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COLUMNS: SOUTH GIBSON: Last Saturday David Pritchard, a brother of former Sheriff J. H. Pritchard, met with a serious accident in which one of his horses was killed. He had started to drive “cross lots” with a heavily loaded wagon, when the rear wheels commenced slewing at the top of a long steep slope. Seeing the weight of the wagon would pull the animals over the slope, he jumped and saved himself, but the vehicle and horses were dragged over the brink and rolled over and over to the bottom of the declivity. The animals were held down by the weight of the wagon, one being killed outright, but the other escaped much injury. SUSQUEHANNA: Hotel DeSimony, a four-story wooden building, was badly gutted by flames of an unknown origin yesterday morning. When discovered at 4 o’clock, the flames were bursting through the roof. Firemen had difficulty in preventing Hotel Barnes, adjoining on the east, from catching fire. Some of the guests were forced to flee into the zero atmosphere clad in night clothing. ELK LAKE: Calvin Lathrop has installed a 35-horse power steam engine in his mill at the lake. LENOX: Floyd Carey has purchased a new team of horses for the purpose of hauling milk the coming year. ALSO, Monday morning, March 13, Charlie James met with a terrible accident. His clothing caught fire from the range, burning him seriously. He is the little son of the late Will James, who accidentally shot himself two years ago while handling a gun. Mr. James received injuries from which he died later of blood poisoning. FRIENDSVILLE: James Carroll is busy every day hauling logs to the mill. He is preparing to build more chicken houses on his farm this summer. WILLIAMS POND, BRIDGEWATER TWP.: C. W. Bullard, formerly of this place, who joined the marines at Annapolis, was ordered to Cuba, last week. HOP BOTTOM: The Ladies Aid of the Universalist church will serve an Easter supper on Good Friday, April 14. Hot cross buns will be served and all are cordially invited. Supper fifteen cents. BROOKLYN: “His Old Sweetheart” is the title of the monologue, illustrated by tableaux, to be given in the Universalist church next Friday evening, in connection with musical numbers and recitations. Admission 15 cents to entertainment and 10 cents to shadow portrait gallery, including refreshments, or 20 cents for ticket for both features. JESSUP TWP. & LAWSVILLE: A. L. Roberts has sold his personal property in Jessup Township and purchased the Northrup store property in Lawsville, where he will move his family and take charge of the store. Mr. Roberts has a host of friends who wish him success. MONTROSE: Has Montrose lost an opportunity for a summer hotel? Among the plans the Northern Electric Railroad (trolley) had in connection with Montrose, was the locating of a summer hotel here in connection with the trolley they were talking of building. But last week they bought Lake Winola and some adjoining land for a summer hotel and amusement purposes, for $45,000. Some of our citizens are wondering if the opposition to the coming in town of the road in the way the company had surveyed has been the means of losing the opportunity for a summer hotel. SPRINGVILLE: Fred Thomas left on Tuesday of last week, returning a week later with a wife, who was before her marriage Miss Lena Hughes. Some years since her father preached in the Baptist charge at Dimock. SILVER LAKE: We have had fine sleighing, but the snow is fast disappearing. Sugar making is now in order. NEW MILFORD: Marcus Perigo and wife entertained the old soldiers and their wives on Saturday and Miss Bess Bradley entertained the Fudge club on Thursday evening. KINGSLEY: Otis J. Bailey, for many years a resident of Kingsley, died at the home of his daughter, Mrs. John Gavitt, of South Montrose. The deceased was born Aug. 19, 1832. He was a member of Co. B, 177th Pennsylvania Volunteers, and had an honorable war record. On Oct. 2, 1853, he was united in marriage to Polly E. Loomis, whose death occurred about 2 years ago. Four children were born to them. He was an earnest Christian. Another old soldier of the Civil War passed through the waters and joined the Grand Army above. In South Gibson, on Feb. 14, James S. Belcher, who had been confined to his bed nearly two years, suffering intensely the entire time, died at age 69 years 6 months and 9 days. He was a member of Co. C, 203rd Regiment. Comrades of the G. A. R. Post at South Gibson conducted the services at the grave. LYNN, SPRINGVILLE TWP.: Harry E. Tiffany, of Newark, Del., and his aunt, Mrs. W. C. Conrad, of Tunkhannock, were callers in Montrose Monday. Mr. Tiffany is executor of his brother’s estate, the late Donald A. Tiffany, of Lynn, and was here on matters relating to the settlement of the estate. He is assistant chemist at the State College in Newark, a position he has held the past six years. Mr. Tiffany is a well informed young man and a most agreeable gentleman to meet. He spent his boyhood days with Auburn relatives and is also known to many in this county, having frequently visited his brother in Lynn. NEWS BRIEF: The Philadelphia Record is a newspaper that every member of the family wants to read, and that every member of the family profits by reading. It is clean, typographically and morally. There isn’t a line in it that the head of the household feels he ought to cut out before passing it along to the women and children. ALSO, a pure food inspector dropped into a hotel at Shinglehouse, Potter county, a few days ago and was dieted on oleomargarine. There were no notices posted in the dining room according to the statute made and provided, and he caused the arrest of the landlord, who settled by paying a $104 fine and costs. The purpose of the law is that no man shall be fed on oleomargarine without giving him notice, for he can’t tell it in any other way. LATE LOCAL GOSSIP: The early Robins had better wear their mittens.
From the Desk of the D.A. If you have been following the budget deficit discussions, I am sure that you have a sense of frustration similar to the one that I have been feeling. Actually, my frustration has been morphing into something more akin to hopelessness. There is almost a sense of Wonderland coming out of Washington - and neither party seems to be willing to really advance the ball in a meaningful direction. Everybody knows that the current financial state of the nation is poor - and perhaps even dangerously precarious. While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and I generally do not agree, I was proud of her last September when she bluntly stated that the national debt was posing a national security risk. Secretary Clinton went further: “It undermines our capacity to act in our own interest. And it does constrain us where constraint may be undesirable.” In other words, the foreign policy of the United States is slowly being purchased by foreign powers who were becoming our creditors and bosses. Secretary Clinton cannot effectively pursue a foreign policy that protects our national security when she knows that those she is trying to influence have financial control of our country’s debt. Secretary Clinton looked into the future and her prognostication was bleak: “It is very troubling to me that we are losing the ability not only to chart our own destiny, but to, you know, have the leverage that comes from this enormously effective economic engine that has powered American values and interests over so many years.” What was her point? If we cannot chart our own destiny, we are no longer an independent nation - we have become dependent upon others, and dependence is inherently a state of weakness, not power. While her blunt comments about the danger the debt poses to our national security should have been a sobering moment for all politicians, it seems that nothing is changing in Washington. The Obama Administration proposed a budget for 2011 that contained a $1.6 trillion dollar deficit, which means that the budget deficit will exceed the $1.4 trillion deficit that occurred in 2009. Since Congress never passed a budget for 2010, it is not entirely clear exactly how bad things were that year - but it is safe to assume that the deficit was not reduced. In fact, a recent report, the budget deficit for February alone was over $220 billion, which was a record for a monthly deficit. So what are the political leaders in Washington doing about this problem? First, the Obama Administration is plainly not doing anything to balance the budget - though they continue to make noise about reducing the deficit, which only means that we will borrow less each year. Borrowing less does not solve the problem - it only slows the exacerbation of the problem. Realistically, we will likely be unable to continue borrowing money as our lenders are beginning to make stark assessments about our financial viability. Imagine going to a bank looking for a fourth mortgage with all of your credit cards maxed out and knowing that your hours at work were being cut back. You might find someone crazy enough to give you money - but you will not like the terms. Thus, Hillary Clinton’s warnings - beggars cannot be choosers. The Republican-led House of Representatives is making noise about their political courage in cutting the deficit by $61 billion. This would be laughable if it was not so serious. This proposed reduction in the deficit is not even enough to cover 30 percent of the deficit for February alone! But even these paltry cuts cannot get through the Senate - where the Democrats are proposing a cut of only $11 billion - which represents only 5 percent of the February deficit alone. There is plenty of blame to go around - this is not a problem that happened overnight, but it is a problem that is growing at an alarming rate with neither party really working at a solution. And so it goes - and the United States of America will go out again with a hat in hand looking for those willing to give us money with no end to the begging in sight. And with each dollar borrowed, our dependent state is more firmly secured and Hillary’s words become more and more prophetic. 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'm 68 years old and I've been diagnosed with Peyronie's disease. How common is this? Peyronie's (pay-roh-neez) disease is the development of abnormal scar tissue inside the penis. The scarring bends the penis and may make an erection painful. Peyronie's can make sex difficult or impossible. A flat plate of benign scar tissue - known as a plaque - forms on the top or bottom side of the penis inside a membrane called the “tunica albuginea.” Peyronie’s disease runs in families. It is not contagious. There have been many surveys done to determine the prevalence of Peyronie's. Estimates range from less than 1 percent to 23 percent of men have Peyronie's. Researchers suspect that we will never know the truth about the disease because men are reluctant to discuss it. Many in health research believe the problem may be more common than any statistics demonstrate. An age range of 18 to 80 has been reported, but most men who report suffering from Peyronie's are between 45 and 60. Almost all those affected are Caucasians. The disease is most common in northern Europeans. Peyronie’s disease is difficult to treat. It has been called “the doctor’s nightmare.” Most everything about it varies from man to man. A French surgeon, François de la Peyronie, first described the disease in 1743. Prior to Peyronie's description of the disease, it was classified as a form of impotence. Many researchers believe that, in some cases, the scarring develops following trauma that causes bleeding inside the penis. Aging causes diminished elasticity, and this might increase the risk of injury. However, most cases develop slowly and with no known trauma. There is no convincing evidence proving that any treatment other than surgery is universally effective. Because some patients improve without treatment, medical experts suggest waiting a year or longer before having surgery. There are three basic surgical procedures for Peyronie’s disease. One surgery removes or cuts the plaque and attaches a patch of skin, vein, or material made from animal organs. This method may correct a deformity, but some patients may experience numbness and an inability to achieve an erection. Another technique involves removing or pinching a piece of the tunica albuginea opposite the plaque; this corrects the bend. This method is less likely to cause numbness or erectile dysfunction. A third option is to implant a device that makes the penis more rigid. In some cases, an implant will straighten the penis. If the implant does not straighten the penis, implantation is combined with one of the other surgical procedures. Most types of surgery are effective. However, because of possible complications, most doctors prefer to perform surgery only on the small number of men with curvature severe enough to prevent sexual intercourse. If you have a question, please write to fred@healthygeezer.com.
Library Chitchat No Library Chitchat This Week
Rock Doc How Fragile Is The Solid Earth Beneath Our Feet Geology has surely been in the news lately, with the price of petroleum moving relentlessly upward, a threat to global economic recovery because oil is so central to industrial society the world around. But now matters are suddenly worse. Even geologists like myself, used to the ferociously destructive power of earthquakes, have been taken aback by the tragic news from Japan. The largest seismic event since earthquakes were first measured in that nation, near an 8.9 on the Richter scale, has clearly devastated sections of the northeast coast, and major aftershocks will rock the region for at least days to come. The epicenter of the massive quake was under the sea, and a tsunami was immediately triggered by the event. The word “tsunami” has replaced what older readers may remember as a tidal wave, a name that was highly misleading because tsunami have nothing to do with the tides. The name tsunami is Japanese, a fact that shows Japan has been plagued by earthquakes and tsunami for as long as Japanese civilization has existed. Tsunami are usually caused by movement of the solid sea floor, a lurch either up or down, that sends an enormous body of water on the move. The water packs a great deal of energy, like an enormous sledgehammer. As a tsunami flows into more shallow conditions near the coast, the height of the wave increases more and more. That’s why ships far out to sea are not tossed by massive waves, but people in a harbor can see a truly enormous surge of water coming toward them. The water can spill far inland, as it clearly has done in northeast Japan. Tsunami travel fast - at literally hundreds of miles an hour. Because of that fact, there was little time between the quake itself and the tsunami hitting the coast of Japan. Much of the evident destruction of the quake is from the effects of seawater inundating the land, sweeping whole buildings off their foundations, undermining roads and most unfortunately of all, quickly sweeping many local residents to their deaths. Because tsunami travel across the entire Pacific Ocean, damaging coasts thousands of miles away from the original earthquake, scientists have a tsunami warning system in place 24-7. Nothing is perfect, but it’s a good system, and warnings in Hawaii preceded the arrival of the tsunami there. So far, Maui has had the highest wave, one recorded at about 7 feet. As usual with massive earthquake damage, fires have broken out and are burning out of control in some cities. Fires often follow major seismic events because natural gas pipelines are cracked and start to leak, and because electric lines fall and create sparks. To make matters worse, fire fighters can be hampered in their work because water mains are broken. We must all wish the Japanese people well as they start to cope with what has happened, and the U.S. has already pledged support for whatever the government of Japan thinks it needs to respond to the massive damage along its northeast coast. But we Americans should also find some time to reflect on the fact that two regions of the Lower 48 stand at risk of similar events - and we are generally less prepared than the Japanese to deal with major quakes. The first part of the country known to face earthquake dangers is, of course, the west coast. California most famously, but Oregon, Washington and inland states like Nevada are all slated for massive quakes in the future. But it’s also true that the central part of the country, in the region centered around where Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee all come together, is another place where we geologists are sure there will be massive quakes. We’ve got to learn from what we now see in news reports coming out of Japan. We can do better on everything from protecting our infrastructure to having family plans in place for emergencies. Let’s let the tragic event in northeast Japan be a wake up call right here at home. 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’s the latest research on the question of whether cell phone use causes cancer? ~William Cell phones have only been in widespread use for a couple of decades, which is far too short a time for us to know conclusively whether or not using them could cause cancer. Research thus far appears to indicate that most of us have little if anything to worry about. According to the federally funded National Cancer Institute, the low-frequency electromagnetic radiation that cell phones give off when we hold them up to our heads is “non-ionizing,” meaning it cannot cause significant human tissue heating or body temperature increases that could lead to direct damage to cellular DNA. By contrast, X-rays consist of high-frequency ionizing electromagnetic radiation and can lead to the kind of cellular damage resulting in cancer. Nonetheless, some cell phone users and researchers still worry about our cell phone usage, given how much we now use them and how little we know about their potential long-term effects. The reason the issue keeps coming up is that some initial studies in Europe, where cell phone usage caught on a decade before the U.S., showed links between some forms of tumors and heavy cell phone usage. As a result, researchers teamed up to do a more definitive study, called the “Interphone” study, across 13 countries between 2000 and 2004. The results, published in May 2010 in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Epidemiology, indicated no increased risk of developing two of the most common types of brain tumors, glioma and meningioma, from typical everyday cell phone usage. Study participants who reported spending the most time on their phones showed a slightly increased risk of developing gliomas, but researchers considered this finding inconclusive due to factors such as recall bias, whereby participants with brain tumors may have simply remembered past cell phone use differently from healthy respondents. Researchers looking to get past the relatively short timing window and the recall bias issues of the Interphone study recently launched a longer term study, dubbed COSMOS (short for Cohort Study on Mobile Communications), in Europe. Some 250,000 cell phone users between the ages of 18 and 69 and located in Britain, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark will participate by allowing researchers to track their cell phone usage and health over three decades. According to an April 22, 2010 article in Reuters, the study will factor in the use of hands-free devices and how people carry their phones and will also be on the lookout for links to neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. There are some precautions you can take to minimize whatever risk may exist. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) suggests reserving the use of cell phones for shorter conversations, or for times when a conventional phone isn’t available. Also, using a hands-free device places more distance between the phone and your head, significantly reducing the amount of radiation exposure. If the fact that many states require hands-free devices for using a cell phone while driving isn’t enough to make you go out and spend the extra money on such an accessory, maybe the cancer risk, perceived or real, will. Dear EarthTalk: In his recent State of the Union Address, President Obama called for a million electric vehicles on American roads by 2015. How likely is it that we’ll attain that goal? ~Jerry “We can break our dependence on oil… and become the first country to have one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015,” President Obama said in his January 2011 State of the Union address. “The future is ours to win.” It’s difficult to say how likely such an arbitrary goal might be, but green leaders and others are optimistic. The waiting list for the new electric Nissan Leaf, rolling off the factory floor as we speak, is some 20,000 Americans long. The auto industry expects similar demand for other new electric and plug-in hybrid cars hitting U.S. roads this year and next from General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Mitsubishi and others. Of course, the Obama administration realizes that attaining such a goal will be impossible without help from the federal government. To that end, consumers and businesses can get tax credits worth up to $7,500 on the purchase of each new electric vehicle (EV). The feds have also committed $2.4 billion for research and development into improving EV batteries, and another $115 million for the installation of EV charging infrastructure in 16 different metro areas around the country - not to mention some $300 million in clean cities grants to dozens of American communities working to reduce petroleum use, and the $25 billion being doled out to help U.S. automakers retool. So much federal involvement has helped spur state governments and private industry to make significant investments in the EV sector as well. But even with all this funding, a million EVs on the road by 2015 may still be just a pipe dream. James Sweeney of Stanford University’s Precourt Energy Efficiency Center calls the plan “very aggressive.” He reasons that it took over a decade for hybrids - which “did not require any difference in infrastructure and had as great a range as conventional vehicles, neither of which is likely to be the case with electric vehicles” - to capture three percent of the U.S. passenger car and light truck market. EVs would have to achieve the same market share in just four years if Obama’s goal is to be realized. “Even with a large subsidy, it would be very hard to move to such a large market share that quickly,” Sweeney concludes. The Electrification Coalition, an organization of pro-EV business leaders from companies including Nissan, Federal Express, Coda Automotive and Coulomb Technologies, would take issue with that conclusion, however. The group’s November 2009 study, dubbed the Electrification Roadmap, predicted that as many as 14 million EVs could be on American roads by 2020 if lawmakers create “electrification ecosystems” in several major U.S. cities simultaneously. If the group is anywhere near the mark, reaching Obama’s goal of a million EVs by 2015 should be a no-brainer. The group also says that EVs could account for as many as 75 percent of all miles driven by light duty vehicles in the U.S. by 2040. Now if only we could clean up our supply of electricity too, then we really might be onto something good for the planet. 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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