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Last Updated:
Where You Live Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh Having worked for an electric company for nearly 47 years, I should be able to tell you where electricity comes from. In fact, I don’t have a clue. Ok, I do know that we make electricity at generating stations and that in one way or the other we convert water to steam to turn turbines that in some magical way makes electricity. It has always fascinated me that even though you cannot store electricity and must use it the instant it is generated we somehow are able to do just that with a maze of wires, substations, transformers and who know what else. You probably know all this too, but I bet you don’t know where these generating stations are located, or do you care for that matter. They are near rivers or oceans (lost of water you know), they are either out in the middle of nowhere or they are buried in old industrial areas (and occasionally within large dams). But be prepared, in the future you will know where electricity is generated as the landscape and perhaps your neighbors backyard become doted with giant wind generators. Think I’m kidding, you can buy your own wind turbine for about $3,000 and all you need is 26 mph of wind and you are good to go, whoosh, whoosh, and whoosh! But if you want to be serious, you need the real thing and that are 328 feet tall and larger in diameter than a Boeing 747. http://www.aweo.org/windsize.html T. Boone Pickens the Yeah, I know pollution and all that, coal burning generating plants hurt the environment and heaven forbid we embrace nuclear power. But in the years ahead I suspect someone may ask, how the heck did we create such ugly landscapes with these thousands of noisy turbines across our deserts, off our beaches, in our backyards, over our mountains and on our farmlands…my God they are everywhere! Couldn’t we have improved the technology for generating stations and accomplished the same result and not even dependent on Mother Nature? The problem you see is that this rush to wind is politically correct and who better to generate interest in an excess amount of hot air than the people in “What’s the matter Ralph?” “I can’t sleep.” “Is it the neighbor’s dog barking?” “I wish!” WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH When the fields of amber grain are covered with 10,000 acres of solar panels interspersed with wind monsters, remember…you really needed that electric toothbrush. May 16, 2008 How you doin? I bet you think your friends and neighbors are doing better than you and that may be so, but how do you know? Well here is a way to check. Log on to http://zipskinny.com/ At this site you can find out all kinds of information for virtually any town in Have fun, how you doin? Tripping Over People 1045/Km, 453/Km, 336/Km, 137/Km, 112/Km and 31/Km Now, consider this You got it, those numbers represent the population density in order of each geographic area shown. Good old It is not as if the Ok, so I am radical, so we must have growth and development and so what, there will not be a real problem for years to come. I’m listening; do you have a better solution to the ever-declining quality of life, to sitting in traffic no matter where you go or when in NJ? Do you like seeing open land dotted with oversized cookie cutter homes that the people in them cannot afford in the first place? Will you be disappointed when there is no place left to take a quiet walk without the sound of traffic? In a few years you won't tell people which exit of the Turnpike to take to find your home, you will be living at the exit. November 4, 2007
A Creek No More It was never much of a creek, rather small and certainly not in an idyllic setting lying only about 100 feet off a main road, but a creek nevertheless. To the south of the creek was a stand of trees, a mini forest if you will, cool and reasonably quiet with a college campus to the south of that. Then someone had a brilliant idea, an opportunity, a way to provide a service to the community in the form of a gigantic bakery, or more specific an “
The creek is still there but it gets no respect, instead it has become a trash bin for cups from the nearby Duncan Donut shop, doors and household garbage and who knows what else.
Don’t you wonder what makes people to something like that, I do. But then again I am strange, I am still upset over seeing a neighbor recently have two 150 foot two hundred year old oak trees cut down because "he was tired of the mess."
The creek now looks like this, but hey in a few months it will be a lot sweeter
It does no good to lament the felling of a tree, the clearing of a forest or the destruction of a woods, but I do so nevertheless, it is a kind of therapy for me. In the suburban town where I live I frequent a Duncan Donuts on Saturday morning and I park in a lot a short distance from the store because for a time I pass through some woods and over a small brook. This Saturday it was no more. In one week all the woods are gone, the brook was still there of course, but the charm had disappeared because I was no longer among trees, but standing next to another parking lot. On the same road about a mile east there was a stretch of road where one side was still thick with trees. This is a four lane county highway filled with stores, and strip malls and gas stations and the like, but for this quarter mile or so you drove past woods, not a forest mind you but woods about hundred and fifty feet deep off the road. They are all gone now, the land is barren and there is a sign foretelling the coming of luxury town houses, luxury mind you with no property and sitting just a few feet from a very busy road. I am sure they will have granite top counters in the kitchen, and all the other luxuries of today’s daily living, but the luxury of looking out a window and seeing a tree or anything green is gone forever. I have heard that clearing a forest is not so bad, it is after all a renewable resource. Not in my lifetime it isn’t. That tree taken down by wind on my street a few weeks ago was a hundred foot oak. While a new tree may be planted to replace it, not even my grandchildren will be able to see what that hundred footer looked like. It’s hard to prevent nature from taking its toll, but man is a different matter. There is no need for those luxury townhouses other than so someone can make money, there is no need to build a strip mall and then place a for lease sign on the property and let it stand empty for years while the tax advantages accumulate. Developers have plenty of opportunities in already urban areas to recreate, to renovate to make cities livable once again, is it really necessary to consume every square foot of empty land, or treed lot? We have a funny definition of progress, in the end it is more like traveling down a road until you find the road simply ends at the edge of a cliff. Even if you stop in time, it’s hard to define that trip as forward progress.
What Progress Looks Like
Lots of cars, lots of people, lots of money.
All of what I have described is in NJ, all within less than twenty miles from You would think, at least I would, that we would learn from the past, perhaps we would take a step back and look at what we have done and what we have received in return and some place, some time we would say, enough. Let’s stop the speculative development, let’s buy land as a society and preserve it just for its own sake, but we don’t and we probably never will. Oh, we have planning boards and planning studies and land use programs, but they all include more of things we simply don’t need. One of the most tragic examples of the gradual destruction of something irreplaceable and in the process changing for ever the very essence of a place is on Cape Cod Some would argue that there is plenty of land, that indeed development is progress, that we have to move forward, we need jobs, we need tax revenue, we simply need more. Be that as it may, in the final analysis we will end up with little places of quiet and serenity, lots of people in small places, asphalt surrounding us, buildings instead of trees and woods. All in the name of progress, how sad. [1] In 1972, the death of the Becker Farm--and the C&S (railroad) --was precipitated by a decision of the Roseland town council to rescind the farm's tax assessment. In a move that had political implications--Prudential insurance company made a bid on the property shortly thereafter (or was it before?) --the farm was forced to close, as the 1000+ acres of farmland would now be assessed as if it were owned commercially. In spite of this, the C&S ran through Labor Day of that year, with the final run having pulling into the station near dusk. NIMBY
Take a look...someday they may dot all the open land....and water.
Sunset at the beach
Clear cutting anyone?
Progress on the last open land in Verona, New Jersey July 2007
A grove of trees stands unmolested for scores of years and then one day an opportunity arises, not for the trees, but for a “developer” or more accurately someone who sees an opportunity to make money. Building houses on that land is progress. No, it is not “affordable” housing, low income or senior housing, nor is it small businesses needed by the community. Rather, the development of million dollar homes is deemed the best use of the land. The town sees no problem in developing every inch of unused land, the town too sees a money opportunity in the form a more tax revenue and the space between these homes is of little consequence so down go the trees one by one, or more accurately several at a time in the path of a bulldozer. They are not even given the dignity of a saw or axe. As this occurs over and over the trees in the town are limited to those newly planted along the new streets, but do not despair, if you live for a hundred years or so you will see they are just like the ones cut down by the yellow monster. Why it is so objectionable to leave land alone especially in areas already fully developed I will never know, but then again I am not a “developer.” Developer has a straightforward definition which is: “a person or company that buys land in order to build on it or sell it to others who want to build on it.” I think they forgot the make money part, but no matter. In the end, the trees have their revenge because you see once they are gone, once the houses are in place and the new roads paved, they have to be named and what do we name them? How about, There is one advantage in all this destruction of mini forests in suburban areas, the deer population in my backyard has risen considerably as have the turkeys, raccoon and an occasional Coyote. Darn animals don’t even know their place, why don’t they stay in the … |
The woods now look like this. Wait, do I see one tree left?
because no doubt it will then contain empty bakery boxes, half-eaten cannoli and assorted Italian pastry. 
Trees
In my six decades I have seen a thousand acre dairy farm (a farm with a well know and extensive miniature railroad) become a corporate park filled with office buildings only a short distance from another cluster of “luxury” townhouses and suburban homes. The town simply could not resist more tax revenue and so we made more “progress” 
No cows, no corn field, no miniature railroad.
We all want clean air and who doesn't want to take the chill off global warming. And heaven knows we also want cheap, clean electricity. Off of Cape Cod they want to put a wind farm, hundreds of giant wind mill generators spinning in the breeze. In Californaia there are about 13,000 of the things. But be careful what you ask for, you may get it. Right in your backyard. Wind mill generators are hugh and when they spin they are noisey.If you have ever traveled in near Palm Springs, CA you know what I mean. The hundreds of windmills dotting the landscape are hardly a plearsure to view. But, hey no polution, at least not the kind that gets into our lungs, visual polution is another matter though.
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