Every summer for the last several years, when school lets out, I pack my children in a vehicle full of photography equipment and outdoor gear, and head out into the northeastern US.   

I do this for several reasons:  

 One reason is to attempt to bond with my children, who tend otherwise to be illuminated more by the LCDs of a video screen, than by any remaining wisdom their father may have left to impart.  

  I also do a little photography.  

It started in 2004 as a trip with my son Gus, driving around Pennsylvania to capture spring/summer images for what became Pennsylvania Seasons, a book of Commonwealth images with poetry contributed by native authors. My nine-year-old son put up with my prattling, carried my tripod, hung around as I planned out shots and fiddled with equipment, and endured the days we spent together. He was a wonderful companion.  

He thus made a huge mistake.

  After this, it became a tradition. The next year Brigid was added. My loving wife, who I think is grateful for a week of solitude and peace, is happy to stay home.  

   I love this trip every year. We camp, tour new places, hike, and at times, visit my relatives and old friends, particularly those that have children of similar age. We have visited the deepest old growth areas of the Allegheny National Forest, whitewater rafted on the Youghiogheny River, explored the baseball museum in Cooperstown, NY, toured the battlefields of Gettysburg on horseback, did the “rock scramble” at Mohunk Mountain, and visited the aquarium at the Inner Harbor of Baltimore. Last year, as we ate dinner on a deck in Annapolis, we watched as a line of historically severe thunderstorms pummeled the town.  

 I vainly try to keep it interesting.  

The family tradition is that the kids hate the trip. It takes them away from the refrigerator, their computers, and their friends. They began very early on, referring to it as “Bad Dad’s Summer Camp”. They claim to consider it to be something to endure, so that they may enjoy the remaining summer.  

   Despite this, I love to spend time with my children, watching them interact with each other. I am lucky that they are close, and enjoy each other’s company. They seem to spend most of the week laughing.  

   I am proud to say that both of my offspring are experienced campers, with strong backpacking skills. “Car camping” is thus a breeze; one of my joys is watching my kids as they set up in the evening ( I generally sit in a comfortable chair, eating corn chips with a nice spicy salsa, with a cold drink close at hand). Of course, I critique their efforts as any good parent would.  It is rewarding to watch one’s children demonstrate competence in skills that they will undoubtedly pass on to their offspring (though they adamantly deny that this will ever happen).  

   I admit to some issues. I do snore… apparently, in fact, loudly. We bought Gus a backpacking tent a year ago for use at the Philmont Boy Scout Reservation.  He now demands to sleep in it, on our trips, as far from where I am sleeping as the campsite will allow. Brigid tragically, is stuck in a two room tent with me. The dividing wall is made of nylon which offers little in the way of sound insulation. She sleeps, no matter what the temperature, with her head buried in the “mummy bag” groaning at me occasionally when I reach a crescendo.  

  Like most teens, my kids have a delayed sleep phase, preferring to “sleep in” for the morning. This has begun to work out for me as I can’t seem to sleep past the first bird call in the morning, which as it turns out, in the first weeks of June, happens about 5am. Now that the kids are older I am more comfortable leaving the campsite while they sleep.  I arise before the sun, my gear already prepared in the car.  When the weather is right, this can work out really well.  

In Vermont, several weeks ago, we had pitched on the shores of large lake on what was already an unseasonably cool night.  

A front passed, dropping an hour’s worth of rain just after we had retired to the tents. The sky then cleared and the temperature dropped further, ultimately into the low 40’s.  

 I knew on awakening that the atmospherics would be interesting… and they were. The lake was shrouded in a fog that moved deliberately over the water. A more subtle mist clouded the atmosphere elsewhere, leaving heavy dew on the marsh plants of the boggy wetlands that were a prominent feature of this state park. I spent the hour or so around sunrise walking on the lakeshore and exploring the surroundings, shooting with both the Nikon D700 and the Panasonic GH1 to a soundtrack of flutelike birdsong and distant loon calls.  

   Finally with the passage of time, the sun angles became less interesting and the fog very suddenly dissipated. I trudged back to the tents, the kid’s rhythmic breathing signaling that for now at least, they remained oblivious to the beautiful day evolving around them. It still being chilly I restarted the fireplace, zipped up my fleece and made coffee, then settled in with a book, waiting for them to awaken.  

  With Brigid on her way to college next year, I don’t know for sure for how many years I will have this time with them in June.  

  I love this trip.  I really hope we have at least a few left.

I’m back. I was on vacation for a week, camping with my  kids and doing some photography.

And  now, another Bossa Nova tune… in this case featuring the incomparable Dianne Krall, who is a triple threat with her smoky voice, her amazing command of the keyboard, and yes, the fact that she is a pretty hot looking babe. She is here, singing the female version of the classic “Girl from Ipanema”.

I love this clip, not only for Krall’s performance, but for the Brazilian audience’s incredible participation in singing a song they obviously know by heart.

They need little prodding to sing it.

This song was written by Antonio Carlos Jobim with Portuguese lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes. The English lyrics were written by Normal Gimbell.

The song was composed originally in 1962, inspired it is said, while the authors sat at a particular café in Rio. A comely, if for our society, underaged (15y/o), young girl would often walk by during their visits, inspiring the original version of the song.

  Though this sounds vaguely creepy, in the context of current sensibilities, the translation  of the original lyrics reveals an elegant, and entirely proper tribute to youth, beauty, and vitality (rather than the slavering of two older men ogling a barely pubescent young women).

The English version I think, is certainly pleasant, perhaps casting the “girl” (or the “boy” in Krall’s case) as older and more an object of desire. It   is really a different and much less sophisticated lyric.

The “girl” was later identified by Jobim, as the very real and beautiful Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto.  Later in life, perhaps in part based on her notoriety, she became a model, business women, and ultimately a plaintiff, when she named her chain of boutiques after the song that made her famous… and was sued (unsuccessfully) by the composers.

To finish this, here’s the song again,  sung in the original language, and much later in time, by  Jobim with a friend. “Tom”Jobim has sadly  since expired.

May he rest in peace. I would thank him for this wonderful song.

   

    

    

Gas Drilling In Pennsylvania   

This is the full text of an Editorial published in the Wilkes Barre, Times Leader on Sunday , June 6th, 2010. It is about the juggernaut of Marcellus Shale Gas drilling that is  steamrolling across the farms and wildlands of Pennsylvania.   

   Like many in our region, I am struggling with the issue of drilling for gas in the Marcellus Shale formation. It’s hard to ignore the potential benefits. Gas drilling in Pennsylvania has the potential to tap a new source of clean-burning fuel applicable to many uses, from home heating, to motive transport, to the production of electricity.  In North Texas, where companies have been drilling gas wells in the Barnett Shale formation since the 1990s, gas production has added a significant number of new, good paying jobs to a struggling region. For land owners, gas leases offer the prospect of significant income in these challenging financial times. Unlike the wind energy boondoggle of several years ago, the gas industry comes with the prospect of very real and tangible benefits.   

  Given my previous modest involvement in environmental advocacy, I have been asked by a number of people to weigh in on the issue. Up to now I have been reluctant, as I was not knowledgeable enough to have an answer. I’m still not sure that I am. What I have learned however is sufficient to cause me great concern.   

    In my travels, I have spent a lot of time in the western part of the state, where small gas and oil wells have been a regular feature of the landscape for many years. They generally sit on a small footprint, and appear to have little impact on their pastoral surroundings. I once encountered a venerable, but functioning gas/ oil well in the middle of a lush forest that had grown up around the installation. Many of these are so-called “stripper wells” were drilled by landowners themselves, down to depths of 1500-2000 ft. They produce modest amounts of natural gas, and have had some problems such as “gas migration”, particularly the so-called “orphaned” wells, abandoned by their owners before being properly “plugged”.   

   So, at first blush, gas drilling wasn’t particularly frightening to me.   

   But… this isn’t your grandfather’s gas drilling.   

  “Fracing” is the process by which gas is extracted from the shale that lies roughly 5000-9000 ft below ground in this region. Suffice it to say that it involves injection under great pressure of very large volumes of water, sand, and what was, until recently, a secret mix of chemicals, now known to contain some really nasty toxins and carcinogens. This is done do fracture the rock and allow gas to be extracted. It said to be safe, because the process occurs a mile or more below the surface, far below the natural aquifers. As I understand it, a good proportion of the fluid is then recovered, and has to be dealt with at the surface. A pad site can house 6 to 8 wells, each of which will need to be fraced.     

Given the usual strict federal regulations that apply to industry, I wondered how such a risky process could be legal. It turns out that since 2005, gas drillers have been exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act, and thus the nation’s most potent and pertinent regulatory laws. Arguably, this is the only way that they could get away with injecting these toxic chemicals into the earth.   

   Each episode of fracing requires significant heavy truck traffic to transport the literally millions of gallons of water, plus the sand, and chemicals required. And what is the source of the water? Apparently in western Pennsylvania where drilling is well underway, it has been streams and rivers.  A Pittsburg television news team recently reported that in August of 2008, well drillers actually “pumped dry” Sugarcamp Run, a stream in Washington County.   

  Another huge problem is what to do with the toxic brine extracted from the well after fracing is completed. Our current DEP Secretary, John Hanger was recently quoted on the topic: “I am concerned about the capacity to treat the water…There is a problem looming.”   

  There are very few treatment plants in the state that are equipped to properly detoxify the mixture pumped out of the well head.  Some drillers have attempted to present the waste water to municipal treatment plants. Many have prudently refused the gift. In some parts of the state the water, which may not be completely detoxified by the municipal equipment, is still being discharged into the Monongahela River which serves as drinking water source.   

By the way,  brine samples from 11/13 Marcellus wells in New York tested by their DEC recently, were found to be radioactive, some at levels as much as 250 time the level allowed by law   

    If this large volume of contaminated, possibly even radioactive liquid is not treated, then it must be stored on the site. Where there are liquids, there will be spills…and there’s going to be a lot of liquids in holding ponds, in tanks, and in trucks driving on our roads.   

Also, has anyone considered how  the municipalities involved are going to pay for the rather drastically increased wear and tear on what have been up to now often lightly travelled rural roads and bridges?   

    I think of the Foster Wheeler incident near my home in Mountaintop. There, a relatively small amount of trichloroethylene, a chemical degreaser, escaped into the soil and fouled a great many water wells downstream. The solution was to run public water into the affected homes. What would happen to the value of your home if there were no public water nearby, and fracing water contaminates the local aquifer? Or worse, if drilling contaminates the public water supply, a scary thought with drilling set to occur near to the Ceasetown and Huntsville reservoirs.   

    I have a number of friends who own acreage suitable for drilling; others have been offered money for a well to be run beneath them from a drilling “pad” on adjacent land. I have heard them describe the money that they have been offered for leases on these properties, often where they reside. I own no such land, and I think I’m glad I don’t.  The temptation to sign on must be overwhelming.   

   I am concerned that these friends do not understand the intrusion on their lives, as well as those of their neighbors, that drilling on their property would involve. I also fear that the effects of such a violent and toxic geologic manipulation might cause problems far beyond the borders of their parcels. I hope that they’re testing their water supplies and perhaps the soils near to where drilling may occur, to establish a baseline. Someday that information may be essential.   

  I honestly believe we should slow down the rush towards widespread drilling.  Let’s drill some wells in carefully selected sites.  See what happens. If everything comes out OK, drill a few more. After all, it’s not like the gas is going away any time soon. What’s the big rush?  The potential downside is huge.     

  Perhaps we should wait for the results of recently announced EPA study, commissioned to investigate the surge in reports of drinking water contamination in sites near to where fracing has been used.   

   I fervently hope that we can find a safe, cost-effective way to exploit this wonderful resource with out permanently ruining our aquifers, wild places, and watersheds.   

I’m just not convinced that we have, as of yet.   

                                                                                   Henry F. Smith Jr. MD   

    

 

  Bluegrass music can be a little raw sometimes.

For fans accustomed to overproduced commercial country, or popular music, bluegrass music can at times, sound unsophisticated and perhaps even, a little shabby, very much the hillbilly cousin you have to acknowledge, but are secretly ashamed of.

For dazzling urban sophisticates, the music is tainted, at times with an unpleasant aroma of religiosity and with a sense of poor rural folk living a life devoid of the things they value.

   They fail to appreciate the beauty of hard work, innocent romance, and devotion to God and family, that is often thematic in Bluegrass music.

  I had little interest in the genre until like many people, I was captivated by the soundtrack of the Coen Brothers film, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou. This wonderful film is a beautifully written allegory to Homer’s Odyssey   set in the deep south of the 1930’s. The  film is populated by wonderful actors such as George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and Charles Durning. It  features music by some of the most talented practitioners of the craft, including Allison Kraus, Gillian Welch, Pat Enright, and  Dan Tyminski (who is the true lead vocalist of the movies most memorable hit: “A Man of Constant Sorrows”.

    As a long time fan of Celtic music, I have found much joy in these extraordinary performers, as well as the largely Celtic-based melodies, which after all, have their roots in my beloved Appalachian Mountains.

   Submitted for your approval: a wonderful version of an old gospel tune: “Soldiers of the Cross”, performed by a bluegrass legend, Ricky Skaggs, and his band, “Kentucky Thunder”.

 For the bluegrass newbie, I think it helps a lot that the back up “band” is the Boston Pops Orchestra, with an incredibly congruent and complimentary symphonic treatment. It should be clear from the performance, that these are some incredibly talented and creative musicians, as skilled and polished as any.

This genre is a window into the past, to the rugged individualists who settled the frontier of the eastern mountains from North Carolina, to Pennsylvania.  To me it makes for a wonderful accompaniment to a good book, a porch rocker, and a warm June evening.