Photography by Rich Gigli

Grand Canyon

GRANDIOSE -The grandest of all the canyons of the world is the Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona.  A powerful and inspiring landscape, that overwhelms our senses through its immense size; 277 river miles long, up to 18 miles wide, and over a mile deep. Recent evidence suggests the Colorado River established its course and carved the canyon at least 17 million years ago. Since that time, the Colorado River continued to erode and form the canyon to the point we see it at today.

By Shawn Dell Joyce 

Nothing says Christmas quite like a wild evergreen tree decked out with sparkling lights and loaded with gift-wrapped boxes. Before you head out into the woods with your axe, consider a greener alternative.

The greenest tree is a potted Douglas Fir tree from a local nursery, that you can plant outdoors in warm weather.  Your little fir tree will clean your indoor air during the holidays, and clean carbon out of the atmosphere year round when you transplant it.  If you bought a live tree every year, and planted it in spring, you could offset your family’s carbon footprint in twenty years and create a green holiday tradition.

If you don’t have room (or the inclination) for a live tree, consider a locally grown tree. Christmas trees and greens are agricultural products that add to the economic and environmental health of your region. These trees are grown specifically for the holidays on marginal lands that wouldn’t support other crops.  Buying one of these trees stimulates your local economy, and improves the life of a local farm family.

“Go without a twinge of environmental guilt,” suggests Deborah Brown a horticulturist from University of Minnesota Extension Service. “During the seven to ten years that a Christmas tree grows, the tree provides wildlife habitat and helps hold the soil and prevent erosion,” says Brown. “Commercial tree operations plant and harvest trees every year. Each year’s harvest is quickly renewed, and tree farms never strip large portions of land for a single year’s holiday greenery.”

If you live in a place where a live tree won’t work, consider a second-hand artificial tree. Plastic trees require major amounts of petroleum to manufacture and generate tons of greenhouse gasses in the process. Plus they are generally not recyclable, and wind up in landfills. Using that second-hand tree for several years helps to lessen its environmental impact. It is usually more economical than a cut tree.

Here are a few farms that sell holiday trees in our area courtesy of Cornell Cooperative Extension:

Hoeffner Farm, 405 Goodwill Road, Montgomery

C. Rowe & Sons Farm, 113 Station Road, Campbell Hall

Christmas Tree Lane, 9 Christmas Tree Drive, Wallkill

Farm Side Acres, 280 Angola Road, Cornwall

Indigot Creek Christmas Tree Farm, Camp Stadie Road, Middletown

Manza Family Farm, 730 Route 211, Montgomery

Pierson Farm, 1448 Route 211 West, Montgomery

Pine View Farm, 575 Jackson Ave. New Windsor

Stone Oak Farm, 207 Stony Bar Road, Slate Hill

Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning newspaper columnist and director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery. www.WallkillRiverSchool.com

By Jeffrey Page

Charles Rangel’s response to being censured by his colleagues in the House of Representatives contained the sounds of my childhood when a kid’s answer to a reprimand often was “But all the other kids do it and they didn’t get in trouble.”

It also reveals that this is a man who has basically told the House to go chase itself.

“ … we do know that we are a political body,” Rangel told the House in one-minute remarks after the censure vote. And then, without using the name, Rangel recalled the suffering of the man who preceded him in Congress. That would be Adam Clayton Powell. But Rangel, bemoaning the political nature of the House, didn’t tell the whole story.

Powell had his own ethics problems. It was in 1970, during Powell’s troubles, that Rangel declared his own candidacy – for Powell’s seat. Rangel won the primary and has been reelected every two years since, and Powell spent most of the next year and a half on Bimini in the Bahamas. He died at a hospital in Miami in 1972. Rangel omitted this coda to Powell’s career in his remarks about the politics of the House.

The House? A political body? Was there doubt? Ask any member who was around for the Powell episode or any member who’s around now. Politics? In Rangel’s case, it must be noted that while the current makeup of the House is 255 Democrats to 179 Republicans, the total vote on his censure was 333 to 79.

In the days after the House acted, Rangel tried to downplay his ethics breaches by cynically declaring that he was not guilty of some of the misdeeds that other members of the House have committed. “In all fairness,” he said over the weekend, “I was not found guilty of corruption. I did not go to bed with kids. I did not hurt the House speaker, I did not start a revolution against the United States of America. I did not steal any money. I did not take any bribes and that is abundantly clear.”

Well, as a matter of fact, nor did he murder anyone, commit arson, rape anyone, rob anything, lie under oath, or leave the scene of an accident. But that’s not the point. The point is that he violated the rules of the House. And a defense that leans on the notion that the other kids didn’t get punished is no defense at all.

The things he did do are the petty little breaches that serve to separate members of the House from the 300 million Americans who happen not to be in Congress. He failed to report income on a rental property he owns in the Dominican Republic. Not for one year but for several. He attributed this lapse to forgetfulness. Seriously, how do you forget income of almost $100,000?

Like all members of Congress, Rangel is allowed to send official mail without charge. But the House ethics committee found that he had used his postal privilege for other than official business, specifically to raise funds for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Policy at the City University of New York.

The list goes on. What are ordinary people supposed to make from Rangel’s failure to list $600,000 in assets on his Congressional financial disclosure form? He forgot? The dog ate his form?

In seemingly contradictory moods, Rangel said at one point he understands the House’s authority to police itself. And then, in one grand gesture of disdain, he told his colleagues:  “ … I know in my heart that I’m not going to be judged by this Congress but I’m going to be judged by my life, my activities, my contributions to society and I just apologize for the awkward position that some of you are in.”

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

Thanksgiving week, the major news in our country is shopping, and if retail sales will top last year. Judging from our media, you would think that Americans made the holidays specifically for shopping.  We spend an average of $856 per person on the holidays, according to the American Research Group.

Most of those hard-earned dollars will go straight to China since more than 70 percent of the goods on store shelves are from there. If we multiply that by the current U.S. population, that’s $257, 775, 794, 632 dollars leaving home for the holidays! I was surprised that shopping wasn’t an Olympic event this year considering how skilled we have become at sending our money overseas.

If you shop for the good of the economy, keep in mind that buying products made outside of your community means that your money also leaves home for the holidays. Instead, feed your local economy by making your own gifts, and buying what gifts you can’t make from local, independent stores and artisans.

On average, we spend between 20 and 40 hours shopping for holiday gifts, and waiting on long lines. You could easily make most of your holiday gifts in that time, and have the added bonus of time shared as a family. Climate writer Bill McKibben, in his excellent book; “Hundred Dollar Holiday” says; “I can remember almost every present that someone’s made for me since we started doing these Hundred Dollar Holidays. And that’s testimony in itself-I have no idea what gifts came in all those great piles under the tree in previous years. They didn’t attach themselves to particular faces, particular memories.”

Holidays should be about time well spent, not money. “Give things that are rare; time, attention, memory, whimsy,” notes McKibben. In the land where we have plenty of food, noise, gizmos, stuff, those are the things we cherish.

               Here are a few ideas for adding more joy to your household and community this holiday season:

• Spend less time shopping and make gingerbread men with your children one afternoon. Put the gingerbread men on decorative plates, and drop in on each neighbor to spread cheer.
• Pump money into the local economy by making donations to the food bank. That money will help families in your neighborhood more surely than spending it at a national chain store. Montgomery’s food bank is feeding over 100 new families this holiday season, let’s lend a neighborly hand.
• Ask young children to pick out a toy to buy and donate to one of the “toys for tots” programs.
• Have a family meeting to decide on a spending limit, and figure out what imaginative gifts you can make together. 
• This time of year is craft fair season, and most churches and community groups offer at least one. Craft fairs are great opportunities to directly support local producers and keep your holiday spending local. Dec. 4^th, 12-8pm “Handmade for the Holidays” local crafter’s bazaar at Wallkill River School, all sales directly benefit local artisans.

Shawn Dell Joyce is a sustainable artist and activist and founder of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery. Shawn@zestoforange.com