Please Help Drew

At Graduation

In the Hospital

DrewAnna (Drew for short) Klossner grew up in the rolling farm country of Central NY. Graduating from high school in Camden, she wanted to travel and broaden her horizons, to experience new things. So, a couple of years ago, when she was 18, she moved to California, where she was doing well.

Until she got shot in the head by a drive-by shooter, three days before Christmas. At night, while she was parking her car. She wasn't robbed. Her car had tinted windows. Mistaken identity? Sheer random accident? No one knows. What is known is that Drew is a sweet, kind and loving person who has always done her best to help others. Now she's in a hospital. The top of her skull was removed to make room for the swelling of her brain. She was in a coma. Now she's in the half-light between a coma and a waking state, occasionally being able to talk in a barely perceptible whisper. But she's still a long way from home. Her doctors say if anything can help them bring her completely out of the coma, help them bring her all the way home, it would be the sound of her mother's voice.

But it's going to cost a lot of money for her mother to fly to California and live there, perhaps for months, going to the hospital every day to talk to Drew while she's half asleep, hoping that someday she'll completely wake up. So please help her family help her. Please help them raise enough money so her mother can afford to go to California and stay there, so she can see and talk to Drew every day. Drew needs as much help as she can get, and who better to help her than her family?

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All donations are more than welcome. Checks can be mailed to Sweet Old Memories, 6506 State Route 5. Vernon, NY 13476. If you have any questions call 315-829-2663. Ask for Jack (Jack Maine, Drew's grandfather).

Thank you,
The family of DrewAnna Klossner

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Drew's family are working on making a website or a Facebook page to help raise funds to help Drew. When it's finished I'll link to it from here.

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I will be displaying a painting at the Broad Street Gallery Co-op in Hamilton, NY, with the intention of selling it and donating my share of the proceeds to Drew's family. To see what the painting looks like, check out my Unadilla Art blog. Thank you.

Gasland Showing at Hamilton Center for the Arts

On February 6, a Monday night, at about 6:30 PM, there will be a showing of the award-winning documentary Gasland at the Hamilton Center for the Arts, located upstairs at 10 Broad St in Hamilton, NY.

Why go to this showing when you can either rent or buy Gasland online and watch it in your own living room? Because of who is showing it. Toshia Hance, a professional photographer and artist, who is in the forefront of the anti-hydrofracking movement, will be showing it. And she's been to many of the areas in Pennsylvania that have been hydrofracked. And she can tell you what it's really like down there, what it's really like for the people who live there. And she will be able to tell you how to help the anti-hydrofracking movement, if you want to do that after seeing the thing.

Nobody will be sitting in your living room to tell you all those things if you rent this documentary and watch it at home. Except for the politicians and mainstream newscasters on TV. And they'll tell you that hydrofracking is safe and you shouldn't worry about it. So if you trust politicians and the mainstream news, there's no reason for you to go to Hamilton and watch Gasland and listen to Toshia Hance. But if you'd like a second opinion . . .

By the way, I've seen Gasland. It's pretty scary.

Occupy Utica

Occupy Wall Street. Occupy Utica. The 99%. What's it all about? I suppose that's a matter of opinion, depending on who you ask. I sat in on some of the Occupy Utica GA's (General Assemblies), but I never set up a tent and spent the night in Utica's Liberty Bell Park, like the real-deal, fulltime occupiers did, so I can't speak for them. Actually, even if I had camped out in the park I couldn't speak for them, since the whole idea of Occupy seems to be a consensus of opinion thing, and one person's opinion isn't a consensus. But for me the idea is pretty simple. What do we want? A government that's on our side. That's it. It's not really big government versus small government, although that's how the politicos like to frame the dialogue. What we always have is big government, but it's not on the side of We the People, is it? Of course it isn't. It's on the side of the war profiteers and the big banks.

Someone told me about a local radio host complaining about the Utica occupiers, saying they should just go out and get themselves jobs. First, that's simply a callous thing to say, as if there were a lot of jobs out there. Second, as an observation, I'd like to say that as far as I can tell --- as someone who spent time in Liberty Bell Park talking to the occupiers and who also spent time talking to them at their meetings at The Other Side, next to a local coffee shop called Domenico's, on Genesee St in Utica --- most of them do have jobs. So they're not doing this just for themselves, they're also trying to help others.

But they're not camping at Liberty Bell Park anymore. They weren't forced out by the police or anything like that. It just got cold. So what are they doing now? The Readers' Digest condensed answer, as far as I can tell, is they're trying to do the best they can to make Utica a place that's friendlier toward We the People, the 99%.

They have a Facebook page. If you check it out you'll get a lot more info. Google Occupy Utica Facebook and you'll find it.

By the way, their Facebook page reads like a very well-written laundry list of just about everything that's wrong with America.

Notes on the photos: Liberty Bell Park in Utica on 9/29/11, the day Occupy Utica started. One photo is of the occupiers and their tents in an alley near the park. It looked to me like there were 15 or so people who were actually camping there at that time. There were a lot more who came down to join them during the day, though. About 300 or so were there on 9/29/11, as far as I could tell. Many were carrying signs. Others were chanting "They got bailed out, we got sold out."

More Thoughts on Hydrofracking

On Nov 28 I attended a presentation given at Clinton High School by Dr. Anthony Ingraffea, the Dwight C Baum Professor of Engineering and the Weiss Presidential Teaching Fellow at Cornell University. Dr Ingraffea is also an expert on the unconventional extraction of shale-gas. His presentation was sponsored by Hydro Relief Web and lots of people attended.

Prior to the presentation tabling was done by the Hydro Relief Web people. This means that they set up long cafeteria tables with information printouts about the dangers of hydrofracking put on them for people to take home. The above photograph was one of those printouts. I have no idea who took the photo or which website it came from. But I thought it was compelling, and highly doubt if the person who took the photo and put it on the web would object to it getting more exposure.

Take a look at it. Just think. The people who put that sign up on their property were desperate. Their land and water was trashed and their local government wouldn't or couldn't help them, so they had to resort to asking God for help, with a sort of Christian version of a Buddhist prayer wheel, reading their prayer to the heavens, over and over again. So, if hydrofracking gets into NY State, is this what upstate New Yorkers are going to have to resort to? Is our clean water going to be exchanged for profit, with our only hope going to be that God will fix what our government let the hydrofracking industry ruin? I hope not.

Thoughts on Hydrofracking

Hydrofracking is a big topic in Central New York. A big bone of convention. But it shouldn't be. It should be a no-brainer. Why? Because it pollutes the water. Simple. The natural gas industry was given an exemption from the Clean Drinking Water Act. You can look this up if you want. It's easy to find. An exemption. Get it? That means that the industry isn't legally required to adhere to a law that was designed to protect the consumer (consumer = We the People) from having their water being contaminated by industry. Pretty simple, actually. Don't need to go much further than that. Exemption. Exemption. Exemption. If hydrofracking were safe, if hydrofracking wasn't a threat to clean drinking water, the industry wouldn't need an exemption. So, since the industry does need an exemption, hydrofracking isn't safe and is a threat to clean drinking water. It's not complicated.

But the "fracking" industry tries to complicate it all up with smoke and mirrors. Why? So they can make money for themselves, not for We the People.

As an almost aside, Norway's Statoil owns 32.5% of the rights to the Marcellus Shale (and Norway isn't the only foreign country that has money invested in the Marcellus). But the really important thing is that there's not going to be lots of jobs for New Yorkers. That's not what it's all about. It's about corporate profits. And a lot of those corporate profits aren't even American corporate profits.

By the way, there's a ban on hydrofracking in France. Why France? Well, this is just a guess, but what's the first thing that comes to mind when you think about France? Wine, probably. Maybe they don't want to risk ruining their centuries-old reputation as the most famous wine-producing region on the planet for the sake of some natural gas. Maybe they figure that they'll lose far more jobs and sources of income if they let their wine-producing water get contaminated than they'll gain from hydrofracking. Maybe. Hmmm . . . there's quite a few wineries and vineyards in NY State. And breweries, too. I wonder what they think about hydrofracking?

And think about this: Working on a rig is specialized work. Hydrofrackers aren't going to hire lots of out-of-work cashiers and school teachers to work the rigs, they're going to bring their own workers with them, migrating oil riggers from Texas and Oklahoma and Lousiana. And it's only going to be for a limited time, anyway. As soon as the shale is bled dry the frackers will move on, taking their riggers (and jobs) with them, leaving behind a shattered landscape and a contaminated water table.

The only reason why polluting upstate NY water is even an issue at all is because the economy is bad. If, back in the '70's or '80's, someone had tried to run this by the people they would have been told to take a long walk off a short pier. But now they've got people thinking about how it might be worthwhile to pollute upstate NY water for the sake of some jobs.

Exemption, exemption, exemption. Clean Drinking Water Act. Think about it.

And think about this. There are some local politicians who seem to be on the anti-fracking side. Anthony Brindisi comes to mind. Thank you, sir.

Notes on the image: It's a painting (the 24x36 original, which isn't for sale, is displayed in the Broad Street Gallery Co-op, a co-op art gallery just down the street from the Hamilton Center for the Arts, in Hamilton NY), an artist's impression of what it might look in upstate NY if hydrofracking isn't kept out of the state: Ponds holding the chemically contaminated backwash from the millions of gallons of water used each time a well is "fracked," hundreds of trucks on the (deteriorated) roads, smoke and smog and noise, and methane escaping into the air, adding to climate change. See the little blue things in the yards of the houses? Those represent what are known as "water buffaloes." They are full of water because many people who lived in fracked towns can't drink their own water, or take a bath in it or wash clothes or dishes with it, so they have to have it trucked in. There are towns in Pennsylvania that are full of these things. You can look this up too, if you want.

Stand to Protect Medicare (Social Security)

We've got to fix the deficit, say our politicians. Well, of course we do. But how are they proposing to do it? Are they talking about making the wealthiest corporations, like Bank of America or GE, pay their fair share of taxes? Nope. Not that. Are they talking about ending the wars (how many are we in now, anyway? 3? 4? 5?) Nope. Not that. Are they talking about cutting the military, which is where at least half of every tax-payer dollar goes? Nope. Not that.

So what in the heck are our politicos talking about doing to fix the deficit? Cutting Medicare! Yeah, really. Hard to believe, isn't it? They've also been talking about cutting Medicaid and Social Security, too. It boggles the mind.

Franklin Square at the intersection of Genesee St and Oriskany Blvd in Utica. 5 PM. Stand to protect Social Security. Protest. Let them know how we feel. Let them know we didn't elect anyone to take away Social Security (or Medicare). No way.

Be there or be square.

P.S. Medicare and Social Security have nothing to do with the deficit, anyway. It's all a big blackmail scheme: You try to make us pay our fair share of taxes and watch what happens to you!

The Coolest House in Oneida County

. . . is located at 2872 Austin Road in Clinton.

What's so cool about it? It's made out of straw bales and is completely off the grid and it costs about $500 a year for all its utility costs, including heat and electric. And that's pretty cool.

The owner of the house, Mary Ellen Blakey, gave a tour of her house on 7/25. A lot of people were there. The tour was set up with the help of Green Local 175, an organization that is trying to promote green economic development within a 175 mile radius of Utica. Check this out: Green Local.

In the course of the tour Ms. Blakey told us that the bales are straw bales, not hay bales, and that the difference between the two is that straw bales contain the wheat or oat stems only and hay bales contain the grain that's fed to livestock. She also said the bales have an R-value of about 50. And the house doesn't have a basement, but an insulated concrete slab that keeps the first layer of bales about 18 inches off the ground. And that just about the most important thing about building a straw bale house is that you can't let the bales get wet. And that she didn't build an underground or earthen berm house because of how damp it was in upstate NY. And that the bales are covered with a coat of plaster made from sand, clay and lime. And the plasterers were from VT. And the roof was put on by Mennonites.

She took us inside the house. We didn't go upstairs (it's a one-and-a-half-story house) because the upstairs wasn't quite finished yet, but we did get to look at the bottom floor, which was one big room, with the kitchen flowing into the dining room and the dining room flowing into the living room and so on. Except for the bathroom, which was separate. It was very rustic. Big wooden beams. No refrigerator. An icebox instead. Wood stove. Solar oven. A battery closet for storing electricity collected from the solar panels, which are not on the roof of the house. Huge, argon-filled Marvin windows lined one side of the house. The house's windows cost about $12,000. Outside dimensions of the house were under a thousand square feet. Not a big house and not a house that everyone could build, but just about as low in the carbon footprint area as you can get. And the scenery was beautiful and so was Ms. Blakey's garden.


The off-the-grid part was really cool, but the coolest thing about this house to me was the fact that none of its heat or electricity were from coal-powered plants, which spew enormous amounts of fossil fuel emissions into the air, contributing to climate change. It would be nice if every house in America could be off the grid, but since that isn't possible, it would also be nice if we could get more electric from clean sources like solar and wind. Wind? Wind turbines? Buy electricity from electric companies that's produced by wind farms, or maybe even solar farms? Why not? Then people who can't afford their own solar panels or windmills or who live in apartments can use electric that's from renewable sources.