Photography by Rich Gigli
Raindrops
Raindrops pitter-patter upon the leaves
are angel’s tears for us to grieve.
falling from the heavens above
land softly on the the soul to love. (Gigli 2011)
By Shawn Dell Joyce
Almost half of our energy use goes into heating and cooling our homes. We are already paying an average of 20 percent higher home energy costs, so reducing your energy usage by ten percent will pay for itself. A professional home energy audit costs $100-$300, but is free to homeowners who sign up through NYSERDA at www.getenergysmart.org.
Some states, like New York, will reimburse businesses and municipalities for the cost of the audit, and make you eligible for a low interest rate loan to pay for major renovations. If you take out the loan and make the improvements, the money you save on your electric bill easily covers the loan payment, often with plenty left over. If you plan to go solar, or incorporate some form of renewable energy into your home, the same program will pay for half the installed cost.
Having a trained eye look at your home is invaluable. My auditor spotted right away that my furnace was operating at 80 percent efficiency in spite of just being serviced. He also found some leaky and uninsulated ductwork that was never noticed previously.
Here are a few ways my home energy audit suggested would save ten percent of home energy costs in the coming year:
The Wallkill Valley Times will be covering the progress of the Town of Montgomery and its villages in reducing their energy usage by ten percent. If you have a tip or story you would like to share about your personal experience reducing your family’s energy usage, email ShawnDellJoyce@gmail.com
Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School of Art in Montgomery, and a nationally-syndicated newspaper columnist.
By Jeffrey Page
Suit: Black.
Blouse: Conservative gray.
Spinach on teeth: None.
Hair: Coiffed.
Accessories: Pearl necklace and earrings.
Drool dripping from mouth: None.
Expression: A bit of a smile; slightly wide-eyed and gazing slightly upward.
Leakage from nose: None.
So what is Michelle Bachmann complaining about? Critics of her Newsweek cover picture have concentrated on her eyes and expression. The picture has been described as showing someone who is “wild-eyed,” “a lunatic,” “enraged,” “nuts.”
I don’t get it. To me, it’s a picture of an assertive, hopeful, dressed-for-business woman whose politics I loathe. Do better pictures of her exist? Of course. Were there more flattering pictures shot in the same session as the one that made it to the cover? We’ll never know. And the question: Is Newsweek somehow obligated to ask the subjects of its articles which pictures they want the magazine to use? Ask Hillary Clinton about that.
Of Bachmann’s cover shot, there can be no question: This is Michelle Bachmann and, for better or worse, this is what she looks like.
I don’t recall any of Bachmann’s friends coming forward to take Newsweek to task for the bad-cop shot of Clinton it used for its cover just three months ago. Clearly unflattering. She looks not like a cop — and not like a secretary of state — but like a hired thug with squinty, dangerous eyes. If she was angry about the picture, she was too much of a pro to mention it.
But of course the fight is not just over Bachmann’s picture. There’s the caption: The Queen of Rage. And here, I think Newsweek has a problem. First, with two important exceptions, I don’t know of any woman in public life who’s been described as the queen of anything. That excludes Elizabeth II, but Newsweek wasn’t trying to compare Michelle Bachmann with her. The other was the late Leona Helmsley who, among other things, declared that “only little people pay taxes,” who bequeathed millions of dollars to her dog, and who was described by everyone as “the queen of mean.”
Was Newsweek making that comparison? How could it not have been? After all, the magazine described Clinton as “Obama’s Bad Cop” with all the coded messages that “bad cop’ brings with it.
Another problem for Newsweek is one of pure piggish sexism. The National Organization for Women wisely asked if Newsweek ever described a man as “the king of rage.” It did not.
What are your thoughts on this?
jeffrey@zestoforange.com
Passing Fancy
By Carrie Jacobson
Here in Connecticut, I live near a place called Buttonwood Farm. Some would argue that its claim to fame is its delicious homemade ice cream… I would argue that its sunflower fields and related charitable project is where its real glory is.
Every year in July, Buttonwood Farm grows acres and acres of sunflowers, cuts them and sells them, giving the funds to the Make-A-Wish foundation. This year, the farm raised more than $100,000.
The sunflower bouquets are a draw, and the ice cream is a draw, but the fields of sunflowers themselves are the real draw for me.
It is a fantastic sight to see, yellow and yellow and yellow, the sun come to earth on tall stalks, brightening even the grayest of days.
Painting sunflowers is about as fun as it gets for me, and so I’ve gone back day after day to paint. The first day, someone bought my painting before I had finished it. The painting I made the second day sold before it was dry. So far, I have the third and fourth-day paintings, and they are headed for the Mystic Outdoor Art Festival this weekend, in downtown Mystic, CT.
By the time I made this painting, late last week, the hot weather had done its work, withering leaves and forcing the flowers’ heavy heads to droop, their crown of petals to curl.
I think the sunflowers are gorgeous, even bowing and passing as they are here.
“Passing Fancy” is 12 inches by 48 inches, oil on canvas. If you’re interested in finding out about price and delivery, please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com
Neither is viable.
By Bob Gaydos
Time for my occasional stroll through the headlines, a la Jimmy Cannon:
Maybe it’s none of my business, but when did TV reporters start interviewing caddies at the end of major golf tournaments? Last week, Australian Adam Scott won the Bridgestone Invitational tournament, for his first World Golf Championship victory. Yet the post-tournament focus on CBS was on Scott’s caddie, Steve Williams.
For those who understandably don’t follow golf on TV (zzzzzzzzz), Williams was the caddie for Tiger Woods for many years. Carrying the bags for a dozen years and 13 major championships. Yet on Sunday, Williams was declaring Scott’s victory “the most satisfying win I’ve ever had, there’s no two ways about it. The fans have been unbelievable. It’s the greatest week of my life caddying and I sincerely mean that.”
Well, gee, Stevie, that’s nice, but wasn’t Scott the one hitting the ball and putting it in the hole and weren’t you the one carrying the bag?
Williams is ticked off at Woods for firing him. The caddie says he wasted a couple of years of his life waiting for Woods to get his life and game on track again. Fine. But Williams has made a fortune carrying bags for Woods and earned more than Woods did on Sunday caddying for Scott, whom he never mentioned in the TV interview.
A word to CBS and Williams: The story is never about the caddie.
* * *
Speaking of ratings, maybe it’s none of my business, but doesn’t anyone think it’s odd that stock markets around the world are thrown into chaos because a credit rating company blamed for playing a large part in creating the worldwide economic recession issued a downgrade in the rating of the United States from AAA to AAplus? That downgrade, by the way, included a $2 trillion error and seemed to lean more on politics than economics in its conclusion.
Standard and Poor’s, which has nothing good to say about the ability of the U.S. to cover its debts, is the company that had nothing bad to say about all those worthless sub-prime mortgages that sent the same stock markets reeling when banks realized they were stuck with worthless paper, and lots of houses. Of course, if the checks on such ratings companies that were included in legislation passed by Congress in the wake of the recession had actually been put in place, we might have a clearer, more objective idea of what is really going on. But hey, who needs regulation? It’s only money.
* * *
I know this is really none of my business, but sometimes rioters are just hoodlums and thieves looking for an excuse to do damage. Which seems to be what much of the rioting in London and other British cities is about. It may have begun with anger over the shooting of a citizen by police, but the mobs of young people looting and burning businesses and attacking police have no apparent connection whatsoever with that incident.
* * *
The wide-eyed photo of Michelle Bachmann on the cover of Newsweek says a lot more about the steep, sudden decline of the magazine, with its new owner and editor, as a viable news weekly than of Bachmann as a viable presidential candidate. Neither is. Viable, that is. Of course, since I have canceled my subscription to Newsweek, this is none of my business.
* * *
I really wish no ill will of Jorge Posada and I appreciate those years of occasional key hits and trying to call games as a catcher, but when he strikes out looking every other at bat, I feel like it’s really my business, as a fan, to say swing or get off the bench.
* * *
OK, maybe this is nothing for me to be sticking my nose into, but he is my president, so I have to ask: Has anybody seen Barack Obama’s spine lately? (I wasn’t sure how to spell cojones, although I understand Sarah Palin apparently knows how and was wondering the same thing about Obama.)
* * *
By the way, happy 50th birthday, Mr. President. For all your difficulty dealing with Republicans in Congress, it looks like Republicans themselves are having as much trouble dealing with their new friends, the tea party people. If I were you, I’d keep encouraging every one of them to declare their candidacies for president. It may not be the most impressive way to get elected, beating a God-fearing, science-fearing, Muslim-fearing, education-fearing, Mexican-fearing, logically challenged, contraception-fearing, homophobic gun worshiper who loves the death penalty and hates Medicare and Social Security, but if you don’t mind, then I don’t either.
* * *
And finally, a report tells us that NASA-funded researchers have found DNA elements — the building blocks for life — in meteorites. Which suggests, strongly I guess, that the components for life on Earth may have originated in outer space. I guess that’s kind of everybody’s business. Even the tea party people.
Until next time.
Bob@zestoforange.com
By Jeffrey Page
President Obama was in Chicago for his birthday celebration and of course made some remarks to a friendly hometown crowd. Some parts of his appearance made me yearn for the days of the 1980 campaign when Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter – the incumbent – for the nomination.
Because, surely I’m not the only one having nightmares about such expressions as “President Perry” and “President Bachmann.”
No one takes on an incumbent of his own party, right? But Kennedy, sensing weakness and opportunity, announced, and it quickly got ugly. “If he runs, I’ll whip his ass,” Carter said. No one believed he could do it. After all, there Jimmy Carter was sitting in the White House, wearing his cardigan and informing us of the malaise he decided had overtaken us. He had a 28 percent approval rating, an average national misery index (sum of unemployment and inflation rates) of a nasty 16.26, the U.S. embassy in Tehran packed with 52 American hostages, and a failed attempt to rescue them.
But he swept Kennedy – who didn’t help his own cause when he stumbled on the question of why he wanted to be president – in the early Iowa caucuses by a margin of about 2-1 never even mentioning Chappaquiddick. And Ted was done.
So was Carter. Sure, he whipped Kennedy, which everybody sort of knew he would. And then of course Ronald Reagan whipped Carter. Everybody sort of knew that was going to happen, too.
Hence a question: Is there someone among the Democrats this year who’s going to challenge President Obama and thus maybe prevent the advent of a President Perry or a President Bachmann?
President Obama says he wants to work with the GOP opposition. It seems everybody but the president understands that the Republicans don’t want to work with him; they want his head. They don’t want to be his friend or work partner. Why doesn’t President Obama understand this? Has he forgotten a telling comment by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell? “The single most important thing we [Republicans] want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” McConnell said last year. Read it again: The single most important thing.
You have to give McConnell credit. He doesn’t obfuscate. But why is it that I understand this and President Obama does not? He keeps talking like there’s a chance the Republicans will see the light and work with him. They will do no such thing. When they got together to work on a deficit compromise, the GOP made sure that not an extra nickel would be extracted from millionaire taxpayers. Obama? He got a nice birthday card.
Parts of the birthday trip to Chicago were wrong as wrong can be.
Will someone inform the president that when he uses a teleprompter at an informal event – a birthday bash, for crying out loud – he not only looks ridiculous but plays right into the hands of the Limbaugh crowd, who’ve been mocking his use of teleprompters since Day One.
One of Obama’s quotes at his Chicago party gave the Republicans a great sound bite. Doubtless you will see the following in GOP campaign commercials next year. It’s President Obama speaking in Chicago about the night of his election: “And we knew the road ahead was going to be difficult, that the climb was going to be steep. I have to admit I didn’t know how steep the climb was going to be.”
Didn’t know?
He didn’t know that the climb involved the 4,189 U.S. service personnel killed in Iraq up to two years ago, another 1,049 in Afghanistan?
He didn’t know the climb involved the loss of 2.6 million jobs in 2008 alone?
He didn’t know the climb involved an unemployment rate hovering in the neighborhood of 7 percent, the highest since 1993?
Well, he should have known. And if he didn’t know in 2008, he shouldn’t have mentioned his ignorance in 2011.
jeffrey@zestoforange.com
By Shawn Dell Joyce
The Town of Montgomery voted at the last board meeting to accept the Ten Percent Challenge and put the entire town and its three villages officially on board. This means that we need to reduce our energy use by ten percent at a municipal level, as well as encourage ten percent of our residents to do the same.
If you would like to be one of those ten percenters, you can sign up at any Village Hall, or the Town Hall on Bracken Road. This is an opportunity to save ten percent on your energy bills over the next year.
Central Hudson notes that about one-third of all electricity produced at power plants in the United States is for home use. Of that, heating and cooling uses 44 percent of household energy; lighting, cooking and other appliances use 33 percent; water heaters use 14 percent; and refrigerators use 9 percent. If you are trying to reduce usage by ten percent, Central Hudson is offering some incentives to make efficiency an even better investment.
You could get up to $600 in rebates, and save hundreds on your utility bills by taking advantage of these incentives. Central Hudson is offering:
You can take advantage of these rebates from Central Hudson by downloading the forms from their website at www.savingscentral.com. You can find out more about the Ten Percent Challenge by visiting Sustainable Hudson Valley’s website at www.sustainhv.org/10pct-main.
The Wallkill Valley Times will be covering the progress of the town government and all the village governments in reducing their energy usage by ten percent. If you have a tip or story you would like to share about your personal experience reducing your family’s energy usage, email ShawnDellJoyce@gmail.com
Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery, a benchmark business in the Ten Percent Challenge. The Times Community Newspapers office is also a benchmark business. Read about our efforts to reduce our energy use by ten percent in upcoming issues of this newspaper.
Photography by Rich Gigli
Mulholland Point Lighthouse
Mulholland Point Lighthouse was built in 1885 and is the only lighthouse shared by the United States and Canada. It is located in Roosevelt Campobello International Park.
Franklin D. Roosevelt spent many enjoyable vacations at his summer home on Campobello Island, in New Brunswick’s Bay of Fundy. His magnificent 34-room residence is today the centerpiece of Roosevelt-Campobello International Park, preserved as a memorial and as a symbol of the close friendship between Canada and the United States. Owned, funded, staffed, and administered by the peoples of both Canada and the United States,
by Sam Ferri
A native of Orange County, Sam Ferri lives, writes and draws for several newspapers and magazines in Brooklyn. He frequently returns to Orange to visit his parents’ home in Middletown. His work has appeared regularly in Time Out New York and has also been featured in the NY Press, NY Post, Jerusalem Post, Brooklyn Rail, The Brooklyn Paper, Funny Times and other publications.
By Jeffrey Page
Let me say here, high up, that I was taken to task recently by a Zest reader, Duane Small, when I chided all sides in the debt limit fight for their inability to understand and employ the concept of compromise. To which Mr. Small responded: “Why is it, when one side has offered to give up almost everything it believes in, and the other side has offered to give up nothing, everyone who writes about it blames both sides for not compromising?”
An excellent point. I wish I had grasped it when I was writing that previous Zest piece.
The fight is over – for now at least – and the barking among House and Senate Republicans and Democrats, the president, the speaker, and the Tea Party is finished – for now at least. In the sudden quiet and calm, we recall:
That if anyone had even a scintilla of doubt, the Republicans have proved they really are the friends of that most oppressed class – America’s poor and struggling millionaires – and pass along to the rest of us the responsibility to pay to make the country work.
That Exxon, which reported second-quarter profits of nearly $11 billion, will continue to receive tax breaks.
That the fight over raising the debt ceiling will be reignited sometime in 2012.
That President Obama, wishing to prove himself above the fray, is a lousy compromiser because his idea of meeting the other side half way to conciliation is to wave a white flag.
That if the Republicans can resist nominating one of their resident goofballs, and if the nation is still saddled with high unemployment in 15 months, President Obama’s gone.
That President Obama could have done himself a lot of good by dropping the good manners, calling a news conference and declaring to Boehner and Cantor and McConnell, “Get stuffed, boys, the answer is no. Let’s settle it in the parking lot.”
That if the Democrats continue their current way of doing things, anyone betting on the future of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is a sucker.
That maybe what rational people need is a tea party of their own, an organization that will stand defiantly before groups of voters with its own one-word responses. Tax cuts for millionaires? “No.” End of discussion. Spending on social programs? “Yes.” End of discussion. You don’t like us? “Trust us, we’ll do more for you than the Republican protectors of millionaires.”
That the enormous agreed-upon cuts in federal spending will prolong the national economic lethargy and high unemployment by depriving people of government jobs rebuilding the infrastructure, which is in tatters.
That it’s time to make the links by, for example, informing decent people of the connection between Michele Bachmann and Joe McCarthy when she declares: “I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?”
That for all the yelling in the debt limit debate, we’re about right where we were when it began. And that’s no place to be.
Jeff can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com