FALL LEAVES

I just finished my fall leaf routine.  No, not raking and bagging.  That's for suckers who either are pathetic creatures of habit, desperately in need of exercise or are woefully uninformed.

Raking a bagging strains muscles and strains the local landfill.  Those bags of leaves become large clumps of leaves that take forever to decompose.  The smart way is to mulch them and leave them on your lawn.  This  feeds the lawn with valuable nitrogen and other nutrients and provides important weed control next spring.

I recommend this article to you.

Mulching leaves into lawns better than raking them

By Dean Fosdick - The Associated Press

November 18, 2004

New Market, Va. — Mike Goatley is the kind of guy couch potatoes appreciate most on football-rich fall afternoons. The Virginia Tech extension turf specialist preaches the gospel of "leave them alone" lawn leaf management.
There's nothing wrong with blowing, vacuuming or raking downed leaves -- especially if you're trying to spot errant golf balls or keep your grass from being matted down over winter. Disposal is the problem.
"One of the biggest things we're trying to get away from is putting these things in bags and dumping them in a landfill," Goatley says. "At the same time, you're improving the organic matter in your soil." The technique has been used for years, he says. But "there's quite a bit of data out there now (from Purdue, Michigan State and Cornell universities) indicating this is the way to manage those leaves." In other words, crank up your mulching-capable lawn mower first when the leaves start piling up in autumn.
A Purdue University report details the responses of a perennial ryegrass lawn to the addition of as much as two tons of maple leaves per acre per application. Mowing the leaves into fine pieces and filtering them through the turf doesn't degrade lawn color or quality, introduce diseases or weeds, the report says. Over time, the shredded leaves decompose, enriching the topmost soil layers. Mower mulching also saves time and money that would be unnecessarily spent on bagging and dumping. Composting leaves directly into the turf doesn't mean you should stop fertilizing, however.
"I don't think leaf recycling is a substitute for a sound fertilizing program," Goatley says. "Mother Nature has already removed a lot of nitrogen from those leaves. The microbes needed to further break them down also need some nitrogen.


You can read the entire article at: http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2004/nov/18/mulching_leaves_into/?print

Now, aren't you glad you checked in today?

CAN ANY OF US TRUST THE MEDIA?

I suppose at one time or another we have all complained that the media never presents any good news.  We fail to realize (or refuse to acknowledge) that WE are the reason for that.  We are the problem.  We don’t really care to learn that 147 eighth graders went to school today and behaved themselves.  We do, however, really want to hear about the fight at the middle school in which two kids got hurt, with one having to go to the hospital.  In other words, we want the newscasters on the six o’clock news to tell us about the bad things that happened today. That's human nature and both the print and broadcast news media know it.

So they oblige us.  Bad news sells newspapers.  Bad news sells television time.  Bad news, the more bloodier, more graphic the better.  It shows up well on our HDTV screen and gets our attention.  And our attention is what gets advertisers.

It should not surprise us that in his October 12, 2009 interview with Jamie Gangel on NBC's Today Show, Rush Limbaugh confirmed that his show is mainly about making money: "I'm doing my show for ratings. I want the largest audience I can get because that's how I can charge the highest advertising rates, which means what else do I want? Money."  You can be sure the same is true for Glenn Beck or any other independent print or TV commentator, regardless of whether he or she has a liberal or conservative leaning.  Controversy sells just like bad news sells.

Does it make any sense then to switch from one news outlet to another?  Probably not.  Although, by switching you do get to choose the type of biased reporting (translated that means: not getting news you don’t want to hear) you receive.  I guess in a way that its the same as screening out the bad news and only getting, what for you is, the good news.  One-sided news is still biased news, whether liberal or conservative.

Blatantly biased reporting aside, our free press, the fourth estate is crumbling and badly in need of an overhaul.  The house is still there but the insides have been gutted.  For another view, Samuel Clairborne makes the argument that we no longer have a free press in this country.

He says in his blog piece titled, Don’t Piss In My Pocket And Tell Me It’s Raining,  “But the average American looks to the mainstream media for their information, and the mainstream media is no longer free. It is bought and paid for by the same corporations that have bought our congress through lobbying – those that comprise the military/industrial/penal/pharmacological/oil and gas/agribusiness complex. 

“Far from being an objective, inquisitive force, our media have become cheerleaders for much that is rotten in America – because their paymasters profit from our inhumane health insurance system, our centralized energy production and distribution monopolies, our leadership as the world’s number one weapons dealer, and our imperial rape of both human and natural wealth the world over.”

I encourage you to check out his entire piece at: http://samuelclaiborne.blogspot.com/.


Whether you agree with him or not, you will find his comments thought provoking.  His comments underscore the fact that our numerous news outlets are hard pressed to come up with enough objectively gathered and reported news to fill all the hours they are obligated to fill.  Hence, they go for the easy stories and play them over and over again.  They eschew what used to be considered good news reporting -- get the facts, check the facts, corroborate the facts, report the facts -- in favor of being first to break a story.  The important thing is be first and be sensational.  The facts can come later.

Can you really trust your favorite news outlet?  Can you trust any news source that advertises that it is the anti-news to the other guys?  Our fourth estate is apparently up for sale to the highest bidder.  Can we trust any of the media anymore?  I don't think so, but I'd like to hear from you.

WHY NOT GIVE THE MONEY TO CHARITY?

According to what I read, the Obama administration has asked Congress to allocate $250 for some 57 million Social Security recipients who, this year, will not receive a cost-of-living allocation (COLA) in their monthly Social Security check.  There is no COLA this year because the cost of living decreased this past year.

I have several problems with that.  The first problem being that many of us retirees DO NOT need the $250.  Yes, our income is fixed.  (During any given year most people's income is fixed.)  But since the cost of living decreased, the value of our fixed income actually increased.  Not by a lot, I agree, but we should not be experiencing financial hardship.

The second problem I have with the $250 "government bailout" is that while we are all happy to get our COLA when prices increase, we seem less than happy to accept no increase when they decrease.  In fact, shouldn't we graciously accept a decrease when prices go down?  Are we just greedy or what?  Are we like the labor unions that want a piece of the action when the company shows a profit but don't want to talk about give backs when the company hits some lean years?

We seniors are supposed to be the wiser for our years of experience.  Shouldn't we then be wise enough to have put a little aside for those possible years when there would be no cost-of-living increase?  No decrease, understand, just no increase.

Now before you jump down my throat for being insensitive to those senior citizens out there who are just barely getting by on their Social Security and, maybe, a small pension check from some previous employer, let me say that I am well aware of their existence -- and their difficult financial circumstances.  I know some of these people, but I ask that you reread the second paragraph above in which I said that "many of us retirees do not need the $250."  Just the same, some people absolutely need the extra money, any extra money.

I feel obligated, however, to add that anyone paying attention has known for over 50 years that one cannot live very well on Social Security alone.  If you go into retirement having only your Social Security check to live on, you are going to live in a world of financial hurt.  An extra $250 will certainly help you, but it will only postpone for a while the return of your desperate financial condition.

So, if Congress approves this senior citizen bailout (bailouts are popular this year, you know) and we all receive our $250, what should we do?  We can spend it.  That would help the local economy.  We can sock it in the bank.  That would help bank profits and, presumably, those struggling bank CEO’s who had to take 50-90 percent pay and/or bonus cut.  (Some, I understand may see their pay cut from $38 million a year to $19 million.)  Or, we can donate the money to charity.

Why not?  You don’t need it and lots of others do.

The Salvation Army food bank is running out of food and the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons are not yet upon us.  The regional food bank in eastern New York is running out of food.  These places, to name just two, are being hit hard by the number of people out of work and out of money to buy food.  Children are going hungry!  Are you?

Just think of the reaction across the nation, if not the world, if, say, 40 million of us who don’t really need that $250 donated it to our local food pantry, the Salvation Army, City Mission or some other local program that will directly benefit local families in need.  If we did that, we could turn this government program into something worthwhile, something that will directly benefit people in our community who need the help.

Yes, you may have to pay taxes on the $250, unless you have enough in the way of charitable deductions to affect your tax payment next April.  But think of the people you are helping who wish they had enough money on which to pay taxes next spring.

Let’s show the world that senior citizens are not a bunch of me-first, greedy old geezers.  We already get discounts at most restaurants, some department stores (on selected days) and nearly all theaters.  We have earned the right to these discounts.  We’ve paid our dues, for sure.  But many of us do not need this government handout!  Donate your $250 to the local charity of your choice and stand ready to be interviewed on the six o’clock news.  You will surely be recognized as a citizen of note.