By Shawn Dell Joyce
Traditional gas-powered lawn mowers are responsible for 5 percent of the nation’s air pollution according to the Environmental Protection Agency. One gas mower running for an hour emits the same amount of pollutants as eight new cars driving 55 mph for the same amount of time, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Even the innocuous Weedeater emits 21 times more emissions than the typical family car, while the leaf blower can emit up to 34 times more, says Eartheasy.com.

All this adds up to about 800 million gallons of gas burned each year in the quest for the perfect patch. But, about 17 million gallons of that fuel doesn’t quite make it to the mower tank and winds up spilled on the ground. That’s more than the Exxon Valdez spilled in 1989, and chances are that most homeowners do not clean it up. If that spilled fuel is left to evaporate into the air, it forms smog-forming ozone when cooked by heat and sunlight, and seeps into our water supply.

If your mower happens to be a two-cycle engine, it releases 25 to 30 percent of its oil and gas unburned into the air, along with particulate matter, carbon dioxide, and other ingredients of smog. This unhealthy soup we breathe contributes to cancer, and damages our hearts, lungs and immune systems.

Want lessen the environmental impact of your lawn?

The “greenest” thing you can do is convert your lawn to a vegetable garden and replace the turf with lovely raised beds of edible greens.

If that is too crunchy for your taste, how about trading in those gas guzzlers for the old-fashioned human-powered kind? Reel mowers are easier to use, quiet, non-polluting and you don’t have to worry about spilling the gas. With the money you save on gas alone, you could buy a good pair of clippers for the bushes and a scythe for weed whacking.

If you want to take the work out of lawn care, consider investing in an electric mower and weed whacker. Electric mowers range in price from $150 to $450, and the average cost in electricity to power the mower for one year is about five bucks, with no spilled gas and less emissions. Propane powered lawn equipment is a good choice when your lawn is the size of a golf course.

Leave grass clippings on the lawn instead of using chemical fertilizers. This keeps yard waste from landfills, and cycles the nutrients from your lawn back into the soil. It also provides a little mulch so that your lawn needs less watering. shawn@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page
During last year’s congressional campaign, Nan Hayworth assured voters that she was a Republican who supports a woman’s right to abortion. Sort of. She says she still is. Sort of. And thus there’s a self-imposed asterisk next to her name.

Now that she’s been in office for about five months, it turns out that if you need an abortion and you can just go ahead and write the check, or if you have private insurance, that’s fine with Hayworth. But she says she has a problem with federal funds being used to pay for elective procedures, including abortions. Women who get such government help likely are not rich, so Hayworth would establish a two-tier system based on how rich a pregnant woman might be.

If you’re of the working poor or on welfare, and you’re pregnant and need an abortion, Hayworth doesn’t want to know about it – or about you. For the record, an ophthalmologist who almost certainly took a pay cut when she went to Congress where the salary is $174,000, Hayworth will never face the dilemma of wishing for an abortion while not having the money to pay for it.

She proved her lack of compassion by voting to add new and stricter restrictions to the Hyde Amendment, the measure that bars the use of federal money for abortions.

In an attempt to cover her tracks, this is what she told the editorial board of the Times Herald-Record: “I am not taking away a woman’s right to choose. But it is her responsibility, or her community’s responsibility, if they have chosen to pay for that procedure in other ways. But it is not a federal government tax responsibility.”

So Hayworth supports a woman’s right to choose – except when she doesn’t. For her to blithely declare that she’s not taking away a woman’s right to choose and then deny that right to women who are not as well off as she is, amounts to the living definition of hypocrisy.

Note to Hayworth: A choice that is beyond a woman’s means is no choice at all.

Hayworth further disgraced herself by also voting to end all federal funding for Planned Parenthood, whose abortion activities are pretty low in number despite what the anti-choice forces in Congress have to say. Factcheck.org, for example, reports that only 10 percent of Planned Parenthood’s clients receive abortions, and that abortions represent just 3 percent of the organization’s total services.

So what does Planned Parenthood do in the other 97 percent of its business?

Among Planned Parenthood’s non-abortion services are breast examinations, screening for ovarian cancer, birth control, cholesterol testing, blood pressure monitoring, thyroid screening, pregnancy tests, diabetes screening, stop-smoking clinics, anemia testing, administration of flu shots, and such men’s matters as infertility, treatment of urinary tract infections, prostate cancer screening, and treatment of erectile dysfunction.

How can anyone possibly justify cutting funds for these essential services? Especially someone with Hayworth’s medical background.

* Is Hayworth prochoice? Is she not prochoice? Does anyone know?

Jeff can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.

Photography by Rich Gigli

Kingston, New Yrok

In 1777, Kingston, N.Y. became the first capital of the state. The senate first met here in the house that today remains a historic site and museum. It was here that Governor George Clinton was inaugurated. He is buried in the city’s Old Dutch churchyard.