It's a long Twain
More on De Twain. Again saw the gates malfunction again this morning. This time I actually counted it out. Train is at the station, gates go down for 30 seconds (slow count), gates go up for 6 seconds, gates go back down fro 10 seconds as train goes by.
I got a return call from my State Senator last night, and emailed him and called him today to let him know I had emailed him (his auto reply said he got a lot of email). Anyway, I didn't hear anything more today on the matter. My email to the editor of the Ledger has not been acknowledged, so I assume they will not be publishing it. Maybe if I sent it by snail mail. This is the second letter to the editor that has gone unnoticed in the last few months. Maybe they just don't give a shit either seeing how things are being done at the paper. What next? What else can a person do? My neighbor and I actually thought of the same thing, putting home made signs up on the crossing to warn people. Might be the next step, except it's trespassing. Not sure I'm that obsessed with this yet.
On to weirder things.
The other day my neighbor asked me if I had seen the dead dog on the lawn of a home in the neighborhood. I had not noticed it. No one knows what happened to the little dog, and at the time she wasn't even sure who's dog it was. Then she told me about two days later that one of our paper customers had a new puppy. They used to have a little toy Yorkie. So I am guessing that it was their dog.
So today I am mowing and it Dawns on me, literally Dawns on me. Two days ago I saw someone in a section of the cemetery doing something, I thought planting flowers. later in the day I went down into that area to blow leaves, and found a patch of disturbed ground. "Ah HA!" I thought for sure someone had buried some cremains on the sly. I looked at the name and thought it funny that is was the same name as a person we buried a few weeks again, only with "Mc"in front of it. Today while mowing, the gears finally fell into place. This "Mc" is the name of my customer who's dog died. She buried her dog in the cemetery in her family lot, probably her husband's lot. That is why the name kept bugging me. I can't believe I've missed that all this time.
And this is my "onion" homage.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/10/31/signing.chimp.dies.ap/index.html
Washoe, a female chimpanzee said to be the first non-human to acquire human language, has died of natural causes at the research institute where she was kept. She died Tuesday night, according to Roger and Deborah Fouts, co-founders of The Chimpanzee and Human Communications Institute on the campus. She was born in Africa about 1965.Her final word was "Freedom!"
But there was controversy over whether the chimp was really using ASL. Among those who doubted chimps could use language were MIT linguist Noam Chomsky and Harvard scientist Steven Pinker.
Chomsky contended that the neural requirements for language developed in humans after the evolutionary split between humans and primates. Pinker argued that primates simply learn to perform certain acts in order to receive rewards, and do not acquire true language. Pinker made this statement as he accepted an award presented by his colleagues in the field of language studies.
And lastly... I had to sign a death warrant for a tree the other day. National Grid is going around sealing the fate of trees that look diseased and might fall onto power lines in storms. Luckily we had only one tree that needed to be removed. It's an old silver maple, which has in the past lost some huge branches due to rot, and it has big holes in it. They will remove it free of charge which is good for us, but still, I hate to see an old tree taken down. I really do. I am wondering if the suckers that it produces so prolifically will be able to produce a strong new tree in it's place. Maybe I can just prune it down to one sucker and hope that it comes in strong. Not sure.
On the same note, someone tore down an old house near where we live, and when they did, they also cleared the lot, which is pretty huge. They left one beautiful maple tree that was sort of in the middle of the lot. A perfectly shaped tree that must have been 100 years old. And then today when I went by I saw that they had cut that one down too. What a waste.
People can keep buying credits to plant trees, but what they really need to do is stop cutting down so many healthy trees.
I got a return call from my State Senator last night, and emailed him and called him today to let him know I had emailed him (his auto reply said he got a lot of email). Anyway, I didn't hear anything more today on the matter. My email to the editor of the Ledger has not been acknowledged, so I assume they will not be publishing it. Maybe if I sent it by snail mail. This is the second letter to the editor that has gone unnoticed in the last few months. Maybe they just don't give a shit either seeing how things are being done at the paper. What next? What else can a person do? My neighbor and I actually thought of the same thing, putting home made signs up on the crossing to warn people. Might be the next step, except it's trespassing. Not sure I'm that obsessed with this yet.
On to weirder things.
The other day my neighbor asked me if I had seen the dead dog on the lawn of a home in the neighborhood. I had not noticed it. No one knows what happened to the little dog, and at the time she wasn't even sure who's dog it was. Then she told me about two days later that one of our paper customers had a new puppy. They used to have a little toy Yorkie. So I am guessing that it was their dog.
So today I am mowing and it Dawns on me, literally Dawns on me. Two days ago I saw someone in a section of the cemetery doing something, I thought planting flowers. later in the day I went down into that area to blow leaves, and found a patch of disturbed ground. "Ah HA!" I thought for sure someone had buried some cremains on the sly. I looked at the name and thought it funny that is was the same name as a person we buried a few weeks again, only with "Mc"in front of it. Today while mowing, the gears finally fell into place. This "Mc" is the name of my customer who's dog died. She buried her dog in the cemetery in her family lot, probably her husband's lot. That is why the name kept bugging me. I can't believe I've missed that all this time.
And this is my "onion" homage.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/10/31/signing.chimp.dies.ap/index.html
Washoe, a female chimpanzee said to be the first non-human to acquire human language, has died of natural causes at the research institute where she was kept. She died Tuesday night, according to Roger and Deborah Fouts, co-founders of The Chimpanzee and Human Communications Institute on the campus. She was born in Africa about 1965.Her final word was "Freedom!"
But there was controversy over whether the chimp was really using ASL. Among those who doubted chimps could use language were MIT linguist Noam Chomsky and Harvard scientist Steven Pinker.
Chomsky contended that the neural requirements for language developed in humans after the evolutionary split between humans and primates. Pinker argued that primates simply learn to perform certain acts in order to receive rewards, and do not acquire true language. Pinker made this statement as he accepted an award presented by his colleagues in the field of language studies.
And lastly... I had to sign a death warrant for a tree the other day. National Grid is going around sealing the fate of trees that look diseased and might fall onto power lines in storms. Luckily we had only one tree that needed to be removed. It's an old silver maple, which has in the past lost some huge branches due to rot, and it has big holes in it. They will remove it free of charge which is good for us, but still, I hate to see an old tree taken down. I really do. I am wondering if the suckers that it produces so prolifically will be able to produce a strong new tree in it's place. Maybe I can just prune it down to one sucker and hope that it comes in strong. Not sure.
On the same note, someone tore down an old house near where we live, and when they did, they also cleared the lot, which is pretty huge. They left one beautiful maple tree that was sort of in the middle of the lot. A perfectly shaped tree that must have been 100 years old. And then today when I went by I saw that they had cut that one down too. What a waste.
People can keep buying credits to plant trees, but what they really need to do is stop cutting down so many healthy trees.