Terry Cowgill

LJ 02.28.08

February 28, 2008 on 2:21 pm | In Local, Media |

Very informative pieces on the front page this week:

Karen Bartomioli leads with a feature on the difficulty of finding home heating oil retailers to participate in aid programs for the needy; our Winsted editor Michael Marciano interviews native son Ralph Nader about his recently announced presidential bid; and our Millerton reporter Shaw Izikson gauges reaction to a Dutchess County official’s scathing letter denouncing the proposed Durst development in Pine Plains.

I did a piece on the Region One Board of Education telling HVRHS Principal Gretchen Foster to forget about cutting the third rail of the school’s budget — the agriculture education program; and in Nature’s Notebook, Fred Baumgarten has a fascinating look at a mysterious disease that’s killing off bats in the region (see also Tim Abbott’s excellent blog post on this in Walking the Berkshires).

I don’t know about you, but I think we have more than our share of bugs in the Northwest Corner. Indeed, I’d even go so far as to say we are an entomologist’s delight. I shudder to think of the size of our insect population if the bats disappear. The gnats and mosquitoes will be so thick that we’ll all need to wear netted helmets like the beekeepers …

P.S. According to this piece in the Daily Freeman (linked by Tim):

A mass die-off of bats could have economic implications because bats feed on insects that, if allowed to survive, could destroy crops.