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MML - BUFFALO

DULUTH * MILWAUKEE * DETROIT * BUFFALO * OTTAWA * QUEBEC

REGIONAL CAPITALS OF THE ST. LAWRENCE.

NATIONAL CAPITAL TO FLOW WEST TO EAST EVERY TWO YEARS AND THEN RETURN WEST. NATIONAL PARLIAMENT ABLE TO MODIFY LOCAL LEGISLATION WHEN AND ONLY WHEN IN SESSION IN THAT REGION. ELECTIONS EVERY NOVEMBER.

ONE LEGISLATOR PER 100 000 CITIZENS. LINES DRAWN BY NATIONAL JUDGES.

DEFEND OUR WATERSHED. STRENGTHEN OUR PEOPLE. TEACH OUR CHILDREN.

MML - BUFFALO

From the diaspora -

These have been dark decades. Many of us perished, many of us in our desperation created yet more disaster. Our masters have been brutal, and we in turn have shown that same brutality to each other.

There are fewer of us now, better able to support ourselves on these meager hills. We have slowly, painfully, sadly learned the art of extracting food in a world of hot sun and harsh rain, and how to keep it through the blizzards while we hide from the snow.

Our stories live on, even when we don't, so long as we share them. Time and experience have softened our fate, but we must never forget our loss. Our masters plead with us to forget, but in this we can never surrender. As long as we live we will not forget the Winter March, the Tappan Zee deception, the years of suffering that followed.

Time is short and our children are few but we will survive to take back what was ours, to bring justice to those who gave none to us.

Preserve your strength,
Alexander G. Sullivan

Stuart Staniford doesn't report whether Jon Harrod cackled madly as he saw how energy-inefficient Stuart's house was, but otherwise it sounds much like the energy audit Jon did for this house almost a decade ago, long before I was blogging and before Jon was running his own company, Snug Planet.

That all worked out really well, even impressing a second auditor from the state. Hopefully the upgrades will be as effective there as they were here!

Lots and lots of small pieces, in no particular order:

I didn't know Jack, but I know lots of people who did. An obituary is here, and there's a letter from the Dryden school district here (222KB PDF).

Via DrydenDailyKAZ, there's an excellent video of him singing with family.

My heart goes out to his family and friends.

Now I'm starting to wonder if anything at all in the Geology chapter (4.2MB PDF) of the Revised Draft SGEIS on the Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Regulatory Program can be trusted. I posted a while ago about the 'fairway' it described, supposedly the best place to drill for gas. Dryden was inside the edge of that, as were Corning, where I grew up, and Auburn, where my mother grew up.

Marcellus Shale Fairway (darker area with lines), Upstate New York.

The recent rant against Senator Seward from Energy In Depth Marcellus, however, shows a very different map.

A different take on the Marcellus Shale. (from EID Marcellus.)

EID Marcellus unfortunately doesn't give a source for its "economically viable" line here, but it's clearly calculated differently than the DEC's "fairway". In particular, it extends much further west, to the western edge of Cattaraugus County, includes much more of Allegany and Steuben counties, and much less of those troublesome Tompkins and Otsego counties.

It makes me start to wonder if gas companies are factoring local opposition into their economic calculations, or think it would cost less to operate in much more Republican municipalities. Given the number of other things that were geologically questionable in the dSGEIS, though, maybe the fairway map is botched too. Or maybe the shift toward drilling for oil and 'wetter' gas instead of the drier gas that's here may be having an impact.

I'll keep an eye and an ear out for explanations.

Now that's a headline I never thought I'd write. It's Dryden Republicans, too.

First came Henry Kramer's blast at One of Nine, Liberty or Tyranny, arguing that "Home Rule is Undemocratic", but not mentioning Senator Seward by name.

Then came the followup, which starts by noting the earlier piece and then quotes Energy in Depth Marcellus, the PR site for the gas companies where "if you're not with us you're against us."

Isn't that nice? Seward is well-liked, but he's sold out to the people in Cooperstown. (I guess EID forgets this end of the vacuum cleaner district.) They even manage to rephrase "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" into the somewhat gentler:

Never compromise, never surrender, never imagine a world in which your opponents might have a point. It's kind of a strange position to take in New York politics, though maybe New Yorkers are so tired of random Albany compromises that it has some small chance of working. (Either that or EID hopes that all part of New York State that have gas will decide to become part of Pennsylvania instead.)

Anyway, it's strange to watch the ever further shift right of our local Republican party, especially on energy issues. I can no longer bring myself to call these folks "conservative". They're not. "Right wing" is about the only term I have left, except maybe the 1860s "Radical Republicans" name, which doesn't seem to fit.

George Frantz, once the consultant on the Dryden Comprehensive Plan, sent the Sustainable Tompkins list a note last week about the American Farmland Trust's No Farms, No Food rally day, coming on February 15th. He included their agenda for lobbying (72KB PDF), which mostly looks great. Good things like farmland protection money, nutrition assistance for consumers, getting state agencies to buy food from the state, and support for farmers markets.

I like all of it, but looking around Dryden and especially after the contentious battles over hydrofracking, it seems weak.

Farmers are getting crushed in New York State, and not just for lack of farmers markets. Some of it, to be sure, has to do with farmers getting lousy prices from food processors, who seem immune to much-needed antitrust action, but a lot of it comes from the way New York State makes municipal governments and school districts fund themselves.

In two words, that's property taxes.

The state has tinkered a little bit with income taxes in the last few years, but relying on property taxes for schools in particular creates large problems for poor districts and massive headaches for farmers. Every year, whether the farm does well or not, they get huge bills from schools, and smaller bills from counties and towns.

Why are we stuck here? Partly it's because Republicans have fought constantly against any increase in income taxes. (Last year's "we can call it an increase or decrease as politically convenient" was a masterpiece of Albany nonsense.)

At the same time, however, state Democrats make an equal but opposite mistake. This piece from the New York Observer really hammers it home:

While I think renters are important and understand their central part in pretty much any conversation about Downstate politics, those dynamics don't work the same way Upstate. Despite what certain State Senators might think, renters get hurt by property taxes too - but here the distribution falls harshly on the farms we're trying to keep alive.

I've been appalled by the eagerness some farmers show for hydrofracking cash, but they have a point when they say the government just takes and takes and takes from them. If we want farms to continue here - and pretty much everyone I've talked with wants farms - we need to change the structure of taxes. That means reducing the hit of property taxes, or at least finding some sane way to move that hit away from farmers.

Unfortunately, the most local governments and school districts can do is try to keep their spending as low as the state will allow. Changing the formula for where that money comes from is something that only the state can do.

Maybe the American Farmland Trust thinks that's too much to ask? It sure won't be easy to get there.

It's been a powerful week of Quaker provocation. Maggie Harrison opened with YOU ARE NOT A QUAKER (so please stop calling yourself one) (live version here). Micah Bales followed up with Who is a Quaker, which on the surface sounds gentler but is maybe even a stronger call to action - "she has not gone far enough".

Stop for a moment and read them both, then pause for a moment over Bales' description of the past and present:

I sympathize with both of these, as I frequently dream of a more focused fellowship more willing to cut to the bone, or "GET NAKED" as Harrison puts it. I dream of pushing myself ever further that direction as well. I've spent a lot of time here talking about concepts like deification that really push the "why can't go farther?" question to the limit, and asked if early Quakers thought that was what they were doing.

At the same time, however, I draw back a little because I know Quakers who are, as Bales says, "called to so much more than secure lives in the lap of Empire," or as Harrison puts it, "are committed to the process of gettin' naked as a step in the longer path of being clothed in righteousness, which means a return to right order, or the Gospel Order, or the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Garden or Eden, or total Liberation, or WHATEVER YOU WANT TO CALL IT."

There are many levels of commitment to such change in Quakerism (and elsewhere), many people with different levels of such commitment helping each other toward it. Even those with the least commitment can be helps, not hindrances, to those with the most commitment. Commitment can, as I wrote recently, come to us, not the other way around.

Reading early Quaker history, it is hard not to be struck not only by the commitment of the Valiant Sixty but by the number of people who were interested in the message but didn't stay around. Reading Pennsylvania history, it's hard not to notice Quakerism falling off over the generations because the appeal of worldly things - fashion, slaves, and many kinds of business - had a greater appeal than the Quaker message. Waves of Quaker revival (and associated conflict) brought in new people, and drove others out.

In a world full of churches that call themselves Christian but really contain people aspiring to be Christian, it is not surprising that a world full of meetinghouses contains people aspiring to be Quaker. We call ourselves Quakers and Christians, but because that is the path, not a destination we've reached.

(Okay, some people think they've reached the destination, but that's a separate conversation.)

So yes, it's critical to focus on "real radical transformation.... we ARE about something." Something is happening, something is here - as these two and many others demonstrate.

At the same time, we need to remember that we are walking a difficult path that requires leading. We are not there yet, any of us. This piece from a Presbyterian service I was at this morning reminded me of that:

The surprising part to me was that that was the Assurance of Forgiveness.

A landmark of Dryden architecture, built by John Southworth, is now formally in the hands of the Dryden Town Historical Society. I'd mentioned it earlier when the Ithaca Journal did an article, but it's good to see the transfer happen.

DTHS President Betsy Cleveland cuts the opening ribbon for the Southworth House, as Betsy Van Sickle and Mike Lane look on.

Sara Rebecca "Becky" Southworth Simpson left the house and its many contents to the Historical Society, on condition that the DTHS establish an office there. She had been active in the founding of the organization, and always interested in the history of her house, built by John Southworth in 1836. Her niece Betsy Van Sickle was there to celebrate the transfer, along with a small group of DTHS trustees and executor Mike Lane.

At John Southworth's desk, DTHS President Betsy Cleveland signs papers needed for the transfer.

A sign is in the works, and the Historical Society will be having a more public celebration of their new home sometime later this year.

DTHS trustees celebrate.

It's an amazing building, and I'd never seen the inside before yesterday. It's always felt like a calm spot separating the Village Green by the churches from the commercial zone on North Road, and it's wonderful inside as well.