The 50 Things List I Received.
The handwritten 50 Things List I received arrived on gorgeous gold paper.
Fifty Things To Do
Fifty Things To Do - A Sketchbook Project that occurred in February, 2013. "A simple list swapped with a stranger. Things to do, adventures to have, experiences not to be missed, or dance moves to master. Make your list of 50 things that will make this year one to be remembered.
1. Detox your body with a juice or liquid cleanse.
2. Support small press literature. Attend a poetry reading.
3. Support small businesses. Shop local for a month, avoid corporation stores.
4. Support independent book stores. Buy a book from one.
5a. When you finish reading a book, find a Little Free Library and donate / circulate it.
5b.. List the book on Book Crossing
6. Commit daily random acts of kindness for thirty-one consecutive days.
7. Donate your time to a non profit organization.
8. Sign the petition at the Niagara Heritage Partnership website to restore the natural landscape at Niagara Falls, NY.
9. Get 15 additional people to sign the Niagara Heritage Partnership website.
10. Buy a potted flowering plant and give it to a stranger.
11. Look a homeless person in the eye when you walk past and say, "Hi. How are you?"
12. Visit someone in a nursing home.
13. Deliver your old magazines to a hospital emergency room, a dental office or to a drug detox center, etc.
14. Send thank you notes to people written about in the newspapers who are doing good things in your community.
15. Take a free course online at Udemy, Coursera or MIT on the topic of your choice.
16. Go for a walk. See what you notice. Feel the breeze or sun on your face.
17. Buy 10 postcards and participate in Post Crossing. It's a project that allows anyone to receive postcards (real ones, not electronic) from random places in the world.
18. Attend a city council meeting. Then write a letter to the newspaper about it, expressing your views.
19. Plant a garden for pollinators, even if it's a single pot by your door.
20. Create a Bird Habitat: Feed the birds. Provide water. Add a nest box, shelter.
21. Identify 10 different trees in your neighborhood. Are they indigenous (local to your locale) or not?
22. Look at the clouds. Learn their scientific names. Take pictures of the shapes you see.
23. Work in or start a community garden.
24. Notice the color orange today, make a list.
25 Visit a farmer's market.
26. Play tourist in your community and find an unusual activity. List it on Facebook.
27. Surprise a friend with a pot of soup or another dish you made.
28. Fly a kite.
29. Attend an outdoor festival.
30. Go for a drive. If you live int he city, go to the country. If you live in a rural area, go to the city.
31. Learn two (2) new languages by year's end using an audio only system. Learn the basic words or phrases of courtesy, how to ask for and understand directions, how to order beer, and be able to count to the extent your money might require.
32. Join a Zumba class.
33. Go rollar skating.
34. Learn a new sport.
35. Make a snowman or a snow sculpture.
36. Ride in a hot air balloon.
37. Make your own artisan cheese at home: i.e. mozzarella.
38. Make freezer jam or marmalade.
39. Take a drumming class.
40. Ride a bus or subway route from one end to the other.
41. Ride a bike for every trip you need to take that's under 5 miles.
42. Call someone you've lost touch with.
43. Participate in National Parking Day. If there isn't one in your community, be a pioneer and create one.
44. Go antiquing.
45. Attend an art show or create Man Art. Decorate every envelope you send.
46. Attend a free outdoor concert.
47. Cook a different ethnic food once a week for 6 months.
48. Call your mother.
49. Learn to recognize seven constellations in the night sky, in addition to the Big and Little Dippers.
50. Create a blog. If you don't have one, you can follow mine and write about all the things you did on this list.
BONUS: "Stand for what's right, even if it means standing alone. Even if your voice shakes."
1. Detox your body with a juice or liquid cleanse.
2. Support small press literature. Attend a poetry reading.
3. Support small businesses. Shop local for a month, avoid corporation stores.
4. Support independent book stores. Buy a book from one.
5a. When you finish reading a book, find a Little Free Library and donate / circulate it.
5b.. List the book on Book Crossing
6. Commit daily random acts of kindness for thirty-one consecutive days.
7. Donate your time to a non profit organization.
8. Sign the petition at the Niagara Heritage Partnership website to restore the natural landscape at Niagara Falls, NY.
9. Get 15 additional people to sign the Niagara Heritage Partnership website.
10. Buy a potted flowering plant and give it to a stranger.
11. Look a homeless person in the eye when you walk past and say, "Hi. How are you?"
12. Visit someone in a nursing home.
13. Deliver your old magazines to a hospital emergency room, a dental office or to a drug detox center, etc.
14. Send thank you notes to people written about in the newspapers who are doing good things in your community.
15. Take a free course online at Udemy, Coursera or MIT on the topic of your choice.
16. Go for a walk. See what you notice. Feel the breeze or sun on your face.
17. Buy 10 postcards and participate in Post Crossing. It's a project that allows anyone to receive postcards (real ones, not electronic) from random places in the world.
18. Attend a city council meeting. Then write a letter to the newspaper about it, expressing your views.
19. Plant a garden for pollinators, even if it's a single pot by your door.
20. Create a Bird Habitat: Feed the birds. Provide water. Add a nest box, shelter.
21. Identify 10 different trees in your neighborhood. Are they indigenous (local to your locale) or not?
22. Look at the clouds. Learn their scientific names. Take pictures of the shapes you see.
23. Work in or start a community garden.
24. Notice the color orange today, make a list.
25 Visit a farmer's market.
26. Play tourist in your community and find an unusual activity. List it on Facebook.
27. Surprise a friend with a pot of soup or another dish you made.
28. Fly a kite.
29. Attend an outdoor festival.
30. Go for a drive. If you live int he city, go to the country. If you live in a rural area, go to the city.
31. Learn two (2) new languages by year's end using an audio only system. Learn the basic words or phrases of courtesy, how to ask for and understand directions, how to order beer, and be able to count to the extent your money might require.
32. Join a Zumba class.
33. Go rollar skating.
34. Learn a new sport.
35. Make a snowman or a snow sculpture.
36. Ride in a hot air balloon.
37. Make your own artisan cheese at home: i.e. mozzarella.
38. Make freezer jam or marmalade.
39. Take a drumming class.
40. Ride a bus or subway route from one end to the other.
41. Ride a bike for every trip you need to take that's under 5 miles.
42. Call someone you've lost touch with.
43. Participate in National Parking Day. If there isn't one in your community, be a pioneer and create one.
44. Go antiquing.
45. Attend an art show or create Man Art. Decorate every envelope you send.
46. Attend a free outdoor concert.
47. Cook a different ethnic food once a week for 6 months.
48. Call your mother.
49. Learn to recognize seven constellations in the night sky, in addition to the Big and Little Dippers.
50. Create a blog. If you don't have one, you can follow mine and write about all the things you did on this list.
BONUS: "Stand for what's right, even if it means standing alone. Even if your voice shakes."
NYS Parks Scoping of Robert Mises Parkway North Shows Clear Bias
NHP Gorge Parkway Scoping Response, March 2013
The NHP Evaluation of the Niagara Gorge Corridor Project, Robert Moses Parkway-North Segment, Scoping Report Presentation.
NYSDOT PIN 5757.91
The Niagara Heritage Partnership (NHP) (www.niagaraheritage.org) found this scoping report to be biased in favor of options other than total removal in the following ways.
The Project Objectives, as written, favor parkway retention.
1) benefits related to total removal, elsewhere thoroughly discussed by NHP and documented by the independent study conducted by EDR were ignored.
2) arguments against total parkway removal that were thoroughly debunked by the EDR study were incorporated as "objectives " that can only be "met" by parkway retention.
3) goals and benefits of total removal proponents were incorporated as vague "catch phrases" to imply that treatments other than total removal could also provide them.
Some amplification of the above:
1) the potential for ecotourism as outlined by NHP, the increased Homeland Security, the potential for power plant-greenhouse--all detailed elsewhere and which we'll forward by snail mail tomorrow or hand deliver--were not acknowledged.
2) the EDR traffic study concluded alternative routes could easily handle parkway traffic with the parkway totally removed; yet a "Goal" of the project remains "Promote vehicle traffic patterns that minimize traffic patterns in residential areas." Translation: keep the "detour" function of the parkway.
3) "Promote ecotourism..." This has been a central feature of total removal and it has been repeatedly explained why attempting to attract ecotourists to hike, walk, and bicycle alongside a two-lane commuter route is a non-sell proposition: yet there that phrase is, as if merely printing those words make it feasible in the world of reality.
Nowhere in the Project Objectives do we find: to eliminate road maintenance costs for the future; to eliminate the direct, on-site contamination of the Corridor that occurs as a function of road use and maintenance (salt spreading, vehicle carbon emissions, the latter just under 232,000 tons annually by OPRHP's own calculations); to increase as much as possible the numbers of acres of wildlife habitat acres to the Corridor, which is already recognized as a Globally Significant Important Bird Area; to reduce threats to Homeland Security; to create the potential for a world-unique greenhouse with both practical, economic, and tourist-attracting capabilities (in spite of the Report's inexplicable depiction of the power plant on the front cover as if it's a contribution to the Greenway); to begin the restoration and future-creation and preservation of an historical old-growth forest; to eliminate (not "reduce") the dysfunctional detour function of the parkway, and so on.
It's clear that an honest assessment of the realities and potentials associated with the North Corridor Project is likely to have resulted in a quite different set of conclusions.
Further, when the estimated cost of total removal provided by EDR is 3.8 million, the Scoping estimate of 33 million is nothing short of preposterous. The difference of some 28 million can be found in projects such as the "Expansion of Discovery Center and Aquarium footprint," and in "new shared park road entrance to....Maid of the Mist facility." While these may be desirable projects, they have zero to do with removal, and it is dishonest to indulge in this kind of accounting. Even with this obvious slight-of-hand number juggling, the difference between total removal (the lowest estimate in spite of padding) and the much-touted Alternative 3 (by local politicians) remains 19 million. Advantage: total removal.
Of course the facts and other complexities obscured by the accounting numbers noted above beg further discussion, but we've done that previously and it's been ignored.
Rather than repeat, we'll forward other relevant documents with this response: a letter to Assemblyman Ceretto; a recent Guest View (9 March 2013); a sampling of the online petition; the statement "The NHP Position re: RMP/Niagara Gorge Corridor Project: Meeting No. 4 for Representatives of Organized Groups" (27 Oct. 2012); and documentation that no road (a retained parkway) ever pays for itself, is invariably a drain on future economies, facts with which the DOT and others are no doubt very familiar.
It's worth noting, however, that the Scoping Report's failure to take into account the 4,000 + individuals who've voted for total removal (plus the 80 organizations who also support total removal) is a serious oversight, indeed. We ask that their voices be counted, so that no future report can say, as this one does, that the Phase One {removal to Findlay} is supported "by the public." These voices are a genuine expression of what potential visitors want to see along the gorge rim--a park without a commuter road.
The "public" of the Scoping Report is not comprised of those who've responded to the Niagara Heritage Partnership's proposal for total removal over the last 16 years. As we may have pointed out previously, the list of organizations and about half of the individual names (the other half we have on hard copy) are available for viewing at: www.niagaraheritage.org
That the MOU partners endorse Phase One is no surprise--they are all entities who share conflicts of interest regarding this issue. ( The MOU was entered into prior to the Niagara River Greenway becoming a reality, so it may be bound to strictures other than that new, over-arching vision.) That the Scoping Report concludes removal to Findlay ends at a "logical termini" and has an "independent utility" (whatever that means) is a conclusion with which NHP takes issue--we believe that Phase One should be total removal to the City Line at Devil's Hole, which is our "logical termini."
What's more logical than a termini that terminates at the City's boundary? It's an additional mile of parkway removal that would permit much of the natural restoration upon which developing an ecotourism market depends; it is the portion of the gorge rim most ecologically valuable, the portion EDR recognized as the most significant, and that which they recommended be first scheduled for parkway removal and natural restoration. Perhaps that was a moderate view; NHP believes that mile should be added to Phase One.
Relevant to this additional mile, under Project Objectives, Improve Access and Transportation, "C" is "Link Parks, communities, and attractions adjoining the NGC."
Having "link parks" as an objective is clearly a goal requiring parkway retention, but it is also very close to being silly when two facts are known: 1) three State Parks are currently "linked" by that first mile of parkway north of Findlay (only two of which are accessible from it), and 2) no State Park, community, or "attraction" to which vehicle access is currently available would be denied vehicle accessibility if that additional mile of parkway were totally removed--and the same could be said of the entire length of the parkway should that be totally removed.
The objective itself, therefore, is of questionable value, unless we imagine alternative routes do not exist. The entire "Improve Access and Transportation" category is feeble when examined closely, stating the obvious (remove cones) and "remove barriers that impede access" (a given), though we suppose it had to be said. It is the NHP position that the "transportation" here is of little value and should be discarded as an objective when the road providing the "transportation" degrades the landscape, and the potentially restored landscapes, though which it runs.
Sincerely,
Bob Baxter
Conservation Chair
Niagara Heritage Partnership
19 March 2013
The NHP Evaluation of the Niagara Gorge Corridor Project, Robert Moses Parkway-North Segment, Scoping Report Presentation.
NYSDOT PIN 5757.91
The Niagara Heritage Partnership (NHP) (www.niagaraheritage.org) found this scoping report to be biased in favor of options other than total removal in the following ways.
The Project Objectives, as written, favor parkway retention.
1) benefits related to total removal, elsewhere thoroughly discussed by NHP and documented by the independent study conducted by EDR were ignored.
2) arguments against total parkway removal that were thoroughly debunked by the EDR study were incorporated as "objectives " that can only be "met" by parkway retention.
3) goals and benefits of total removal proponents were incorporated as vague "catch phrases" to imply that treatments other than total removal could also provide them.
Some amplification of the above:
1) the potential for ecotourism as outlined by NHP, the increased Homeland Security, the potential for power plant-greenhouse--all detailed elsewhere and which we'll forward by snail mail tomorrow or hand deliver--were not acknowledged.
2) the EDR traffic study concluded alternative routes could easily handle parkway traffic with the parkway totally removed; yet a "Goal" of the project remains "Promote vehicle traffic patterns that minimize traffic patterns in residential areas." Translation: keep the "detour" function of the parkway.
3) "Promote ecotourism..." This has been a central feature of total removal and it has been repeatedly explained why attempting to attract ecotourists to hike, walk, and bicycle alongside a two-lane commuter route is a non-sell proposition: yet there that phrase is, as if merely printing those words make it feasible in the world of reality.
Nowhere in the Project Objectives do we find: to eliminate road maintenance costs for the future; to eliminate the direct, on-site contamination of the Corridor that occurs as a function of road use and maintenance (salt spreading, vehicle carbon emissions, the latter just under 232,000 tons annually by OPRHP's own calculations); to increase as much as possible the numbers of acres of wildlife habitat acres to the Corridor, which is already recognized as a Globally Significant Important Bird Area; to reduce threats to Homeland Security; to create the potential for a world-unique greenhouse with both practical, economic, and tourist-attracting capabilities (in spite of the Report's inexplicable depiction of the power plant on the front cover as if it's a contribution to the Greenway); to begin the restoration and future-creation and preservation of an historical old-growth forest; to eliminate (not "reduce") the dysfunctional detour function of the parkway, and so on.
It's clear that an honest assessment of the realities and potentials associated with the North Corridor Project is likely to have resulted in a quite different set of conclusions.
Further, when the estimated cost of total removal provided by EDR is 3.8 million, the Scoping estimate of 33 million is nothing short of preposterous. The difference of some 28 million can be found in projects such as the "Expansion of Discovery Center and Aquarium footprint," and in "new shared park road entrance to....Maid of the Mist facility." While these may be desirable projects, they have zero to do with removal, and it is dishonest to indulge in this kind of accounting. Even with this obvious slight-of-hand number juggling, the difference between total removal (the lowest estimate in spite of padding) and the much-touted Alternative 3 (by local politicians) remains 19 million. Advantage: total removal.
Of course the facts and other complexities obscured by the accounting numbers noted above beg further discussion, but we've done that previously and it's been ignored.
Rather than repeat, we'll forward other relevant documents with this response: a letter to Assemblyman Ceretto; a recent Guest View (9 March 2013); a sampling of the online petition; the statement "The NHP Position re: RMP/Niagara Gorge Corridor Project: Meeting No. 4 for Representatives of Organized Groups" (27 Oct. 2012); and documentation that no road (a retained parkway) ever pays for itself, is invariably a drain on future economies, facts with which the DOT and others are no doubt very familiar.
It's worth noting, however, that the Scoping Report's failure to take into account the 4,000 + individuals who've voted for total removal (plus the 80 organizations who also support total removal) is a serious oversight, indeed. We ask that their voices be counted, so that no future report can say, as this one does, that the Phase One {removal to Findlay} is supported "by the public." These voices are a genuine expression of what potential visitors want to see along the gorge rim--a park without a commuter road.
The "public" of the Scoping Report is not comprised of those who've responded to the Niagara Heritage Partnership's proposal for total removal over the last 16 years. As we may have pointed out previously, the list of organizations and about half of the individual names (the other half we have on hard copy) are available for viewing at: www.niagaraheritage.org
That the MOU partners endorse Phase One is no surprise--they are all entities who share conflicts of interest regarding this issue. ( The MOU was entered into prior to the Niagara River Greenway becoming a reality, so it may be bound to strictures other than that new, over-arching vision.) That the Scoping Report concludes removal to Findlay ends at a "logical termini" and has an "independent utility" (whatever that means) is a conclusion with which NHP takes issue--we believe that Phase One should be total removal to the City Line at Devil's Hole, which is our "logical termini."
What's more logical than a termini that terminates at the City's boundary? It's an additional mile of parkway removal that would permit much of the natural restoration upon which developing an ecotourism market depends; it is the portion of the gorge rim most ecologically valuable, the portion EDR recognized as the most significant, and that which they recommended be first scheduled for parkway removal and natural restoration. Perhaps that was a moderate view; NHP believes that mile should be added to Phase One.
Relevant to this additional mile, under Project Objectives, Improve Access and Transportation, "C" is "Link Parks, communities, and attractions adjoining the NGC."
Having "link parks" as an objective is clearly a goal requiring parkway retention, but it is also very close to being silly when two facts are known: 1) three State Parks are currently "linked" by that first mile of parkway north of Findlay (only two of which are accessible from it), and 2) no State Park, community, or "attraction" to which vehicle access is currently available would be denied vehicle accessibility if that additional mile of parkway were totally removed--and the same could be said of the entire length of the parkway should that be totally removed.
The objective itself, therefore, is of questionable value, unless we imagine alternative routes do not exist. The entire "Improve Access and Transportation" category is feeble when examined closely, stating the obvious (remove cones) and "remove barriers that impede access" (a given), though we suppose it had to be said. It is the NHP position that the "transportation" here is of little value and should be discarded as an objective when the road providing the "transportation" degrades the landscape, and the potentially restored landscapes, though which it runs.
Sincerely,
Bob Baxter
Conservation Chair
Niagara Heritage Partnership
19 March 2013
Ten Ordinary Things of Great Beauty
Q: To be an artist one has to find beauty in ordinary things. Find 10 things of great beauty in the landscape that surrounds you.
A:
1. A room outlined with bookcases stacked, overflowing.
2. Dust motes orbiting in a ray of sunshine
3. the lingering fragrance of a sandlewood shower
4. the family framed, clustered on a table
5. his shoes in a
line by the bed
6. a milky kaleidoscope in green jasmine tea
7. a sump pump digesting rain
8. the slow pulse of an antique clock
9. sun baked skin, toasted brown
10. Summer's back-door creak and double-bounce slam
11. shadows touching a floral tablecloth
A:
1. A room outlined with bookcases stacked, overflowing.
2. Dust motes orbiting in a ray of sunshine
3. the lingering fragrance of a sandlewood shower
4. the family framed, clustered on a table
5. his shoes in a
line by the bed
6. a milky kaleidoscope in green jasmine tea
7. a sump pump digesting rain
8. the slow pulse of an antique clock
9. sun baked skin, toasted brown
10. Summer's back-door creak and double-bounce slam
11. shadows touching a floral tablecloth
Deep In Your Soul
Deep in Your Soul by Michael McFadden
“I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Q: What message is yearning inside you? What is something you know deep in your soul? Don’t look for someone else to describe it. You do it. Write it down. Write it as a poem, a sentence or even just a string of words. Just make sure you get it to paper.
A: All I know is since I was a child I have felt there is something very specific I am supposed to accomplish, something noteworthy, of importance. It drives a compulsion to read, to buy books on specific topics, to take college courses, not for the degree, but for the knowledge. I keep turning rocks over and digging in the dirt thinking any moment the epiphany will happen. But maybe that's the problem, maybe it's not an exuberant, spotlight bright AHA, maybe it will only be a quiet, self satisfied whisper, a star lit glow. Maybe it grows the way nature does, slow and almost imperceptible.
I just want to hear it, recognize it for its importance and focus on it with intense clarity of purpose. I want to know what exactly IT is or is IT a multitude of things, half filled wishes? I believed, for the last few years, it was writing about place, about native plants, protecting the Niagara River Gorge Rim and Gorge. Maybe it still is and I'm just weary of the political haranguing.
The constants or assets in my life are: creativity, (I overflow with with productive, implementable ideas and I can make great connective leaps); intelligence (I learn with ease in an academic setting but am a preferred autodidact); books I own thousands - nonfiction mostly, literary fiction for pleasure--I am immersed when reading; gardening; love of nature, wildlife and family.
Creative pursuits: writing, knowledge and research, cooking, gardening with natives for wildlife, bird watching and feeding, creating a home-based, place of refuge inside and out, creating art - not fine art, but artful, decorative things.
What I want: clarity of purpose so precise it can never be questioned, deep intuitive knowledge, and eloquence. Most of all I want eloquence.
“I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Q: What message is yearning inside you? What is something you know deep in your soul? Don’t look for someone else to describe it. You do it. Write it down. Write it as a poem, a sentence or even just a string of words. Just make sure you get it to paper.
A: All I know is since I was a child I have felt there is something very specific I am supposed to accomplish, something noteworthy, of importance. It drives a compulsion to read, to buy books on specific topics, to take college courses, not for the degree, but for the knowledge. I keep turning rocks over and digging in the dirt thinking any moment the epiphany will happen. But maybe that's the problem, maybe it's not an exuberant, spotlight bright AHA, maybe it will only be a quiet, self satisfied whisper, a star lit glow. Maybe it grows the way nature does, slow and almost imperceptible.
I just want to hear it, recognize it for its importance and focus on it with intense clarity of purpose. I want to know what exactly IT is or is IT a multitude of things, half filled wishes? I believed, for the last few years, it was writing about place, about native plants, protecting the Niagara River Gorge Rim and Gorge. Maybe it still is and I'm just weary of the political haranguing.
The constants or assets in my life are: creativity, (I overflow with with productive, implementable ideas and I can make great connective leaps); intelligence (I learn with ease in an academic setting but am a preferred autodidact); books I own thousands - nonfiction mostly, literary fiction for pleasure--I am immersed when reading; gardening; love of nature, wildlife and family.
Creative pursuits: writing, knowledge and research, cooking, gardening with natives for wildlife, bird watching and feeding, creating a home-based, place of refuge inside and out, creating art - not fine art, but artful, decorative things.
What I want: clarity of purpose so precise it can never be questioned, deep intuitive knowledge, and eloquence. Most of all I want eloquence.
The Empress' New Clothes
Be You by Elizabeth Presson
Q: In one sentence, who are you?
I am an emerging, evolving soul dressed as a small human--a sense-of-place prose poet/lyric essayist/garden blogger, a native plant/wildlife advocate,a certified naturalist--framed glass clear with purpose: provide awareness of and be a persuasive, knowledgeable, bright voice for lifeforms unable to speak.
def Empress, a woman who rules in her own right. Wikipedia
I am an emerging, evolving soul dressed as a small human--a sense-of-place prose poet/lyric essayist/garden blogger, a native plant/wildlife advocate,a certified naturalist--framed glass clear with purpose: provide awareness of and be a persuasive, knowledgeable, bright voice for lifeforms unable to speak.
def Empress, a woman who rules in her own right. Wikipedia
What's Burning Deep Inside
Your Personal Message by Eric Handler
Q: To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is burning deep inside of you? If you could spread your personal message RIGHT NOW to 1 million people, what would you say?
A: If I could spread my message right now to 1 million people I would tell them about the vision to remove the Robert Moses Gorge Parkway from the Niagara Gorge Rim and restore ecologically the unique botanical landscape of Niagara Falls, NY and the Niagara River Gorge. I would direct them to www.niagaraheritage.org to sign the on line petition and then I would ask them to write and mail a letter by July 1, 2011 to New York State's Governor Cuomo and NYS Parks' Commissioner Rose Harvey, and to NYS Senators George Maizarz and Kirsten Gillibrand, to Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, to Assemblyman John Ceretto, and state they want to see the vision for NYS Parks and the Niagara Gorge Rim as put forth and advocated for these last 15 years by The Niagara Heritage Partnership and Wild Ones Niagara Falls and River Region chapter embraced, funded, and implemented within the next three years.
I would ask each to say he or she believe this vision will economically benefit not only the residents of a challenged city, but will benefit the tourists who come to see Frederick Law Olmsted's unparalleled 1880 vision for NY's first and oldest State Park.
Finally, I would ask them to state unequivocally that anything less than a full restoration does a global, state, and local disservice to the multitudes that travel to this world destination and to those who live in the western New York region.
Q: To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is burning deep inside of you? If you could spread your personal message RIGHT NOW to 1 million people, what would you say?
A: If I could spread my message right now to 1 million people I would tell them about the vision to remove the Robert Moses Gorge Parkway from the Niagara Gorge Rim and restore ecologically the unique botanical landscape of Niagara Falls, NY and the Niagara River Gorge. I would direct them to www.niagaraheritage.org to sign the on line petition and then I would ask them to write and mail a letter by July 1, 2011 to New York State's Governor Cuomo and NYS Parks' Commissioner Rose Harvey, and to NYS Senators George Maizarz and Kirsten Gillibrand, to Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, to Assemblyman John Ceretto, and state they want to see the vision for NYS Parks and the Niagara Gorge Rim as put forth and advocated for these last 15 years by The Niagara Heritage Partnership and Wild Ones Niagara Falls and River Region chapter embraced, funded, and implemented within the next three years.
I would ask each to say he or she believe this vision will economically benefit not only the residents of a challenged city, but will benefit the tourists who come to see Frederick Law Olmsted's unparalleled 1880 vision for NY's first and oldest State Park.
Finally, I would ask them to state unequivocally that anything less than a full restoration does a global, state, and local disservice to the multitudes that travel to this world destination and to those who live in the western New York region.
