I have not visited my blog pages in a long time. Now that January 1st has come and gone, I need to think about why I started this page in the first place. It was an exercise in writing when I began. I started it to write about the NYRI powerline issue in Central NY. Secondly, as a summer visitor to Tupper Lake, I wanted to illuminate my views on the Adirondack Resort LLC plans to develop a resort property at Big Tupper (Mount Morris).
Amazingly enough these projects have taken a very similar turn into a kind of limbo state. Both are stalled at state agencies and the stall is even similar. The lack of clear plans/and or environmental assessments cause state agencies to slow them down. The PSC is still waiting for questions and plans from NYRI. The APA is still investigating and questioning the plans of Michael Foxman. Both agencies are claiming they are not holding up the projects -- but they cannot approve until details emerge. They both need to nail down the details -- and maybe the agencies will want scale back.
It is interesting to note the similarities in these two proposals as they proceed through the processes that take them from paper to real life construction (or destruction).
In the doldrums of these two issues, I stopped writing. So maybe I should just write and bore others with the ho-hum details of what I have been doing. Maybe I should reveal details a little at a time... so I have more than one blog entry to write.
I have been reading some books. My reading list of late:
Currently:
Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje - a novel that I am still reading. He is a wonderful writer. He wrote the English Patient, which for some reason I have never read.
Recently:
The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies - a novel of World War II with the setting of Wales. Includes some thoughts about Welsh culture and has the wonderful idea of cynefin. This is the concept that sheep will die if they leave their known territory. Great book and highly recommended.
The March by E.L. Doctorow - a civil war novel that concentrates on General Shermans March through the South. Great book. Read it. Questions the reasons for the war on a personal level. The Welsh Girl asks some of the same questions in a different way.
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick - excellent history of the population of New England, beginning with the Mayflower. It emphasizes the relation of the new settlers to the old settlers (the tribes). This is the history I should have learned in school. I want to read more history and this book was a good way to just get started.
On Chesil Beach: A Novel by Ian McEwan: If you want to read a long short story this is it. From the author of Atonement, which in my opinion was a better book. I liked this one and of course, dislike the ending. If this is made into a movie, it should be interesting how they will do the wedding night.
March by Geraldine Brooks -- another novel with the Civil War mixed with life in New England. I loved this book. At first it took me a little while to get involved with Mr. March (Little Women's patriarch) but afterall, I read this when looking for something light. It is not a light story. Try it.
To read:
1491
Baltimore Blues
My list is so long, and so little time. These two are sitting on my table so I think they might be next. But I will be returning to the Vestal library very soon to return my stack. I loved just picking out some random books and finding they are hidden jewels.
