Tompkins County – Page 63 – Rural Tompkins County

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “Child Safety Poster – Manure Lagoons”

Factory farmers and their families are warned to wear respirators around manure lagoons to prevent injury and death. Authorities don’t consider the health risks to farmer’s neighbors of any importance.

Satellite Lagoons are promoted as being a cost saving alternative to carrying liquid manure to distant fields. Under Agricultural Law; factory farmers can buy land and build a “lagoon” containing millions of gallons of liquid manure within feet of a rural residence as a matter of right. This has become the new standard for factory farms.

There is no disclosure of this practice, or recourse under the law, to potential home buyers. Instead, they are blamed for being “unfamiliar with farming practices.”

In Cornithaca County; it’s the demographic, not the act, that defines accountability.

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “Farm Harm Child Safety Poster”

This reprint from the Family Farm Fun book adds color to the original black and white poster.

If you think this poster is scary; prospective buyers of rural property will never see any of this. The current Agricultural Disclosure Form only states “farming activities may include, but not limited to, activities that cause noise, dust and odors.”

All my efforts to have this decades-old form updated to include modern agricultural methods and activities, and court acknowledged injuries to local farm neighbors, met with a stone wall of silence from State authorities.

This issue and others will be documented and dissected in Part 2 of this book.

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “GMO Corn Mazes”

This reprint from the Family Farm Fun book adds color to the original black and white spread.

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “[The new normal]” Poem

A short poem. Take from it what you will.

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “Find the Original Virus”

This simple puzzle is intended as a change of pace so the reader can bring a refreshed attention to the book.

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “Cornithaca Billboards 4”

“Doctrine, Doctrine everywhere, and not a drop of love.” to paraphrase the poem. Cornithaca’s Elite have run a relentless hate and fear campaign since I can remember — and as to their love; any examination of the county’s poor and needy shows that it must have evaporated decades ago.

When I wrote to the local college where the noted Rural Sociologist Janet Fitchen taught and authored Poverty in Rural America, requesting their help in publicizing the county’s current rural poverty and neglect: The response I received was; “She lived in simpler times.”

A year ago, Cornithaca gave a quarter of a million dollar tax let-off to the largest privately owned corporation in the US. Why? The corporation said they needed it.

What’s complicated about that?

It’s OK: they’ll simply increase our taxes to make up the difference.

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “Cornithaca Billboards 3”

Early Harvest is an idea whose time has come in Cornithaca County. This week the Common Council voted to eliminate rental payments by tenants and place the burden on “people or entities who have greater resources to solve the issue.” They themselves will, of course, be the ones to decide who those entities are, what resources will be needed, and what further issues need to be addressed.

It’s notable that the University, by far the richest and most powerful entity; one whose expansionist policies have driven out the original residents and turned their College Town into one of the twenty most expensive cities in the US to live in, is not one of the entities they have decided to burden. They will target the old, the poor, and those they can separate from the herd.

There’s not much sympathy that this issue can squeeze out of rural poor living three generations in an old wood frame house that they’re trying to keep in the face of ever-rising assessments and taxes: not for upscale urban renters having a hiccup in their six-figure salaries — but then they don’t write stories about the rural poor in Cornithaca County.

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “Cornithaca Billboards 2”

I have a couple of more songs to write before putting together a storyline and working on the interior of the “Bigotry” Paybill.

It’s been months since I’ve been in the Pub; drinking pints with a pizza to die for. When it reopens, I think I’ll call myself “Doug the Beloved” and see how that plays . . .

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “Cornithaca Billboards”

As leaders in the New Religion; Cornithaca billboards may seem strange to people in many other parts of the country: but you had better get used to them . . . you had better!

There’s more to fear than the Yellowstone Supervolcano. “Not with a bang but a whimper.”

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “The Hierarchy of Righteousness”

To put this page in proportion: Googling the CDC’s COVID-19 Provisional Death Counts for the US for the week of April 11-18: Aged 24 and under = 14, and Aged 65 and over = 12,818. This ongoing trend never even rated an emotional story in the College Town media. What is the big story? “Police brutality protest draws hundreds to downtown”

In Cornithaca’s “One thought-One Taught – One Voice-One Choice” dictatorship: Doctrine is everything.

It’s a doctrine of privilege and hate; and they never miss the chance to procure more of the first and loudly express the second.

For them; the tens of thousands of elderly who have died so disproportionately in New York is not even an issue. Their pretense of compassion is only skin deep: and they have a very thin skin.

There is no time for love in Cornithaca — they’re too busy hating everyone and everything that’s different.