This has gotten ugly

I was there, I was at the one and only GasStock event that was staged in 2010. Truth be told, I walked something like 217 miles to get there.

And I would have been all-in for the 2011 event. But the folks who organized the well-attended and well-reported protest event, the folks who repeatedly and steadfastly claimed they had the most at risk--namely their homes and lands and water supplies--retreated back to the relative ease of protesting by way of electronic pulse. In my mind, a huge mistake.

And now, the loosely-knit, ad-hoc coalition members, so strident while walking amongst their many supporters just a year ago, are being individually targeted for financial retribution by LLCs of the gas-drilling world that came here claiming to be good corporate neighbors, but turned out to be predatory and vindictive when the last few voices of dissent refused to die quietly.

Susquehanna River Sentinel: Bloggers Beware: Chief Sues for Facebook Comments

Another Monkey: Thugs to bloggers: "Watch what you say online!"

They are the good corporate neighbors. And still, some of us are sullying their good names.

Here, kid, have a yo-yo.

And tell your father to shut the fu>k up!!!

Folks, we need some pro-bono stewardship and a renewed sense of committment. This is wrong on too many levels to list.

Later

Markie Maceman's miscellany

So...do you really want me to come to your little blogger soiree?

Are you sure?


Markie Maceman

Nope. Ain't a toy. Forged steel.

Don't ask.

Get this: they tell me a sitting county commissioner who is on the Home Rule transition committee and who is also running for a county council seat has also applied for the county executive position. That's what they tell me.

If that's true, some of you may need to seriously reevaluate your preferences before next we vote.

Unreal.

Just now, a flash flood warning has been issued for Luzerne County. Oh, goodie. Just what we wanted to  hear...post-flood.

How long before some limp-wristed bed-wetter starts going on and on about Global Wetting?

Never know.

Did anyone notice how, with increasing frequency, the President of the United States is sounding dumber and dumber and dumber?

I figure that just about everyone has noticed. But I also figure that only about 60% of us will admit to noticing. That is, will admit to it just yet.

It's getting to the point with this pencil-neck, ineffectual geek that more and more people are going to just start tuning him out until the time finally arrives when they can dispatch him back to wherever it was that he actually sprung from. Hawaii, wasn't it? Yeah, Hawaii.

Oh, yeah. How's that job search going?

Whatever.

Later

Happy Birthday (perhaps)

I got a bit of a kick out of all of the many email notifications I received alerting me to the cavalcade of birthday well-wishing on my Facebook, uh, on my “wall.”

They always celebrated my birthday on September the 19th as I was growing up. But after my mom passed away and we started sifting through her documents, after my daughter’s genealogic endeavors hooked me up with long lost cousins in Colorado and California and after reviewing the many news clippings from the kidnapping days that said daughter managed to dredge up from the archives, I found that about half of what my mom told me about my seemingly fictional father’s side of the family were complete fabrications meant to put the quick kibosh to my natural curiosity about the missing fragments of my life.

Here’s an example: Supposedly, my name is Mark Matthew. But those ancient news clippings from the Florida newspapers listed my name as being Mark Joseph. According to mom, my dad wanted to name me Ugak after some Russian. Nope, that's not a typo. Ugak. True story.

For that matter, I’ve never seen my birth certificate. So, you got me as to what birth name was actually affixed to me. I’ve always believed that I was born where my mom told me I was born, in Endicott, New York, only because my long-lost dad did work at the IBM facility in Oswego.

The only problem is, he ran off with me to Florida in very early 1961, got in a heap of trouble with the law as a result (interstate kidnapping), and was never heard from again after my mom whisked me out of a Florida courtroom for the trip to my grandparent’s home here in Wilkes-Barre.

She also said he was working in Pinellas County, Florida, for a defense contractor at that time. Yet, I have in my possession an IBM newsletter from 1961 announcing that he was made a senior design engineer on a guided-missile project at Oswego.

So which was it? Was he working for IBM, or Minneapolis-Honeywell via NASA in 1961?

She told me the reason for their divorce was my dad’s wandering eye. She told me he had a girlfriend named Martha. But as those old news clippings prove, she left out the part about my having lived with Martha for some 16 months when I was that on-the-run toddler. Essentially, Martha was my surrogate mother for damn near a year and a half. That would explain why my mom seethed at the very mention of that woman, I suppose.

When she was younger, mom told me that my dad’s parents--my other grandparents--wanted nothing to do with her. The inference by extension was that they wanted nothing to do with me. So as I was growing up, I never bothered to pick up a telephone.

But when my daughter managed to reunite me with those aforementioned long-lost cousins from over there by the tsunamis, they were generally excited to have found me after the passage of so many, many years.

My point?

My point is this: September the 19th may or may not be my actual date of birth. I may or may not have been born in New York state. Further, my name may or may not be Mark Matthew, Mark Joseph or Ugak Jiggy. And my father, as well as his extended side of the family, may or may not have been ogres.

At this late date, it obviously doesn’t matter.

I just thought it was an absolute hoot to receive so many birthday well-wishes while I have a multitude of reasons to doubt everything I’ve ever been told as to my pre-formative years.

But, thanks.

Later

Intemperate musings

Ain’t been lurking around on the blog scene very much of late.

I’ve been working too much. Fantasy football is off to a roaring start. And my nephew landed in the ICU after overdosing on something or other. Anyway, the past week wasted away faster than those so-called stimulus dollars.

What? No griping about the performance of the City’s leadership during the big flood scare? Nothing?

Wow. You mentally incontinent people are slipping.

By the way, just in case you blinked, there was a mass protest against “corruption” at City Hall. All the usual dozen or so suspects were there, including a few who spoke to the press, thereby losing even more votes.

Once upon a time, our then-fearless leader would loudly boast about all of the grant monies he would acquire, and then proceed to buy nonsensical junk with said handouts.

For instance, a two-man hovercraft for water rescues. As in, wouldn’t an actual water rescue lead to an overcrowding of the boat?

Let’s see, we went and got a couple of solar-powered emergency sirens. I think they are still in place, one at Meyers and the other at Hollenback. Funny, though, I ain’t heard them since they were originally installed and tested.

After those flood waters got to receding, I got to wondering about whatever happened to 1620 AM. Remember that? No, well here’s what I scribbled on 5-24-2004...

As far as the money we received from grants is concerned, don't believe every press release you read during the previous eight years. By his own words, McGroarty's grant totals seemed to grow faster than the national debt. A recent e-mailer asked where the $110 million in grants that McG claimed to have secured went to. First off, I seriously doubt the accuracy of McG's boasts and secondly, most of the stuff he actually got was junk we probably didn't need. We have new solar-powered emergency sirens, but we don't have many street lights left. We have an emergency radio station, WPUU, but we can't afford to hire the cops we need. We've covered all of this before.

Yes, you got it, WPUU, Wilkes-Barre’s emergency radio station. Back when it was momentarily operational, it went something like this…

You are listening to WPUU, Wilkes-Barre’s emergency radio station. In the event of an emergency…

You get the gist.

Anyway, I asked a high-ranking city official (real high), whatever became of that indispensable little nugget of ours. Well, it was out of service before he took office in January of 2004. Just like I thought.

And as for those solar-powered emergency sirens, we’re not really sure what their status is. Might have been stolen and scrapped for all we know. At this point, no biggie.

After listening to our county controller on WILK, I have to vehemently disagree with his stated position as to the status of the Hotel Sterling.

While our one-term president wastes billions of dollars on green technology companies racing each other to bankruptcy, it would somehow be a misappropriation for the Feds to pony up one million in disaster relief to remove the sagging Hotel Sterling from the landscape?

They can rebuild Shickshinny only to be flooded again and again and again, but Fedrule dollars should not be allocated for the removal of a public safety risk? What, Wilkes-Barre should spend a million-plus is does not have?

Dude, you’re losing me.

Personally, I think Shickshinny should be bulldozed, and it’s inhabitants relocated to Centralia.

Later

Recovery Web site

Need help in Wilkes-Barre?

Follow the link...

2011 Flood Recovery

Gaffe? What gaffe?

From The American Thinker...

Barack Obama has gone to Congress asking for more money to spend. The President, in a rambling and tedious exercise mixing blame with demands, made quite a few dubious statements in laying out the case for Congress to vote for the plan which as yet does not exist. Much like Obamacare, Congress must ultimately vote for the bill to know what is in it.

At one point Mr. Obama made a major gaffe; he identified Abraham Lincoln as the founder of the Republican Party.


Lincoln did not join the Republicans until 1856, over two years after the party was founded. The first Republican convention was held in Ripon, Wisconsin in 1854.

PBS alters transcript to hide Obama gaffe

Now, listen to me tell it.

If G.W. Bush had made such an egregious error, everybody 'cept for FOX News would have been spitting all over their DCCC talking points bulletins while instinctively lurching to criticize him.

Tell me I'm wrong, Nancy!

But, hey, this ain't Dubya we're talking 'bout. This is a textbook example of a clueless and useless boob who makes Dubya look really smart in direct comparisan.

But, being the last gasp darling of the non-productive folks---the Democrats---his repeated gaffes shall go unmentioned.

Sorry, but Mr. Teleprompter makes even Dubya look smart!

And yet, the media covers for him.

Later

Breaking (anecdotal) news

My son, Marque, manages a local restaurant that sits high above any possible flooding.

He just called, at 2:45 PM to tell me that the restaurant was practically filled with National Guardsmen (as it has been most of the day), when the entire lot of them sprung to their feet and hurriedly headed out.

According to the waitstaff, they cited a possible dike breach in the Forty Fort area, a crumbling bridge at Wilkes-Barre, as well as another important bridge showing the first signs of coming undone for their hasty retreat from the foodstuffs.

For what it's worth, there it is.

Yikes!

Still crossing the fingers

This lone picture will tell you all you need to know about a wide swath of Wilkes-Barre's flat lands.

You can cruise the length of Washington St. and Penn Ave. until you hit the flood waters at Brookside. But if you head west towards the Susquehanna River at any point, you'll have to deal with the National Guard.

Mill Creek backed up in a big way. So much so, that as I type this the WBFD is conducting a water rescue on Brookside Street. And I'm having trouble understanding why anyone would choose to ignore the mandatory evacuation order when the river was predicted to crest at 41 feet.

Then again, I've always fantasized about throwing a humdinger of a hurricane party, so I should talk.

The WBPD headquarters was evacuated last night.

Last night he power went off at 6:33 PM and then came back on at 12:28 AM.

Now, they warned us that PP&L would pull the plug on parts of Wilkes-Barre at some point, but the timing confuses me. Was there more or less of a flood risk at either of those times? If I had to guess, I'd say that after the dikes were stressed all night, it would make more sense for the power to go down later, not earlier. But what do I know about all things 21 billion jiggawatts?

And there's some noise being made about a significant crack in the Pierce Street bridge. The river portal gates are all gushing water. While the river slowly recedes, we're not out of the danger zone just yet.

Stay tuned

Watching, waiting & praying

I’m sitting here in the Nord End listening to what is sure to be an award-winning emergency programming performance coming from the staff and management of WILK. I’m also sampling the wall-to-wall flood coverage from our local television stations. And I’ve never before heard so much constant bantering coming from the police scanner as the WBPD, the WBFD, the National Guard and various other volunteers evacuate the lower-lying areas of Wilkes-Barre. In a word, this is nuts.

The evacuation order says those affected by the Agnes flood of ‘72 must pack up and get out of town by 4 o’clock today. While we watched the waters back in 1972 stop advancing just two hundred yards from here, I remember some of the sewers, the manholes, the sinks and the toilets backing up. So, while we were affected at this general location, we were not flooded per se.

Here at the modest adobe, we’ve taken a ton of water in the basement, in the front bedroom and the posts that support our pool have sunken into the deluged soil to the point that the pool appears as if it might collapse with just a bit more prodding.

In 1972, I was 13-years-old and had no idea anything of note was up until I climbed out of bed to find WBRE off the air. And when I told my mom about the snow in lieu of programming, she explained that the entire valley was flooding. So when I headed over to first Tank Hill and then North Street to have a look, I was absolutely beyond amazed to see the utter devastation displayed there before me.

We’ve had a few close calls since 1972, but after the levee system was reconfigured the way it was--raised to 41 feet--I figured that Wilkes-Barre would never again face what it faced back when I was but a struggling young sprat. Never.

But as far back as 2001, I met this guy prone to sudden outbursts of kayaking. And because of the friendship we formed, I started learning all sorts of things concerning hydrology, acid-mine drainage, storm water run-off and how replacing the forests in the higher elevations with fields of asphalt would eventually make storm water run-off an issue we’d all have to learn about at some later date. Sadly, from what I’m hearing and seeing today, that date may have arrived.

In my opinion, Wilkes-Barre has made a ton of progress since the nadir of it’s existence some eight years ago. And I do not want to see it laid waste all over again. So with that, I’m prepared for the worst, but praying on bent knee for the best.

And if you know me at all, you already know I've never been accused of being even remotely spiritual.

Later

Mental isometrics

If people think going up against the Republicans is too much of a chore for our middling president, I wonder what they think of his decision to go up against the NFL? And on opening day no less.

Jobs? A jobs speech? Another one?

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL!?!

Now that the big bad hurricane has moved on, it‘s been interesting listening to the week-long freak out session on WILK.

Some folks have been without electricity and all that it enables for the better part of a week. And the seething acrimony towards both PP&L and UGI has been growing in intensity, if not, in absurdity.

I was there. I was in the Back Mountain Monday afternoon. And after bouncing from roadblock to roadblock, after barely skirting under far too many downed trees supported only by wires, I aborted my attempt to reach points north such as Lake Silkworth and Sweet Valley. Honestly, I was shocked by what I observed.

Anywho, my daughter Ebon moved out of the modest adobe just last Saturday. Yep, her and my soon-to-be son-in-law have struck out on their own by relocating to the Stroudsburg area. As the hurricane was fast zeroing in on Wilkes-Barre, there we were tying a tarp down over the last of her possessions to be removed.

So, as I type this, she has been in her new townhouse for a whole week now. The twist is, she has been living alone for this past week.

See, her favorite squeeze is what I call a pole climber, he’s a lineman for Met-Ed. In other words, he’s the guy who goes on up there in the cherry-picker and plays with the high voltage while we earthbound types grumble about having to live without power for an hour. And since this past Sunday (his day off), he has been working mandatory 16-hour days.

So, for those of you that graduated from GAR, that’s 96 hours in 6 days.

While I have absolutely no clue about the staffing or commitment of our local providers of electricity in the wake of the big sh*t storm, I strongly suspect that all of the rumors, the anecdotal “evidence”, the accusations and the call for investigations are wildly off-base.

I’m just saying, man.

Since I had not typed a word for damn near a week, some have expressed concern via electronic pulses.

No, I ain’t had a sex change operation or anything like that. Ain't gone transexual, pansexual or such some goofy thing. No rare foot funguses or the long overdue brain matter transfusion.

Simply put, I’ve been cramming much like a college kid does during finals week. Yes, we held our fantasy football draft, the results of which have me brimming with confidence. But if and when the anticipated injuries take a bite out of my roster, I want a backup plan in place for every roster spot going in.

And that’s it. I’ve been studying. It’s kind of like doing mental isometrics with a beer in hand. And all for what some see as a trivial pursuit.

As far as I’m concerned, there is not nor ought there be anything so completely exulted on the face of Allah’s great earth as that apogee of organized violence…the NFL.

Jobs?

Let’s get it on, girlies!!!

Later