain tumors, colon and breast cancer. When I had my real estate license I found that properties under or near power lines were not as attractive to buyers as those some distance away. If the towers are built they will need to be maintained. The access roads to keep the underbrush trimmed and the towers groomed will be invitations to Homeland Security risk as well as blights in the wilderness. These roads and towers will be all you see when you gaze out at what used to be lakes and green forests of our Garden State.
Let's stop this now. Please call or write your legislators now. After all, the monies for this boondoogle are coming right out of your power bill.
Have a good day.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
What happened to our mastodon?
It is raining today. The forecast is for 2 to 4 inches of precipitation for New Jersey. On top of the past weeks, I wonder if we are all getting mossy. Even the tap water has a river odor to it. Being inside means lots of time to read or blog.
I read today that a group of Bergen County fossil owners have given their 21 million year old prize to the State Museum here in Trenton. This is great opportunity for interested scientists and school children to appreciate the prehistoric treasures that lie beneath our macadam and Walmarts.
This also got me to wondering what happened to our mammoth back in the '60's. My husband was a contractor with some expertise in building ponds and lakes. We had several draglines and wide-track bulldozers that literally could walk in muck that would not support a man. We were working on a pond site in Johnsonburg, New Jersey, and got a call one morning from our wide-track operator that we had to "Come quick!"
The location was a peat bog about twenty minutes from our business location. This was before cell phones and today's instant communication, so details of the emergency were sketchy. I remember finding the estate, driving down the snowy white stone driveway and marveling at the spotless barns and rolling hills landscaped like a golf course. I headed up a hill towards several weeping willows. Willows always mean water so I assumed that that was where they were working. Sure enough, in the midst of these manicured meadows I spotted the pond site down in a hollow. Our operator, Jerry Snyder, had tons of experience but his excitement was out of character. My husband had gotten there before me and they were bent over and intent on their digging.
I slugged out to the hole, peat and slime sucking at each step, and then got my first look at a tusk. It looked like the golden mottled tortoise shell back of my antique comb. Jerry held one up and my husband bent over to help him with more, heavier pieces hidden in the muck. I reached out to touch it but thought it was rather ordinary looking. Obviously it was not an ordinary tooth. It had an amber patina but there was no drum roll to announce that it waited millions of years for light of day. I did not know what to expect but the thought crossed my mind that it would be more dramatic on my glass coffee table.
I rolled up my sleeves and squished through the ooze. My fingers found something slippery but solid. It had an opening that my fist could hook into and I tugged. In those days, I was quite sturdy from carrying water buckets and hauling hay bales so it was not much trouble to put my back to it and retrieve my prize. With a smooshing sucking sound it gave up its million-year old bed and hung in my dripping arms. Jerry informed me that I had snagged a vertebrate.
That was the first of several that we collected in about an hour, hoping that we could get the thing out before someone found out that we had uncovered it. Any delay while working in these conditions meant costly holds on a contract, and on payments, but more than that, over time, the peat conditions would revert to a steady state and any excavations would have to begin all over again. Whatever we had accomplished to excavate for the pond parameters could be lost and need to be initiated all over again.
As luck had it, a local dinosaur enthusiast showed up and for some reason absconded with the remains. I heard later that the mammoth or mastodon resided in a chicken coop in Paulina for a time. I always regretted that I had not kept a vertebrae for my coffee table.
I googled today and read that the Trenton State Museum owns up to as many as thirteen mastodons, mostly from Sussex County. But there is no mention of the one I helped scoop out of the peat bog in Johnsonburg. I wonder if someone can tell me if it ever made it to the Capital.
Everytime it rains and I can smell the Delaware river, I think about the peat bog.
I read today that a group of Bergen County fossil owners have given their 21 million year old prize to the State Museum here in Trenton. This is great opportunity for interested scientists and school children to appreciate the prehistoric treasures that lie beneath our macadam and Walmarts.
This also got me to wondering what happened to our mammoth back in the '60's. My husband was a contractor with some expertise in building ponds and lakes. We had several draglines and wide-track bulldozers that literally could walk in muck that would not support a man. We were working on a pond site in Johnsonburg, New Jersey, and got a call one morning from our wide-track operator that we had to "Come quick!"
The location was a peat bog about twenty minutes from our business location. This was before cell phones and today's instant communication, so details of the emergency were sketchy. I remember finding the estate, driving down the snowy white stone driveway and marveling at the spotless barns and rolling hills landscaped like a golf course. I headed up a hill towards several weeping willows. Willows always mean water so I assumed that that was where they were working. Sure enough, in the midst of these manicured meadows I spotted the pond site down in a hollow. Our operator, Jerry Snyder, had tons of experience but his excitement was out of character. My husband had gotten there before me and they were bent over and intent on their digging.
I slugged out to the hole, peat and slime sucking at each step, and then got my first look at a tusk. It looked like the golden mottled tortoise shell back of my antique comb. Jerry held one up and my husband bent over to help him with more, heavier pieces hidden in the muck. I reached out to touch it but thought it was rather ordinary looking. Obviously it was not an ordinary tooth. It had an amber patina but there was no drum roll to announce that it waited millions of years for light of day. I did not know what to expect but the thought crossed my mind that it would be more dramatic on my glass coffee table.
I rolled up my sleeves and squished through the ooze. My fingers found something slippery but solid. It had an opening that my fist could hook into and I tugged. In those days, I was quite sturdy from carrying water buckets and hauling hay bales so it was not much trouble to put my back to it and retrieve my prize. With a smooshing sucking sound it gave up its million-year old bed and hung in my dripping arms. Jerry informed me that I had snagged a vertebrate.
That was the first of several that we collected in about an hour, hoping that we could get the thing out before someone found out that we had uncovered it. Any delay while working in these conditions meant costly holds on a contract, and on payments, but more than that, over time, the peat conditions would revert to a steady state and any excavations would have to begin all over again. Whatever we had accomplished to excavate for the pond parameters could be lost and need to be initiated all over again.
As luck had it, a local dinosaur enthusiast showed up and for some reason absconded with the remains. I heard later that the mammoth or mastodon resided in a chicken coop in Paulina for a time. I always regretted that I had not kept a vertebrae for my coffee table.
I googled today and read that the Trenton State Museum owns up to as many as thirteen mastodons, mostly from Sussex County. But there is no mention of the one I helped scoop out of the peat bog in Johnsonburg. I wonder if someone can tell me if it ever made it to the Capital.
Everytime it rains and I can smell the Delaware river, I think about the peat bog.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Capital City Aid, Catastrophe or Opportunity?
The Office of the Mayor, City of Trenton, is circulating a letter that invites residents to a meeting on Tuesday, March 30th in the City Council Chamber. The 5:30 p.m. meeting is a more accessible hour than the 8:00 a.m. chosen for Board of Education meeting so we can expect a packed house. Mayor Palmer has reason to rally the troops but this letter was handed out at a Senior Nutrition Site and the folks attending got the idea that the City was going to shut down their lunch programs and daily entertainment.
I have a copy of the Mayor's letter in front of me, no mention of the Senior Nutrition Sites being at risk, but I must respond to the possibility. When you get to your seventies, eighties, nineties or better, you feel vulnerable to more youthful and energetic forces. The present climate in this State is like waiting for the hundred year storm. Yipes! Governor Christie has declared a fiscal emergency and seized on every opportunity to crunch numbers. Are we going to have to lash ourselves to a tree?
Let's consider some harsh truths. A hunk of Trenton real estate is occupied by State Capital buildings. Why should we not get Capital City Aid? Meeting the physical demands of State Functions is costly on many levels. Many times since leaving my job at a lobbyist's office, I have imagined how nice Trenton could be if it did not host the legislative functions. When someone on the news says that "Trenton is full of crooks!", I cringe.
I am also thinking of reaching out to you, my readers and election hopefuls, consider what could happen during this period of attrition. Instead of clinging to futilile things that no longer work or we can no longer afford, let us look ahead and try to keep our focus on surviving.
The number of students in Trenton has declined by almost a third. Obviously there are going to be business decisions that reflect this. If three school buildings are not going to be used as a result of more efficient consolidation, how about new uses?
Several years ago Willingboro faced the possibility of abandoning a still useful school building and responded to the needs of its aging population by turning it into a beautiful senior center. Today it hosts a variety of events, including the Willingboro Art Alliance Workshops with over thirty in attendance on any given session. There is a fitness center, a huge meeting room where seniors can play dominoes, checkers and cards, and even a gallery hung with senior art. It hosts daytime and evening events with plenty of parking.
I also wonder if using one or more of these sites as community centers might make the senior transport easier. Right now, the jitney pickups for the seniors cannot accommodate walkers or wheelchairs so nutrition centers closer to homes might be helpful.
Something else to think about: Tonight is worldwide Earth Hour. If you want to participate by turning out your lights and TV for one hour at 8:30 p.m., you will be part of the call to action to be part of a greener future.
Have a good day!
I have a copy of the Mayor's letter in front of me, no mention of the Senior Nutrition Sites being at risk, but I must respond to the possibility. When you get to your seventies, eighties, nineties or better, you feel vulnerable to more youthful and energetic forces. The present climate in this State is like waiting for the hundred year storm. Yipes! Governor Christie has declared a fiscal emergency and seized on every opportunity to crunch numbers. Are we going to have to lash ourselves to a tree?
Let's consider some harsh truths. A hunk of Trenton real estate is occupied by State Capital buildings. Why should we not get Capital City Aid? Meeting the physical demands of State Functions is costly on many levels. Many times since leaving my job at a lobbyist's office, I have imagined how nice Trenton could be if it did not host the legislative functions. When someone on the news says that "Trenton is full of crooks!", I cringe.
I am also thinking of reaching out to you, my readers and election hopefuls, consider what could happen during this period of attrition. Instead of clinging to futilile things that no longer work or we can no longer afford, let us look ahead and try to keep our focus on surviving.
The number of students in Trenton has declined by almost a third. Obviously there are going to be business decisions that reflect this. If three school buildings are not going to be used as a result of more efficient consolidation, how about new uses?
Several years ago Willingboro faced the possibility of abandoning a still useful school building and responded to the needs of its aging population by turning it into a beautiful senior center. Today it hosts a variety of events, including the Willingboro Art Alliance Workshops with over thirty in attendance on any given session. There is a fitness center, a huge meeting room where seniors can play dominoes, checkers and cards, and even a gallery hung with senior art. It hosts daytime and evening events with plenty of parking.
I also wonder if using one or more of these sites as community centers might make the senior transport easier. Right now, the jitney pickups for the seniors cannot accommodate walkers or wheelchairs so nutrition centers closer to homes might be helpful.
Something else to think about: Tonight is worldwide Earth Hour. If you want to participate by turning out your lights and TV for one hour at 8:30 p.m., you will be part of the call to action to be part of a greener future.
Have a good day!
Thursday, March 25, 2010
The Artfull Codger
It is a leap of faith to start anything new when you are a timid senior citizen, but look out world 'cause we are going to make it count. The Trentonian is giving me the opportunity to let you into my thoughts and yours and sound out just what makes us tick. Feel free to contact me with your issues and concerns.
For a start, we should address the truths and misconceptions that seem to have clouded one of the most important opportunities of our time. Just what does the Obama medical legislation really mean for senior citizens? Are you worried that you are going to lose your coverage because you need more services as you age? The new legislation will not let insurance companies discriminate because of preexisting conditions which should make it easier for seniors to consider more reasonable coverage. Payments of over a hundred dollars a month from Medicare to insurance companies to cover seniors are abolished in the new legislation. These are the cuts in Medicare that are concerning us. These are not cuts in our medical benefits...they are cuts in the bounties that have been paid to for-profit businesses to offset their risks.
An insurance company is like a casino. Everyone knows that the odds favor the house...but we like to play anyway. Well, insurance companies are based on the premise that your car will not crash, you will not get sick, you will not die...but every once in a while they will have to pay up. Reserves are set to account for pay-outs but it would be interesting to see what the reserves are really for a Blue Cross, a Cigna, a Hartford or a Met-Life. These very profitable companies circulate their profits across our economy with top executives raking in huge bonuses while gorging on their policyholders. The downside is that when their shenanigans miss the mark, guess who ended up bailing them out? We did. Years spent paying taxes and this is what we get.
As I look over my years spent without medical coverage, with partial medical insurance and one blissful time when I was carried by Amerihealth that even included preventative care, I want to cheer President Obama for having the intestinal fortitude to prevail.
A couple of weeks ago I spent some time with a Canadian couple. Fooling around about the hazards of vacation I told them how expensive it was to take out travel insurance...in case I needed help to get home from a medical emergency. They hooted...
"Our government loves us. We're covered for anything..."
Well, that's all for today.
For a start, we should address the truths and misconceptions that seem to have clouded one of the most important opportunities of our time. Just what does the Obama medical legislation really mean for senior citizens? Are you worried that you are going to lose your coverage because you need more services as you age? The new legislation will not let insurance companies discriminate because of preexisting conditions which should make it easier for seniors to consider more reasonable coverage. Payments of over a hundred dollars a month from Medicare to insurance companies to cover seniors are abolished in the new legislation. These are the cuts in Medicare that are concerning us. These are not cuts in our medical benefits...they are cuts in the bounties that have been paid to for-profit businesses to offset their risks.
An insurance company is like a casino. Everyone knows that the odds favor the house...but we like to play anyway. Well, insurance companies are based on the premise that your car will not crash, you will not get sick, you will not die...but every once in a while they will have to pay up. Reserves are set to account for pay-outs but it would be interesting to see what the reserves are really for a Blue Cross, a Cigna, a Hartford or a Met-Life. These very profitable companies circulate their profits across our economy with top executives raking in huge bonuses while gorging on their policyholders. The downside is that when their shenanigans miss the mark, guess who ended up bailing them out? We did. Years spent paying taxes and this is what we get.
As I look over my years spent without medical coverage, with partial medical insurance and one blissful time when I was carried by Amerihealth that even included preventative care, I want to cheer President Obama for having the intestinal fortitude to prevail.
A couple of weeks ago I spent some time with a Canadian couple. Fooling around about the hazards of vacation I told them how expensive it was to take out travel insurance...in case I needed help to get home from a medical emergency. They hooted...
"Our government loves us. We're covered for anything..."
Well, that's all for today.
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