Lucky tree...Last week we noticed ominous lines of pencil sized holes in the bark of a large poplar on the southern border of our Garden on 89th Street. The tree was already large when the West Side Community Garden was established in 1975, and survived the various building cycles which resulted in a neighboring townhouse development and the landscaping of our permanent Garden site. The Poplar tree was almost a goner when lightning struck it in August 1988. It survived, and now bears a long pale vertical scar along the north side of its trunk, as a reminder of the summer storm. Tom Thies, head of our Flower and Greenhouse regiments, noticed the holes first and alerted me during a walkthrough last Wednesday with some of our funders and supporters. Heavy hearted, I called 311 after the visitors left, and asked for the Asian Longhorn Beetle hotline. The young man manning the line is part of the Parks Department, and we went over the specifics of location and types of nearby trees. The beetles not only enjoy Poplar, they also would like our Birch trees, Plum and Crab Apple trees. I didn't think to ask him about the airy Sappora trees that shade the table or the rare Tibetan Cedars. While I was on the line I also checked the other Poplar tree in the property, located on the border of the vegetable garden and the 90th Street playground.. That tree is very large and grand and probably the largest tree below 110th outside of Central and Riverside Parks. It has no holes. Going back to the 89th Street Poplar, the hotline guy asked me to take a pencil or pen and see if it fit into the holes, and to check their depth. The tree looked healthy and our garden Mockingbird twittered in the branches as I approached. The holes were about a third of an inch deep. There was no sawdust about. The hotline mentioned there is also a possibility the holes are from birds, and promised to send an inspection crew out to look things over as soon as possible. This morning I heard again from Tom, who had contacted our regular tree pruning guys to come and take a look. They tell us it is highly likely that the holes were drilled by Yellow Sapsucker birds dropping by for a snack on their way north this spring. Keep your fingers crossed... lucky tree.

Memories of Buffalo... The recent stories about the Buffalo Fireman who regained his memory , and the proposed sainthood of Father Baker brought back memories of second grade back at PS 68 on Westminster Avenue in Buffalo. The ultimate threat from a teacher - even in public school- was " if you're not good we'll send you to Father Bakers." Father Bakers was widely known in Buffalo children's culture as a correctional orphanage for bad boys. The threat had teeth, because we all knew that parents who had too much to handle could make arrangements to ship an errant son off to Father Bakers. Big boys in the neighborhood working on their cars in the back yard would regale us with tales of deprivation and whippings at Father Bakers. Once a year the Buffalo Courier Express featured a story about the yearly Christmas party at the orphanage, with pictures of thin little tykes getting toys, and the older boys getting socks. It was said the boys slept in dormitories, and wore hand me downs. We'd make fun of kids in the playground by saying they got their clothes from Father Bakers. Now that time has padded some distance on the Father Baker story - and a symbol of terror from my childhood is being exalted. What else is weird is seeing the "Our Lady of Victory Basilica " getting press. Our Lady of Victory Basilica is a huge Italianate over- the- top structure on the border between Buffalo and Lackawanna. Originally built in white marble, pollution from the steel plants and factories turned it bright yellow. The whole area was engulfed in a horrible stink from sulfide gas. The nearby Buffalo river was so polluted that it caught on fire. The surrounding Lackawanna and South Buffalo neighborhoods consisted of workers hovels - A cheap two story wood frame house built in the twenties would have a tunnel of two or three tiny shack like houses built on the back of each other, extending into the back yard and filling the entire lot. The area was so low class that nice people ignored the Basilica as a sort of a Folly. My father would take the route past it on the way to the beach when the lake road was blocked with traffic, and occasionally we would visit the South Park Conservatory and Gardens located across the street. When the steel plants and factories went out of business, the smell abated and people rediscovered the Basilica on Buffalo's south side as a pilgrimage destination. The trip is actually enjoyable, and you can get world class "Beef on Weck" while you're there.

Kruschev arrests bicyclist... page 2 of Metro section of the paper of record carried a shocking picture of assistant Chief of Police Smolka forcibly arresting a bicyclist who was walking while straddling her bike at a Critical Mass gathering. To us cold war veterans, Chief Smolka bears an astonishing resemblance to Kruschev, leader of the evil empire back in the sixties. Naturally, this picture and the accompanying story will further inspire car drivers in their ongoing campaign of rudeness towards bicycle riders. Today I saw a huge SUV frustrated in a left turn onto Broadway from 110th Street honking and inching forward towards a man crossing the street with his little girl with the light. Police parked on the opposite corner did nothing- the SUV hadn't actually run anyone over yet. As soon as the man and his little girl walked far enough toward the curb to provide room for the SUV to get through, the driver surged ahead with a little burst of annoyed speed, only to wait for the signal at 109th street. I am so sick of drivers in the City who threaten us daily. Rushing us out of crosswalks so they can make turns, honking at lights the minute the light turns so they can race ahead, tunneling down Amsterdam Avenue at breakneck speeds to catch the lights any unlucky pedestrians crossing at the end of the light, and honking while they pass within inches of bicyclists trying to negotiate passage around cars double parked in the bike lanes. Let's reassign Chief Smolka to traffic cop duty. Maybe then he'll see who the real enemy is.

Methane Hydrate and global warming... Update on the apocalypse theme. I just read a book that takes place at and around the South Pole. It has a somewhat fantastic, overly complicated plot, but it gives the reader a picture of what it must be like to live and work in that region. One of the plot lines turns around a substance called Methane Hydrate, a mineral sometimes found under the glaciers at the South Pole. Interested, I googled the mineral just to see how much the book exaggerated climate risks posed by release of methane into the atmosphere from glacier melt. The 2005 information turned up was more alarming than the plot of the potboiler-written in 1999. Methane Hydrate is a crystalline substance composed of methane and water crystallized under pressure and cold. It's found at the presurrized cold at the bottom of oceans and glaciers, including the east coast continental shelf, and is a component of permafrost found in Canada, Russia, Alaska, China, and Antarctica. There's a lot of methane in the environment locked up in crystal form. When it "melts," one liter of Methane Hydrate forms 20 liters of methane, a greenhouse gas much more potent than Carbon Dioxide. Several scientific web sites discussed the mass extinctions at the end of the Permian Age as a result of a global warming caused by sublimation of methane hydrate into large quantities of methane into the atmosphere. Other web sites discuss how the permafrost in northern climes is rising in temperature, leading to instability and release of Methane. Another web site discusses how drilling for oil in the far northern areas may have an unsettling effect on Methane Hydrate, and could release methane. [If we could figure out a safe way to mine it, it would be the perfect fuel.] At least one website talks about release of methane hydrate as a destabilizer of the ocean floor on the coastal shelf, which could lead to an east coast Tsunami. At least one large tidal wave occurred in Norway and Greenland from a gas release. The theory is that once we warm up to a certain level, methane hydrate begins sublimating into methane, which rapidly escalates global warming, unlocking more and more methane and creating radical fast climate changes. Scientists from the Pentagon warned the Shrub about this possibility, but secure in his belief system that Jesus wouldn't want that to happen, the warning was shrugged off. Now I'm wondering why people who swallow the Left Behind fairy tale totally reject the idea that global warming may affect our civilization in some radical way because it is based on scientific extrapolations. If, as the ocean temperature levels and perma frost summer temperature levels indicate, there is a global warming effect taking place, why would a prudent world leader not take all possible steps to avoid a possible catastrophy? And why are people so prepared to accept extrapolations about the end of the world taken from the book of Revelations, but unwilling to accept in the tiniest way the possibility that continuing in our present course of fossil fuel usage could endanger civilization?
Some websites with methane hydrate information:

http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html
http://www.llnl.gov/str/Durham.html
http://healthandenergy.com/methane_hydrate.htm
http://www7430.nrlssc.navy.mil/7432/hydrates/index.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1215-24.htm

Tulips make you feel good. Last November, about 50 people converged on the West Side Community Garden the week end before Thanksgiving to plant Tulips. We roasted hamburgers on the last of summer's charcoal, served roast turkey and chili out in the cold air for the workers. Money for the 8,000 bulbs came from the Green Acre Foundation, and neighborhood contributions. Species Tulips, Darwin Tulips, early Tulips, late Tulips, fragrant Tulips, Peony flowered Tulips, Lily flowered Tulips, Parrot Tulips, green Tulips, striped Tulips, pink and yellow Tulips, red Tulips, as well as some Bluebells, Crocuses, Daffidils, and Hyacinths. They are all in bloom right now. You can see them on our website- westsidecommunitygarden.org, but you should go to West 89th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues for the full effect. People go in there and wander around with their mouths open, stunned at the sight of so many different Tulips. Children grow quiet and walk the paths smiling. People set their newspapers down in their laps and just sit looking. Lots of people come with their cameras, taking pictures of the Tulips, then their companions and the Tulips, and then pictures of themselves in front of the Tulips. No one picks the Tulips- even the flowers in the tree pits remain unmolested. I went there yesterday after a hellish morning in court where my adversary fluently lied to get his motion granted and found myself leaving with a stupid grin on my face. This happens every year, and every year the experience is slightly different but the same. The garden is open daily from 9-ish to dusk.

Left Behind club... I recently got my first e-mail bulletin from the Left Behind club. After wondering how they knew I had acquired a copy of the first "Left Behind" book ( I got one as a forced Christmas present), I clicked on the free button for five of the ten signs that we are living in the end of days. But, the free button took me to a LB Club web site with only one puny sign of the end days- the death of Arafat. Nothing about the Jews being back in Israel, unrest in Babylon, or the Pope's death. The free offer for the other four signs required my email and account numbers. If I elect to join the LB club, I get all ten signs, and email bulletins updating me on our progress towards world's end. I've always been a sucker for apocalypse stories and alternate universes since reading A. Merritt's "Dwellers in the Mirage" at the Kensington branch of the Buffalo Public Library as a kid. The "Left Behind" book extends the predictions in the biblical book of Revelations, exploring similar ground as the "Omen" movies. But unlike "Omen" movies and Merritt's 1930's pulp fiction novels, LB purports to be a fictionalized version of true predictions contained in Revelations that are actually going to happen. Much like the Omen, the LB novelist has taken material from Revelations and liberally translated it into the humdrum world of malls, airplanes and highways, extending the predictions to modern day people caught in the intricacies of an end war between good and evil and the second coming. The LB club catches the wind, and invites us all to join the club, follow the score card, and breathlessly apply the implications of end war to our own lives. A year or so ago, the paper of record carried an account from a survivor who was on the very floor where the second plane hit the south tower. He recalled seeing the terrorists through the window in their final moments as they drove into his office, and they were smiling.

$40,000 a year to live in a nursing home facility. That's what the financial report on Monday Morning's NPR morning news said. The poor can't pay this and their Social Security can't cover it so the Government pays the facility the difference. Social Security is charactorized as the most successful retirement plan in history, but I don't know anyone who can live on Social Security. I have a relative who worked for many years at fairly good jobs paying $50,000 a year. She's getting a little over a thousand a month now. There is no way she can live on that., and due to a catastrophic hospitalization she was stripped of her savings. There are a lot of people like her- they are getting social security, they have little in the way of savings and they can' pay rent and buy food on their social security. The minute they get dragged into court and evicted the solution is to get them into a "home" where it costs $40,000 a year to keep them- but the government won't come up with the extra $300 monthly to keep them in their own apartment. Visiting a friend in a facility I saw what she gets to eat- canned green beans, a cup of clear orange gelatine, a white roll and a pat of margerine, some kind of creamed chicken thing on a half cup of white rice...What normal person would want that to look forward to for the rest of their life? There was also a salad- a leaf of iceberg lettuce with a hard slice of tomato with a dab of orange salad dressing. Most people would be much happier in their own homes with a little extra money to get their own food. I guarantee you they won't be eating any half cups of orange gelatine and white iceberg lettuce. Isn't it cheaper to goive someone an extra $500 a month so they can pay rent and eat than to pay a nursing home $3500 a month to keep them in a place where they must share a room, give up most of their own possessions, and eat institutional food for the rest of their life?