BRANDT: After an interval of about four years the manufacture of brick is about to be resumed here. The work of preparation is now going on and it is expected that the American Brick Company will commence work next week.

FOREST CITY: Someone broke into the dwelling of Rev. Joseph Tomsik recently and secured two hundred dollars in cash.

FRIENDSVILLE: Mr. M. J. Lee, one of Friendsville’s substantial and highly respected citizens, was among the “Democrat’s” esteemed visitors Friday. Mr. Lee is a Democrat of the progressive type, and heartily upholds the organization as represented by State chairman, Guthrie, which means the support of men and principles.

HALLSTEAD: Hon. Jas. T. DuBois has been appointed, by President Taft, the United States Minister to Bogota, United States of Columbia. He will leave in about a month, his son Arthur probably accompanying him, and Mrs. DuBois going later. To reach Colombia requires a long journey to Cuba and thence across the Gulf to the mouth of Magdalena river and then a ten days’ journey, by boat, up the river to Bogota. The proximity of the country to the Panama canal makes the post an especially important one at this period, and under the present conditions, a most difficult one to fill.

LAWTON, RUSH TWP.: Christie Curran, perhaps one of the most popular base ball “fans” of the County, was here Monday arranging for the big game between Choconut and Fairdale, at Haire’s Park, Lawton. The line-up includes men from most all of the leading colleges of the country, and will attract a big crowd and be an interesting game.

LAWSVILLE: A very painful accident occurred to Mrs. Henry Ives Sunday morning. As she and her granddaughter, Clare Knapp, were on their way to church, an automobile suddenly came upon them. The horse became frightened, turning quickly around and throwing the occupants to the ground. Mrs. Ives received several wounds on her face and head, besides several bruises and a severe nervous shock.

EAST LYNN, SPRINGVILLE TWP.: Ivy States teaches the school here again this year. Miss States has taught two very successful terms and we feel glad to retain her. AND, in Springville, Lionel Meserole and wife, Charlie and Lee and wife, Ray Greenwood and wife, started Monday, August 21, for Falls, Wyoming Co., for a weeks outing. Harrie Lee and other half will go later.

BROOKLYN: Prof. R. S. Breed, P. C. D., who has been pursuing extensive research work in the field of milk bacteria, in Europe, will return this week. He has consented to give an informal account of his travels at the Presbyterian Church at Brooklyn, Friday, Sept. 1, 1911. Admission, 10 cents. AND, Mrs. Emma Lathrop killed a large spotted snake in her kitchen one day last week. We think Mr. Snake was getting pretty friendly.

LENOX: “Cozy Nook” Cottage, Jeffers’ Lake, is occupied this week by a party of young people, including Misses Edna Brown, Vina Qualey, of Hop Bottom, and Ruth Sweet of Binghamton. Messrs Louis Tiffany, of Kingsley, Tracy Brown and Dean Bertholf, of Hop Bottom; chaperoned by Rev. Dowson and wife.

FRANKLIN FORKS: The 29th annual reunion of Co. H., 141st Reg., P.V., will be held at the home of Comrade A. E. Stockholm, on Wednesday, Sept. 6, 1911.

MONTROSE: The lawn fete given by Mrs. J. M. Wainwright, of Scranton, for the benefit of the Susquehanna County Library, was held on the lawn of Mr. A. R. Anthony, on Lake Avenue. The proceeds of this fete gives the library $165 for the purchase of books.

AUBURN TWP.: Next Saturday the West Auburn quoit pitching team goes to Silvara to pitch with the team of that place. AND, Auburn Center ball players were invited to play a game with West Auburn next Friday afternoon. There will be a social in the basement of the church that night, Aug. 25. An entertainment will be given by the “married people.” This will be worth your time and surely doesn’t cost any money.

THOMPSON: They say they are sporting with motor boats of all sorts up on Crofton Lake these days, and no joke.

DIMOCK: Mrs. Mary Thomas, Mrs. Chas. Stevens, and daughter, Mrs. Olin Green, of Shannon Hill, Auburn Twp., who had been attending camp meeting, went to visit Mrs. Stevens’ daughter, Mrs. Archie Ellsworth, of Dimock. On their way to the train station the next day, after going a short distance, the horse began to kick and was unmanageable. It ran up on a bank and threw the three ladies out of the wagon hurting and bruising them all, Mrs. Stevens most seriously. As she fell her skirts caught on the brake and [she] was dragged quite a distance, tearing her clothes badly and bruising her shoulder, hip and side very severely. She was brought home later in the day and is in a bad condition.

HARFORD: Three horses were killed outright, a fourth was badly burned and several hundred dollars worth of farm produce and implements were destroyed when lightening struck a barn on the fair grounds. The barn, the property of C. H. Johnson, was burned to the ground. John Lewis, who was working the farm, had four horses, several wagons and carriages, twenty tons of hay, several hundred bushels of oats and all his farm implements in the barn. George Tyler, a farm hand, had just put the horses into the barn, taking another horse to the village to get shod. The fire that followed the lightning bolt burned so rapidly that it was impossible for neighboring farmers to save anything out of the barn, except one horse, which was badly burned.

NEW MILFORD: A terrible accident occurred near the Avery mill on the A. C. Barrett place, Aug. 16, which resulted ion the instant death of Otis Salisbury, an employee of Mr. Avery. Mr. Salisbury, in company with three other men, was engaged in felling some hickory trees in an open lot. Salisbury, assisted by Olin Boskit, was sawing one of the trees and when nearly sawed in two it broke on the stump and fell in the opposite direction from which it was intended. If he had stood still no accident would have occurred but Mr. Salisbury, apparently becoming confused, ran directly under the falling tree, which struck, killing him instantly. He was 25 years old and unmarried, a genial companion, and his tragic death is deeply felt by his fellow workmen and a large circle of friends.

I had a friend approach me last week to ask about the recent federal corruption trial involving the two Lackawanna County Commissioners involving their use of their public office to obtain financial kickbacks for the awarding of county contracts. The question my friend had was a terrific one and I suspect that it is something that most of you have considered from time to time. The question dealt with a prosecutor’s use of granting immunity to certain witnesses in return for cooperation and testimony.

From my friend’s perspective, there was no justice in this approach. How could there be justice where a prosecutor picks and chooses which criminal will be punished? How is it fair that some of the criminals were given immunity while some had to stand trial and be punished for the conduct that they were all involved in perpetrating? These are hard questions to be sure, and I am not sure that I can give you an answer that will really satisfy your own sense of fairness and justice.

Let me start with a general discussion about immunity - there are two types of immunity that a prosecutor can offer to a cooperating witness. The first type of immunity is known as use immunity and it is limited in scope. A prosecutor will generally provide use immunity in situations where a witness has asserted his right to remain silent and refuses to answer questions in a formal proceeding, such as during grand jury testimony or trial testimony. At this point, the questioning must stop as the government cannot compel a person to give testimony that may be personally incriminating.

The solution for this problem is the offer of use immunity to the witness. What that means is that the witness can testify freely and whatever he says during that proceeding cannot be used against him. In other words, the prosecution agrees not to “use” the testimony against the witness in any subsequent criminal proceedings. Once this use immunity has been granted, the witness’s ability to assert his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent disappears as the testimony will no longer be incriminating. There is a single exception to use immunity - a witness can still be prosecuted for perjury if he testifies falsely after being granted use immunity. In other words, you still have to tell the truth.

The other form of immunity is the more attractive one - full immunity. This is the true “get out of jail free” card. And this is the immunity that my friend was talking about in his question. As part of a cooperation agreement, a prosecutor may agree not to prosecute a particular witness in return for truthful testimony regarding the criminal enterprise in which he was a participating member. If a prosecutor decides to grant immunity, the terms of the immunity agreement will be very specific and such agreements always require that the witness provide truthful information. If it is discovered that the witnessed lied or withheld information, then the promise of immunity would generally disappear.

Why would a prosecutor agree to give someone full immunity? It is a hard decision because it necessarily allows the witness to get away with his or her criminal conduct. As I told my friend, however, there are times that you need to get the direct evidence of the criminal conduct in order to solidify the case. You may have all the circumstantial evidence in the world, but the “smoking gun” is still missing. As we saw recently in the Casey Anthony murder trial, strong circumstantial evidence is not always enough to secure a conviction.

To be sure, a prosecutor’s decision to grant immunity to a witness has its own perils as defense attorneys love to point out that the only real criminal is the prosecution’s star witness and the prosecution is letting him get away with it in return for false testimony. It provides fertile ground for defense arguments. My friend’s reaction to immunity agreements would be the same one that jurors would have upon hearing an admitted criminal on the stand and knowing that this particular criminal was getting off. In the end, a prosecutor does not make the decision to grant immunity lightly, but there are occasions where it is necessary in order to strengthen a case in order to convict the more culpable parties.

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. Do women get color blindness?

Color blindness affects about ten percent of men, but only one percent of women.

Color blindness is the common term used to describe color vision deficiency. The term is misleading, because total color blindness that turns the world into shades of gray is rare.

The most common type of color blindness makes it difficult for people to discriminate between red and green. The next most common form of the deficiency affects the perception of blues and yellows. Those with blue-yellow blindness almost always have red-green blindness, too.

Most people with color blindness inherited it. There is no treatment to correct inherited color blindness. However, there are specially tinted eyeglasses that can help people with deficiencies to discriminate between colors.

Q. How can you tell if you have a gambling problem?

Gamblers Anonymous offers the following 20 questions to help people decide if they have a compulsion to gamble and want to stop. Most compulsive gamblers will answer yes to at least seven of these questions.

1. Did you ever lose time from work or school due to gambling?

2. Has gambling ever made your home life unhappy?

3. Did gambling affect your reputation?

4. Have you ever felt remorse after gambling?

5. Did you ever gamble to get money with which to pay debts or otherwise solve financial difficulties?

6. Did gambling cause a decrease in your ambition or efficiency?

7. After losing did you feel you must return as soon as possible and win back your losses?

8. After a win did you have a strong urge to return and win more?

9. Did you often gamble until your last dollar was gone?

10. Did you ever borrow to finance your gambling?

11. Have you ever sold anything to finance gambling?

12. Were you reluctant to use "gambling money" for normal expenditures?

13. Did gambling make you careless of the welfare of yourself or your family?

14. Did you ever gamble longer than you had planned?

15. Have you ever gambled to escape worry or trouble?

16. Have you ever committed, or considered committing, an illegal act to finance gambling?

17. Did gambling cause you to have difficulty in sleeping?

18. Do arguments, disappointments or frustrations create within you an urge to gamble?

19. Did you ever have an urge to celebrate any good fortune by a few hours of gambling?

20. Have you ever considered self destruction or suicide as a result of your gambling?

Q. I'm taking a variety of medications and was wondering if any of them can contribute to bruising.

Blood-thinning medications can contribute to bruising. So you might bruise more easily if you take Plavix or Coumadin. Aspirin will have a similar effect. The thinners allow more blood to pool under your skin. So, if you’re taking one of this drugs, what seems like a harmless bump against a coffee table could lead to a nasty bruise.

Some dietary supplements can thin your blood, too. Be careful if you are consuming more than normal amounts of fish oil, ginkgo, ginger and garlic.

A tendency to bruise easily is common when you age. It’s especially common among women.

A bruise - also known as a contusion - occurs when the tiny blood vessels under your skin break after being struck. When you bruise, the blood leaks under the skin and leaves a black-and-blue mark. The harder the impact, the bigger the bruise. As the blood is reabsorbed by your body, the bruise goes away.

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

Reading The Record Of The Tree Rings

Scientists have studied natural climate change for quite a while. Part of what we have learned about past climates comes from tree rings, and thereon hangs an interesting tale going back more than a century.

Flagstaff, Arizona was a pretty small burg in the 1890s, without the street lamps of big cities Back East. It also has an elevation of 7,000 feet, making it well over a mile above sea level.

It was those two conditions that brought a young astronomer named A. E. Douglass to the area in 1894. He was commissioned to set up a new telescope by Percival Lowell.

Lowell was an amateur astronomer, fascinated by telescopic images of Mars that included long lines. The linear features seemed to run from the poles toward the middle of the Red Planet. Lowell speculated the features were Martian canals, dug by an advanced civilization to bring water from the poles to lands were it was becoming more scarce.

Unlike most of us, Lowell had the money to bankroll the investigation of his ideas. (In Lowell’s family, when one generation died, it handed over real wealth to the next round or two of Lowells. When my grandmother died, I inherited a sweater. But I digress.)

Once Douglass got Lowell’s telescope set up, he studied Mars alongside Lowell. But Douglass came to doubt Lowell’s interpretation of what could be seen of Mars. In time, Lowell fired Douglass.

Douglass made a living in Flagstaff for a while as a Justice of the Peace and also by teaching. But he was a true scientist, and he kept his research interests alive as best he could. One of his interests was our Mr. Sun.

One thing astronomers had noted about the sun were the dark patches, or sunspots, that sometimes could be seen on its face. The sunspots varied a lot in number over substantial periods of time, and they also appeared to go through a much faster 11-year cycle of smaller ups and downs.

Some people wondered if the sunspots created climate change on Earth. It seemed important to understand them better if they determined whether farmers would soon have good or bad yields. But studying the sunspot cycles was limited to the time people had been looking at the sun’s face and keeping records about it.

Here’s where some creative thinking comes into the story.

Douglass couldn’t help but see the lumber industry working around Flagstaff, cutting down the big ponderosa pines of the area. He noticed that the width of the tree rings in the trees varied quite a bit. He wondered if the 11-year cycle of the sun had influenced climate in Arizona in a way that was recorded in the growth of the ponderosas.

Douglass went to work looking at the freshly cut trees. He measured the width of tree rings, the thick ones and the thin ones. He established clear patterns in the ponderosas of the area, with some distinctive thick-thin sequences in the rings. Of course, it was easy to count the rings back through time to learn in what specific year the trees had done well versus when they hadn’t.

Then Douglas started to look at dead wood of the area. The outermost rings of some specimens of fallen trees sometimes matched up with the distinctive sequence of the living trees. When that happened he could count farther back in time with the older wood, and extend his thick-thin record keeping.

Next Douglass started to use old wood in the archeological sites of the Southwest, wood from Navaho hogans and even older structures. Eventually he and his colleagues who had taken up his methods had a good record of the thick-thin rings in the Southwest going back to the days of the most ancient ruins of the region.

What Douglass discovered in the tree rings were clear patterns showing how much climate could vary. There were years and decades of miserable tree growth, then long stretches of time in which the trees had flourished. Most interesting of all, it started to seem likely that climate change was a factor in what had brought early civilizations in the Southwest to their knees.

Tree rings are still being studied around the world. They give us one picture of how climate has varied - and it’s not a comforting bedtime tale about a kindly Mother Nature.

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: What is a “dead zone” in an ocean or other body of water? ~Victor

So-called dead zones are areas of large bodies of water - typically in the ocean but also occasionally in lakes and even rivers - that do not have enough oxygen to support marine life. The cause of such “hypoxic” (lacking oxygen) conditions is usually eutrophication, an increase in chemical nutrients in the water, leading to excessive blooms of algae that deplete underwater oxygen levels. Nitrogen and phosphorous from agricultural runoff are the primary culprits, but sewage, vehicular and industrial emissions and even natural factors also play a role in the development of dead zones.

Dead zones occur around the world, but primarily near areas where heavy agricultural and industrial activity spill nutrients into the water and compromise its quality accordingly. Some dead zones do occur naturally, but the prevalence of them since the 1970s - when dead zones were detected in Chesapeake Bay off Maryland as well as in Scandinavia’s Kattegat Strait, the mouth of the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the northern Adriatic - hints at mankind’s impact. A 2008 study found more than 400 dead zones worldwide, including in South America, China, Japan, southeast Australia and elsewhere.

Perhaps the most infamous U.S. dead zone is an 8,500 square mile swath (about the size of New Jersey) of the Gulf of Mexico, not far from where the nutrient-laden Mississippi River, which drains farms up and down the Midwest, lets out. Besides decimating the region’s once teeming shrimp industry, low oxygen levels in the water there have led to reproductive problems for fish, leading to lack of spawning and low egg counts. Other notable U.S. dead zones today occur off the coasts of Oregon and Virginia.

Fortunately, dead zones are reversible if their causes are reduced or eliminated. For example, a huge dead zone in the Black Sea largely disappeared in the 1990s following the fall of the Soviet Union, after which there was a huge spike in the cost of chemical fertilizers throughout the region. And while this situation was largely unintentional, the lessons learned have not been lost on scientists, policymakers and the United Nations, which has been pushing to reduce industrial emissions in other areas around the globe where dead zones are a problem. To wit, efforts by countries along the Rhine River to reduce sewage and industrial emissions have reduced nitrogen levels in the North Sea’s dead zone by upwards of 35 percent.

In the U.S., dead zones have also been reduced in the Hudson River and San Francisco Bay following clean-up efforts. Hypoxic conditions continue to plague the Gulf of Mexico, however, with matters made worse by pollution unleashed by Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill, as well as by a federal push to increase Midwest corn production, which effectively loads even more algae-inducing nutrients into the already overloaded system. The Mississippi Basin/Gulf of Mexico Water Nutrient Task Force, a coalition of federal, state and tribal agencies, has been busy monitoring the dead zone and recommending ways to reduce it since its formation in 1997. But with industrial and agricultural activity throughout Gulf and Midwestern states only increasing - and Mother Nature not making the job any easier - the task force has an uphill battle on its hands to say the least.

Dear EarthTalk: I am a retailer and have had customers ask whether the plastic bags in wine boxes are BPA free or not. What can I tell them? ~Chris

The short answer is: “It depends.” A fairly recent innovation in wine packaging, the so-called Bag-in-Box (BIB) dispenser makes use of a plastic bag with a nozzle surrounded by a corrugated cardboard box. The whole package sits easily on a shelf and usually features a built-in spout for easy pouring and resealing. The main benefit is that each box can hold about four bottles-worth of wine, and the BIB technology prevents oxidation, keeping the wine fresh for up to six weeks after the seal has been broken initially.

Besides costing less to manufacture than glass bottles, the Bag-in-Box apparatus, invented by Scholle packaging a half century ago, weighs significantly less, stacks more efficiently (meaning more wine can go with each container load) and will not shatter if dropped. As such, they are easier to transport, which keeps costs down and reduces the carbon footprint of the entire distribution process. While U.S. wine buyers traditionally have viewed wine in a box as cheap and unsavory, several American and European wineries are working to turn that view around by putting out award-winning vintages by the box. Eco-conscious yet no less discriminating wine consumers are helping to drive the growing demand for boxed wines in the U.S., which currently command about 10 percent of U.S. supermarket wine sales.

But boxed wine may have an environmental dark side: Some of the plastic bags inside the boxes contain Bisphenol-A (BPA), a synthetic chemical that has been in use for four decades to strengthen plastic food containers and other items but recently has been linked to a range of human health problems. “A growing amount of scientific research has linked BPA exposure to altered development of the brain and behavioral changes, a predisposition to prostate and breast cancer, reproductive harm, diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease,” reports the non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

The bags are made out of #7 plastic, a catchall category typically containing mixed types of plastic (“polycarbonate”), combined for various practical reasons. As more and more research comes to light, many environmentalists and public health advocates are warning consumers to avoid storing any food or drinks in containers made out of #7 plastic, as there is likelihood that BPA could be part of the mix.

Most wineries offering boxed wines make it clear if their plastic bags do not contain BPA. For one, Scholle Packaging, inventors of the BIB system and one of the largest wine box manufacturers, uses only BPA-free #7 plastic in their bags. Perini, Campo Largo, Bota Box and many other box wines come in BPA-free packaging. The simple way to know is to read the labels when you’re wine shopping.

Also, don’t think that by avoiding boxed wine you are necessarily avoiding BPA. Researchers have found that the plastic stoppers so many of us use to cap an unfinished bottle, not to mention the lining of concrete vats used to store wine at many wineries, contain and can leach BPA into your glass. That’s not to say that all wine contains BPA; quite the contrary, in fact, as most bottled wine still never comes into contact with plastic and as such does not carry any BPA-stigma. Regardless, the more you know, the safer you can be - so that the worst thing you get from your wine is a hangover.

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.