Spring is finally here. How do I know? Walking home at midnight-thirty I observe worms all over the sidewalks.

Most everybody slams Jimmy Carter for one thing or another. A letter writer in a recent New Yorker points out some things the former president got right:

“To reduce our dependence on imported oil, in 1977 a national goal was set (with bipartisan support) to derive twenty percent of our energy from renewable sources and conservation by the year 2000. Toward that end, the Solar Energy Research Institute was established, in Colorado, along with four regional centers to help foster the commercialization and adoption of alternative energy technologies and practices.

When Ronald Reagan took office, he slashed the institute’s budget, ordered the four centers shut down (on Christmas Eve), allowed tax incentives for renewables to lapse, and, for good measure, removed the solar panels that Carter had installed on the roof of the White House.”

Here we are, a quarter century later, says the writer, more dependent than ever on foreign oil and barely at square one in dealing with the problem.

The Mount Pleasant Morning Sun reports on money troubles at a corn ethanol plant under construction near Ithaca, Mich. The company building the plant was hoping to attract sufficient investors in Michigan, but it’s now heading out of state for money. That’s like the plant in our area near Riga. It’s now owned by an Australian firm.

Four 800,000 gallon stainless steel fermenter tanks are near completion. An administration building is almost fully enclosed. Some 6,000 yards of concrete are poured for the foundation and flooring for the fermenter tanks and process buildings.

Construction will continue through December and resume only when financing is closed.

“It’s just slowing down, not shutting down,” Everett said, adding that work would have probably discontinued during winter anyway.

Everett countered the rumor the ethanol project in Ithaca is a lost venture.

“This project remains extremely strong,” he said. “It will not be mothballed.”

Read the rest of this entry »

I wonder why it was so chilly in Morenci this morning compared to other area communities. According the National Weather Service, it was 18 degrees here this morning and 24 in Blissfield. That’s quite a difference for that close by. Tipton, 23; Tecumseh,21; Dundee, 24; Defiance, 24; Toledo. 25.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports on a meeting of former Secretaries of State:

Five former U.S. secretaries of State said Thursday the next president should move quickly to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

That single act would improve America’s dismal reputation in the world immediately, agreed Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Warren Christopher, Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell.

The five former secretaries, who served under Presidents Nixon, Ford, George H.W. Bush, Clinton and George W. Bush, were at the University of Georgia for a roundtable discussion billed as “The 16th Report of the Secretaries of State,” which offered “bipartisan advice to the next administration.” Kissinger, Baker and Powell all served Republican presidents. Albright and Christopher served Clinton, a Democrat.

Powell, who was in office when the notorious prison opened in Cuba, was the first Thursday to call for it to be shuttered. The most recent holder of the office on the stage, Powell served the current president from 2001 to 2005.

“Our image abroad has dropped significantly,” Powell said. He put some of that blame on his former boss.

Slate has started the Hillary Deathwatch, watching the odds that she could win the nomination:

Hillary Clinton is as good as dead. This became the consensus over the past week, when the media awoke en masse to the dual reality that 1) Clinton can’t close the pledged-delegate gap and 2) Obama has her beat in the popular vote. But the Clinton campaign shows no signs of slowing—she said herself she’s prepared to compete for at least three more months. So the question now is not just “How dead is she?” but “When will she realize it?”

Are half of us really mentally ill? Sure, you can look out the window or into the mirror and spot a few people that you think might have some problems, but half of us? That’s a question Christopher Lane asks:

America has reached a point where almost half its population is described as being in some way mentally ill, and nearly a quarter of its citizens - 67.5 million - have taken antidepressants.

These statistics have sparked a widespread, sometimes rancorous debate about whether people are taking far more medication than is needed for problems that may not even be mental disorders…

To help settle this long-standing dispute, I studied why the number of recognized psychiatric disorders has ballooned so dramatically in recent decades. In 1980, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders added 112 new mental disorders to its third edition, DSM-III. Fifty-eight more disorders appeared in the revised third edition in 1987 and fourth edition in 1994…

P.E. Jackson noted that I didn’t do the weekly overview of the print edition this week, so here it is a couple of days late.

On the front, we have a Fayette church group taking a five-mile hike into town on Good Friday. The snow started in really heavy and nearly obliterated the people, photographically speaking. The lead story asks, “One Last Blast?” That’s in reference to the snow and we now know the answer: No, it wasn’t the last one of the season.

Also:

Not a lot of big news, but a lot of little news. You have to see it, P.E. Jackson, to comprehend it all.

4.4 inches of snow, .88 inches of melted stuff. It’s a beautiful day for Morenci kids. The Ohio students are all in school today. They could handle what fell, apparently.

There’s a lot of water flowing in the Bean, but it’s still a foot and a half below flood stage at Powers Station.

Pres. Bush spoke yesterday in Ohio (to a safe military crowd, as usual) and talked about the wisdom of his decision for the surge of troops last year into Iraq. As always, it’s a great success.

And then there are those darn news reports:

The daily Iraq violence report is compiled by McClatchy Newspapers Special Correspondents in Baghdad from police, military and medical reports. This is not a comprehensive list of all violence in Iraq, much of which goes unreported. It’s posted without editing as transmitted to McClatchy’s Washington Bureau.

Baghdad

12 mortars hit the Green Zone starting at 10 am until this report was prepared at 2 pm, Thursday, said Iraqi Police. The U.S. Embassy said no one was injured.

2 mortar rounds fell on Ur neighbourhood, east Baghdad near an open air marketplace killing one civilian, injuring two.

2 mortar rounds hit Karrada Kharij Street, central Baghdad injuring 1 civilian.

17 wounded Iraqi Army soldiers from Basra were taken to al-Yarmouk Hospital for treatment.

Keep reading: Read the rest of this entry »

A seven-inch-plus snow fell in late March of 1968 and brought out this terror gang from Cawley Road.

Maude Chases’s history column mentions big snows on April 6, one from 1886 and one in 1938. No mention of how deep it was, just “very heavy snow.” It happens from time to time. George Isobar spoke of one in the paper this week: a precise 8.2 inches in 1982.

Mark Steele writes in the Independent:

But mostly it seems the Chinese government are working hardest to live up to their stereotype. For example, the Communist Party Tibet Daily described the protesting monks as “Loyal running dogs of the Dalai Clique.” You’d know if someone from the Tibet Daily got a job on the Shepton Mallet Gazette, because the articles would begin “On Saturday there was a demonstration by pensioners who object to the proposed closure of the sub-post office in Wickton Street.

“It was organised by proprietor Mrs Henderson, a poisonous feudal decaying rat, lickspittle bourgeois stooge of her stamp-peddling reactionary camel-dung husband, the so-called Mister Henderson.”

Similarly, if the Communist Party chief in Tibet was seriously trying to persuade neutrals of his case, he might not have referred to the Dalai Lama as “A devil with a human face, but the heart of a beast.” To be fair, this sort of language might be what’s needed to liven up political debate in this country. Then on Question Time, Dimbleby could say: “So Frank Dobson says you’re a devil with a human face and the bowels of a hyena – how do you respond to that, Shirley Williams?”

In Morenci we have a person who makes twice-daily trips to look for returnable bottles in city trash cans. In poorer countries, the search goes much deeper:

As the world scrambles to save dwindling resources and halt global warming, a long-scorned population is becoming the latest hope in the environmental battle.

The unsung heroes are the impoverished trash pickers who fill the streets of countless cities around the developing world, searching garbage for cardboard, plastic bags and other treasure that can be sold and recycled.

One thing led to another thing that led to another thing and it ended here, with a fortune cookie and indigestion.

Bibi van der Zee writing in the Guardian says that we just don’t realize the cost of fuel:

It all goes along with a culture which sees power as free: the shops don’t seem to make the connection between the open doors and the electricity bill. I sound like a pompous old git when I say this, but we are all just spoiled rotten: we have no idea of the true price of water or power. It’s just there whenever we need it and we use it and forget about it.

Her conclusion is that high fuel prices and a recession may teach us more about energy efficiency than environmental campaigners have managed.