FOREST LAKE: Charles Boyd, who was so terribly burned in the fire at the home of H. B. Stone, last week, was taken to the Sayre Hospital on Christmas day. He will recover, but will probably lose his left hand. Charles is an orphan and is a bright, intelligent and courteous chap, and has the sympathy of all the people in the neighborhood. He was conscious throughout the awful ordeal and was very patient as well as thoughtful. His age is about eighteen years.

DIMOCK: Ray Jones has bought the feed and wagon shop of Lee Estus and will take possession in April. ALSO, when you want a good book or paper to read, go to the Dimock Free Library, of Isa Mills, near the resident of W. L. Stilwell.

MONTROSE: James M. Sprout died at his home in Catasauqua, Pa., Dec. 23, 1911, aged 68. He was born in Montrose and was a brother of our townsman, Louis H. Sprout. The deceased studied medicine at Ann Arbor and practiced at one time with Dr. Halsey, but at the breaking out of the Civil War, enlisted in Co. B, 28th Regiment, Pennsylvania Militia. After his discharge he became a businessman, in which he was successful. He is survived by a wife and two sons.

CLARKS SUMMIT/HALLSTEAD: Though it lacks official approval there is a belief in Lackawanna railroad circles that the board of directors will, with the new year, give serious consideration to building the cut-off from Clark’s Summit to Hallstead. Plans outlined call for the elimination of curvatures and grades, shortening of the road three miles. The whole, it is estimated, will cost approximately $14,000,000. What will be the biggest concrete bridge in the world is embodied in the plans. It will be near Nicholson, and will span two mountains across a valley. The Nicholson tunnel will be eliminated.

BROOKLYN: Christmas tree entertainments were held in all three of the churches on Saturday evening, and in consequence many little folks were made happy. ALSO, Ami Ely recently celebrated his 87th birthday. Mr. Ely has spent his entire life in Brooklyn and in his younger days was one of the staunch Democrats, and now with his mind active and mental faculty unimpaired, he is stronger in the faith. Mr. Ely enjoys the fruits of a well spent life, surrounded with his sons and grandchildren.

SOUTH MONTROSE: Mr. and Mrs. B. D. Titman are planning to move to South Montrose and will occupy John Struppler’s new house. Mr. Titman intends building a store on the Harper lot, near M. L. Lake’s residence, and will handle a complete line of general merchandise and also operate the Lehigh Valley coal business in that place.

SPRINGVILLE: Brown and Fassett have just completed modern coal pockets and will give this branch of their business special attention. These pockets are steel lined and with the latest screens, for delivering clean coal. This improvement will permit Brown & Fassett to give both better service and product with considerable saving in the way of handling.

EAST ARARAT: J. W. Silver and son Leo are tearing down the factory of the Jefferson Chemical Company

HALLSTEAD: The men who became dissatisfied about the change in foreman at the Herbeck-Demer’s Co. and quit work have started a factory in the Reckhow building and will manufacture cut glass ware.

ELK LAKE: A party of six Scranton young ladies arrived in Montrose, Wednesday, en route to Elk Lake, where they have been spending a few days in the club house. The young women, with the exuberance of youth, thought it a fine stunt to pedestrianize from Montrose to the lake, a distance of six miles, evidently believing our muddy country roads as good as the Electric City’s pavements (owing to the absence of Trinidad asphalt). To date there are no reports of a “relief party” having been sent out. Three of the young ladies are daughters of Atty. C. S. Woodruff, formerly of Montrose.

HOPBOTTOM: Christmas was rather an unpleasant day. Mud is plenty and it looks very much like an open winter.

HARFORD: Remember the concert to be given on Tuesday evening in the Methodist church by the colored jubilee singer, Prof. F. A. Morris. He is a singer, entertainer, humorist and orator. He sings the songs that were sung by the slaves.

SUSQUEHANNA: M. B. Belcher, one of Susquehanna’s most successful business men, dropped dead Sunday night. Funeral was held Tuesday afternoon with burial in Evergreen cemetery. ALSO, J. Hoffman has resigned as roundhouse foreman to accept a position with the B. & O.

FAIRDALE: Wednesday at noon, at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Jerome Smith, occurred the marriage of their daughter, Miss May Bell, to Paul H. Kiefer, of Jessup, the ceremony being performed by Rev. Cole, of Rush. They were attended by Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Bell. Miss Helen Alger played Lohengrin’s wedding march. The bride wore a gown of dark blue and carried white carnations. After the ceremony a bountiful dinner was served to about 35 guests.

FOREST CITY: There was a slight fall of “the beautiful,” Sunday night, just enough to give a Christmas coating. It is gone, and we are again knee deep in mud.

NEWS BRIEF: A new type of station construction has been adopted by the Lehigh Valley Railroad. The Company has built a number of passenger stations entirely of terra cotta, to make them absolutely safe from fire. The terra cotta is not visible in the completed structure. It is in the form of hollow bricks, which are covered by plaster inside the building and stucco on the outside. The fireproof qualities of the material are established by severe tests. As additional advantages, due to the fact that the dead air space made the blocks non conductors of heat, is that the stations are warmer in winter and cooler in summer than if they were of wood or bricks.

Back issues of 100 Years are now on our website, www.susqcohistsoc.org.

Governor Corbett signed a bill last week that closed some of the loopholes in the Megan’s Law statute. First, it closed the loophole that dealt with out-of-state offenders who move to Pennsylvania. The appellate courts had determined that the previous version of Megan’s Law did not require registration for certain out-of-state offenders. The Legislature fixed the language - and they did so in two different spots - to make clear that out-of-state sexual offenders need to register under Megan’s Law.

Second, the Legislature has closed the homeless offender loophole. Because the prior version of Megan’s Law required offenders to register their “residence,” the appellate courts determined that it did not require a homeless offender to register because that offender did not have a “residence.” In response, the Legislature amended the definition of “residence” to include “homeless shelters and parks.” Sexual offenders who live in such transient abodes are now required to register every thirty (30) days with the state police. The homeless offender must also provide a list of the places where the offender eats or receives mail during the period of transient living. While offenders with residences are required to notify the state police of any changes within 48 hours, the homeless offenders are subject to the 30-day registration periods until such time as they establish a real residence.

Significantly, a sexual offender’s failure to properly register under Megan’s Law is a separate felony offense with a mandatory minimum sentence of 2 years incarceration. The amended statute closes the previous loopholes that prevented the prosecution of out-of-state offenders and transient offenders.

Megan’s Law had always required the offenders determined by the Court to be a “sexually violent predator” to attend monthly counseling, but there was never any penalty for the failure to attend counseling. The Legislature has now made it a misdemeanor of the first degree (punishable by up to 5 years incarceration) for a sexually violent predator to fail to attend the required monthly counseling session.

Finally, the Legislature also amended some other sexual assault statutes in significant ways. The institutional sexual assault statute was amended to make it a criminal act for any teacher (or other school employee) to have sexual intercourse with a student. The age of the student does not matter, i.e., even if the student is over the age of consent and consents to the sexual intercourse with the teacher (or other school employee). The offense is a felony of the third degree (punishable by up to 7 years incarceration), it is a Megan’s Law offense, and it carries a lifetime bar from teaching.

The Legislature also changes the Statutory Sexual Assault statute, which previously had made it unlawful for anyone to have sex with a child under 16 years of age if offending party was 4 or more years older than then child. The statute has been amended to make different classifications for the age of the offender. There are now different classifications for offenders who are between 4 and 8 years older than the child, between 8 and 11 years older than the child, and over 11 years older than the child. In the case of the offender is more than 11 years older, the grading of the offense is increased from a felony of the second degree (punishable by up to 10 years incarceration) to a felony of the first degree (punishable by up to 20 years incarceration). This amendment of the statute will allow the Sentencing Commission to devise new guidelines for older offenders in statutory sexual assault cases so that there will be a difference between a statutory sexual assault sentence where the victim is 15 and the offender is 19 as opposed to a situation where the victim is 15 and the offender is 50.

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/.

Cookie Cutter Science

One of the best parts of baking for me as a kid was the process of “helping” my mama roll out and cut cookie shapes for the oven. At this age I know that I actually hindered her work and she was just being kind in letting me participate, but at the time I thought I was an aide in the process of transforming a lump of material into a thin sheet of ginger-rich dough that we could cut up into the barnyard animals of which I was so fond - and for which we had many different cutter shapes.

One of the goals in the overall process was to make as many ginger cookies as humanly possible from the first rollout of dough. The second rollout, because it necessarily had more flour worked into it, was considerably tougher and thicker, hence not as highly prized by anyone in the family. Indeed, when we were all done, we stored the first and second roll cookies in separate containers and ate them at different times, so great was our preference for the thinner and more delicate cookie.

Truly maximizing the number of animals you can cut from a sheet of dough and minimizing the waste bits between the animals is the sort of problem that a skilled mathematician can best address. It’s no easy task and would take more mathematical acumen than I will ever possess. Still, anyone who has done the kitchen work by the seat-of-their-pants can appreciate that some patterns of animals yield a lot more good, first-roll cookies and less waste than do others. (Simple squares and rectangles do the best job of all, capturing 100% of the dough for first-round status, but who wants to eat such simple shapes when much more is possible?)

A second more scientific issue involves how our brains process the shapes of cookie cutters themselves. I read about it recently in “The Mad Science Book” by Reto Schneider.

Here’s an experiment you can do with simple cookie cutter shapes: a star, a circle, perhaps a simple Christmas tree, and the like. First you need a friend to put them all under a towel for you, so you don’t see the shapes. Next, using your fingers, you should work to identify each cutter by its shape.

If you are like most people, you’ll be quite able to accomplish the task with your fingers. Our brains, in other words, are good at using our moving fingers for such work.

But if your friend presses, say, the star shape into your palm - still under the towel - you will likely be only 50% as good at being able to name the shape of the cutter.

There is quite a paradox in this result. Moving fingers require the brain to sort through a heck of a lot of information. Pressing the star into the hand is really much more simple. But why can’t the brain recognize the shape better in the simpler manner?

An American researcher named James J. Gibson took up this issue in the 1960s. He recognized that the simple experiment showed something significant. He hypothesized that our brains do better as active explorers of the world around them than as passive receivers of tactile input.

One way he had of testing the idea was to press the star shape into a subject’s hand, then release it, rotate it a bit, and press it in again. The proportion of people who could recognize the star increased when he did this.

In short, the more skin disturbance, the better. Or, to put it another way, the brain does well with different and various input - it doesn’t get swamped or overwhelmed by it.

Gibson’s work led to a revision of the theory of tactile reception. We feel things and recognize them not because our brains need to examine them in the most simple way, but because our brains are remarkably adept.

In short, we are all smarter in some respects than researchers before Gibson thought. That - plus this season of homemade cookies - is the good news.

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 do I need to know about the new U.S. energy efficiency standards for light bulbs that take effect in January 2012? Will certain bulbs be unavailable? And am I supposed to switch out my older inefficient bulbs with newer efficient ones? ~Melissa

Indeed, January 2012 marks the beginning of a planned phase-out of inefficient light bulbs in the United States that was signed into law five years ago by President George W. Bush. It was designed to reduce energy usage nationally from lighting by some 30 percent overall within three years. The benefits of the phase-out will be a savings of between $100 and $200 annually on electric bills in each American household - a total energy savings equivalent to the output of 30 large power plants - and reductions in global warming-inducing carbon pollution equivalent to taking 17 million cars off the road.

The first bulbs to disappear from store shelves are conventional 100 watt incandescents, but consumers can get compact fluorescent (CFL) or light emitting diode (LED) bulbs with similar light output instead. There are also some new more efficient incandescent bulbs that made the cut and will be available as replacements for conventional incandescents. In 2013, conventional 75 watt incandescents will be phased out, while conventional 60 and 40 watt bulbs will be phased out in 2014. Given the great alternatives available these days, most consumers will hardly notice any difference except lower electric bills.

As for what consumers should do to prepare themselves, the best advice is to get educated about the difference between power use and light output as we enter the brave new world of more efficient lighting. “Given the range of efficiencies the new bulbs provide, buying a bulb solely on the amount of power it uses no longer makes sense and we’ll have to shift to buying lumens,” reports Noah Horowitz of the Natural Resource Defense Council. “For example, a typical 60 watt light bulb produces around 800 lumens. The CFL that produces 800 lumens only uses 15 watts.” He adds that bulb packages will likely contain claims like “as bright as a 60 watt bulb” or “15W = 60W” to help consumers make the transition.

Horowitz adds that consumers looking to replace their old incandescents with new more efficient varieties should look for CFLs or LEDs marked as “warm white,” since the quality of light they give off will be most similar to that given off by old-school incandescents. “Those marketed as ‘cool white’ or ‘day light’ have much different light color, which only a small minority of consumers prefer,” says Horowitz.

Also, Horowitz warns that most CFLs are not dimmable and “may fail prematurely if installed in a dimming circuit.” So if your space features light sockets with dimming capability the best bet would be LED bulbs or newer more efficient incandescents. Specially marked dimmable CFL bulbs are also an option but at present are less commonly available.

As for whether to switch out your older incandescents with newer more efficient bulbs, the answer is maybe. According to Earth911, the leading source of information of how and where to recycle anything, consumers should consider the waste they will create by throwing out working albeit aging light bulbs. “If they aren’t spent, don’t trash them,” reports Earth911, adding that they can be used until they burn out - at which point more efficient bulbs can go in. Those who want to start saving energy now might consider donating older bulbs to local charities. Meanwhile, spent bulbs can be recycled. Earth911’s website can help find locations near you where old bulbs can be dropped off.

Dear EarthTalk: I always hear about hair products and sprays that claim to be natural and organic based. What are some hair products that can be purchased that are legit and cause no harm to the environment? ~Penny

Many common hair care products, including shampoos, conditioners and hair sprays, can pose health hazards. Most of the shampoos for sale on supermarket and drugstore shelves use a chemical called sodium laureth sulfate (or one of its derivatives), a foamy de-greaser that can cause follicle, skin and eye irritation, and which has been linked to some cancers when combined with other common shampoo ingredients.

Meanwhile, mass-market conditioners typically rely on so-called quaternary compounds to produce thicker, silkier and tangle-free hair, but these chemicals can also irritate the skin and eyes and likewise have been linked to cancer. As for hair spray and other styling products, most work by coating the hair with polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP), a plastic polymer that has been dissolved in solvents to keep it flexible. Environment Canada, Canada’s counterpart to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, classifies PVP as a medium health priority, although phthalates, triethanolamine, parabens and other hair spray ingredients may be more harmful, having been linked to respiratory, immune and endocrine problems as well as cancer.

Luckily for those who spend a lot of time and money getting their hair to look, smell and feel just right, a wide range of greener, healthier hair care products has emerged in recent years. Aveda has been a pioneer in the industry ever since Horst Rechelbacher launched the company in 1978 after visiting India and witnessing the healing powers of Hindu medicine and aroma. Today the company offers seven hair product lines tailored to different hair types, with the majority of the ingredients derived from plants, non-petroleum minerals or other natural sources. Furthermore, upwards of 89 percent of the essential oils and raw herbal ingredients Aveda uses in its hair care products are sourced from certified organic producers.

There are hundreds of other companies, too, that sell natural hair products. A great place to look is at the GoodGuide, www.goodguide.com, a website that rates 145,000 foods, toys, personal care and household products according to health, environmental and social responsibility standards. Top-rated shampoos listed there include Burt’s Bees Rosemary Mint Shampoo Bar, Aura Cacia Kids Shampoo and Aubrey Organics Men’s Stock Ginseng Biotin Shampoo. GoodGuide’s top performing conditioners include Dr. Bronner’s Hair Conditioning Rinse, Burt’s Bees Herbal Blemish Stick with Tea Tree Leaf Oil, KMS Haircare Liquid Assets and Nurture My Body Conditioner. As for styling, GoodGuide likes any of the varieties of Dr. Bronner’s Hair Conditioner and Style Cream as well as L’Oreal’s Elnett Extra Strong Hold.

Another source for credible hair care products recommendations is the Guide to Less Toxic Products, www.lesstoxicguide.ca, a free online resource produced by the Environmental Health Association of Nova Scotia. The guide lists 25 shampoos, 22 conditioners and 18 hair styling products that meet its stringent ingredient standards. Also check out the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep cosmetics database, www.ewg.org/skindeep, which provides detailed ingredient information and safety assessments for 70,000 personal care products, including hundreds of shampoos, conditioners and hair styling formulations.

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.