The Novelty of Clean Air and Water

   The town of Toms River is known at a broader national level for three things.  We won the Little League World Series.  We have the unfortunate proximity to the seaside town that filmed the iconic, if not culturally regressive, Jersey Shore.  And Novartis, the chemically company formally named as Ciba-Geigy, had a dye plant in town that left a Super Fund site and a cancer cluster wake as it was forced to leave town.   (Read the book Toms River by Dan Fagin) So that would be one positive and two negative events, which is not bad given how well negative events spread.
    I recently moved back to the Jersey Shore, though a little farther north.  A commute to NYC would be just too much from exit 82.  The proximity to the ocean, the rivers and bays, and great park systems, while still just a short car or train ride to the city are all draws to the area.  The fact that we have clean drinking water, can swim in most of the waters, can see clear sunrises, breath smog free air is not a given.  The long hard work by scientists, environmentalists, and the Environmental Protection Agency help awake our collective conscience to the seemingly obvious need to live in a clean place.  Somehow now we take it for granted.
   Again, it is not a given.  Companies are in business to make money.  Period.  Thank goodness there are businesses that make everything that we can and can't imagine, but to make anything also means there are things that need to be extracted and some sort of waste at the other end.  If a company can quietly avoid the cost of its waste, thus sluffing it off on someone else, they will.  They are in the business of making money.  Obviously, a company needs to be profitable, but if it is rooted in a community they are compelled to have other concerns as well.  Publicly traded companies exist but in the vast binary ether of ones and zeros moving through lines attached to the Bloomberg Terminal.  They are focused on quarterly profits because that is the only thing important to investors, even if otherwise socially and environmentally minded.  They are just a three letter code with a hopefully increasing number next to it.  There is no root in a community.  There is no incentive to account for their waste.
   One of the key purposes of a government is to help ensure that a community is livable and therefore clean.  We now take it for granted.  Having lived in Brooklyn for many years, there is a fast growing Chinese population.  When you walk the streets of Chinatown, many many people are walking around with ventilator masks.  The masks may be a necessity on the streets of Beijing.  I suppose that if you always had to wear the mask, that going outside otherwise would feel naked.  We don't have to wear them.  That is a direct result of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of the late 70s and by extension the EPA.  Having clean air and and water is a win win situation.
   Collectively holding companies accountable is, unfortunately, an expensive, arduous, and often fleeting in its individual outcomes, but it is imperative and we are better for it.  Toms River is better for it.  I can take a walk in the local woods near my house or put a canoe in the local river.  We can't take it for granted.  It takes work.
  

Why?

Why are we resorting to the blame game?
Why do the radical philosophies of isis or other hate groups influence people?
Why are people afraid of homosexuals?
Why would anyone want an assault rifle?
Why would anyone need an assault rifle?
Why would someone with good conscience make or sell an assault rifle?
Why can't we study the impacts of gun violence?
Why do men (not women) so often resort to indiscriminate violence?
Why will our collective reaction be nil in terms of addressing gun control?
Why will our collective reaction be ten fold against mostly innocent people in foreign lands?
Why do we give such a shit about guns?
Why can't we recognize the cyclical action of violence?
Just why?

Calamity Brook

 We entered the high peaks region of the Adirondack Mountains from the southern corner, an hours drive around from our regular starting point, Keene Valley.  The little town is, from the point of view of this city slicker, an ideal trail head town.  It has one main street, the Ausable Inn with plenty of beds, excellent food, and microbrews on tap, The Mountaineer outdoor gear store, a good hipster-ish coffee shop and multiple entry points to the back country.  We chose a different corner to access Colden Lake, the frozen lake saddle within the highest peaks of New York .  As it turns out, two of the brooks we hike up and around are headwaters to the might Hudson River.  The fallen house is a remnant of the iron mill town that existed for a very short time much more than a century ago.  It was operational for two years, was shut down because of an economic depression nation wide and then a few years later was destroy by a big flood event. 

 This memorial sits in a marshy clearing about five miles from the road.  There is a good chance the name of the brook, Calamity, is tied to the event that happened in 1845, when this area was being cleared for logging. 

 We stayed the night at the Livingston Point Lean To.  It sat on the edge of a frozen marshy little tributary to the the dammed lake.  Down the trail a half mile the spectacular Hanging Spear Falls dropped in multiple steps some 500 feet, the largest waterfall more than a hundred feet.  The river is named Opalescent and combines with Calamity to start the Hudson's journey to the Atlantic Ocean.

City Parks

From most vantage points, Brooklyn is a concrete jungle of varying degrees of decay. There are, however, some gems of open space.

Republican Debate

As I watch the Republican debate,

Paul reinvigorates his undercard position.
Mentions the unmentionables in Republican debates:
Race, Criminal Justice, and expensive military expansionism.

Kasich continues to appear pragmatic, inclusive, and experienced
Qualities not sought for in a rightward trending conservative primary.

Christie panders to fear,
Evades questions, and throws attacks at Hillary,
Thinking a blustery and vacuous posture will win points

Cruz skeeves, whines, and scaremongers
This unofficial Tea Party leader
May be the best bet for Democrats to regain Congress.

Bush improves his position
Seeming more confident on the stage.
Probably too little, too late
And he has that well known brother.

Carson confuses and fades.

Rubio tries to hard.
His crescendo cadence with each answer
Moves too fast and too rehearsed to generate confidence.

Trump was not there, thankfully.
He strikes a real cord with the conservative underclass,
But the overtones of anti-anything but- white male
Are a non-starter.

American Museum of Natural History

Winter Storm Jonas

Dying River

Dying River

She flows
Through mountains and deserts
Carving canyons over eons
40 million depend
To irrigate and drink
The great, sprawling cities
Denver, Las Vegas,
Salt Lake, Phoenix, Tuscan,
LA, and San Diego consume
This finite source
Based on archaic law
Written a century before
"Use it, or lose it"
The rights held dear
By the progeny
Of those first white settlers
Who forged the land
At the expense of those native.
Now sick and depleted
Her flow trickles
And ends before reaching the sea.

Democratic Socialism

People scare at the word socialism in any context. They immediately conjure images of the failed communist states, conflating the two different terms. Obviously, in education, in life, we need healthy competition but there are definitely things a government needs to help provide for a country's own best interests. A protected, well-educated, healthy, and generally happy population with the ability to move, access, and transport goods and services throughout the given area with a sustainable environmental impact (so our progeny can be part of that).  So strong defense (not offense), education, healthcare, environment protection, time for family, friends, and play, along with a viable infrastructure.  That may be the essence of democratic socialism.  A healthy democracy that provides a fair platform for competition of ideas, innovation, goods, and services.

Autumn on City Greenroofs

 Few are the days that a walk along the High Line is without crowds.  While people watching is part of the beauty, this misty day was sublime.

Atop the vast roof at the Morgan Distribution Post Office building, a look at NYC's largest building site to date, the Hudson Yards Project.  A 52 story building went this year and the foundations for a 90, two 70's, and a 60 plus story buildings are underway.  On this roof, the noise of construction is overshadowed by the sound of crickets, birds, and the wind passing through the grasses.