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COLUMNS: HALLSTEAD A number of persons who were unable to get their ice houses filled from the river before the ice broke up, are obtaining their supply from the vast quantity piled along the banks, which is of very good quality and thickness. ALFORD: The pony truck wheels on the L & M. engine jumped the tracks on Saturday morning, making the train about an hour and a half late in reaching the Montrose station. SUSQUEHANNA: George Stark weather has presented two fine oil paintings to the Erie Hose Co. and the Chemical Engine Co. ALSO, the Chicago Glee Club delighted a large audience in Hogan Opera House last evening. This was the final number of the citizens’ entertainment course. FAIRDALE: The Fairdale baseball club, having organized for the season of 1911, will hold a box social Friday evening, Feb. 10, at Grange Hall to aid the boys in defraying expenses of the coming season. Ladies are invited to bring the boxes supplied with eatables for two. Come and give the boys a lift and see who gets the gold watch. BROOKLYN: The funeral of L. K. Tewksbury was held from his late home on Thursday of last week. Mr. Tewksbury was almost 80 years old and in years gone by was the village cooper. He was engaged in the car stops of the DL & W railroad for over 20 years. He is survived by his widow, who is a sister of Mrs. D. A. Titsworth of Montrose, and three sons: Cramer, who is the official engineer for the DL & W and has had charge of the “Comet”, the official car of that road for several years; DeWitt A., has charge of the silk department of the Finley store in Scranton and Joseph is the barber at Brooklyn. One daughter, Mrs. G. B. Tiffany, of Kingsley, also survives. THOMPSON: Allan D. Miller has been appointed by the master of the State Grange a member of the Legislative Committee of the Grange. HEART LAKE/LAKE MONTROSE: Work on the ice was discontinued the first of the week, owing to the warm weather, the ice being unsafe to drive horses upon. It will take about a week more to complete filling the large ice house. It is also hoped to send out large quantities of ice on [railroad] cars, if the weather holds good. At Lake Montrose, E. J. Keough has his ice houses filled with excellent ice, and the farmers of the vicinity largely have their individual ice houses filled. WEST AUBURN: Petitions for woman suffrage have been sent to this place recently. Our people are inclined to go slow on this sort of thing. Better wait a few years until it has been thoroughly tried out in the States of Washington, Idaho, Colorado and Wyoming. Let the woman suffrage tree be known by its fruits. ALSO, in South Auburn, F. M. Baldwin and Marble Capwell furnished the gasoline engine and cut the wood for the church on Tuesday last, while the neighbors split and piled it for future use. FOREST CITY: Like a victim of the African “sleeping sickness,” or Southern “hookworm,” Miss Tillie Stratford is puzzling three physicians who are trying with all their skill to diagnose the strange ailment of the young woman. Miss Stratford is seized with yawning spells that keep her yawning five minutes and more at a stretch. The yawning is of such violent character that it is steadily and surely weakening the girl. Drs. Niles and Knapp, of Carbondale, and McGuire, of Vandling, are attending the girl, and they consider the case one of the strangest they have ever come in contact with. ALSO, Forest City wants to have Main Street paved, letting the State of Pennsylvania pay 3/4 of the bill and 1/4 to be paid by property owners, whose properties front said street. FOREST LAKE: More than 60 friends and relatives gathered at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Brown, on Jan. 26, to give him a pleasant surprise on his 63rd birthday. His children were all home for the first time in 19 years. All were served with a bounteous dinner and entertained with music and singing. ELKDALE: Prof. John E. Williams gave an illustrated lecture on “California” in the church Saturday evening. There was a large attendance. NORTH JACKSON: On Jan. 25, the graduating exercises of the training school for certified nurses, at Albany, N.Y., were held. Many will be interested to know that Miss Edna Crane was among the graduates, having received the highest average in the class. LYNN, SPRINGVILLE TWP.: C. W. Berry has taken the agency for a new kind of engine, manufactured at Detroit. It will burn coal oil, kerosene, alcohol, naphtha or anything in that line. UNIONDALE: A wordy traveling church member came into one of the stores in town the other day and began raking the church members down quite freely and emphasized his words by throwing his arms quite lively; we tried to pacify him by saying to let the wheat grow until the harvest, and to love his neighbor as thyself, but he was disconsolate. He may be one of that kind - big I and little U. ARARAT SUMMIT: Leon W. Potter, of Thompson, will open his store to the public on Wednesday of this week. He is now located in the large store building near the depot in this place, and is putting in a general line of store goods. This makes two businesses in this place, where theretofore we have had but one store. O. F. Potter, who has been our only merchant here for several years, has sold his store building and goods to James I. Wakeman, of Burn wood, who has been occupying the store the past two weeks. When in need of merchandise drive to Ararat where you should be able to find just the goods you want at the right prices at both our new stores. NEW MILFORD: The roller block mill, the lath mill and the engine house of the Crossley plant here, were destroyed by fire which started at 2 o’clock Tuesday morning. The loss is estimated at several thousand dollars. The fire department, by heroic effort, saved the main mill and also prevented a more serious conflagration. A light snow storm proved of great help in preventing the sparks from lodging on roofs. The fire started in the engine room and was discovered by Mr. Cooper, the night towerman of the Lackawanna, who gave the alarm. The mill is owned by A. C. Crossley of Binghamton.
From the Desk of the D.A. George Santayana once famously said: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Harry Truman has a similar view: “The only new thing in this world is the history that you don’t know.” I love both of these quotes as they effectively capture the need to learn the lessons of history. I thought about both of them recently when I saw a news report concerning several states resurrecting the nullification doctrine. Now, if you love history and political science, then it does not get much better than this. Nullification is a constitutional theory that began appearing shortly after the Constitution was ratified. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison are generally considered the fathers of the nullification doctrine - and the debate first began to rage in earnest in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts during John Adams’ presidency. The Alien and Sedition Acts were noxious pieces of federal legislation aimed in part at ending criticism of the Federalist political party and its policies. Madison wrote the Virginia Resolution and Jefferson wrote the Kentucky Resolution - which collectively announced the concept that a sovereign state has only given up a portion of its sovereignty in ratifying the federal Constitution, and that the states could nullify any federal act that exceeded the bounds of federal authority. In essence, the states retained the final authority to determine whether the government that it created was acting within its original charter. I was never terribly comfortable with the nullification arguments - it seemed like an invitation to utter chaos where states would pick and choose what, if any, federal legislation each state wanted to follow. This would have inevitably resulted in a political situation similar to the unworkable confederacy structure that led to need to ratify the federal Constitution. The Constitution itself indicates that it is the supreme law of the land - and any legislation, treaties or other acts under the Constitution supersede state laws. The idea of nullification flies in the face of the plain language within the Constitution itself. On the other hand, James Madison was an influential member of the Constitutional Convention, he authored both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and he helped pen a bulk of the Federalist papers advocating the ratification of the federal Constitution. For good reason, James Madison has been called the “Godfather of the Constitution.” If there was ever an expert on the Constitution, it was Madison. For this reason, the Kentucky Resolution is hard to wholly discount as crazy ramblings of a states rights loon. The concept of nullification has led to some very tense moments in American history. President Andrew Jackson and South Carolina had a confrontation over a tariff that resulted in Congress authorizing the use of force against South Carolina in order to enforce the tariff after South Carolina “nullified” it. Prior to any hostilities, the Congress enacted a new tariff that South Carolina could support and the issue resolved itself. Undeterred, however, South Carolina passed another resolution “nullifying” the federal legislation that authorized the use of force against South Carolina. Nullification presents really interesting questions of federalism, limited federal power, states rights and judicial power. It seems that the federal government cannot accept the proposition that states can individually refuse to comply with federal legislation simply because a particular state believes the act exceeds constitutional authority. This provides an invitation to disaster where there is no uniformity in the law - some states follow federal law while other states nullify it. On the other hand, it also seems reasonable to accept the proposition that states cannot accept the federal government acting outside of its constitutional authority and infringing upon state sovereignty without taking some protective measures. The balance of power between the different sovereigns depends upon how each reacts to the other. The idea of nullification came to a head in the Civil War when the question of secession ended in the bloodiest confrontation in American history. The Civil War Amendments to the Constitution squarely placed certain restrictions on state sovereignty and expended federal power. Nullification has not really been a viable political strategy since that time and few politicians even discuss (or know) about it - until now. History has a way of repeating itself - and nullification is suddenly in the news again. Idaho, Maine, Montana, Oregon, Nebraska, Texas and Wyoming are talking about resurrecting nullification in response to the national health care law, i.e., simply passing resolutions declaring it unconstitutional and refusing to enforce it. Right now, these states are challenging the law in the court systems - but what will happen if those states are unhappy with the judicial results and resurrect the nullification doctrine? Please submit any questions, concerns, or comments to Susquehanna County District Attorney’s Office, P.O. Box 218, Montrose, Pennsylvania 18801 or at our website www.SusquehannaCounty-DA.org or discuss this and all articles at http://dadesk.blogspot.com/.
The Healthy Geezer Q. I've heard the term “shock” a million times, but I realized that I don't really know what it means. What is shock? Shock is a condition in which blood pressure is too low and not enough oxygenated blood can sustain your body. The medical disorder of shock is not the “shock” that people feel from a sudden traumatic event. In the United States, hospital emergency departments report more than one million cases of shock each year. There are different kinds of shock. They include: anaphylactic shock from an allergic reaction, cardiogenic shock from a heart deficiency, hypovolemic shock from bleeding, neurogenic shock from severe emotional disturbance, and septic shock from infections in your blood. The symptoms of shock include cold and sweaty skin that may be pale or gray, weak but rapid pulse, irritability, thirst, irregular breathing, dizziness, profuse sweating, fatigue, dilated pupils, lackluster eyes, anxiety, confusion, nausea, and reduced urine flow. If untreated, shock is usually fatal. If shock is treated, the outlook depends on the cause, the other disorders the person has, the presence and severity of any organ failure, the amount of time that passes before treatment begins, and the type of treatment given. Regardless of treatment, the likelihood of death caused by shock is great after a massive heart attack, especially in older people. It is important to get immediate treatment when shock is diagnosed. If you come upon someone in shock, the first step you should take is to call 911 for emergency medical assistance. Any bleeding should be stopped. Then the victim should be laid down and kept warm. Raise the person's legs about one to two feet to get the blood returning to the heart. Breathing should be checked. The head should be turned to the side to prevent inhalation of vomit. Nothing should be given by mouth. When the emergency medical technicians (EMTs) arrive, they may give oxygen through a face mask or provide a mechanical device to assist breathing. They may also give large volumes of fluids intravenously to raise blood pressure. A blood transfusion may be given. Drugs that constrict the blood vessels may be administered to boost blood flow to the brain or heart. A bacterial infection could be treated with antibiotics. A drug such as atropine may be used to increase a slow heart rate, and other drugs may be given to improve the ability of the heart muscle to contract. If you have a question, please write to fred@healthygeezer.com.
Library Chitchat No Library Chitchat This Week
Rock Doc A Rapidly Evolving Medical Landscape Parts of medical science are highly developed areas where doctors can precisely nail down specific diseases and even sometimes eradicate them. The more vexing - and perhaps more interesting - pieces of medical science are those in which we still struggle to diagnose, let alone fully treat, major maladies. Mark Vonnegut, M.D., the son of famous writer Kurt Vonnegut, has a first-hand knowledge of the challenging kind of illness where modern medical science is quite limited. Vonnegut-the-younger has recently written about his personal, lifelong tour of major mental illness. Dr. Vonnegut has had several, full psychotic breaks in his adult life. In between times of the deepest illness, he also attended Harvard medical school and built a successful medical practice in pediatrics. You can read his newly published memoir, which is at times achingly funny. Just to give you a flavor of the book, it has the title “Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So.” If you have friends or relatives dealing with chronic mental illness, the book might be of interest in helping you understand one man’s journey through the landscape where the doctors are sometimes at a loss to successfully predict or usefully treat disease. There was a time not long ago people in polite society simply didn’t speak about mental illness. Today research scientists and psychiatrists understand that schizophrenia and bipolar disorders are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, not greatly unlike a chemical problem in your bloodstream or a growth in your organs that can make you ill. From this point of view, mental illness isn’t different from other diseases, it just affects the brain rather than the lungs or the liver. That new understanding has made it more possible for literally millions of Americans to seek medical help for garden-variety episodes of depression, and entire books have been written about simple anti-depressant medicines. The loss of productivity that mental problems create for America’s young people is quite real. The New York Times recently ran a feature story on the increase in demands for serious psychiatric services that our nation’s colleges have been experiencing in recent years. Compared to a scant decade ago, the story said, the number of students seeking help with serious mental conditions is now double. Many young Americans don’t go to college, but may enlist in our military. The armed services have become much more proactive in recent years in their response to the mental issues known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In short, we as a society are trying to change the way we do business to help people with serious mental health issues contribute to their fullest potential to our world. An impressive portion of psychiatry is still pea soup. That’s one reason it’s really impossible to say how many Americans are suffering from maladies like PTSD or bipolar illness at any given time. But even with imprecise knowledge and treatments that may be only partially helpful, many people with significant diagnoses do a lot for our society. We need only look at some famous people to see evidence for what the mentally ill can contribute. As Bipolar magazine has reported in an interview with Jane Pauley, the television newswoman is bipolar. Forbes magazine has reported the same about Ted Turner, and the actress Patty Duke has written about living with what used to be termed manic depression. And, of course, there’s Dr. Mark Vonnegut, practicing medicine despite a mental health history that includes repeated and full psychotic breaks with hospitalizations to match. New developments in the field of psychiatry focus on new medicines. The brain is obviously a complex organ to regulate, so new drugs are needed that address imbalances without crippling side effects. Research science at universities and pharmaceutical companies is ongoing in this field. For patients, progress is achingly slow. But compared to what was standard practice in the 20th century, we’ve come a long way. That’s all for the best, because there’s still a great distance medical science needs to travel to be helpful to literally millions of Americans whose only affliction is rooted in the chemicals that happen to be found in the brain. Dr. E. Kirsten Peters, a native of the rural Northwest, was trained as a geologist at Princeton and Harvard. Follow her on the web at rockdoc.wsu.edu and on Twitter @RockDocWSU. This column is a service of the College of Agricultural, Natural and Resources Sciences at Washington State University.
EARTH TALK Dear EarthTalk: What is being done to enable ocean fish populations to rebound after being so over-fished? Are nations coming together on this in any way? -Deborah There is no overarching international agreement to limit overfishing globally, but a few governments have been able to implement and enforce restrictions at regional levels that have resulted in rebounding fish stocks. The success of these isolated examples gives environmentalists and marine biologists hope that protecting marine hotspots from overfishing can save the biodiversity of the world’s oceans. The results of an extensive four-year study released in 2006 by leading fisheries expert Boris Worm of Canada’s Dalhousie University and colleagues showed that overfishing would put every single commercial fishery in the world out of business by 2048, with the oceans potentially never recovering. But University of Washington fisheries scientist Ray Hilborn challenged Worm’s frightening conclusion, offering evidence that several fisheries in parts of the U.S., Iceland and New Zealand were recovering. So the two men decided to team up on a new, even more comprehensive survey of fisheries around the world. The results the second time around, published in 2010 in the peer-reviewed journal, Science, provided ocean advocates with somewhat more encouraging results. In half of the 10 fisheries studied by Worm, Hilborn and their researchers, closing some fisheries, creating protected areas, setting catch limits and modernizing equipment did result in lower exploitation rates and some fish are indeed on the rebound. “This is a watershed,” Worm told reporters. The new study “shows clearly what can be done not only to avoid further fisheries collapse but to actually rebuild fish stocks” and provides a baseline which scientists and managers can use to gauge progress. “It’s only a start, but it gives me hope that we have the ability to bring overfishing under control,” he added. Of course, a little bit of good news hardly means we’ve solved the overfishing problem. Environmentalists were particularly disappointed last year when the European Union (EU) announced it would set quotas for deep-sea fisheries even higher than expected. According to Uta Bellion, director of the European Marine Programme for the non-profit Pew Environment Group, the EU’s decision “will give fleets from France, Spain and Portugal the opportunity to continue plundering these stocks.” She adds that the new quotas go against a 2009 United Nations General Assembly resolution that commits the EU to implement a set of measures to ensure the long-term sustainability of deep-sea fish and the rebuilding of depleted stocks. Meanwhile, some groups are trying to end the government subsidies that effectively bankroll overfishing, legal or otherwise. The nonprofit Oceana, for instance, led an ill-fated 2010 effort to persuade the World Trade Organization to ban subsidies that encourage the depletion of fish and other marine resources. “Although 75 percent of the world’s fisheries are now either overexploited, fully exploited, significantly depleted or recovering from overexploitation, many governments continue to provide huge subsidies - about $20 billion annually - to their fishing sectors,” says Andy Sharpless, Oceana’s CEO. “The fleets are fishing at a level that’s as much as 2.5 times more than what’s required for sustainable catch levels.” Dear EarthTalk: What’s being done to “green up” professional sports? I know that the last two Olympic Games both made some effort, but are there others? -Rob The last two Olympics were indeed greener than any before, but environmental awareness isn’t limited to the realm of international amateur competition. In fact, in just the last few years all of the major professional North American sports leagues have made strides in greening their operations. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has helped blaze the trail through its “Greening the Games” initiative. Since 2003, when the National Football League’s (NFL) Philadelphia Eagles turned to NRDC for help saving energy and reducing waste, NRDC has helped dozens of pro teams evaluate their environmental impacts and make changes. Today the Eagles obtain all of their energy at Lincoln Field from wind power, pour fans’ beverages in biodegradable corn-based plastic cups, power their scoreboard with solar panels and have reduced electricity use overall by a third. The NFL itself has also jumped on the bandwagon, implementing various green initiatives at the Super Bowl, the Pro Bowl and other big events. In 2008, NRDC teamed up with Major League Baseball (MLB) to first green the All Star Game and, the following year, the World Series. Subsequently, NRDC assessed each team’s environmental footprint and made recommendations for improving it. Several teams have gone on to build or refurbish their stadiums with sustainability in mind. Boston’s Fenway Park, Atlanta’s Turner Field, Washington, DC’s Nationals Park, and San Francisco’s AT&T Park all get high marks for pro-environment features and operations. In 2008, NRDC began working with the U.S. Tennis Association (USTA) to green its signature event, the U.S. Open. For one, this led to a move to 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper for tournament programs. And an environmental review of all operations at the National Tennis Center in Queens, New York led to a number of green improvements, including the switch to 90 percent post-consumer recycled paper for some 2.4 million napkins and a move to wind turbines for the tournament’s electricity. The National Basketball Association (NBA) jumped on the NRDC sports bandwagon in 2009, working with the group to organize its first annual Green Week in early April whereby the entire league works in concert to generate environmental awareness and funding for related causes. As part of the festivities, which took place in 2010 as well and will happen again in April 2011, each NBA team hosted community service events including tree plantings, recycling drives and park clean-up days. NRDC got the National Hockey League (NHL) in on the act as well, helping to green the Stanley Cup Finals and working with individual teams as it did with baseball and football. In announcing the launch of the NHL Green program, league commissioner Gary Bettman commented that it’s only fitting for professional ice hockey to care about staving off global warming: “Most of our players learned to skate on outdoor rinks. For that magnificent tradition to continue through future generations we need winter weather - and as a league we are uniquely positioned to promote that message.” SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E - The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com
Barnes-Kasson Corner No Barnes-Kasson Corner This Week
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