FOREST CITY: Judge Little, Monday afternoon, in disposing of the license cases evidenced strong disapproval of the beer wagons and delivery of intoxicants to homes. He said that if a man must have drink and would have it, it was better for him to go after it, rather than having it brought into his home by the case, where children and women also partake of it, and where the man also would probably drink much more than at the bar. This was in reference to the four wholesale license applicants at Forest City, who had been charged with violations of the law. ALSO, The Church of the Sacred Heart will receive a contribution of $2500, from Andrew Carnegie, toward the payment of a $3000 pipe organ. ALSO, Frank Eustice, the Forest City man who had his feet so badly frozen that they were amputated, died in the State Hospital, Scranton.

GREAT BEND: Mr. Isaac Roosa is arranging his affairs to leave next week for Mobile, Ala., where he will take up land and locate. His family will go about March 1. Mr. Roosa has been a resident of this place all his life and he will be greatly missed in the community.

SPRINGVILLE: The death of Mrs. Emily Riley occurred Jan. 15, 1912. She was the oldest resident, having passed her 91st birthday a few weeks prior to her death. She was the widow of Minot Riley, for years one of the storekeepers of the place, and of their four children but one is left, Stuart Riley, who has conducted the business since the death of his father. Mrs. Riley shared her commodious home with her son and his wife and during the many months of decline received a daughter’s care and attention. The funeral took place at her late home Wednesday. Interment in the Bunnell cemetery at Auburn. ALSO, Benvan Johnson has sold his house and lot in town here to John Mitchell, who expects to occupy the same April 1. Dr. Diller will move, but does not know exactly where yet; we hope he will remain with us. We certainly need two doctors; the ride over these hills is too much for one.

BROOKLYN: The class of 1912 held a class party at the home of Miss Louise Reynolds at East Bridgewater, last Friday eve.

SOUTH MONTROSE: Lewis Hawley, who went to Florida last fall, has rented the Fish and Clark farms for the coming summer; there is no place like old Susquehanna after all. ALSO, on Sunday, Jan. 28, at 2:30 p.m., there will be preaching in the little Union church. Rev. Harmon will bring a man from Wilkes-Barre who will speak for the Anti-Saloon League.

MONTROSE: The management of the C-Nic theatre wishes to announce that owing to the fact that under present conditions the theatre is not on a paying basis and hereafter the price of admission will be 10 cents; furthermore wishes to announce that he is raising the price only to be able to continue the amusement for its patrons. I hope the change in price will not prove detrimental to the past liberal patronage. D & H Green Trading Stamps will still continue to be given with each ticket. (Frank Caruso, prop.)

SOUTH GIBSON: Stephen Carpenter has sold his old Stage route to Ralph Gelatt of North Jackson. Mr. Gelatt will soon move to this town and will occupy the Dr. Haverly house.

SUSQUEHANNA: Mrs. Thomas B. Blake had a narrow escape from being killed recently when the water front of the cook stove exploded. Mrs. Blake had started the fire only a few minutes when she noticed the water in the hot water compartment was frozen. She was about to put out the fire when the explosion took place. The shock was so great that a number of window panes were broken and the stove was completely ruined. Mrs. Blake received several bad bruises on the face and arms.

FRIENDSVILLE: Morris Tingley, of Hop Bottom, the genial and efficient County Surveyor, spent the past week at A. Minehan’s running the lines on Lake Side Farm, some of which were not run since 1845.

BROOKLYN: A sleighload of young people from Montrose had supper at the Austin House one night last week. ALSO, Couger [Conger] Tiffany celebrated his eighty-ninth birthday last Wednesday.

WATROUS CORNERS, BRIDGEWATER TWP.: Frank Catlin and Will Very are working on the ice house at Heart Lake.

EAST ARARAT: A great many men are working at Hathaway pond harvesting ice.

HOP BOTTOM: Jasper T. Jennings wrote the following about the history of Hop Bottom. “Hop Bottom was incorporated in 1881. The first permanent settler, where the borough now is, was Orson Case. Truman and Elisha Bell, two brothers, took an active part in the early progress of the village and the first person to sell goods in the place was Amos B. Merrill. Other early merchants were: Geo. W. Rees, E. M. Tiffany, Nelson M. Finn, George P. Tiffany, Geo. Strupler, J. S. Wright, M. A. Blair, J. P. A. Tingley, Frank Jeffers and others. The D L & W railroad passes through this place, stopping at the Foster station. The first school house was built in 1858. Hop Bottom is said to have derived its name from the abundance of wild hops that were growing in the valley.

MONTROSE: The trial of Mrs. Minnie Lee, charged with the arsenic poisoning of her husband, Willis Lee, of Lanesboro, took place in Montrose. Atty. F. D. Axtell told of the circumstances in which Lee had placed his wife by his neglect and attention to another woman who had usurped her in his affections. The prisoner and her daughter, Flossie, a young woman of about 20 years, showed their emotion by quietly sobbing in their handkerchiefs, while the attorney briefly sketched the early happy married life of Lee and his young bride and how through baser passions he had finally drifted from her, bringing her into surroundings of squalor and poverty. Several testified that they had purchased arsenic, in small quantities for Mrs. Lee, but none surfaced when the home was searched. After Lee’s burial his body was ordered exhumed and a second autopsy was performed in a barn near the cemetery. However, prior to this Loren Prentice, a cousin of Willis Lee, and the grave digger, stated that the first body exhumed was that of a woman. Said she was a suicide. She was buried about the same time as Lee. Her body was returned to the cemetery and Lee’s was brought to the barn. The barn was used for storing wagons and had a basement in which horses were occasionally kept. Arsenic was found in the remains, but may have been from the medication Lee received. [More next week]

I received a letter from a reader who was looking for more information on how the different law enforcement agencies across the federal, state, county and municipal levels interacted with each other. This would be a monumental task as the different agencies that have full or even limited law enforcement jurisdiction are staggering. Still, there were a few questions in the reader’s letter that can be answered fairly easily.

First, the reader was wondering about the jurisdiction of these different agencies. First, a federal law enforcement agency has jurisdiction anywhere in the country provided they are investigating a federal offense. In other words, the federal law enforcement agencies can assume jurisdiction over any local offense provided there is a basis to believe that a federal statute was violated. This does not mean that the federal government must become involved in an investigation and prosecution. There is a substantial overlap between the state and federal criminal law, and the federal government exercises a great deal of discretion in determining what offenses meet the proper standard to warrant prosecution in federal court. Over the course of over 12 years as a prosecutor, I can recall only a handful of cases where the federal authorities decided to prosecute a local defendant - and there were conversations with local authorities prior to that decision being made to assume federal jurisdiction over the cases.

In terms of the jurisdiction of the Pennsylvania State Police, they have statewide jurisdiction to investigate crimes and arrest suspects for criminal violations. Within the structure of the State Police, however, a criminal investigation will be transferred to the State Police Barracks for the community where the crime was committed. On the other hand, there have been occasions where a State Trooper in Susquehanna County has charged defendant’s for criminal acts in other counties when those acts arose out of a continuing criminal enterprise. When that occurs, the State Trooper would call me and I would have a conversation with the District Attorney in the other county to seek permission to file the criminal charges here in Susquehanna County - rather than having criminal complaints filed in a multitude of jurisdictions.

With respect to county detectives, they would only have county-wide jurisdiction unless they have been cross-designated in other counties for purposes of conducting cooperative investigations. With respect to local municipal police officers, they have jurisdiction within the municipality covered by the police department, but may exceed the territorial boundaries of that jurisdiction to make arrests under limited circumstances. The most common circumstance would be a traffic incident that began in the police officer’s municipality, but the traffic stop did not occur until the parties had crossed the municipal boundary. Municipal police officers may also leave their primary jurisdiction to assist another police entity if requested to do so. This occurs with some regularity in Susquehanna County as there are times when the State Police cannot respond quickly and the State Police contact the closest municipal police department to solicit assistance. When this occurs, the municipal police officer may investigate a criminal act and arrest a suspect outside of his or her primary municipal jurisdiction.

The jurisdiction question relates only to the ability of a police officer to make an arrest - it does not relate to the ability to investigate a crime. Law enforcement officers are not bound by any restraints when they are investigating criminal activity - and it is fairly common for a law enforcement officer to travel outside his or her primary jurisdiction for purposes of conducting interviews or reviewing records. The State Police have solved quite a few burglaries in this county by traveling up to the pawn shops in Broome County, New York, to review the records of sales maintained by those businesses.

Across that entire spectrum of jurisdictional boundaries for law enforcement entities, there is a common theme of cooperation and assistance. The more cooperation, assistance and communication - the faster crimes are generally solved. Each law enforcement entity has its own wealth of knowledge that can prove invaluable in a criminal investigation - and any good investigator utilizes that knowledge.

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/.

And A Little Child Shall Lead Them

Little kids are amenable to learning new habits - generally much more so than those of us who are set in our ways because this isn’t our first rodeo. That’s why it’s sometimes more effective to teach children health science information rather than to do outreach aimed directly at their parents.

That’s part of the background to the Global Soap Project. It’s a project that rests on some simple science long ago worked out by biologists and medical researchers. The basic fact is that many types of infections are spread through contaminated water and dirty hands. Microbes can flourish in such spots, particularly sometimes in places like crowded refugee camps or in poor nations.

The Global Soap Project is a program with two basic components. The first is to collect “gently used” bars of soap from hotels – soap that otherwise would be discarded. The pieces of soap are reprocessed in Georgia and shipped to nations like Haiti and Uganda where poverty is rife and health and sanitation facilities are few.

The second prong of the program is to teach children in developing nations to use the soap to wash their hands before eating and after using the toilet. Children accept the lessons - as trusting little kids the world around do - and if they establish hand-washing as a personal habit it likely influences others in their households at home.

Hand-washing is a simple yet key approach to combating a lot of water-borne illness - like cholera. For a variety of different reasons, in some places around the world hand washing is just not a pattern of conduct for many people. In many places it’s a difficult habit to establish in part because a bar of soap can cost a day’s wages.

Simple but basic hand washing habits are one of the best ways to combat diseases that flourish where sanitation is poor - conditions that affect a staggering 2.4 billion people according to the World Health Organization.

As I read about the Global Soap Project the other day, I thought about how much I take for granted in my life. A bar of soap beside the bathroom sink, warm water to wash with, anti-bacterial soap in the shower, and so on. When I travel, I also take for granted the little bars of soap the hotel provides me.

According to a news report from CNN, a hotel maid named Fatoma Dia is one person involved collecting scrap soap. She works at a Hilton hotel where she simply tosses little-used bars of soap into a collection bucket as she cleans rooms. Her hotel in total accounts for several hundred pounds of soap collected each month.

The soap redistribution project has included work in Haiti. Especially after the earthquake of January, 2010, many Haitians have been living without what we’d recognize as adequate sanitation facilities, both at home and in refugee camps. Cholera has often dogged the people of Haiti. A total of more than 400,000 cases have been reported since the disease reared its head in October of 2010. Basic hygiene - like washing hands with soap and water - can make all the difference in terms of limiting transmission of disease in crowded places.

CNN reports one project in Haiti that’s been aimed at changing kids’ habits. A Port-au-Prince school teaches its children to wash their hands with soap and water using a jingle with these words: “Good morning, water! Good morning soap! Goodbye microbes!” Obviously some punchiness has been lost in translation, but the simple yet useful idea gets through to me as I sit here in a nation that takes pure water and soap for granted.

I wish Dia and her co-workers the best in collecting soap that would otherwise be thrown out. Sometimes simple things matter the most of all - like giving little kids (and their parents) in the developing world a chance to avoid water-borne diseases.

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: Are there healthy, green-friendly mouthwashes? I’ve heard that some contain formaldehyde and other nasty substances. ~Marina

Many mainstream mouthwashes contain ingredients that you definitely don’t want to swallow, or even put down the drain. According to the Environmental Health Association of Nova Scotia’s (EHANS’s) “Guide to Less Toxic Products” - a free online resource designed to help consumers choose healthier, greener everyday products - conventional mouthwash is often alcohol-based, with an alcohol content ranging from 18-26 percent. “Products with alcohol can contribute to cancers of the mouth, tongue and throat when used regularly,” the guide reports, adding that a 2009 review in the Dental Journal of Australia confirmed the link between alcohol-based mouthwashes and an increased risk of oral cancers.

And you might want to avoid mouthwashes with fluoride (aka sodium fluoride). While fluoride may help fight cavities, ingesting too much of it has been linked to neurological problems and could be a cancer trigger as well. Common mouthwash sweeteners have also been linked to health problems: Saccharin is a suspected carcinogen while sucralose may trigger migraines. Synthetic colors can also be troublesome.

Some brands contain formaldehyde (aka quanternium-15). According to the National Cancer Institute, overexposure to formaldehyde can cause a burning sensation in the eyes, nose and throat as well as coughing, wheezing, nausea and skin irritation. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers formaldehyde a “probable human carcinogen” and research has shown an association between long term workplace exposure and several specific cancers, including leukemia. Few of us are exposed to as much formaldehyde as, say, morticians, but does that mean its okay to swish it around in our mouths every day?

Other problematic ingredients in many conventional mouthwashes include sodium lauryl sulfate, polysorbate, cetylpyridinium chloride and benzalkonium chloride, all which have been shown to be toxic to organisms in the aquatic environments where these chemicals end up after we spit them out.

So what’s a concerned green consumer to do? EHANS recommends the following mouthwashes that do not contain alcohol, fluoride, artificial colors or sweeteners: Anarres Natural Candy Cane Mouthwash, Auromere Ayurvedic Mouthwash, Beauty with a Cause Mouthwash, Jason Natural Cosmetics Tea Tree Oil Mouthwash, Dr. Katz TheraBreath Oral Rinses, Hakeem Herbal Mouthwash, and Miessence Freshening Mouthwash. Besides these brands, the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Cosmetic Database also lists Tom’s of Maine Natural Baking Soda Mouthwash, Healing-Scents Mouthwash, and Neal’s Yard Remedies Lavender and Myrrh Mouthwash as least harmful to people and the environment.

You can also make your own all-natural mouthwash at home. Eco-friendly consumer advice columnist Annie Berthold Bond recommends mixing warm water, baking soda or sea salt, and a drop of peppermint and/or tea tree oil for a refreshing and bacteria-excising rinse. Another recipe involves combining distilled or mineral water with a few dashes of fresh mint and rosemary leaves and some anise seeds; mix well and swish! A quick Internet search will yield many other down-home natural mouthwash formulas.

Dear EarthTalk: I understand that some Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic U.S. states have banded together to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions. Can you enlighten? ~Bo

Given the lack of federal action to curb greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., several East Coast states joined together in 2008 to form the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), committing to a market-based system to cap carbon pollution and lower energy bills while creating more green jobs.

Under RGGI, the 10 participating states - Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont - agreed on a region-wide greenhouse gas emissions limit, enforced through the sale of pollution permits to large fossil fuel power plants there. The utilities that run the plants purchase the right (at quarterly auctions) to emit certain capped amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2). The money raised is in turn invested in local businesses throughout Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states that promote energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. RGGI’s overall goal is to reduce CO2 emissions from the power sector in the states involved by 10 percent by 2018.

The program was conceived in 2008 by then New York governor George Pataki based on a similar federal program launched by President George H.W. Bush in 1990 that successfully curbed emissions of other pollutants that led to acid rain.

While RGGI had strong bipartisan support at launch, changing priorities have since forced some states to reconsider their commitments. According to RenewableEnergyWorld.com, New Jersey is likely to back out, while factions in New Hampshire and Maine have also called for a withdrawal. “The political tides have turned significantly since the program was started, and many legislatures are now dominated by a new crop of lawmakers looking to cut spending in cash-strapped states,” the website reports.

Environmentalists and many business owners have banded together to try to save RGGI in the face of economic threats to its viability. Last July some 200 Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic businesses signed on to an open letter urging the governors of the 10 participating states to keep up with the program so that it can achieve its goals. “The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative shows that market-based programs can reduce greenhouse gas emissions while boosting our economy and improving energy security, and we encourage you to support and strengthen RGGI going forward,” the letter states. The letter goes on to cite research showing a $4-6 increase in economic output for every $1 invested in energy efficiency programs in the RGGI states. “Even better, these market-driven investments create jobs in the clean tech sector - one of the most dynamic segments of our state economies.”

Perhaps more important, RGGI “serves as a powerful model for what a comprehensive national energy policy should do” says the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a leading environmental group. Whether or not the economy will improve enough or climate change will become dramatic enough for Congress and the White House to take federal action to limit greenhouse gas emissions across the board is anybody’s guess. In the meantime, keeping alive programs like RGGI might be the best we can hope for.

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.