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Vol. 41 No. 48
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NOVEMBER 26 - DECEMBER 2, 2015
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House abandoned because of compressor station Family walks away from $250,000 By JESSICA COHEN
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INISINK, NY — In June, Leanne and Rob Baum and their four children abandoned their house in Minisink, leaving it to the bank holding the mortgage and oversight by a friend. Ominous symptoms from emissions of a 12,600 horsepower gas compressor built in their rural neighborhood two years before by Millennium Pipeline, LLC, prompted their decision, said Leanne. After it had been six months on the market they had no offers on their house, and selling to another family felt morally questionable.
“Once you know, you can’t un-know about the hazards,” she said. “I hoped no one would be interested.” No one was, and others in the neighborhood negotiated with “lowball offers” to sell their houses in the once-quiet rural community after they had been a year on the market, Baum said. The Baums had bought their four-bedroom house for $374,000, and invested about $250,000 in payments and improvements during their nine years there. In addition to putting in hardwood floors, lighting upgrades, a family room, wood stove and patio, they had landscaped
two acres. Their apple, cherry and peach trees, gardens and greenhouse yielded produce they ate, preserved and gave away to friends. They sold raspberry jam at a farmers’ market and drank wine made from grapes they grew. But in those last two years, they lost interest in gardening. Rob had begun waking up with headaches that went away when he arrived at work, though his office was dusty, low-ceilinged and lit by fluorescent lights, said Leanne. Her eyes became too irritated to tolerate contact lenses, and she noticed her children had become “lethargic.” Although they were
The original Thanksgiving booster By FRITZ MAYER
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EGION — Most Americans know that the first Thanksgiving was celebrated by the Pilgrims in the fall of 1621, with a feast that was shared with many members of the Wampanoag Tribe of Native Americans. What’s not as well known is that it did not become a national holiday celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November until many years later. The person credited with doing the most to advocate that Thanksgiving should become a national holiday celebrated by all states, on the same day of the year, was a writer and editor named Sarah Josepha Hale, who became a widow at a young age, and turned to literature to support her five children. Hale, who is credited with having written the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” was the “editress” of Godey’s Lady’s Book, an influential Philadelphia magazine, when she wrote her first editorial about Thanksgiving in 1837. At the time the holiday was celebrated in New England and some other states, but not
Taking sides Add a special wow to your Thanksgiving feast
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in all states. Hale wrote that Thanksgiving, “might without inconvenience, be observed on the same day of November, say the last Thursday in the month, throughout all New England; and also in our sister states, who have engrafted it upon their social system. It would then have a national character, which would, eventually, induce all the states to join in the commemoration of ‘In-gathering,’ which it celebrates. It is a festival which will never become obsolete, for it cherishes the best affections of the heart.” In 1846, Hale began a sustained campaign to make the holiday a national one with an editorial about the topic every year, and letters to five presidents. Finally, in 1863 she wrote a letter to President Abraham Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War, asking him to issue a proclamation for a Day of National Thanksgiving. He complied, writing, in part, “In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity… order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of
military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore… “It has seemed to me fit and proper that [these gifts] should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving….” Hale considered this a great accomplishment; still, however much power a presidential proclamaation had at the time, the day was not set in stone. The next president, Andrew Johnson issued
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“Sarah Hale portrait” painted by James Reid Lambdin (1807-1889) — Richard’s Free Library, Newport, NH
Sarah Josepha Hale a proclamation saying Thanksgiving should be celebrated on the first Thursday in September. The matter was finally settled completely when the Senate and House of Representatives passed a bill saying that Thanksgiving would be celebrated every year on the fourth Thursday of November, and President Franklin Roosevelt signed the bill into law on November 26, 1941.
SPANNING 2 STATES, 4 COUNTIES, AND A RIVER THAT UNITES US
A fall feast, the Lenape way Remembering Gamwing
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accustomed to playing imaginary games outside, where they had a tree house and trampoline, the Baums began to wonder if that was a good idea, with the toxic emissions from the compressor. “OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] regulations for the workplace are more stringent than for compressors,” said Leanne. “And that’s for a six-foot male, not for kids, whose metabolisms are faster.” Even some of the Baum’s fruit trees looked sickly, as environmental health
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