Terry Cowgill

A Pretty Pest

Caught this fellow on film over the weekend hammering away at a dying pine tree in my backyard. Everyone in my house has been sick for days, so it took a tremendous burst of energy for me to stir from the couch just to see him — to say nothing of actually taking out the camera and working it from my porch.

My son tells me it’s a male downy woodpecker, but it looked a little large and lacking spots on his wings to be a downy. Perhaps it was the related hairy woodpecker, which also has the red spot on its head. At any rate, this was one of the trees that suffered extensive damage in the Dec. 1 storm. It had already been weakened by the carpenter ants that had begun to hollow it out.

If this bird gets his way, the tree will become his home. Then when I have to take it down, he’ll have to find a new abode — just like so many spotted owls in Oregon. Will that get me in trouble with the DEP?

Using The Hatchet On Hillary

As regular readers of this blog know, there are few public figures I’m less enamoured of than Hillary (sorry for the double negative). But after reading this column by Gerard Baker, I am tempted to feel slightly sorry for her.

Baker’s essential points about the junior senator from New York (that she is a phony and chameleon) ring true to me. But does he have to be so mean about it? After all, there are lots of profoundly annoying pretenders to the throne out there.

Here again, a journalist (and a Brit, no less) has succeeded in making an unappealing figure look sympathetic. Move over, Wolf!

Crazy Like A Wolf

Yesterday Wolf Blitzer interviewed VP Dick Cheney on CNN. Well, Wolf. I was with you until the last question anyway.

Asking whether the administration has lost credibility in Congress and among the public because of blunders and mistakes that have been made in Iraq (faulty intel, insufficient troop strength) is a valid approach. And Cheney’s breezy dismissal of the premise of the question as “hogwash” says more about him than you.

I, too, have been accused by public officials of being in league with their enemies just for asking a question those opponents have sometimes raised. So I can relate.

Aside: Of course, someone might well have asked Wolf whether the media have lost credibility because of the blunders that were made in reporting in the run-up to the war. But that’s another matter, eh?

But asking Cheney about the criticism of a conservative group about the pregnancy of his lesbian daughter made me feel very uncomfortable. What place does that have in the interview? It came across as petty and mean-spirited.

I wonder if Wolf had intended to ask the question at some point during the interview or if he was holding it in reserve in case things got rough.

Either way, it’s too bad. Wolf, you succeeded in doing what The Prince of Darkness himself could never do in a public forum. You turned him into a sympathetic character.

Of Teachers and Theater

A quick news flash: Tonight in Falls Village, both the teachers’ contract and the easement for the Falls Village Children’s Theater Company passed by unanimous or near-unanimous voice votes at a town meeting that lasted barely 20 minutes.

There were no calls for paper ballots and not much of a discussion about the theater company’s need for an easement on town-owned land to build a septic system for the 100-year-old R&D Emerson building.

There was grumbling in some quarters after the meeting that it was rigged to shut down debate and get the deal through. But I didn’t hear much grumbling during the meeting.

There will be a full story in Thursdays’s Lakeville Journal. Oh, and the new contract for teachers at Lee Kellogg School passed unanimously and with no discussion. Not much controversy there.

Meekertown’s ‘Moral Darkness’

Reader and Lakeville Journal contributor Dick Paddock sent me this photo referring to the abandoned hamlet of Meekertown, which is in the area of Canaan Mountain.

The quote is from Deacon Minor of Norfolk describing the village of coal burners he visited: “I found a hamlet of heathens living in moral, intellectual and spiritual darkness”.

The words are now on a plaque in the Yale Forestry School camp. It is the handiwork of Jody Bronson, forest manager for the Great Mountain Forest. Evidently (or at least in the view of the deacon), the denizens of Meekertown left a lot to be desired.

Another FV Agenda Item

Thanks for the suggestion, Marshall (and a good one at that).

Onward we move to the other topic on the agenda for Tuesday’s town meeting in Falls Village — whether to approve or reject a proposed agreement between the board of education and the union representing the faculty at Lee H. Kellogg School.

As you can see from the article I wrote and researched for this week’s LJ, I went to great lengths to let people know the proposed salary increases in the four-year agreement (3.8 percent in the first year and 3.9 percent in each of the next three years) do not tell the whole story.

In a typical public school system, teachers also get so-called “step increases” based on years served and on academic credentials. As I calculated and confirmed through Region One Business Manager Sam Herrick, the actual increase for a teacher with a master’s degree in the middle of the salary scale after the first year of the proposed agreement would be 8.4%.

Now I don’t question that teachers should make a good living. As a former high school teacher and as someone who is married to a public elementary school library media specialist, I know how tough a job teaching is and how much training it requires.

Continue reading Another FV Agenda Item…

Art Buchwald Uplugged

The New York Times chose as the subject of its first online video obituary the great humorist and columnist Art Buchwald. An innovative concept applied to an equally groundbreaking writer. Talk about dying with class …

Professor Kennedy

Just posted a variation of the following comment on a friend’s blog. Food for thought.

Robert Kennedy Jr. just wrote another piece in the HuffingtonPost citing as evidence of global warming (among other things) “robins and bluebirds in upstate New York” and a friend of his who had just picked some asparagus. Is this supposed to convince skeptics that man is indeed the primary cause of climate change?

Gee, Bob, what about the ice storms to our south and the devastating freezes in southern California? What exactly are we to make of those?

There is no doubt that the earth is becoming warmer. The question is how much man is contributing to it. Listening to clowns like Kennedy talk about science is no better than reading Bill O’Reilly to learn about history. Junk food for the brain …

P.S. There is a terrific and thought provoking series of columns this week in OpinionJournal.com about education by Charles Murray. He writes with more clarity on the subject than anyone I have read. Click here, here and here to read the columns.

Falls Villagers Like A Good Debate

A few days ago as I was flipping though the archives of this blog, tallying up the comments that have been moderated and looking at my Statcounter, I noticed something unusual. The most active thread (i.e. the posting, plus viewings and comments) is more than 15 behind this one.

Post 215 is actually a news article I wrote on a town meeting in Falls Village. By a vote of 72-8 villagers opted to donate $25,000 in taxpayer funds to the nonprofit Falls Village Children’s Theater Company toward the company’s purchase of a downtown building to convert into a performing venue and community center.

I posted the story on this blog because the Lakeville Journal was on holiday shutdown and I didn’t want our readers to have to wait a week to get information about the meeting. Within a few hours there were several comments. Par for the course.

Then in the days and weeks afterwards, more appeared — some from people I had never (or rarely) heard from. There are now 23 comments, one of which was posted yesterday. And dozens of other people check that thread every day (some several times a day) but do not post comments.

This tells me a couple of things. Falls Villagers are a robust breed. They like a spirited debate and they were looking for a forum in which to discuss the most controversial topic to hit the town in years.

Continue reading Falls Villagers Like A Good Debate…

AlGore-Rhythms

Glad to see I’m not the only one out there who thinks this.

I’m not a big fan of the ex-VP, but if the Dems really want to win back the White House in 2008, Gore is the only person on the planet who can truthfully say he has run against George W. Bush and received the most votes. This is to say nothing of having won two other races on a national ticket.

Of course, Bush will not be running again (thankfully), but many Dems realize they would do well to nominate a battle-tested, seasoned candidate who can stand toe-to-toe with McCain or Rudy (or the Mittster).

Within days of announcing, he could raise truckloads of money, tout his electability (watch out, Hillary!) and his experience in foreign affairs (watch out Obama!). And he could run as the I-told-you-so candidate (climate change and Iraq war)

Of course, he does risk becoming another Harold Stassen. But isn’t that a risk worth taking if you want to be president?