WALDEN RENEWABLES SNEAKS INTO LOVELL

Flyer going around town

Solar energy is disturbing the peace here on Christian Hill in Lovell, Maine. Residents are angry because they didn’t know anything about a huge, multi-million-dollar, 171 acre, solar-panel project that will be visible from our hill. What really ticks them off is that, by the time they found out about it, it was already too late to do anything about it. Locals have been calling me and knocking on my door wanting to know what to do. According to what I have been able to learn so far, not much, because Lovell doesn’t have an ordinance to regulate these things and I suspect the solar company knew that.

I'll be seeing solar panels just to the left of the birdhouse

I knew nothing either until about two weeks ago. Even though the site abuts my property, I was never notified. To say that annoys me is understatement. A friend and I purchased 30 acres of overgrown former apple orchard enclosed by stone walls on Christian Hill over forty years ago. The land slopes down from the road, which is a big disadvantage in every way but one: there’s a beautiful view westward toward the White Mountain National Forest in neighboring New Hampshire. 

From my back porch
Solar panels would replace pines & hardwoods on the bottom

After splitting the thirty acres down the middle, my wife and I built a home on our half and moved into it in 1988. For the next several years, I personally reopened the view by cutting down enough trees for eight cords of wood every summer. I split it by hand and burned it to keep us warm each winter until I had cleared my half of the overgrown apple orchard.

Solar Panels would be under the cloud in the center

I had stabilized the disturbed soil around our new house with a conservation mix but our gravel driveway remained a challenge. Thunderstorms opened gullies every summer until we figured out where to install ditches and culverts. Then I hired an excavator to remove the stumps left in the former orchard and stabilized the disturbed soil with more conservation mix. I get it bush-hogged each year now to maintain the field and preserve our vista. It’s been a lot of work and expense, but the scenery always made it worthwhile.

My granddaughters Solar panels would dominate the view to the left of the birch tree

Lovell’s proposed solar project, however, will ruin that view. If it goes through as proposed, about half our panorama will be of hundreds black solar panels. My forty years of hard work has increased the value of our property, but whatever it’s worth will be considerably diminished if our view is spoiled by acre after acre of ugly black solar panels.

The solar company that would destroy my vista calls itself “Walden Renewables,” probably to conjure bucolic images a la Henry David Thoreau. However, row after parallel row of fifteen-foot-high, black solar solar panels is anything but bucolic. The 600-page Walden Renewables application to the Town of Lovell suggests we visualize sheep grazing beneath their black monstrosities and promises to decommission them after thirty years. Then, they say, the land would be open pasture. But if I live that long, I’ll be a hundred years old. Maybe I’ll get to watch them finally disassemble the monstrous things from a rocking chair on my back porch.

This view would be ruined

These huge collections of panels not only look ugly, but their transformers are noisy. It’s not a loud noise, but it can be annoying because it’s a “Pure Tone.” According to Michael Bahtiarian, a sound engineer at Acentech: “In my opinion, when a person is bothered by sound, it is more likely the presence of a Pure Tone that is bothering them rather than just the sound level. At the wrong frequencies, a Pure Tone can be a highly annoying sound” It’s about as loud as a vacuum cleaner.

Solar panels would replace the snow-covered pines

Lest you think this is just a local problem we’re dealing with, check out a November 2nd New York Times account: “Approximately 0.5 percent of U.S. land would need to be covered with solar panels to achieve the decarbonization goals proposed by the Biden administration in April, according to a study by the Energy Department." That’s 190,000 square miles, folks, and they’re not going to be built in cities. Expect to see them just about everywhere you look when you go for that nice, peaceful ride in the country.

Solar panels would replace the pines in the mist

Walden Renewables started quietly buying up leases in Lovell last February, but didn’t submit their application until October after all the summer people went home. Sneaky, huh? From what I can gather, the project will be visible from Kezar Lake where most of them own property. They have deeper pockets than us locals and have always helped enormously during previous fights against a nuclear-waste dump, a series of GWEN towers the Pentagon proposed to help generals communicate after a nuclear attack had killed the rest of us, and several other battles against huge projects by outsiders.

The area lit up would be all solar panels

Lovell’s Planning Board will consider the Walden Renewables application at its regular meeting Wednesday, December 1st. It will be at the Lovell Town Hall because they expect a lot of people.

 I hope they’re right.

IS OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM ON LIFE SUPPORT?

How long before you call 911 and hear elevator music interspersed with a robot voice saying: “Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line and an operator will be with you shortly.”

That’s what we’re coming to. Some places are there already. Next time you have a medical emergency, you may not get the treatment you need. After waiting for your 911 call to be answered, you might wait a long time for an ambulance. A health care professional who worked in hospitals around the country for the past few years is telling me that our emergency rooms are so jammed, patients they used to be able to save are dying.

There aren’t enough nurses. There aren’t enough doctors There aren’t enough aides. There aren’t enough EMTs. It was a critical situation almost everywhere prior to onset of Covid. Writing three weeks ago in US News & World Report, ER physician Sharon Anoush Chekijian said: “Even before the pandemic, it felt like the emergency department was shouldering the lion's share of primary care: We'd provide treatment for hypertension, refill prescriptions when calls to the doctor's office went unanswered and manage chronically elevated blood sugar. Behavioral health patients with nowhere else to go would arrive one after the other by ambulance… Now COVID-19 has laid bare medicine's house of cards.”

Our ERs are teetering on the edge. The recent vaccination mandate from Maine Governor Janet Mills caused a surge of staff resignations, as have similar mandates across the country. According to the October 1st Lewiston Sun-Journal: “‘It has a huge impact on the existing labor shortage,’ said Dr. John Alexander. Central Maine Healthcare is the parent organization of Central Maine Medical Center (CMMC) in Lewiston, Bridgton Hospital and Rumford Hospital, as well as Maine Urgent Care and a primary care network. ‘In addition, to be honest, a lot of the people, a lot of frontline caregivers who have worked through this pandemic are tired,’ he said.”

I asked the health care professional who first alerted me to the problem why hospitals don’t just hire more staff. She said they’re just not out there and nursing schools aren’t graduating them fast enough either. Neither is there enough staff qualified to teach nursing students. Salaries at all levels are way too low. Hospital administrators. However, are paid well. Ten years ago the CMMC CEO was paid over $857,000 for fiscal 2011. What is it today? I wasn’t able to find data. My guess would be over a million per annum.

The Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) passed in 1986 mandating that emergency rooms treat everyone who shows up. They must be screened, stabilized, then passed on to an appropriate hospital or they stay in the ER.

ER staff see patients suffering and dying every shift for lack of care. They see loved ones grieving too. CEOs do not see these things. They see spreadsheets of profit and loss. Kate Wells of Michigan Radio writes: “Inside the emergency department at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan, staff members are struggling to care for patients showing up much sicker than they’ve ever seen.Tiffani Dusang, the ER’s nursing director, practically vibrates with pent-up anxiety, looking at patients lying on a long line of stretchers pushed up against the beige walls of the hospital hallways. “It’s hard to watch,” she said in a warm Texas twang. But there’s nothing she can do. The ER’s 72 rooms are already filled. “I always feel very, very bad when I walk down the hallway and see that people are in pain, or needing to sleep, or needing quiet. But they have to be in the hallway with, as you can see, 10 or 15 people walking by every minute,” Dusang said. …“I cannot tell you how many of them [the nurses] tell me they went home crying” after their shifts.” 

Dr. Chekijian in US News says: “The bottom line is this: The house of medicine in the U.S. is a house of cards that has already started its crashing descent into collapse.” 

I just turned seventy last spring and this is a disconcerting scenario for my demographic, the cohort most likely to need health care. Prone to chronic blood clots, I’ve spent many hours in emergency rooms over the past thirty years, the last few times on a stretcher in a hallway because the ER was overcrowded. I watched nurses scurrying about trying to tend to us all and hated to add to their stress by asking any more of them.

The last time I did that was three years ago. What will it be like the next time? I hate to think.

LEFT & RIGHT SEPTEMBER 15, 2021

Newspaper publisher Mark Guerringue sits in the left chair.

Covid dominates our discussion. Mark believes everyone should be vaccinated. I don't agree that government should force it. We have both been vaccinated for Covid. Mark points to George Washington mandating that all his soldiers be given smallpox vaccine. I point out that he was a general then and not the president. I question whether a president has constitutional authority to force citizens to get the jab.

Mark says this covid vaccine is different from traditional ones like smallpox in that it doesn't transfer weak virus but there's a change in its molecular structure, so it's new. He insists that most nearly all new infections occur in the unvaccinated. I point out that Israel's population is more than 85% vaccinated but also has the most new infections. I point to studies indicating that natural antibodies in someone who got Covid and didn't get sick are several times stronger than those from a vaccine. He thinks it's just the opposite.

LEFT & RIGHT SHOW AUGUST 4TH, 2021

Newspaper publisher Mark Guerringue sits in the left chair for this show. First question from the producer asks our opinion of the CDC renewing a ban on evictions by landlords of tenants who don't pay rent. Mark defers to me and I claim it's unconstitutional for the federal gfuovernment to exercise this power, and Biden admits it. Nonetheless, he did it. Governors may have such power depending on what state constitutions might have granted.

I bring back a question Mark asked on a previous show about why Republicans were going after Anthony Fauci. I said it was because he lied under oath at a Senate hearing when he denied using US tax dollars to fund "gain of function" research at the Wuhan Lab. Mark said it was only a small amount and no big deal. He didn't address lying under oath. From there was discuss where the virus might have originated. Mark insisted there was no evidence it was anywhere but from animals. I said evidence was emerging that it possibly started in a laboratory in Wuhan. After first insisting strenuously there was no evidence, Mark acknowledged it was possible. Mark asked me about Governor Cuomo, who at that point had not yet resigned. I cited enormous discrepancies in mainstream media coverage of similar accusations against conservatives Brett Kavanaugh and Donald Trump. Media was extremely aggressive against Trump and Kavanaugh but played down accusations against liberal Democrat Andrew Cuomo until they simply couldn't anymore. I pivoted to teachers's union support of teaching Critical Race Theory in our public schools. Teachers' unions being the biggest contributors to the Democrat Party after the Trial Lawyers Association. I quoted from a National Association statement at their convention the month before in which they criticize capitalism, claims "White Supremacy" as being inherent in white people, that they're anti-black, and against indigenous peoples as well -- and more. I reiterated Mark's claims that my columns were "anti-black," but he again insisted that didn't mean I was anti-black. I said I stand by what I wrote and would write them again, that they reflect what I believe, that they were not "anti-black" but anti-Black Lives Matter, and other such radical leftist groups.

Left & Right June 6, 2021

 

Mark Guerringue sits the left chair for this program. We discuss the national debt and how much Trump added to it as well as how much Biden's proposals will add if they're passed. That leads to discussion of what is infrastructure and how much should the federal government get involved. Should it be done with private capital instead. I raise historical precedents like the Erie Canal which New York State paid for entirely. We discussed comparisons between last summer's riots in cities across the country and the events of January 6th in Washington DC. I see parallels, but Mark says they're "apples and oranges." We discussed Mark calling my columns "anti-black" but he denies calling me "racist."

WAS IT ALL UNNECESSARY?

As I ran errands in Fryeburg today, businesses still had their mask mandate signs up. I carried a mask but didn’t put it on. I was waiting for someone to tell me to but that didn’t happen. Fryeburg business owners all know me as a conservative so perhaps that was it. When I asked a few why they still had the mask signs up, proprietors told me our beloved mother, I mean governor, Janet Mills said we can stop wearing masks on May 24th. 

“I assume she informed all the Covid virus particles that May 23rd is the absolute last day they’re allowed to infect us. Am I right?” I asked one woman. She and a clerk who overheard burst out laughing. Everyone I saw in that store had masks on.

My daughter and grandson arrived in Maine last week after driving across the country from Portland, Oregon. They reported that no one was wearing masks in the midwest except for the Chicago area. It’s only on the coasts that people wear them. Should we expect people in middle America to start dying now?

A woman from the CDC told us we can use our own judgement now about whether to mask up, socially distance, wash hands every ten minutes, and all that. What’s changed? How come government now trusts ordinary citizens to make up their own minds? They have no clue how many of us have been doing that right along.

People on the coasts have obviously decided for themselves before the guidance from the CDC. Coastal blue people, when asked why they continue wearing masks respond that they don’t want to be mistaken for conservatives. I’m not kidding. They actually say that when interviewed by reporters. Others say they keep wearing a mask because they want to show how much they care for others. These people are so virtuous! I feel like a sinner in their presence.

Covering up half my face for the past year has improved my looks, I’ll admit, and the elastics that pull my ears forward has improved my hearing. Although that aural gain is offset when other people’s words are muffled from being spoken through cloth and from behind plexiglass.

It was so nice to watch Senator Rand Paul expose the lying Anthony Fauci in a senate hearing room. The previously-sainted Fauci denied funding “gain of function” research during his lifelong career with our government — and said Senator Rand Paul’s accusations to the contrary were completely incorrect. As it came out over the next few days however, that Fauci approved our tax money be given to an NGA that, in turn, gave it to the Chinese in Wuhan, China for that research. So he didn’t fund the “gain of function” research. They did.

I have to look up “gain of function” research to learn that meant scientists were researching how to enable viruses to infect humans. Why in God’s name would they ever want to do that, I wondered. Then I learned that President Obama had banned such research years ago. Well, how about that? Something Obama did that I can actually applaud. Fauci and another scientist, however, found a loophole that enabled them to continue funding it, although indirectly. 

Have you noticed that Fauci’s halo has been removed? He’s not on television every day anymore either. Do you miss him? I sure don’t.

Another thing: it’s no longer racist to call this “The Wuhan Virus” or “The China Virus.” The former head of the CDC told us he believes the virus escaped from lab in Wuhan that got money through the formerly-sainted Doctor Fauci to do that “gain of function” research. Apparently it didn’t come from some Chinese person eating a bat purchased from a wet market. Will anyone who called me racist now apologize? Probably not.

I’ve read where a few brave scientists are suggesting that all the economic shutdowns, the social distancing, the mask-wearing — none of it had any effect. The virus was going to do what it did regardless of all that. We could have avoided all that misery. All the businesses that closed didn’t have to. All the schools that closed didn’t have to. Imagine. Are they right? I suspect they are. If so, will our political leaders ever admit it? You know the answer.

Many Catholic schools remained open throughout, and not a single infection can be traced to a student. Were Catholics immune? Were they holier than Dr. Fauci? Or was it all unnecessary? It sure was necessary according to the teachers’ unions and their Democrat allies — and they’re determined to continue with it all. Have the teachers’ unions ever gotten anything right? Not that I can remember. I should have quit the National Education Association much sooner than I did. I actually paid them dues for over ten years. What a fool I was.

The main road through Fryeburg has been choked by construction for almost two years now. I know the back roads so I can avoid it during my errands, but I don’t see road construction projects taking nearly so long over the New Hampshire border a few miles away. Why is that? Let’s see: Democrats have been running Maine for the entire forty-five years I’ve lived here. Republicans have run New Hampshire for almost all of that time.

Could that have something to do with it?

Left & Right Show Wednesday, February 3, 2021

 

Here I confront Conway Sun publisher Mark Guerringue about his decision to spike one of the last columns I submitted to his paper. He claims it was because of inaccuracies and misinformation. I claim it was because of his leftist political bias and I challenge him to cite the alleged misinformation.

THE FINAL DEADLINE

Sunrise at Spring Point, South Portland Maine

“The days of our years are threescore years and ten,” according to Psalm 90, and I reached that milestone yesterday, April 7th. We live longer here in the 21st century United States than people did in ancient Israel when Psalm 90 was written, but not much longer. Because of a circulatory condition I didn’t think I’d make it even this far because I haven’t been able to purchase life insurance since I was thirty-three. Yet here I am, still sucking oxygen.

Reaching seventy seems like a good time to take stock and make some changes. I began writing for publication sometime during the Carter Administration. My pieces were occasional until sometime late in the George H. W. Bush Administration when I committed to writing a regular, weekly column for various newspapers. With advent of the internet, several web sites picked it up too, and up to now about 1500 columns have been published in hard copy. Deadlines for 800-word columns have crimped my weekly schedule ever since, and that has become tiresome.

When I turned sixty, I retired from the classroom. Now, at seventy, I’m liberating myself from deadlines and returning to occasional-writer status. Why? Mostly because writing keeps me at my desk when I’d rather be outside taking pictures, especially now that spring is here. Photography is much more fun, and it scratches my creative itch more thoroughly than writing does. It’s also more lucrative.

Sunrise from Christian Hill last month

After a day exploring my environs through the lens of my camera, I still find myself sitting in front of my computer, but I’m seeing beautiful color photos instead of words in dull black-and-white. It’s relaxing and energizing at the same time — and I listen to music while I edit— classical piano mostly. With income from sales, I purchased high-end cameras, lenses and other tools of the trade and I want to use them more. Already I’m waking up with excitement as I think about where I’ll go with my photo backpack after breakfast, or even before breakfast if I feel like it.

Going into my office now, I’m eager to see what my latest photos look like on the big monitor. Although I discard most, I like using an editing program to make the rest better, but even fewer of those make it onto my web site to be offered for sale. As I said, the whole process is much more fun than writing. Conscious that this is my final regular column, I’m feel liberated from deadlines already. I’ll be free all next week, and for however many more weeks my Creator wishes to give me. Only He knows what my final deadline will be  — and about that I prefer to remain in ignorance.

Whatever occasional writing I may do will be published on my blog, and will likely be in the form of photo essays. Now, however, they can be less than 800 words, or more. I can write whatever comes to mind and go on for as long as I want. I can go off on tangents without feeling guilty for not sticking to the subject. Tangents are usually more creative than the intended script anyway. I never know where they’ll take me but the trip is always enjoyable.

Old Orchard Beach at dawn

My blog is a better medium than newspapers for photos and words and that’s where future pieces will go. If publications ever wishes to pick one up, they can, but I won’t be promoting them. I don’t enjoy marketing and have never done much of it.

Somewhere in Kennebunk, Maine

I intend to continue my TV show: “Left & Right,” because that’s only twice a month and it’s still fun. Whereas writing columns was a solitary endeavor, TV is interactive and I can invite anyone I wish. Show prep is easy because I’m always keeping up with news of the world anyway and I decide what the content will be. 

Positive and negative feedback from my columns have come in newspapers, online, over the telephone, through email, via snail-mail, and in person. It was nice to get it, negative included, and I want to thank the many people who sent it over the years in spite of, or because of, the controversy my columns engendered. I’ve saved most of the hard copy letters to the editor, opposing columns, and snail-mail letters along with digital copies of emails. Comments on my blog will be preserved as long as Google allows.

Sunrise at Old Orchard Beach, Maine

Psalm 90:10 goes on to say, “…and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”

Although there’s been no shortage of labor and sorrow during my 70 years, joy has been thoroughly interspersed as well, and I hope will continue to be before I fly away.

"HOCKEY STICK MANN" LOSES AGAIN

Was it wrong for me to feel schadenfreude last week after infamous climatologist Michael Mann’s second court defeat? Maybe, but I savored it anyway.

It was only five years ago that the litigious, pretentious, and hypersensitive climatologist signed his April 29, 2016 letter to the Conway Daily Sun as: “Michael E. Mann, Distinguished professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center, Penn State University.” After Mann had sued multiple critics over the previous ten years, it looked as though he would add me to his list of defendants which included The National Review, New Hampshire columnist Mark Steyn, Canada’s Dr. Timothy Ball, The Competitive Enterprise Institute, and others.

Mann’s 500-word screed against me began with: “An individual named Tom McLaughlin did a tremendous disservice to your readership by spreading falsehoods about the topic of human-caused climate change, and about my scientific work specifically, in his misguided recent commentary (“Campus craziness” published April 28).”

That column was about loopy developments on American college campuses in general. I mentioned Michael Mann in only one paragraph but he immediately fired off his letter to the Sun. 

Mann is the creator of the now-debunked “hockey-stick graph” first made famous by former Vice President Al Gore’s film: “Inconvenient Truth” and then cited by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Whenever anyone publicly criticized Mann for his faulty scientific reasoning, he sued them. The suits dragged on almost ten years costing defendants millions, but they’re finally being settled.

Last week, Mann’s suit against National Review was dismissed. In 2019, a Supreme Court judge in British Columbia dismissed Mann’s suit against Dr. Timothy Ball with prejudice. That judge also ordered Mann to pay Ball’s court costs which run into the millions. It’s possible Mann will have to pay National Review’s court costs as well, but that hasn’t been decided at this writing. His suits against Mark Steyn and the Competitive Enterprise Institute will likely be dismissed soon with similar results.

David Suzuki

I don’t know how deep Mann’s pockets are, but I think wealthy climate Cassandras like Canada’s David Suzuki who backed him will have to pay Mann’s victims now. I’m no lawyer, but I think that’s how it works. Suzuki said politicians skeptical of anthropogenic climate change “should be thrown in the slammer.” Democrat politicians in the United States have also called for jailing climate skeptics. These court defeats would seem to indicate that if anyone is going to the slammer, it’s more likely to be Michael Mann. Dr. Timothy Ball was right when he said: “Mann belongs in the state pen, not Penn State.”

There’s little doubt that our climate is warming. Portland [Maine] Harbor used to freeze regularly but it rarely does now. The question is whether human activity [burning fossil fuels] is causing it. The left believes it is while conservatives generally do not. Conservatives see the left using the issue to justify expanded government control over the energy sector of our economy. The new Biden Administration is populating the federal bureaucracy with officials who believe they can prevent global warming by phasing out coal and petroleum products in America and substituting expensive alternative energy sources like wind and solar for them.

Public concern about alleged anthropogenic climate change has waxed and waned over the years since Columbia University’s James Hansen predicted doom back in 1988. When scientists like Mann are challenged, mainstream media goes after skeptics. On 60 Minutes last year, Mann said: “There’s about as much scientific consensus about human-caused climate change as there is about gravity.”

Mann's hockey stick cannot be reproduced without his data

If Mann is that confident in his position, why has he refused for more than a decade to turn over the data he used to compose his hockey stick? The scientific method requires that for a theory to become scientific fact, hypothetical experiments must be reproducible with the same results. That, of course, would be impossible because Mann won’t release his data despite court orders to do so. His refusal was cited by both judges in his two recent court defeats.

Even though neither the polar ice caps nor the Himalayan glaciers have disappeared as predicted by green Chicken Littles, mainstream media habitually trumpet climate Cassandras like Mann and attack his skeptics. So, it shouldn’t surprise us that media have ignored Mann’s legal defeat versus Dr. Timothy Ball in British Columbia. They’ve been ignoring Mann’s loss against National Review so far as well. Both contradict media’s “We’re all gonna die from catastrophic climate change!” narrative.

When Mann’s remaining suits against Mark Steyn and the Competitive Enterprise Institute are also thrown out, should I try to suppress my inevitable resurgence of schadenfreude?

Greta Thunberg

Nah. I’m going to savor it.