Things We Don't Love
Video Vulture -- The Bristol Police Department has a surveillance camera allowing the cop shop to oversee large parts of the Bristol downtown without even leaving their desks. Big Brother in the Sky. Not only is it bad policing, it stinks of 1984. There's no place for that kind of thing in a rural areas such as ours, and the town should hold a public cermony in which it destroys the camera.
Obsessive Mowing -- The world is heating up and running out of oil, and the small engines used on lawn mowers are big greenhouse-gas polluters. Yet many Vermonters insist on having giant lawns and cutting them obsessively. Take Saturday off. Let the meadows bloom! And if you have to cut, get an electric mower. I bought a Newton electric mower from DR Power in Vergennes. Powerful and highly recommended. More info: http://www.drpower.com/prdSell.aspx?p1Name=Catalog&Name=CEMSellGroup&BC=0%3aHome&LinkType=2.
Idling Engines -- While we’re on the subject of unnecessary pollution and oil usage, since when was it OK to idle your car while you're talking on the phone -- or just to keep cool on a hot day? At a time when motor vehicles -- especially pickup trucks and SUVs -- are primary contributors to dangerous climate change/global warming, people idling their engines are only making things worse. Cell phone users running their engines while in a parking space to have a conversation ought to just hang up and drive, or turn off the engine and talk. And for those of you running the AC while a family member darts into the store – you’re not gonna die of heat prostration in Vermont, so please just turn the car off and roll down the windows. Your lungs will thank you.
"Coming to Middlebury" (well, maybe) -- In a full-page ad on the back of the summer 2005 issue of Middlebury Magazine (the college publication), Shelburne Bay Senior Living Community says something called "The Lodge at Otter Creek" is "coming to Middlebury, Fall 2006." Don't get out your wallet just yet. This "elegant retirement living" development is still being considered by the town and doesn't yet have the necessary approvals. Even if the town does approve the project, a source at Shelburne Bay acknowledges, the earliest anything would be available would be in spring of 2007. So, two questions -- what made the folks at Shelburne Bay think they could get away with such a questionable claim? And couldn't the college be a little more careful in screening the claims of its advertisers? This is a high-profile, controversial project, and anybody who reads the local papers would know it's not "coming to Middlebury, Fall 2006."
Obsessive Mowing -- The world is heating up and running out of oil, and the small engines used on lawn mowers are big greenhouse-gas polluters. Yet many Vermonters insist on having giant lawns and cutting them obsessively. Take Saturday off. Let the meadows bloom! And if you have to cut, get an electric mower. I bought a Newton electric mower from DR Power in Vergennes. Powerful and highly recommended. More info: http://www.drpower.com/prdSell.aspx?p1Name=Catalog&Name=CEMSellGroup&BC=0%3aHome&LinkType=2.
Idling Engines -- While we’re on the subject of unnecessary pollution and oil usage, since when was it OK to idle your car while you're talking on the phone -- or just to keep cool on a hot day? At a time when motor vehicles -- especially pickup trucks and SUVs -- are primary contributors to dangerous climate change/global warming, people idling their engines are only making things worse. Cell phone users running their engines while in a parking space to have a conversation ought to just hang up and drive, or turn off the engine and talk. And for those of you running the AC while a family member darts into the store – you’re not gonna die of heat prostration in Vermont, so please just turn the car off and roll down the windows. Your lungs will thank you.
"Coming to Middlebury" (well, maybe) -- In a full-page ad on the back of the summer 2005 issue of Middlebury Magazine (the college publication), Shelburne Bay Senior Living Community says something called "The Lodge at Otter Creek" is "coming to Middlebury, Fall 2006." Don't get out your wallet just yet. This "elegant retirement living" development is still being considered by the town and doesn't yet have the necessary approvals. Even if the town does approve the project, a source at Shelburne Bay acknowledges, the earliest anything would be available would be in spring of 2007. So, two questions -- what made the folks at Shelburne Bay think they could get away with such a questionable claim? And couldn't the college be a little more careful in screening the claims of its advertisers? This is a high-profile, controversial project, and anybody who reads the local papers would know it's not "coming to Middlebury, Fall 2006."
posted by Greg | 9:48 AM
5 Comments:
You are apparently spending too much time with your excellent electric mower and not enough with your fishing rod. Your readers demand a fishing report!
But I agree that the love of big suburban lawns seems out of place in Vt.
Re video vulture, you're not really advocating anarchy, are you? So out of character.
gail connors
An ELECTRIC mower? Still uses the juice my friend, just further downstream. Possibible from a hydro project that blocks spawning pelagic fish. Or an oil-fired generator. Or a nuclear plant (which ironically, may be our best bet for future power sources. Let's design them well this time, though...)
I've got a human-powered reel mower which I mostly use, but - and here's what sums up our collective approach to environmentalism in this century - sometimes my gas mower just blasts through all that thatch and crap and IT'S SO EASY!
I'd say I'm going to hell for this infraction - but, heck, I may not have wait that long, what with all that dang greenhouse gas and all!
It's not easy being green!
Jon Wurtmann
Re: the electric mower. yeah, it uses juice, but much less than gas-powered engines. The two-stroke engines used in mowers are particularly polluting (you'd have to drive 100 miles in a car (I assume a car, not an SUV) to cause as much spew as mowing the average suburban lawn. Then there's the spillage of gas when refueling, etc.
The lawn must go the way of the leisure suit. It's as plastic, and, when one considers the fossil fuels and chemicals most Americans use to maintain it, even uglier.
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