Well, count it did.  My vote and 85% of Manhattan for Obama.  62% of New York State.  Across the nation, landslide.  Gathering with friends, we watched tallies roll in while devouring Newman-O’s.  It happened quickly.  Within two hours, CNN, Jon Stewart, even FOX News were announcing the President Elect.  I can barely express the profound sense of relief we all feel!  I mean, last time I spent the wee hours of the night in a Starbuck’s watching Ohio teeter red with a bunch of dumbfounded strangers.  Drama was not welcome this time around.  It had to be a slam dunk.

And I have to say, the subway ride home was a bit of a surprise.  Slightly after midnight, the uptown A train was a rowdy affair, with cheers and Obama chanting at every station stop!  Especially rolling through Times Square and Columbus Circle, you’d think the Rangers won the Stanley Cup!  Stark contrast to 2004, when the day after was scene of New Yorkers in dazed disbelief.  And the day after the day after.  And the week after…

Well, there’s still a long way to go to get this country turned around.  I am sure that this is one great step in the right direction, but it’s going to take a lot more than just Obama and a blue House and Senate.  The world is changing a lot.  The planet is changing even more.  So many of us have been inspired by Obama’s leadership.  (I even donated to a political campaign for the first time ever.  Twice!)  But they can’t do all the work for us.  We can do so much to affect matters within our own grasp.  Locally.  The people around us.  Aside from just feeling relieved, I’m feeling inspired that not only can we make a difference in our democracy—we can stand up and create any kind of change we want!  Yeah, I’m energized.  Are you?

Then to work.  Maybe a haircut.  Finally gather with my posse to watch it unfold in all its mass media glory.

Last Thursday, Sarah Palin campaigning in Wisconsin used the phrase "clean, green natural gas" in her speech.  I catapulted into virtual convulsions upon hearing this!  From the transcript:

"…I have secured agreements to build a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline to get our clean, green natural gas down to hungry markets like here in Wisconsin…"

It offended my sensibilities so much that I had to write about it.  Googling the phrase shows that it’s not the first time it’s been used.  Perhaps, it’s a catchy slogan by one of the oil and gas industry’s PR firms?  At any rate, it’s grossly inaccurate.

I suspect that most people are aware of this.  So I won’t bother exhaustively researching the topic.  (If you disagree, please exhaustively research the topic…)  However, a sobering article fell into my lap this weekend; lap being mailbox, fell being put.

You can read the New York Magazine article "The Catskills Gas Rush" online in its entirety, or just help yourself to my cherry-picked rant below.

The article tells of the prospecting and exploitation of natural gas reserves held within the Marchellus Shale, a massive rock formation that stretches from below Albany, New York, through Pennsylvania, and all the way to Ohio and West Virginia.   It is possibly the largest reservoir of natural gas in America.  However, until recent high oil prices, no one has bothered to extract it because of the difficulty and expense.  Unlike other reserves, this gas is tightly trapped in the rock.

Well, the article goes on to explain the process by which this gas is extracted:

 "But the greater concern is the horizontal hydraulic fracturing process—known as “fracing”—which rattles the ground like earthquakes. Out West, where fracing began in 2003, neighbors complained that the process spoiled their drinking-water wells and damaged their foundations. The water for blasting open the shale and freeing the gas is treated with chemicals, to help break up the stone, and mixed with sand, to hold open the newly created fissures. Exactly which chemicals are used is not publicly known. The recipe was pioneered by Halliburton. The company considers the formula to be a trade secret and guards it like Kentucky Fried Chicken guards its batter recipe. One large independent study of fraced wells in the West, by the environmental scientist Theo Colborn, identified over 400 chemical toxins in contaminated groundwater and soil, including the carcinogens ethylbenzene, chromium, and arsenic."

Not exactly "clean and green" is it?  But it doesn’t really matter to the oil and gas companies, because they have a free pass to pollute at will:

"No prosecutions were brought. I was astonished to learn that the Energy Policy Act of 2005, passed by Congress in part to reduce dependence on foreign energy, specifically exempts oil and gas companies from major environmental-protection laws. These include the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act."

Furthermore, regardless of how tidily natural gas could be extracted, it is still a fossil fuel…

"But natural gas is no solution to global warming. It still contributes greenhouse gases…"

The article focuses on the Catskills, a mountain range northwest of New York City.  So this really does hit "close to home" in way that even lifting the ban on offshore drilling doesn’t (which also sends chills up my spine in an age when renewable energy should be our first priority and is within reach if we try).  I’ve spent time in and traveling through the Catskills numerous time and it is beautiful countryside.  It’s vast and lazy, rolling, green mountains so close to industrialized and urban areas are a treasure largely unprotected outside Catskill State Park.  The range also is a fairly impoverished region, so the big gas money coming in is being widely accepted by landowners.

"Many residents eagerly sign without a lawyer; those who don’t are holding out for a better offer. He [the gas company prospector featured in the article] hasn’t found a single person who is anti-gas."

I’m sure the locals would take offense to my taking offense, being that it’s where they live and they need the money.  For me, it’s a wilderness playground away from city life.  But my concerns are of a global scale.

"There are 500 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Marcellus, enough recoverable fuel to meet all of the nation’s needs for two full years."

To me, that reads "only two years"?  How much groundwater do we pollute for decades and generations to come for a mere two years of one country’s energy supply?  And at what climate cost?  At what point do we focus on renewable and climate-safe energy sources exclusively?  I’m afraid it won’t be until after all fossil sources are exhausted.  What will be left of the planet for our children then?

I have been losing more and more sleep over this in recent years.  Sometimes, I think maybe the thing to do is just seek refuge in a cabin in the Catskills and subsist on turnips…but even that plan is now in jeopardy!

Matchbox Jaguar XK 2006

I accidently froze my seltzer, which presented an opportunity to photograph ice crystals. The ice crystals proved elusive, but I got a neat drippy shot of the bottle:

Boylan Vintage Soda Pop

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White Attire Required

That little building behind the sign — that’s the post office.  One of many we encountered throughout the day.  For some odd reason.

We also learned from local residents that there was a donut place that sold donuts from 9:30pm to 12:30am in some parking lot.  The prospect of late night donuts after the gig got most of the band members excited.  Very excited.  And actually all of them, including myself even though I’m not really an avid donut eater.

So all we did while setting up and sound checking was think about donuts.  Matt is thinking of donuts right here.  "He’s thinking E-string…there’s no E in donut.  There’s a D in donut.  There’s a D-string on my guitar.  I’ll tune them all to D for donut…"

Schwartzer and Axe

Here is the stage before we played.  All those red signs are tennis awards.  This antique wooden complex apparently is some kind of clubhouse now.  It seems to have been a schoolhouse in the past.  There were school photos of kids from jarringly stark white classes of the 1940’s and 1950’s.  I’d like to know whatever happened to Wumpy Howland.

The Venue

The gig ended with less than an hour to spare to make our donut run.  With eight people and a stage full of gear, there was no way to get across the island in one trip, so we had to shuttle people to the motel.  It was like an eternity in donut years.  Darren, Ethan, and I finally headed off to find donuts with 20 minutes to spare.  We had a little trouble finding the place, but it was near a strip of bars, so 4 out of 5 inebriated locals knew the right way.  They were generally bewildered by our black suits.  In fact, so were we in that setting.  So we started running around like Men in Black, briefly, but there were lots of cops around and we didn’t want to attract undue attention until after we procured bags full of donuts.

And then there it was, with the blunt sound of a rigorously untrained chorus…

Back Door Donuts

At the center is an abstraction of short DNA segment. Although our initial focus is on public health, genetics represents a large part of the biostatistics field. The hexagons are reminiscent of carbon tetrahedrons in organic chemistry. They also represent the honeycomb, which in my mind symbolizes "getting things done" (cf. busy bees…). The monotype font represents the typeface of computer terminals and source code.

Stay tuned.

All of the key speeches from the convention can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/user/DemConvention

I watched the convention mostly on C-SPAN to avoid all the biased pundit viewpoints.  That stuff is out of control.  Fortunately, with YouTube, people can go view the speeches in their entirety and make up their own minds.

“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” - Thomas Edison, 1931.

Here’s a list of all the games I’ve attended at Fenway Park to date:

Good waves pretty much all of the time. I was up before the surfers. Cool to see dolphins in the water fairly frequently.

Here’s a shot of the beach looking back towards town:

This rock had all kinds of things living on it, including a pair of colorful starfish. No starfish pics, though…out of batteries!

Really large barnacles:

A 3-inch crab:

These anemone things were everywhere:

Finally, one last look at the big rock by the 8th street public access: