07/06/2000

In The Neighborhood

Every hour, on the hour, or close to it, I hear bells toll in Burlington. First there’s the United Methodist Church on College Street. What I hear is not really bells, but some mechanical or electric device. Thirty seconds or so later, I hear the same hour struck from the cupola of city hall. I like to think the interval between the chimes is our chronological separation of church and state.

Burlington is a small city and the tolling bells can be heard all over town at most hours of the day and night. It’s quiet here, especially with the college students away on summer break. Lawn mowers drone on Saturday mornings, if the weather is clear and in the evenings you can still find people out for a stroll or visiting on a front porch.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
06/29/2000

Summertime Blues

Welcome to summer, wanna buy some gas? I was watching the Lehrer Newshour show last week when a representative from an oil industry trade group explained that gas prices in Chicago are sky-high because area oil wholesalers had not prepared themselves for the summer demand. Does that explain things? The Chicago gas wholesalers forgot this year that summer follows spring. Maybe they were hoping Hell would freeze over and the Cubs would finally win the pennant.

Not gonna happen, not this year. The Cubs are 14 games back in the NL Central and the oil companies have both the administration and Congress investigating the price of Midwest gas. Some people blame OPEC, some say it’s the EPA – I have a different theory. I think the Chicago wholesalers started counting SUVs on the Dan Ryan Expressway and “Holy Cow, those tanks are two out of three cars on the road,” and that’s all it took.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
06/22/2000

Little Tin Hitlers

Adrienne and I had to run some lunch-hour errands a few weeks ago, so we grabbed some sandwiches to eat in the car. We thought we’d park down by the municipal pier and look at the lake, but we forgot now that summer is here, you have to pay four dollars to pull into the pier’s parking lot.

“We really don’t want to park, we just want to eat a quick sandwich by the water,” I told the college-aged kid in the booth. “Do we still have to pay?”

“Um – well – it’s four dollars to park…” His voice trailed off.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
06/15/2000

Political Pollution

Dioxin is back in the news. It’s the chemical that won’t go away, in more ways than one. The Environmental Protection Agency is releasing the results of its nine-year reassessment of dioxin. Nine years of study reveal exactly what the environmental community has said all along: dioxin is a much greater health hazard, in smaller doses, than government officials have ever been willing to admit.

I’m glad the government is beginning to recognize the serious threat posed by dioxin, but some things I’m seeing in the press are just plain wrong. The Los Angeles Times reported dioxin comes from both natural and industrial sources. That’s wrong. Nature does not make dioxin, only humans do. There is dioxin in trees, but only because industrial processes have dispersed dioxin to every corner of the globe, where trees take it up from soil, or it is sprayed on by humans.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
06/01/2000

The Price of Justice

You’ve seen, I’m sure, the news reports from Zimbabwe, where black Africans have been seizing farms from, and in some cases killing, white Africans. The issue is land. What is now Zimbabwe was seized from the Bantu people by the British in the 19th century and, until a few decades ago, called Rhodesia. The majority black population has controlled the government in the years since independence, although much of the country’s best land remains in the hands of white farmers. Now, with the support of President Robert Mugabe, black Africans are seizing white-owned farms.
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By Justin | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
05/25/2000

Thinking Like an Ecosystem

It’s gray and overcast today, the forecast calls for more rain. It’s been a cool, wet spring in New England, very much like the spring of ’98. Burlington usually gets three inches of rain in May, but we’ve already had five. We’re running six inches ahead on rain for the year. Lake Champlain hovers at flood stage. I imagine our Quebec friends at the Chambly Locks on the Richelieu River are keeping the gates wide open, but with all the rain, the lake stays just a bit over its banks.

That’s inconvenient, but as I watched the drops pounding my windshield the other day, I tried to think about the rain from the ecosystem’s point of view. The Lake Champlain Basin is such a complex and finely tuned organism, an oversupply of rain should have multiple and overlapping effects, not unlike, say, rain drops on the water.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)
05/18/2000

Shoot and Release

To everything there is a season, and in Vermont, from late March until late May, it is the season to shoot fish. You think Vermont is all about civil unions and comfortable shoes? Think again.

Vermont is the only state in the union where it is legal to take fish with a firearm. Each spring, rain and melting snow swell the banks of Lake Champlain; the marshes and low-lying areas brim with water and several species of lake fish – particularly northern pike, chain pickerel and muskellunge – swim into the marshes to spawn. At this moment, as the fish are laying their eggs and recreating the miracle of life, some of my fellow citizens, shod in rubber boots and armed with an arsenal ranging from handguns to rifles loaded with center-fire cartridges, kill these fish as they breed.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)