Hoax?

The prevailing winds off the hills around Hackettstown caused the tree's shape.

     So, I understand Faux News' British cousin, The Telegram has now published allegations that climate change is a huge hoax. 
     I didn't real the story because reading most of Rupert Murdoch's drivel is similar to watching Faux News. It lowers the IQ.
    But I know there are people who want to believe the climate isn't changing even as they watch the climate changing. 
     

Farmers are intimately aware of climate change.

 

     What I don't know is why.  
      Even putting aside the fact it makes no sense to claim it's a hoax: no one is profiting from telling the truth about climate change, but huge corporations DO profit from continuing to cause it, it makes no sense.
      Climate change deniers are sitting in the middle of the evidence and they don't want to believe. That makes no sense.
     It could be they just aren't paying attention. 
     The National Climate Assessment, released last spring, details, in 840 pages, exactly how climate change is impacting agriculture. This is not a political document. It is a scientific document.
     Anecdotal evidence comes from farmers as well, so if these climate change deniers want to learn the truth, they just have to consult a farmer.

   

Genesis Farm in Marksboro, NJ

     Extreme weather events that were once rare have become common. These include prolonged periods of heat, unusual numbers of heavy downpours, floods and drought. (See, California)
      Following are six points relating to agriculture from the National Climate Assessment.
     -- Climate disruptions to agricultural production have increased in the past 40 years and are projected to increase over the next 25 years.  By mid-century and beyond these impacts will be increasingly negative on most crops and livestock. (In other words, on the food we all need to survive)
     --Many agricultural regions will experience declines in crop and livestock production from increased stress due to weeds, diseases, insect pests and other climate change change induced stresses. 
     -- Current loss and degradation of critical agricultural soil and water assets due to increasing extremes in precipitation will continue to challenge both rainfed and irrigated agriculture unless innovative conservation methods are implemented. (Farmers in the developed world are implementing these methods. Farmers in the developing world have more trouble with this._
     --The rising incidence of weather extremes will have increasingly negative impacts on crop and livestock productivity because critical thresholds are already being exceeded.
     --Agriculture has been able to adapt to recent changes in climate. However, increased innovation will be needed to ensure the rate of adaptation of agriculture and the associated socioeconomic system can keep pace with climate change over the next 25 years. (Again, advantage the developed world, but who knows how long that will last.)
     --Climate change effects on agriculture will have consequences for food security, both in the United States and globally, through changes in crop yields and food prices and  effects on food processing, storage, transportation and retailing. (Anyone even a little concerned with homeland security, needs to take note that the more problems facing agriculture, the more vulnerable it is.)
 

The Great Meadows Muckland was created by an Eisenhower-era damming of the Pequest River. The extremely fertile soil is especially good for leafy vegetables.

     These are real.
     Talk to any farmer, anywhere.
     Farmers won't speak in these general terms. They will tell you exactly what they have to deal with. It's hard enough to be a farmer in normal times -- if there is any such thing. Imagine what they have to deal with now. 
     Some of the effects of climate change can be mitigated, but we have to act quickly, not pretend there is a debate when the debate doesn't exist. 

Members of a Community Supported Garden harvest the last of the summer vegetables.

    

Entitled

     So a friend and I were dishing over Popeye burgers (think spinach) at a local diner and the talk turned, as it does with those of us who are dinosaurs, or at least mastodons, to the younger generation. 

     My friend, a college professor, was lamenting that some of her students seem to lack focus. She's normally very positive about her classes, but this semester has apparently spawned a crop of unmotivated students. She noted this could be at least partially attributed to the  number of classes snowed out, but she was pretty sure that wasn't the entire problem. She thinks part of the problem is they are simply not prepared for college.

     As we were leaving the diner, a young girl, not wearing a coat in the near-zero weather, is standing on the sidewalk. She accosts us and berates by friend for being critical of her generation.

     Excuse me?

     Here's this kid who blatantly eavesdrops on a private conversation from the next table. Then she tells a tenured college professor (full professor that is) she has no "right" to say some of her students are "slow." That she as no right to discuss problems in her classes -- without mentioning names -- with a friend over dinner.

     Well she sure proved us right about her generation. Talk about a stereotype proving true: rude with a sense of entitlement. 

     I can just see her childhood. She grew up in a world where she got trophies just for showing up. Where she wasn't disciplined for misbehaving. Where her parents didn't back up the teachers who tried to make her behave or required her to work hard. 

     Which means, it really isn't her fault. She was probably taught she can't do anything wrong. She probably wasn't taught to be respectful of her teachers. Or adults in general. To stand on her own two feet. To apply herself if she wants to get ahead. 

     So we really were talking about the wrong generation, weren't we? We should have been talking about her parents, not her. 

Goodbye, Vinny

     Today, I think a little piece of heave looks just like a small kitchen in a little old house in Washington Borough. The cabinets are painted green and there is a yellow farmhouse sink. There are paint  swatches taped to walls adorned with quips and snarky comments written in black magic marker, because, since the walls are going to be painted soon anyway, might as well write comments.

     The table, under a window, adjacent to the back door, has one less empty chair tonight.

     Through the cigar smoke, Dick Harpster, Jim Staples and Alan Painter welcome Vinny Zarate. Dick pours another tumbler of Scotch.

      This is old newspaperman heaven.

      Vincent R. Zarate joined his old buddies on Sunday, Feb. 7.

      These guys were truly of the old school. The "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" newspapermen.

     Vinny's stated goal as a newspaper reporter was : "I want to ruin someone's breakfast every Sunday." A noble goal that most of us real reporters aspire to.

     Vinny started his career at The Easton Express and moved to The Newark Evening News in 1961. He stayed there until it closed in 1972. At the 25th anniversary celebration of the life of that noted newspaper, his anecdote about the days in the Morristown Bureau was the one that got the most laughs.

     It seems he was on the night desk when one of the nuns from the Episcopal Convent of St. John the Baptist in Mendham died.  He ran into a problem in the second graph and called the desk in Newark where he had the chance of reaching Jack McCarthy, Walter O'Malley or Mickey McMenimen.

     He got Walter.

    "How do you refer to an Episcopalian nun on second reference?" Vinny asked.

     Walter didn't miss a beat.

      "An imposter."

     After the death of that great newspaper, Vinny moved, briefly, to "the dark side." He worked at the state Department of Community Affairs and then on the gubernatorial campaign of Congressman Charles Sandman. Then he joined the statehouse bureau of The Star-Ledger.

     He covered the budget and often knew the figures before the governor. He taught the younger reporters in the bureau to cultivate the best sources, including the printer in the statehouse basement.

     Vinny was 84. He outlived by five years one of the reporters he trained. Mike Celizic was just 62, so I guess we shouldn't be too sad. But we are.

     His obit featured quotes from former Gov. James Florio and his former bureau chief Leonard Fisher and former insurance commissioner Kenneth Merin. It could have featured quotes from many others, especially colleagues and former colleagues who know the loss of any old newspaperman (or newspaperlady) is a tragedy because people who really believe in this profession as a calling are scarce these days.

    It could also have featured some of the crazy songs Vinny would write for special occasions, like Harpster's 70th birthday or Christine Todd Whitman's exit from the statehouse.

    The one thing more important to Vinny than his job was his family: his daughter, Joan, her husband, William, and their kids, Adan and Vincent. They miss him too.

    So, enjoy the company in newspaper heaven, Vinny.

Vax Populi

Abby Crisp is a senior at Hackettstown High School

      Part of me wanted to just use photos as this blog. Photos of children, although a couple of the children are seniors in high school.

Joelle Tshudy is a senior at Belvidere High School

      The reason I thought maybe just photos would do is because it's a column about children. Or rather, about what parents think is best for their children.
     Parents have to make decisions every day about what is best for their children.
     Breast feed? When do you start solid food? What do you do about teething pain? In my day we read Dr. Spock like the Bible it is.  Pre-school? One or two years? Public or parochial school? How many extra-curricular activities? 

Desli Norcross and a friend with a very interesting dragon.

     Yes, there were questions about vaccines. Not the MMR, not when my kids were little. The only kids who didn't get the MMR were the children of illegals who thought the free clinic in Dover was run by the Federales.  The questions were about the DPT. Specifically the P in DPT. Some children run a fever. A very few end up with brain damage. Or dead. 
     So, we talked to our pediatricians and decided. 

Molly Gumm of Ringoes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      Of course moms discussed these things through our "social networks." Our social medium was a kitchen table where our chats were interrupted by the urgent need to tie a shoe or wipe a runny nose. Or maybe a wall phone in the kitchen, with a cord long enough to reach the sink and the stove and the dishwasher and all the cabinets. Until, of course, one of the kids chased the cat into the kitchen and they got tangled up in it. 

Alea Funkhauser of Hudson, NY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

    

     So I have great sympathy for parents who worry about vaccinating their children. What I don't have sympathy for is parents who don't give a damn about other people's children.
     Vaccinating kids isn't just about your kids. It's about herd immunity. We all have an obligation to protect each other and each others' children. You know, it takes a village to raise a child. Well, the corollary to that is the village must keep all the children safe. 

Avery and her goat at the Hunterdon County Fair

     The 1998 study linking autism to the stabilizers in vaccines was discredited beginning in 2004 and retracted in 2010. It's author lost his medical license after he admitted to fabricating the study for a financial motive. 
     Seriously, people, especially parents, get off this.

Jess Dai of East Amwell at the Hunterdon Fair

      Certainly, there may be many factors to blame for the seemingly incredible number of children diagnosed with autism. The over use of insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and rodenticides by factory farms, increased carbon monoxide in the atmosphere, fire retardants in cloth used to make pajamas, poisons sprayed on lawns by arrogant people who think their front yard should look like a green at The Masters, overzealous exterminators, artificial sweeteners, people having children later in life. Or a combination of any or all of the above.
     And, genetic predisposition to any or all of the causative factors.  The point is, we don't know. 
    

A dog and her boy in Oak Ridge.

      And, because we don't know, but we do know that the diseases vaccines were developed to wipe out were serious, at least for a percentage of the people who get them, we need to err on the side of vaccinating. 
     Because we're all in this together. 
     And so are  our kids. 

Olivia and a baby goat because if there's anything cuter than a kid, it's a kid with a baby goat.

Stewardship

Sometimes the work of humankind serves to enhance Creation.

 

   The Nature Conservancy held a forum for farmers -- it's first -- that attracted almost as many non-farmers as the intended audience. I'm not sure why, but I'm kinda glad. Because I think they learned something, maybe something unexpected. About stewardship.
    TNC scheduled several themed workshops on pollinators and agri-tourism, but the overarching theme of that snowy day in Augusta was stewardship. 
     Former NJ Ag Secretary Charles Kuperus set the tone during his opening remarks. A farmer, nurseryman and long-time resident of rural New Jersey, Kuperus spoke passionately about the land. 
      Each inidividual has his or her own motivation for taking care of the land. Kuperus says as a Christian he is obligated to care for God's Creation. That obligation is the basis of GreenFaith, an interdenominational group that provides assistance to houses of worship in energy efficiency, solar energy, wind power and other methods of saving the earth and, often, saving money.

I've heard it said if God created anything more beautiful than the horse, he kept it to Himself.

      I'm on the same page as Charlie Kuperus and GreenFaith. And, I don't get people who call themselves Christians who aren't concerned about Creation. The argument is, the Second Coming is coming, so who cares? That's ridiculous. If you are actually Christian, you believe you can't know when that will be and must keep watch. 
     Perhaps I'm wrong about this, but seems to me keeping watch also includes not poisoning what God created.  

This tree is on the Howell Living History Farm in Mercer County, NJ. 

   Understand, I'm not one of those people who believes because of the beauty of Creation. That strikes me as a little shallow. Yes, there's a lot of beauty but to base a faith on it, as a way of life, I don't think so. 
    I don't care if the people listening to Charlie talk about his faith were moved to become believers rights then and there. But I hope they accepted his sincerity and realized every steward of the earth has a valid reason for being that way. 

This beautiful German Shepherd, or Alsatian as most of the world would call him, is the product of quite a bit of human interference, but the basic "dog-ness" or "wolf-ness" of the canine is a gift of God. 

I just had to include this photo of these two creatures of Creation. Jeremiah kisses his friend the Blind Mare.