New York should market its nighttime skies

 

Astro-tourism has become one of the fastest-growing trends in tourism. What once was travel only enjoyed by hardcore astronomers has become mainstream in recent years as more people from all walks of life are venturing to places with dark skies (that is, away from the city lights) to see the northern lights or observe celestial bodies and meteor showers in skies nearly as pristine as those that our ancestors slept under.

 

It’s something that New York should capitalize on, but really isn’t. All told, the state and individual counties and chambers of commerce spend millions of dollars every year on advertising all of the natural wonders in our state (like Niagara Falls, the Adirondacks, and the Thousand Islands). Very little, if anything, is spent on promoting our dark skies, despite having some very special sites in the Empire State. 

 

In the Southern Tier, a good chunk of territory that runs along the Pennsylvania border and includes towns like Alma, Whitesville and Jasper falls under nearly dark sky jurisdiction and stargazers are greeted by nighttime skies featuring countless stars and thick imagery of the Milky Way. The skies are so dark that at a 2014 meeting of Alma residents that focused on the future of the community, a long discussion was had about opening up beds and breakfasts in that Allegany County town for the sole purpose of catering to people who would sleep during the day to be outdoors at night.

 

Approximately two-thirds of the Adirondack Park, a massive area, falls into that same category of night sky, too. There is a specific area within it, though, where the skies are even darker, the darkest in the entire northeast – even darker than Pennsylvania’s famed Cherry Springs State Park. About a half hour to the east of the ever-popular community of Old Forge is a dark sky area centered around Raquette Lake. There, skywatchers are treated to the heavens exactly as they were before Thomas Edison’s light bulb took hold and drowned out the stars. In that place, 10,000 stars can be seen with the naked eye.

 

To see exactly what I mean about dark sky ratings, refer to the dark sky/light pollution map at  https://www.lightpollutionmap.info There, you can zoom in and out of the map of the United States to find the best places to see the stars.

 

The nearness of the Southern Tier and the Adirondacks to the population centers of the northeast is appealing to this newest demographic of outdoor adventurer….both locations are just one tank of gas away from 56 million people.

 

They could all use that primordial exposure to the sky above.

 

We all could, for light pollution has robbed too many of us of the best nighttime sights.

 

It’s been said that 99% of Europeans and Americans have light-obscured views of the nighttime sky. Even here it’s a major issue: In a 2010 column for the Greater Niagara Newspapers I lamented the loss of dark skies in the immediate area. Thanks to the city lights of Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Lockport and the Greater Toronto Area, Niagara’s skies are anything but dark, even in our rural communities. To put that lack of true darkness in perspective, in the central Adirondacks you can see 7 to 10 times the stars that you can see on a good night in rural Niagara County. Yes, 7 to 10 times!

 

Our nighttime misery, as bad as it is, is nothing compared to that of New York City, where its residents never see stars unless the electrical grid goes out as it did in August of 2013. That outage was probably a wake-up call to many metropolitan denizens. That’s because the first time that you have unfettered access to the heavens is unforgettable, you feel like a new person -- spiritually and intellectually. You’ll want more of that experience, guaranteed.

 

It’s time that the good people at state and regional tourism offices took advantage of that desire to be mystified by the stars. We could bring thousands of tourists, and thousands of tourism dollars, to some of the Empire State’s prime locations. Just look at the well-promoted Cherry Spring State Park south of Coudersport, Pennsylvania for such a success story: In 2020, for example, that park hosted more than 46,000 visitors from June through August and on some nights there were 1,000 people in the park’s designated dark sky viewing field. Those numbers are awe-inspiring…as is what they are there to see.  

 

Similar nighttime Meccas could be created and promoted in New York, whether in Allegany County or Hamilton County. There’s so much potential for our communities…in this case, the sky is quite literally, the limit.

 

 

From the 30 August 2022 Greater Niagara Newspapers, Batavia Daily News, and Wellsville Sun

Exploring the Western NY Wilds: What are oak apples?

 

When hiking through Allegany County’s forests in the late-summer and fall you will occasionally encounter at the base of oak trees a fragile, hollow, brown ball.

 

These strange sights always merit attention and questions about their origins. Many people assume that they are undeveloped acorns or some sort of strange fruit.

 

They are neither.

 

These orbs are called oak galls and are more commonly known as oak apples. These were leaves that, for lack of a better word, mutated and became homes for developing wasps.

 

The insect that lived inside the oak apple you’ll find now has as interesting and long life cycle that was spread across generations and years as well as various places on that oak tree.

 

In the summer of two years past, that wasp’s grandmother emerged from her own oak apple and then mated. The fertile female dropped to the earth, buried herself in the ground and then laid her eggs on the roots of that oak tree which the babies occasionally ate (when not dormant during the cold months) all through last year and into this spring.

 

That hatchling grew into adulthood and then crawled out of the ground to become the mother of “your” oak apple wasp. This past spring, she laid he eggs on a budding oak leaf, which grew around the larval stage of the wasp, providing both home and shelter for the wasp until it reached adulthood, bored a hole in the gall, escaped, and went about to do its business to repeat the cycle.

 

That explains how the insect got there, but what explains the strange ball?

 

Well, it’s a pretty interesting act of nature.

 

The mother of your wasp injected her egg into a bud or very young leaf. Those eggs are covered with and/or ooze a chemical that actually causes the plant’s genes to turn off or on and behave differently. That chemical is an imperfect or corrupted copycat of oak hormones which induces the special growth – the gall, the apple -- to begin. When the larva hatches from the egg it continues to emit that substance which further inspires the development of its home. Rather than the oak creating a standard, perfect leaf, the “directions” provided by that chemical encourage the oak to make a mutant growth, a leafy ball, around the baby wasp, using the leaf in whole or growing as a tumor-like growth off the leaf.

 

In the center of that ball sits the developing wasp, which is surrounded by a network of fibers radiating from the center and connecting to the walls of the gall. Those fibers provide food to the growing wasp throughout its development. If you crack open an old leaf gall you will see what looks almost like a downy seed that you might see from a dandelion or thistle – that aged structure used to be that nourishment-delivery system.   

 

This time of year, after the wasps have evacuated their bulbous home, the gall and/or its leaf die and they fall to the ground. You also might occasionally find green oak apples early in the summer when the live growth falls from the tree due to wind and other incidents. The larva in one of those brightly-colored treasures is certain to never see adulthood – that gall is no longer attached to the tree and neither it or its occupant can glean the benefits of photosynthesis and other plant processes.

 

So, there you have it. That golf-ball sized oddity you found in the woods has an interesting story to tell. It was once something’s home, a home that was built through biological ingenuity. It’s truly amazing how Mother Nature’s creations react with and adapt to each other.   

 

 

From the 26 August 2022 Wellsville Sun     

Let former felons serve on juries

 

Over the past couple of years, reforms of the policing, judicial, and penal systems have been in the spotlight as activists try to make what they believe to be a more compassionate and equitable legal system.

 

One reform that keeps slipping under the radar of this movement is the elimination of the lifetime ban from jury duty for those who were convicted of a felony. In 2019, such a bill passed the State Senate but struggled to make its way out of committee in the Assembly. In the proposed law, ex-felons would be eligible to help pass judgment on cases after having completed sentencing related to their conviction, such as the initial imprisonment and any probation or community supervision that follows. Similar bills have appeared in subsequent legislative sessions with limited fanfare and action.

 

When the bill passed in 2019, it was along party lines and the Republican members of the Senate took to the press to voice their displeasure over what the Democrats had done. Of course, their like-partied constituents complained on social media outlets, considering it a disgusting move by Albany as it puts those whom they consider to be lowlifes in power to decide the fate of parties who are accused of a crime or battling it out in the courts.

 

I, on the other hand, would have no problem with a once-convicted juror.

 

I’ve been under the gun in civil trials. I likely will be again; it comes with the territory of running a business that serves a variety of industries and makes water-based leisure products. So, I know the value of good jurors. Four years ago, I was party in a trial that lasted two weeks. At the end of it, the jurors made their decision and ruled that my company was not at fault. Had they gone the other way it’s likely the company would have folded.

 

It took the jury nearly two full days to deliberate because there were a few other defendants – individuals and corporations -- involved in the trial as well, and they had to take their time meting out responsibility if there was any at all. I appreciated the time and effort they put into it.

 

Their thoughtfulness was an outcome of the make-up of the jury as they were a diverse bunch – from lower-income workers to white collar types to retirees to housewives.

 

When people are deciding your fate, that’s what you want. You are best served by people from all walks of life, jurors with their own experiences, worldviews, and observation and interpretation skills.

 

By “all walks of life” that means everyone…warts and all.

 

I would gladly accept a former felon on a jury because he has seen and been through things that the others might otherwise be unable to relate to and, more so than most on the jury, he understands the legal procedures and what the jury is actually supposed to do. 

 

I know that he wouldn’t be any less of a person than those sitting beside him. Yes, he committed a heinous crime, or what society believes to be a heinous crime, but he faced his punishment, served his time, and suffered the woes of incarceration and the joys of reformation. If we did our job as a people and penal system, he came out a better man and stronger man.

 

Those against affording ex-convicts rights such as jury duty or voting would say that the unconscionably-high recidivism rates show that many of them aren’t better people.

 

Is it that they aren’t better people or that we aren’t better people?

 

Do we drive some young men to recommit because we deny them basic rights after having paid their dues, brand them with a modern day Scarlet Letter, and turn them away when they look for gainful employment and community engagement that affirms a new life for them?

 

If we claim to be a just people – a mantle we always proclaim with our legal system, churches, schools, and families, as well as social media’s cause du jour – then why are we not just to those who have been served our justice at its fullest?

 

They have paid their debts to society. It’s up to us to welcome them back into it, rather than driving them away from it.

 

To do so, we need to offer them the same chances that law-abiding citizens have. Not only do they deserve and want to pursue a career, but they also deserve and want to be contributing members of society to, among other things, have the power to vote, and to contribute to our judicial system.

 

As a nation, we’ve done our darnedest – and spent our darnedest -- to institute and employ a system to transform them into good citizens.

 

So, let them be able to be just that.

 

If we don’t, what good was all of our talk, tax dollars, efforts, and alleged moral superiority?

 

 

From the 25 August 2022 Greater Niagara Newspapers, Batavia Daily News, and Wellsville Sun