Cornithaca County – Page 63 – Rural Tompkins County

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “Farm Harm – Respirators 101”

Do you know what you’re breathing? It’s good to know. People often learn by doing; but sometimes the learning process is painful or even fatal.

I once had a professor begin a lecture with: “Sewage is purer than Ivory Snow.” This statement juxtaposed the advertised purity of the soap with the fact that sewage is 99.99% water. The purity of the air, the effects quantified by surveys and studied in laboratories, and the duration of exposure; all need to be judged in terms of human health.

Factory farms take a lot of the bad things from human industrialization; and put it all in one place — the rural community. If it was anywhere else they would be shut down.

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “Factory Farm Feely Bag”

How to describe the indescribable? I’ll leave it up to your imagination.

A number of the items on the list are actually used by factory farms to fatten the animals you eat. Want to know what’s in that burger? “EEEWW!”

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “The Urban Dairy”

Located at the intersection of Satire and Sensible; the Urban Dairy is a practical solution that has practically no chance of ever being implemented. The demographic defines the definition. The same factory farm “nutrients” that are sprayed within feet of rural children’s bedrooms, are defined as “toxic waste” if transported to an urban setting.

So the question of an Urban Dairy is more or less a judgement call – urban communities are worth more, and rural communities are worth less.

“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.