Valeria Construction: Dig We Must

This pictorial post is targeted for my readers at Valeria, the home of Dickerson Pond. I had a chance this afternoon to walk around the property where our developer, AVR Home Builders, has started some actual construction supporting their approved plans to add one hundred and forty-seven additional homes to the existing eighty now located on the Valeria property. I am adding some editorial comment to the photos but have not done as much homework that I should to support all of my narrative. Please feel free to make comments to clarify or correct some of my assumptions used in this posting.

My first photo captures a rare breed of prospective buyers on safari in the first new construction area just east of the existing Sales Office. This photo was taken with a powerful lens at a great distance in order not to frighten away this rare breed of post market crash home buyer from the site.
Later on I took a picture of the site of proposed Building 15 just after the potential buyers passed the spot.

Building 15 overlooks the new catch basin/pond that is being constructed. This area was a habitat area for box turtles. These turtles were relocated to a fenced in area on the opposite side of Furnace Dock Road. The site was maintained by two certified vegetarian goats now living in retirement on a farm in Vermont.


The large mound of dirt created by these modern day behemoths will be trucked across to the existing "ash pit" off the west side of Sniffen Mountain Road.

I believe this area was a dumping area for the Valeria Home since the 1920's and deposits included ash from coal fired boilers. Here are some pictures of the ash pit area being prepared to be capped to seal the contents. I found evidence of bottles and broken pottery in the area. It appears it was a general garbage dump for the hotel.

This is a picture overlooking the fenced in relocated habitat for the migrant turtles.

This is roadside trash thrown from Furnace Dock Road into the area between the turtle habitat and the Valeria waste water treatment area.
Many Valeria residents have never visited the waste water treatment area. Here are some photos of this facility that has served the area since the 1920's. The big sandy areas are leech fields are the last stop for waste water before it flows into a tributary of Furnace Brook. The water coming out of the drain pipe looks very clean and the flow is fairly small.
These shots show the work being done to create our new garbage collection area which will be directly adjacent to the existing waste water treatment plant. The land will be leveled and a large fenced in concrete pad will be constructed that meets a new improved entrance road to the treatment plant and garbage collection area.

While walking back from this photo tour, I crossed the golf course. There in the middle the course was a coyote. Unfortunately I could get no closer than this.

Political Pornography

Online Etymology Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This

pornography

1857, "description of prostitutes," from Fr. pornographie, from Gk. pornographos "(one) writing of prostitutes," from porne "prostitute," originally "bought, purchased" (with an original notion, probably of "female slave sold for prostitution;" related to pernanai "to sell," from PIE root per- "to traffic in, to sell," cf. L. pretium "price") + graphein "to write." Originally used of classical art and writing; application to modern examples began 1880s. Main modern meaning "salacious writing or pictures" represents a slight shift from the etymology, though classical depictions of prostitution usually had this quality. Pornographer is earliest form of the word, attested from 1850. Pornocracy (1860) is "the dominating influence of harlots," used specifically of the government of Rome during the first half of the 10th century by Theodora and her daughters.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper

Although I can admit to being a subscriber and daily reader of the New York Times, I consider myself fortunate to have avoided an addiction to political pornography. Just as sexual pornographers use the underbelly of human sexuality with all of its innuendoes to flame the basest instincts that dwell within us for arousal and profit, so do the political pornographers reach for our phobias, prejudices and low self esteem for partisan aggrandizement and profit.

The workplace or playground for America's political pornographers is talk radio and cable news networks. Political pornographers have legal and widespread access to every nook and cranny of our country. They travel in our cars, talk to us while we eat our dinners, and they can reach us at work or school on our computers. They are the celebrities of the new millennium. Some earn over $40,000,000 per year and have been on the cover of the New York Time Magazine. The most noted political pornographers include: Bill O'Reilly, Al Franken, Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes, Jack Cafferty, Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, and Chris Matthews. They are liberals, conservatives, Democrats, and Republicans.

They command similar recognition and loyalty as did faith healers like AA Allen and Peter Popoff or snake oil salesmen. They tell their listeners and viewers what they want to hear. They are not bound by editorial review and story enhancement is fair game and part of the appeal in their message. Unverified stories are immediately aired and, if later found to be not true, a clarification may or may not follow at a later date. Some of their stories or diatribes make political attack ads seem as tame as Dr. Seuss stories.

Why isn't there a twelve step program targeted to help those who cannot stop listening or watching political pornography? Having talked to people about these shows I hear comments like:

"I can stop anytime."

"I only listen in my car when I cannot find any good music on the radio."

"I find it entertaining."

"I don't let these shows influence my political views."

"They are no different than the [New York Times] [The Post]."

These sound like cries for help to me.

Let me paraphrase the leading etymology quote for "pornography" and modify it for "political pornography".

Pondit Etymology Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This

political pornography

1857, "description of political prostitutes," from Fr. pornographie, from Gk. pornographos "(one) writing of prostitutes," from porne "prostitute," originally "bought, purchased" (with an original notion, probably of "partisan political opinions sold for prostitution;" related to pernanai "to sell," from PIE root per- "to traffic in, to sell," cf. L. pretium "price") + graphein "to write." Originally used of classical art and writing; application to modern broadcasting examples began 1980s. Main modern meaning "salacious writing or pictures" represents a slight shift from the etymology, though classical depictions of political prostitution usually had this quality. Pornographer is earliest form of the word, attested from 1850. Political pornocracy (1860) is "the dominating influence of political harlots," used specifically of the government of Rome during the first half of the 10th century by Theodora and her daughters. Modern examples are found on 77 Talk Radio and MSNBC.

Pondit Etymology Dictionary (apologies to Online Etymology Dictionary)

Grieving to Love

Recently, I had a chance to spend some time away from my day-to-day environment and take some serious time for reflection. During these days spent in a remote part of the Catskill Mountains, I was able to use a journal to let me capture my thoughts and feelings as they came to me in the quiet of the mountain setting. I was focused on some heavy topics and when I read the words I had written, I tried to capture their essence in poems. Why, I do not know. As I wrote in a previous posting, I have not written a poem in over forty-five years and although I do enjoy reading, poetry is not a format that attracts me.

There is good and bad in almost every aspect of living. Most of us spend our life time trying to sort the good from the bad and aspire toward the good and agonize when we gravitate to the bad. Most religious teaching we have experienced tend to emphasize the dichotomy between good and evil choices. This is certainly true for me. I want blue skies and no rain, want peace with no war, joy without grief. With lots of help, my time in the mountains has opened me to accept that there are no blue skies full of flowers and trees without the nourishment of rain. In fact the rains provide a chance for me to slow down and rescue myself from my busyness. Can I truly expect to know joy without having faced the agony of grief?

Grieving To Love

Near and far, my fears they lie,

Yet I do escape them bye and bye.

It is not the fear that is the beast.

It is the grief on which fear feasts.

The grief in me keeps sinking deep,

It reaches down, right through my feet.

Grief winds around my every bone,

Chills my flesh, it eats my soul.

Grief fills my mind with blackest ink.

It chokes all joy, my will to think.

I am transfixed afraid to move.

Grief, oh grief what more to prove?

How do I face this grief so bold?

Where do I turn, whom do I hold?

Easy say some, "To Jesus, brother."

But where was I when He did suffer?

Did I help Job in all his sorrows?

Did I save Joseph in the burrow?

Did I tell Jonah, I will join you?

I judge I need to earn my rescue.

I am like Adam who had all for nothing,

But wanted more by his own working?

Grief has me blinded, my pride kicks in

I become the "god", my original sin.

At last I know my grief is real.

It is with me from head to heel.

My grief is now a tomb of stone,

Show me the way, let me atone.

I fear each thought, each pulse, each pore

Will urge my grief to travel more,

Reach through the bone into the marrow,

Make me regret each new tomorrow.

There's nothing left but to embrace it,

Let grief itself become the prophet,

Let its hard lesson to me be

The guiding light to set me free.

Buddy Can You Spare Me $700,000,000,000?

I do want to help my vast readership better understand some of the physical aspects of the proposed bailout plan now being discussed on the floor of Congress. I will leave the economic analysis to the only American capable of understanding the complexity of the full bailout proposal, Jim Cramer of CNBC's "Mad Money Show". During the last great economic crisis, poor unfortunates on the streets of America (in today's lingo – Main Street America) were brazenly asking us to spare them a dime without any hint of oversight or guarantees of repayment. At least in this millennium's crisis we have a congress with the backbone to demand that missing oversight and those guarantees. Of course, this congress is asking us for seven trillion dimes. That is 15,868,000 metric tons of dimes.

Now this might be hard to follow, but the next few paragraphs will not only give a better feeling for the magnitude of the bailout, it will also point out four specific industries that will be saved by the bailout. Here are some physical properties of the $700 billion bailout:

• Weight: A dollar bill weighs about one gram. Therefore 700 billion one-dollar bills would weigh about 700,000 metric tons, about eight days' worth of all U.S. paper production, or the combined tonnage of seven Nimitz-class aircraft carriers.
  



• Height: A dollar bill is 0.1 centimeters in height. Stacked one on top of the other, 700 billion dollar bills would form a pile 52,000 miles high, roughly a quarter of the way to the moon.
  



• Length: The length of a dollar bill is 15.6 centimeters. End to end longwise, 700 billion bills would stretch 65 million miles, two-thirds of the way to the Sun.
  



• Area: A dollar bill is 15.6 cm x 6.63 cm, or 103 square centimeters. Arranged in a big square, 700 billion bills would carpet 2,800 square miles, a swathe of land twice as big as Rhode Island and half the size of L.A. County.

Now it would not be practical to pay the bailout monies in one dollar bills so let's say we use new crisp $100 bills. We are giving these bills to Wall Street executives and bankers so leather attaché cases are appropriate. I found a nice one thanks to Google. It is made of calf leather and is sixteen by twelve by four inches. It will take 7,056,445 of these briefcases to hold the entire bailout [US luggage industry is now officially saved]. A cow hide is approximately thirty-one square feet. Each briefcase needs about two and one half square feet of calf leather for manufacture. This work requires over 705,666 cow hides to be purchased [US beef cattle industry is now officially saved].

In the year 2004 there were 1,814,491 people working in the US banking industry. The bailout will provide just about three attaché cases of cash for each banker or, more exactly, $365,794. [US banking industry is now officially saved]. I also thought that each member of Congress and each person working in the banking industry should receive a copy of the new Amazon.com release, "Mortgage Backed Securities for Dummies". This would be 535 copies for Congress and the 1,814,491 for the bankers and would be a boost for the publishing industry. [US publishing industry is now officially saved].

What is my contribution in all of this? In 2007 there were 138,000,000 US taxpayers. In the Pondit's household we have two taxpayers. My wife and I will soon "own" $10,145 worth of mortgage backed securities that the government will be buying. That is worth about as much as a new Chevy Silverado, which GM is currently deeply discounting so it can get these vehicles off their books and into the hands of the general public. Will I be required to foreclose on a fellow citizen's home in order to get back my share of the bailout money?

The Breath of Life

The Breath of Life

 

Arise my soul and face your fears.

You cling to life with passion dear.

I am your vessel that I be,

The I in me that would be free.

 

And as I journey, full of strife,

I long for peace, I lust for life.

But peace to me goes still wanted,

My soul's unrest keeps me haunted.

 

Come then death, life's nether half,

You're but a stop on life's short path.

Death grant to me a single breath,

Alas the one that marks my death.

 

Yet this same breath is the sacred air

That wakes my soul to let me bear

The expectation I've been longing,

My journey's end, my Easter morning.

 

This is the first poem I have written since I wrote a sonnet to my high school sweetheart in spring of 1963. The rust is evident. Today is the first full day of autumn. It denotes the beginning of harvest time. It is time of transition for us all. Our days now move from mostly day to mostly night. The glorious plants and flowers we enjoyed in spring and summer, now must die. But it is through their death that we are nourished. We have grain and fruits to eat and even the plants themselves need this dying to seeds in order to sprout again next spring thus renewing the cycle of living.

 

At first no one is comfortable "knocking on heaven's door." But it took a glimpse of death, a touch of dying to give me a fuller appreciation of life and all its beauty. We are all going to die. My goal is not to let the fear of death ruin my joy for life. I will try to embrace the need for death to give nourishment and the promise of new life and use that message so evident in God's nature to continue to reveal the hidden glories of living.

Post 9/11: Have I Learned Anything?

Thursday my posting, Train 911, described my personal observations on September 11, 2001 – a day of infamy for the USA and the world. I was very fortunate not to suffer any personal loss that day. I know others who did. My heart continues to ache for them. I cannot write about their suffering or even begin to understand their loss. But 9/11 is a "tipping point" for many Americans. Some have changed dramatically and are "different" people. Others, like me, are just coming to understand how both our personal and collective responses to the tragedy have altered our lives. If an historic event such as the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon do not cause us to reflect on the event and our response, what will? Here are some of the profound and much less profound life lessons the tragedy and responses to that tragedy on 9/11 have had on me:

• I am fully convinced that I will never be able to understand what mental and emotional processes can enable a human being to perform wanton acts of destruction toward other human beings.
  
• It has taken me years to fully admit and come to grips with the instantaneous prejudice 9/11 caused me to have toward Arabs and Moslems. Due to the magnitude and senselessness of the 9/11 attacks, I needed somewhere to vent my rage. I internalized this prejudice and over the first few months/years after the attacks, I might have spoken of forgiveness, but harbored resentment. I still need to confront myself in this area, but now realize that the attack was planned and carried out by very few people, who happened to be both Arab and Moslem. This does not mean that all Arabs and Moslems are bad people.
  
• I better understand that all religions surround us with holy people and saints that provide wonderful models for living a better life. Religious writings and rites help me better understand my relationship with God and the people around me. I am also aware that religious people are not necessarily good people; some are evil. The events of 9/11 made me leery of the Koran and of Moslem leaders. I had never read the Koran or met a Moslem imam and perhaps this lack of knowledge added to my discomfort. More recently, I have reflected on how Christians from Spain, Portugal, France, England and the United States either killed or dispossessed all Native Americans from the Hudson Bay in Canada to the tip of Argentina in South America. My religious beliefs provide me with the opportunity for more insight and tolerance, but no religion guarantees instant holiness!
  
• Wars are not good for people! Unfortunately, people are good at wars! But the US is not that good at wars when the enemy is not a nation. For example, in 1964 Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty. This was a very noble cause. Poverty in the United States dropped from 22% in 1959 to 19% in 1964 a decrease of 3%. But the nation rightfully believed that 19% are too many Americans living in poverty. During the next forty years we fought the War on Poverty and we reduced those living in poverty to 12% of the population. I have to tell you that I do not get warm and fuzzy feelings that in forty years we have only reduced the percentage of people living in poverty by seven percentage points. With our growth in population, there are more people living in poverty then when we started this war. We have most likely lost this war. We are also waging a War on Drugs in the United States. My thoughts are that we are doing slightly better fighting against drugs than against poverty. In this fight we have spent over $35 billion dollars by some estimates and now America has the largest percentage of its population incarcerated than any other nation in the world. Drug use is reported to be down. Perhaps if we can keep drugs out of our prisons and incarcerate 100% of the population, we can declare this war as won!
  
• Now we are aggressively engaged in a War on Terror. This war was declared in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States that killed 3,056 civilians. Again the United States is waging war against an ill defined enemy. In this war the US has already lost 4,155 troops in Iraq, and 589 troops in Afghanistan. The US government acknowledges over 30,000 Iraqi civilians killed by violent military causes and other estimates put the total Iraqi civilian deaths at 1,255,026. The US military expenses in Iraq are estimated to be $2.5 billion per week. Homeland Security spent $69,107,000,000 in 2006. Although, we have not had any repeat of a terrorist attack in the US – that's a very good thing – I wonder if some of the $3.8 billion dollars a week we are spending in this War on Terror could be better spent to fight cancer that is killing over 1,500 Americans each and every week.
  
• Richard Rohr, A Franciscan priest and author, writes, "The three great demons are fear, guilt and anger." In his first inaugural speech, Franklin D. Roosevelt told us, "So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts…" I believe fear is the goal of terrorism. If it is, then we are losing this war also. Look at us. We are constructing walls at our borders similar to the great fences strung across Australia to keep the animal pests out of the grazing lands. We are restricting visits to our country and in rebuttal are having restrictions put on Americans who want to travel abroad. We are permitting our government to monitor all our email and phone conversations. We allow someone to designate a person as an enemy combatant and then be put in jail with no legal recourse whatsoever. We tolerate the torture of people in the fear of a potential terrorist action. I believe we have allowed our fear of terrorism and desire for safety, to let us subrogate the very freedom and values that make America the great country it is.
  
• Who has won the airport security battle? On the US side we have had no successful terrorist actions at our airports in 2008. This is a battle we seem to have won. Then again we all allow at least one additional hour at the airport to get through security and make our flight. Last year there were 675,000,000 airline passengers in the United States. Besides the cost to provide airport security, American airline passengers invested a minimum of 675,000,000 hours or 77,054 man years waiting in line at the airport. Each passenger must also remove his or her shoes because one person (terrorist?) attempted to place an incendiary device in his shoe. That means 1,350,000,000 shoes are removed and replaced each year at the airport and giving that it takes two minutes to take off and replace those shoes, Americans invest an additional 5,137 man years in shoe shuffling. I trust the TSA has found enough shoe bombs to justify this activity!
  

I apologize for using these trite examples. I just want to make certain we realize we have let fear of terrorism affect our lives. Unfortunately, many of the not so trite examples are a much greater threat to our American values. I am certainly not done with my learning process, but it is clear to me that both the cost of the 9/11 tragedy and the cost of our nation's response to the tragedy are way beyond the value of any personal wisdom I might gain.

Train 911

One spectacular September morning I make my regular morning commute to New York City. There is not a cloud in the sky and the air feels "country" fresh even in midtown Manhattan. My regular train, the 7:42 from Cortlandt, arrives at Grand Central Terminal at 8:39 AM. I sit near the rear of the train and it takes several minutes for me to get from the train to the main lobby of the terminal. As I am a creature of habit when commuting, I walk out the entrance from the corridor in GCT through the subway's 42^nd Street Shuttle station finally emerging in the majestic lobby of the Lincoln Building. I glance at the bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln sitting in a chair, a replica of the one that is so striking at his memorial in Washington. Abe is a symbol of quiet strength to me, a strength sprinkled with conventional wisdom and tolerance.

I exit the Lincoln Building on Madison Avenue, then cross the street and walk up 43^rd Street to Fifth Avenue. I pause at the corner directly across from the New York City Library. What a day! As I mentioned before, clear blue skies and not one cloud east, west or north. I did notice a low white puffy cloud drifting over lower Manhattan as I looked south.

I continue on to my office building at Broadway and 37^th Street. When I get to our small office on the fourteenth floor, it is no different than the day before or the week before. The time is now about 8:55 AM. Suddenly one of my coworkers jumps up from his cubicle and shouts, "A plane has crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers!" I quickly try to bring up the CNN internet site. S…L…O…W. I try the local WNBC site with no better luck. We are all thinking that some small single engine plane is involved in the accident. We cannot get any information. Soon after, I get a call from a colleague in our London office. He wants to know if everything was all right in our office. I ask, "Why?" It is now about 9:10 AM. He tells me that two airliners have crashed into the WTC towers. He is looking for details about the incident from me and here I am only a mile or two from the site and I know almost nothing. I ask him to keep us informed.

I try to call my wife but cannot get an outside line on my office phone or my cell phone. Another coworker comes into the office. He had just been on the roof of our building. He tells us he could see smoke coming from both towers downtown. The mood in the office is now half shock and half panic. We are getting little or no information, but still rumors are flying. I receive a second call from London and they say these incidents are reported as terrorist attacks. At 9:30 three of us decide to go up to the roof to take a look. It was heart wrenching. The smoke from the two towers looks ominous. We could only see the top of the towers, maybe the top thirty to forty floors. We hear and see a few helicopters and some sirens down at street level. I then glance over my left shoulder as I here fighter jets zooming in. I am aware of the looming Empire State Building just three streets and one avenue away from where we are standing. It occurs to me that the roof is not a place I want to be and leave by myself to go back downstairs.

There is still no way for us to communicate to the outside world. Someone finds a radio and at least we get some information on what was happening. Soon that radio is moved to another office and we again have no news! Many of us, me included, want to be home and not in Manhattan. Just after 10:00 AM the two coworkers I left on the roof burst back into the office. All I here is, "It collapsed! It collapsed!" After what seems like minutes, we finally learn that they were watching the towers and in seconds one of the towers was just not there anymore. The plume of smoke and debris was enormous. Now I really want to get home.

I decide to walk to Grand Central Terminal. Once outside on Broadway, there are people walking not only on the sidewalks but right up the middle of the street. All foot traffic is moving north. There are no cars, no buses, and no taxis. People look frightened. At one point, there is a loud noise – people start running in all directions. Others seeing the runners also start running. It makes no sense and lots of sense. I step into a doorway and soon all is again calm and is back to "normal", although I soon realize that "normal" is soon to be changed forever. The police are not letting people into the train station. Someone comes out and tells those assembled that some trains are running up to Marble Hill in the Bronx but not any further south. Marble Hill is a several mile walk from midtown.

When I return to the office, I learn the South tower has also collapsed. Some coworkers are already leaving on foot. I do not know what to do. I take another trip to the roof top. Now the skies are totally quiet. There are no planes and no helicopters. It is an eerie sight. I still worry about the Empire State Building, but feel relieved that there is no air traffic at all in New York City. By now I also know about the crash at the Pentagon and another in Pennsylvania. I want out of the city. Just before 2:00 PM I leave the office to head north, to Marble Hill if necessary. The streets are more crowded than earlier with people walking north. Some are obviously from downtown since they are covered with ash. As I passed GCT I see some people entering at the Vanderbilt Avenue entrance. I follow them in. A policeman tells us that some trains are now running, but there is no schedule. Fortunately there is a train to Poughkeepsie right in front of me. I walk down the platform and take a seat. The train is very quiet. Many passengers are like me, somewhat in the dark about the day's events. Others, those covered in dust, apparently know more but are not sharing information. Today there are no card games, no alcoholic beverages and no idle banter. Once moving, I do over hear some quiet conversations, but still am not able to fully piece together the events of the day.

When I finally park my car and walk into our home, I am relieved to see my wife. It is at home, in front of our television that I finally learn the chronology of the day's events. I start to wonder about some of my friends who work downtown. Are they safe? I cannot remember anyone close to us who actually worked in the World Trade Towers. I flash back to the early 1990's when I did consulting work for the Port of New York Authority. Three days per week, I commuted downtown to my cubicle on the 72^nd floor of the North Tower. I wonder if any of my old coworkers from that time were still working in the tower – most likely. I try to remember names and faces and in the following weeks I check the New York Times for names of victims. Fortunately, I do not see any name I know.

September 11, 2001 is a day of infamy. Let all who perished, rest in peace. And may all who lost loved ones, find peace in their hearts.