My Blood Runs Cold – My Memory Has Just Been Sold

Future of Empire State Landscapes and Waters “All Fracked Up”

My blood runs cold, my memory has just been sold
My angel is a centerfold
Angel is a centerfold  ~~~ J Geils Band

[Update below]

Growing up in New York’s Hudson Valley, there was no doubt in my young mind that I was living in the center of the universe.

As I’ve aged and seen much of the country, that perspective has only grown.

But now I weep in despair over the future of the State I still love.

The things I most treasured about my home state of NY are rapidly vanishing – or already gone.

So lets take a step back and examine my youthful foundational myths and illusions, to explore how present developments are betraying them.

One’s home is always special, not only in absolute terms, but in relative terms too.

So, to start off with the relative perspective, I have to say that NY’s neighboring states were pathetic.

I still recall that Pennsylvania had pinkish red pavement and highways with potholes so huge they gave our crappy 62 Plymouth Valiant flat tires. The best the state could offer was musty Pocono cabins, with mosquito’s, mice, and red mud I had to wash off the tires, fenders and half way up the doors of the car.

Connecticut was a featureless suburb you had to drive through to get to cool places, like Boston and the coast of Maine.

And Jersey was a terrifying industrial nightmare. After running the gauntlet of oil refineries, chemical plants, and reeking landfills, you arrived among baby oil coated, tatooed hordes, packed like sardines onto filthy beaches wedged between a polluted ocean and stinky bathrooms and funky boardwalks. And that was the BEST Jersey had to offer.

But even the best of the Jersey shore  experience couldn’t come close to Bob Moses’ spectacular Jones Beach, which was where our family went when we wanted salt water.

But mostly, on weekend outings we went to sparkling freshwater, like Welch Lake in Harriman State Park or Bear Mountain. There you could swim, hike in the woods, and picnic with a modicum of privacy and tranquility, amidst the grandeur of nature, not assaulted by tar balls and pinball arcades.

New York had the majestic Adirondack Mountains, the mysterious Catskills, the grand Hudson River, and the lovely Finger Lakes region.

We had real red blooded indians, who would crack your head open and take your scalp (and your wife and daughter too). These indians were not like the pussies up in Massachusetts, who shared corn with the Pilgrims, or the docile farmers who smoked peace pipes with the likes of rich lazy landowners in Philly.

We had frontiersmen, like Natty Bumpo who would hunt, trap, and portage canoes between frozen Adirondack lakes to Canadien St. Lawrence waters to feed the fur trade.  These were real hard core manly men, not urban elites in Boston and Philadelphia, who invented stuff, read books, and sat around writing documents.

Our literary legends were the terrifying Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow; the adventurous brave explorer Natty Bumpo; and the laid back Rip Van Winkle.

Non local heroes like Tom Sawyer just couldn’t compete either – Tom rafted the narrow muddy waters of the Mississippi, surrounded by tame, flat farmlands, catching sluggish catfish.

But I navigated the 3 mile wide wild Hudson in a 12 foot wooden craft in the shadows on the steep, rocky Palisades and the forests and forts around Bear Mountain, trolling for the spectacular wild striped bass!  Get back Tom Sawyer!

Our Guilded Age capitalists were far superior to the feudal slave owning wicked southern plantation owners; the greedy California gold rushers and slimy Texas oil men; the midwestern railroad robber barrons who ripped off farmers; and the land raping western mining and timber monopolists.

Our capitalists were sophisticated public spirited intellectual industrialists and philanthropists! They created not only private wealth, but other equally important things – public assets – like parks, libraries, museums, and schools.

Our universities were founded in the egalitarian public spirit of the Morrill land Grant program, created by Congress, and dedicated to progress in science and technology.

Just compare egalitarian Cornell (motto:”I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study,”) with elite Yale (founded in the 1640’s by clergymen) or Princeton (chartered in 1746 by British King George  and led by reverends), both institutions founded in a religious tradition, dedicated to and long serving private interests.

Once called “the first American university” by educational historian Frederick Rudolph, Cornell University represents a distinctive mix of eminent scholarship and democratic ideals. Adding practical subjects to the classics and admitting qualified students regardless of nationality, race, social circumstance, gender, or religion was quite a departure when Cornell was founded in 1865.

Even the Red Coat Torries were better in NY – brave guys like Major Andre and Benedict Arnold, not those effete white whigged elites who hung with the Hessians in Trenton.

But perhaps most significant for our tale today is NY’s rich tradition in progressive government and land conservation.

NY is the home of the likes of Horace Greeley, a leader of a free press who used it to oppose slavery.

Many others created a rich progressive tradition of strong government, from Teddy Roosevelt, to Gifford Pinchot (who was the first Dean of the School of Forestry at Cornell before he later became the first Chief of the US Forest Service), to FDR, to Nelson Rockefeller. Old School!

In 1825, with the opening of the 363 mile long Erie Canal, NY created the model for government public works and transportation infrastructure investments to promote economic development.

In 1885, NY established the nation’s first and largest park in the continental US, Adirondack park., followed in 1904 by Catskill Park.

The intellectual roots of the Adirondack Park go back to the founding of modern ecological science, forestry and landscape planning, by George Perkins Marsh’s 1864 work “Man and Nature“.

Those scientific developments came in the wake of the Hudson River School of landscape art – again, NY was at the forefront of science, art, culture and economic development.

Government in NY always worked effectively and for the people.

Most importantly, a land conservation ethic was a noble tradition and key responsibility of government.

But where has the rich progressive government and land and water conservation tradition I was spoon fed as a boy gone?

Where is that groundbreaking conservation cum powerful environmental movement?

Why has NY rolled over for the gas industry?

Thousands of gas fracking well will industrialize some of NY’s premier and still largelyl rural landscapes and wild regions, including  large portions of the Catskills, Southern  Tier, and Finger Lakes.

Heres’ what those western landscapes look like without the gas industry:

Fracking will pollute NY’s most precious natural resources, its pristine waters and forests.

What the frack is wrong with NY?

[Update: 4/27/20 – As a native NY’er and Bernie supporter, I’m really disgusted by this – smells like the work of those carpetbaggers Hillary and Bill Clinton, with a little friendly support from Obama and the quiescence of Lame Corporate Joe Biden:

• New York Board of Elections Removes Bernie Sanders From Primary Ballot ~~~ end update]