JACKSON: Scott Washburn, of Maple Ridge, was driving to Susquehanna with a veal calf Friday, Aug. 4, when a holdback to the harness broke. The horse became frightened and ran away upsetting the wagon. Mr. Washburn was thrown to the ground, but managed to control his horse. When found an hour later his hip was broken and he sustained severe internal injuries, from the effects of which he died Thursday, Aug. 10. The funeral was held from his late residence Sat. at 2 o’clock. Mr. Washburn was 59 years old and is survived by his wife and one son.

FRIENDSVILLE: Albert Miller, Sr., was at Camp Choconut, on Monday, where he performed the annual operation of removing a two months’ growth of hair from the heads of the young men in camp there. This is the tenth anniversary of Mr. Miller’s trips to the famous camp and 36 young men submitted to the painless operation, his dexterous fingers and sharp shears removing the long hair with the facility and completeness of a modern reaper cutting grain.

RUSH: U. W. LaRue, proprietor of the Rush Mills, recently purchased a flock of Angora goats. They have long white silken wool and are very valuable.

FOREST CITY: The case of the Commonwealth vs. Annie Staninute, of Forest City, charged with larceny by Mrs. Morris Kasson, was brought up in court this week and disposed of, and the defendant returned to her home free and clear of the charge made against her. Mrs. H. M. Joseph, of Forest City, for whom the girl had worked for some time, was so thoroughly convinced of her innocence that she came to Montrose and brought witnesses to prove that fact and is very much gratified with the result.

NEW MILFORD: Miss Helen Beebe is the new librarian at the New Milford public library, being elected to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Miss May Everett, who has been the librarian for some time. Miss Beebe has for some years been a teacher in the county schools and will, without doubt, fill the position admirably.

THOMPSON: W. LeGrand Simrell and family, of Brooklyn, N.Y., are spending the summer at the Simrell farm near Starrucca.

GREAT BEND: The Black Horn Leather Co. has decided to give each of their foremen one week’s vacation this year.

GIBSON: C. C. Lupton has commenced the foundation for his new hotel, which he will build on the old hotel site, and which will fill a long-felt want in this town.

BROOKLYN: M. W. Palmer is sporting a new Ford car, purchased of G M. Carpenter, of Hallstead. Fred Moore, of Alford and Frank Tingley bought duplicates of the same car at the same time. AND, the supervisors have contracted with J. W. Bunnell, of Dimock, to move the feed store that stood in the center of the State road.

SPRINGVILLE: The death of Miss Coral Culver, who had been ill for some months, occurred Aug. 4. She was the only daughter and her death falls heavily upon the home circle, especially the mother. Besides her mother she is survived by a brother, Ray, of Harford, and a half-brother, Charles. She would have been twenty years old this fall. She will be missed in the Sunday School and League of the Methodist church, having acted as organist and sang in the choir. At her funeral, a profusion of flowers borne by six young ladies, mutely testified the sympathy of many friends.

LITTLE MEADOWS: The ball game between Little Meadows and South Owego, on Saturday, resulted in a score of 8 to 3 in favor of the home team.

WILLIAMS’ POND, BRIDGEWATER TWP.: Carl Bullard, of the Annapolis Military Academy, is home on a ten days’ furlough.

HOP BOTTOM: By request, the young people of the Y.P.C.U. will reproduce the Drama “The Old Dairy Homestead” in Masonic Hall, Friday evening, Aug. 18.

UNIONDALE: An automobile, on Sunday afternoon, coming from Carbondale to Uniondale, was struck by a D & H engine on Stillwater crossing. The auto was badly wrecked, but no one was hurt with the exception of a few bruises. AND, Mr. Sherwood has built a new wire fence on the line between his property and the hotel, where some rowdies got in a fight on the Fourth of July and broke the fence down.

FLYNN: Henry Hannon, of Friendsville, is building a belfry on the Flynn graded school.

LENOXVILLE: The Mitchell Quartet, from Scranton, was at the social and rendered some very fine selections. Also Miss Hankinson, of Royal, who is a fine singer, was present and added much. Miss Hankinson has a magnificent voice and because of her musical ability is in great demand in many places.

MONTROSE: The people of Montrose have always been appreciative, and deservedly so, of the various entertainments given from time to time by local talent. On Thursday evening will be held the Lawn Fete for the benefit of the Library that was postponed from Tuesday on account of the rain. On the tennis court of A. R. Anthony, and with the charming background of rocks and flowers, the first part of the Fete will feature a rendering by a series of tableaux, of Tennyson’s “Lancelot and Elaine.” Second on the program will be a dramatized version of Tennyson’s “A Dream of Fair Women” and at the close Ave Maria will be sung by Mr. Hosterman with piano accompaniment and violin obbligato.

BIRCHARDVILLE: The Valley Park Photo Company, of Birchardville, of which William A. Owen is general manager, has added greatly to their facilities for handling photographic work and are able to turn out 1500 prints a day now, which means prompt delivery.

LIBERTY TWP.: L. G. Bissell, a former camp Susquehannock counselor and a popular base ball player, who is now practicing law in New York, is spending a few days at the camp and calling on friends.

You may recall that I did a column a few months back about the ongoing fight between Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Castille and the Federal Defender’s Office. The Federal Defenders are a tax-funded advocacy group that defends killers facing death penalty trials and executions. The Federal Defenders seemingly magically appear at any stage in a death penalty battle - it could be that the Federal Defenders appear at the trial stage, the appeal stage or the post-conviction stage - or even all three stages. The Federal Defenders have significant public resources (provided by the federal government) that are utilized to defend capital defendants - and the Federal Defenders utilize their resources, skills and talents with an unrelenting zeal.

Chief Justice Castille wrote a scathing concurring opinion in a recent death penalty case that made it to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The case had already been to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on previous occasions - but, as with most death penalty cases, these cases never really end in Pennsylvania. Chief Justice Castille finally called out the Federal Defenders and challenged the federal government’s interference in state court matters. In other words, Chief Justice Castille wanted to know where the Federal Defenders got the authority to come strolling into state court with their coffers filled with federal money and then paralyze the entire state criminal justice system with systemic and frivolous legal wrangling. Given his responsibilities in overseeing the entire judicial system in Pennsylvania, Chief Justice Castille’s opinion carried even more weight as he was outlining in painstaking detail the questionable practices of the Federal Defenders and the incredible toll it was taking on the state court system.

The Federal Defenders should have left it alone, taken their medicine and exercised a little more caution and prudence in their legal filings. If they had followed this course, it is likely that the Chief Justice’s concurring opinion would have simply become a historical footnote, nothing more and nothing less. But the Federal Defenders were bound a determined to prove that the Chief Justice had hit the nail on the head. There is a rich irony in what happened next - as the Federal Defenders filed a 50-plus page motion demanding that the Chief Justice retract his opinion and that the Chief Justice no longer be permitted to sit on the case as he had demonstrated bias. After being excoriated for its frivolous and voluminous legal filings, the Federal Defenders responded by playing the same old song one more time.

There is an old saying that if you are going to kill the king, you better do it - and the Federal Defenders plainly missed. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court just responded to the Federal Defenders attack on its Chief Justice - and the Supreme Court is ready to play ball. Rather than simply deny the motion - which is what several of the justices suggested should have been done - the Supreme Court has directed the Federal Defenders to put their money where their mouth is, i.e., back up the crap that they have been preaching (at taxpayer expense) for years. The Court has directed the Federal Defenders to provide the Supreme Court with specific federal authority (whether regulatory or otherwise) that permits them to represent defendants in state court without being appointed by the state court. The Supreme Court has also directed the Federal Defenders to provide a list of all defendants it is currently representing in Pennsylvania and then provide proof that they had been appointed by the state court to represent those defendants, and, if not court appointed, provide a description on how the Federal Defenders came to represent the particular defendant without being court appointed. Oh, the sweet, sweet irony!

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has decided to lift up the rock and see the little critters crawling around under it. The Federal Defenders contended in its 50-plus page motion that they were complying with all applicable regulations, that they were not wasting tax dollars, and that they were acting appropriately in every state court case. The Federal Defenders pushed all their chips into the pot and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court called their bet. The only question now is whether the Federal Defenders were bluffing or do they have the cards to back up their bet. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out over the next few months - and whether this little battle turns some heads in Washington enough to rethink the use of federal funds to constantly interfere in state court criminal matters.

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/.

Q. How should I change my diet to get more iron? I think I'm a little anemic.

Iron deficiency anemia is the most common form of anemia. About 20 percent of women, 50 percent of pregnant women, and 3 percent of men do not have enough iron in their bodies.

Some biology. If you have anemia, your blood does not carry enough oxygen to the rest of your body. The most common cause of anemia is iron deficiency. You need iron to make hemoglobin. Hemoglobin carries the oxygen from your lungs to the rest of your body.

If you suspect that you are anemic, you should see a doctor and get tested before embarking on a new diet. The following are blood tests you may be given:

* Hematocrit. This is a test for the percentage of your blood volume made up by red blood cells.

* Hemoglobin. Lower than normal hemoglobin levels indicate anemia.

* Ferritin. This is a protein that helps store iron in your body. A low level of ferritin usually indicates a low level of stored iron.

If your blood work indicates iron deficiency anemia, your doctor may order additional tests to diagnose the cause. These tests include:

* Endoscopy. A thin tube with a video camera is passed down your throat to your stomach. This allows your doctor to look for internal bleeding.

* Colonoscopy. Another thin tube with a video camera is inserted into the rectum and up to your colon to check for lower-intestinal bleeding,

* Ultrasound. This uses high-frequency sound waves to produce images within your body. Women may have a pelvic ultrasound to look for excessive menstrual bleeding.

The following are some causes of iron deficiency: insufficient iron intake, pregnancy, heavy menstrual flow, frequent blood donation, and hookworms that live in the small intestine.

There are two types of iron that we consume. There is “heme iron,” which comes from meat, fish and poultry. This kind of iron is absorbed more efficiently than “non-heme iron” from plants.

The amount of iron absorbed from plant foods depends on the other types of foods eaten at the same time. Foods containing heme iron enhance iron absorption from foods that contain non-heme iron. Foods containing vitamin C also enhance non-heme iron absorption. Vegetarian diets are low in heme iron, but careful meal planning can help increase the amount of iron absorbed by vegetarians.

Another cause of iron deficiency is overdosing antacids and taking medicine for peptic ulcers and acid reflux. These medications can reduce the amount of iron absorbed by your body.

The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) of iron for men 19 years of age an older is eight milligrams a day. Women between 19 and 50 need 18 milligrams a day. Women older than 50 need 8 milligrams daily.

The symptoms of iron deficiency include fatigue, difficulty maintaining body temperature, increased susceptibility to infection, an inflamed tongue, blue color to the whites of the eyes, brittle nails, decreased appetite, headache, irritability, pale skin, shortness of breath, and unusual food cravings.

A common treatment for iron deficiency anemia is taking iron supplements. You may also be instructed to eat more iron-rich foods. Taking iron tablets with vitamin C improves the absorption of iron. You may need to take iron supplements for several months or longer to replenish your iron reserves.

If you would like to read more columns "How to be a Healthy Geezer" is available at www.healthygeezer.com.

Weather has been a significant topic of discussion this summer. First, we experienced weeks of unending rain and then weeks of heat; but, we all anticipated that the weekend of the Blueberry Festival would be just right. But then the rain came back on Saturday.

As you know, the Blueberry Festival is the single largest fundraiser for operating expenses each year for the Susquehanna County Historical Society and Free Library Association (SCHSFLA). The rain on Saturday hurt the proceeds from the Festival.

Dan and Gretchen Backer, proprietors of The Inn at Montrose, are once again holding a Library Night at the Inn. The timing is wonderful coming after a rain-shortened Blueberry Festival. On Thursday, August 18, a percentage of the profits from all receipts for food and drink between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. will be donated to SCHSFLA’s operating fund. If you will be Montrose, we hope you'll be able to join us.

In addition, we remind you of a way you can help SCHSFLA on a regular basis by participating in the Community Rewards program established by Shurfine Markets. The two Shurfine Markets in our area are Rob’s Country Markets in Great Bend and Montrose. The Community Rewards program donates three cents from every Shurfine and Western Family products you purchase if you register your card. Forms are available at your local library or on line.

Thanks for all those who helped and attended this year’s Festival. We’ll be there again next year on August 3 and 4 - hopefully without rain.

Saving Labor (And Lives) In The Orchard

When I was younger, I used to enjoy picking a pint or two of huckleberries in the mountains in the summer. But even when you work hard, huckleberry picking doesn’t yield a lot of fruit per day. Picking raspberries goes faster because the fruit is larger and the berries grow more thickly on the plant. And picking apples is faster still, with output measured in bushels rather than pints.

Still, it’s one thing to pick a bag of apples from an old tree by the side of a gravel road. It’s quite another to spend all day in an orchard trying to earn a living climbing ladders and harvesting box after box of fruit.

All agricultural work is both demanding and dangerous, and working in orchards is one of the most difficult tasks in modern agriculture. Indeed, it’s such hard work that a lot of Americans simply can’t or won’t do it, which leads to labor shortages and immigration issues we continue to fail to come to terms with.

It’s interesting to note we’d never considering harvesting grain fields by hand. I live in a small town surrounded by fields of wheat. At the end of the summer, large and complex machines reap the grain in the field, then thresh it, and finally winnow it. The three-step process is automatic, done on-the-fly as the combine harvester rumbles across the wheat field.

Why not use machines to harvest fruit in an orchard? We could free people from the back-breaking tedium of picking fruit by hand, training them instead to operate the machines that could do the heavy labor both more quickly and more safely. Lower-priced produce could then benefit all of us.

The good news is that agricultural engineers across the nation are making real progress toward exactly that goal. In the process, they’ve found it useful to change trees themselves. Here’s the story.

Machines operate most easily in unchanging conditions. Lawn mowers work because grass in a lawn makes up a pretty uniform surface. Mowers can’t cope with truly major bumps or depressions.

One challenge for creating machines that could help us harvest fruit in an orchard is that traditionally fruit trees have all been quite different. They are “bumpy,” you might say, with this particular tree pruned years ago in one way, while that tree over there has a different shape due to different growth and pruning.

So the first step in moving toward the mechanization of orchards has been creating trees that are much more similar to one another. Along the way it’s also been useful to make the trees shorter. After all, there’s no need to have a 22-foot tall apple tree, with its fruit way up off the ground, when a much shorter tree will do.

Another step forward hinged on what I think is a truly clever idea. Instead of letting the trees grow in their usual, three-dimensional structure, the ag engineers had them pruned to keep them growing upward in just two-dimensions. You could say these trees make thin apple “hedges” in an orchard.

With that innovation, the next step is to design mechanical pickers that can move along the thin rows of short trees, reaching out and picking the fruit.

One idea is to use camera sensors to determine where a piece of fruit is, and then power a robotic-arm that can pick it individually. Before you think that’s too fanciful to be true, remember your car was welded together by robotic arms.

Dr. Qin Zhang of Washington State University works on agricultural automation issues including the goal of mechanically harvesting fruit trees.

“People all over the word are putting great effort into developing mechanical fruit harvesters. I will not be surprised if we see mechanically harvested apples in the stores in ten years,” he said to me recently.

Although mechanizing agriculture always entails periods of economic adjustment for all concerned, I’ve got to wish Dr. Zhang the best. The equivalent of a combine harvester for fruit would be a labor-saving device that could help a lot of people in several ways, both in the field and in the grocery store.

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, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences at Washington State University.

Dear EarthTalk: I heard of a practice called cyanide fishing, which is used mostly to collect aquarium specimens, but I understand it is also used to catch fish we eat. Isn’t this very unhealthy? ~Phil

Cyanide fishing, whereby divers crush cyanide tablets into plastic squirt bottles of sea water and puff the solution to stun and capture live coral reef fish, is widely practiced throughout Southeast Asia despite being illegal in most countries of the region. The practice began in the 1960s in the Philippines as a way to capture live reef fish for sale primarily to European and North American aquarium owners - a market now worth some $200 million a year.

But today the technique is also used to supply specialty restaurants in Hong Kong and other large Asian cities. There high roller customers can choose which live fish they want prepared on the spot for their dinner at a cost of up to $300 per plate in what the non-profit World Resources Institute (WRI) calls “an essential status symbol for major celebrations and business occasions.” WRI adds that as the East Asian economy has boomed in recent decades, live reef food fish has become a trade worth $1 billion annually.

Of course, the cyanide itself is no good for the fish that ingest it. Internet chat boards are rife with comments about cyanide-caught aquarium fish developing cancer within a year of being purchased. And many aquarium owners are willing to pay a premium for “net-caught” ornamental fish as they have a longer life expectancy.

But perhaps the greater damage inflicted by cyanide fishing is to the coral reefs where it is employed, as cyanide kills the reefs and also many of the life forms that rely on them. Researchers estimate that more than a million kilograms of cyanide have been squirted onto Philippine reefs alone over the last half century. These days the practice is much more widespread, with some of the world’s most productive reefs being decimated.

“Despite the fact that cyanide fishing is nominally illegal in virtually all Indo-Pacific countries, the high premium paid for live reef fish, weak enforcement capacities, and frequent corruption have spread the use of the poison across the entire region - home to the vast majority of the planet’s coral reefs,” reports WRI. “As stocks in one country are depleted, the trade moves on to new frontiers, and cyanide fishing is now confirmed or suspected in countries stretching from the central Pacific to the shores of East Africa. Sadly, the most pristine reefs, far from the usual threats of sedimentation, coral mining and coastal development, are the primary target for cyanide fishing operations.”

While there is not much evidence of cyanide-caught fish poisoning the people who eat it - the dose retained by a fish after being puffed is relatively small - the risk nevertheless remains, especially for those who ingest a lot of it. Nausea and gastritis are the typical symptoms of cyanide poisoning, and of course larger doses can cause death. WRI estimates that some 20 percent of the live fish for sale at markets across Southeast Asia are caught using cyanide. Children, the elderly and pregnant women should be especially careful to avoid cyanide-caught fish.

Dear EarthTalk: I don’t hear much about the environmental impacts of our consumer culture any more, but it seems to me that our “buy, buy, buy” mentality is a major contributor to our overuse of energy and resources. Are any organizations addressing this issue today? ~M. Oakes

There is no doubt that our overly consumerist culture is contributing to our addiction to oil and other natural resources and the pollution of the planet and its atmosphere.

Unfortunately the tendency to acquire and even horde valuable goods may be coded into our DNA. Researchers contend that humans are subconsciously driven by an impulse for survival, domination and expansion which finds expression in the idea that economic growth will solve all individual and worldly ills. Advertising plays on those impulses, turning material items into objects of great desire imparting intelligence, status and success.

William Rees of the University of British Columbia reports that human society is in a “global overshoot,” consuming 30 percent more material than is sustainable from the world’s resources. He adds that 85 countries are exceeding their domestic “bio-capacities” and compensate for their lack of local material by depleting the stocks of other countries.

Of course, every one of us can do our part by limiting our purchases to only what we need and to make responsible choices when we do buy something. But those who might need a little inspiration to get started should look to the Adbusters Media Foundation, a self-described “global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age.”

Among the foundation’s most successful campaigns is Buy Nothing Day, an international day of protest typically “celebrated” the Friday after Thanksgiving in North America (so-called Black Friday, one of the year’s busiest shopping days) and the following Saturday in some 60 other countries. The idea is that for one day a year we commit to not purchase anything, and to help spread the anti-consumerist message to anyone who will listen, with the hope of inspiring people to consume less and generate less waste the other 364 days of the year. The first Buy Nothing Day took place in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1992 with a few dozen participants, but today hundreds of thousands of people all over the world take part.

In recent years some anti-consumerists have added Buy Nothing Christmas to their agendas as well. Some ideas for how to leverage Buy Nothing Christmas sentiment without looking too much like Scrooge include giving friends and family “gift exemption” cards and asking shoppers in line at a big box store, “What would Jesus buy?”

Beyond Buy Nothing Day and Buy Nothing Christmas, the Adbusters Media Foundation stokes the fire of anti-consumerism throughout the year via its bi-monthly publication, Adbusters, an ad-free magazine with an international circulation topping 120,000. Do yourself a favor and subscribe...and cancel all those catalogs stuffing up your mailbox in the meantime.

EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E - The Environmental Magazine (www.emagazine.com). Send questions to: earthtalk@emagazine.com.