Mocking our elders

Last fall, my father had what's known as a "peripheral arterial graft," which basically means the doctors put in a whole new artery from the groin down past the ankle. As you can imagine, you end up with quite a scar. And this being my father, he was exceedingly proud of it.

A couple weeks after the operation, he was over at Canterbury Place (my mother's nursing home; she was still alive at this point), regaling three or four nurses with his surgical saga. Needless to say, the story was not complete without a display of the results, in their fullest extent. So my father, not being one to let propriety stand in the way of 32 inches of suture, unbuttoned, unzipped and dropped trow. 

Yes, he was wearing his boxers. And the only people around were the nurses, give or take a patient or two in the la-la land of advanced dementia. But still. 

When I asked him about it afterward, one of the nurses having filled me in with great amusement, he said, "But they're nurses! It was of medical interest!"  

All of which goes to explain why I had to riff on a certain well-known pun (featuring the future mayor of Portland) for Dad's birthday card: 

I hear the card was a big hit with the nurses. :-)

Kafka in Susquehanna County

Via the Guardian, I learn about some curious goings-on a couple hours' drive to the north of me:

Vera Scroggins, an outspoken opponent of fracking, is legally barred from the new county hospital. Also off-limits, unless Scroggins wants to risk fines and arrest, are the Chinese restaurant where she takes her grandchildren, the supermarkets and drug stores where she shops, the animal shelter where she adopted her Yorkshire terrier, bowling alley, recycling centre, golf club, and lake shore.

In total, 312.5 sq miles are no-go areas for Scroggins under a sweeping court order granted by a local judge that bars her from any properties owned or leased by one of the biggest drillers in the Pennsylvania natural gas rush, Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation.

Scroggins, it seems, has been something of a thorn in Cabot's side: Shooting videos of well sites,  confronting workers, reporting suspected health and environmental violations. But not overstepping her bounds: The article quotes the district attorney saying nothing she did was illegal. Then how is there a problem? In my experience,  when someone breaks the law, or even bends it too far, DAs in rural Pennsylvania are hardly shy about saying so.

Now here's the weird part:

The temporary injunction granted on 21 October does not require Cabot to identify or map the lands where it holds drilling leases, putting Scroggins in the bizarre position of having to figure out for herself which areas were off-limits. 

And not only that:

The company was not pressed to demonstrate the gas leases gave it the right to make such absolute decisions about access. "They have no proof that they had the right to exclude her. They didn't present evidence of leases that gave them the right to treat the property as their own," [Scroggins' lawyer, George Kinchy] said.

You may own your land free and clear, and Vera Scroggins may be your best friend, but if you let Cabot put a well out back, you can't choose to have her over for tea. Cabot's hissy fit trumps your free use of property you bought and paid for. (Yes, I realize that if you leased to Cabot, Vera probably wouldn't be your best friend. That's irrelevant.)

So let's review. A woman makes herself a pain in the ass to a gas company. Said company goes  to court, wins the unilateral right to ban her from 312.5 square miles of Susquehanna County (40 percent of its area) and doesn't even have to tell her which square miles those are. 

But wait, there's more.

[T]he company arranged for Tom Shepstone, a consultant who blogs at Natural Gas Now, to speak on its behalf. Shepstone said the injunction was overdue. ...

Cabot in court filings does not accuse Scroggins of violence or of causing harm to property, and she has never been arrested or charged with trespass. She has not chained herself to machinery, or staged sit-ins.

But Shepstone argued Scroggins had upset too many people to be tolerated. "I believe she is a public menace because what she does is she essentially trespasses not so much on property – though she does do that – but she trespasses on the soul of the community," he said. "She does not allow the people of this community any peace."

She trespasses on the soul of the community?! That's quite a theological insight, coming as it does from the company responsible for the water contamination in Dimock:

"Cabot had every opportunity to correct these violations, but failed to do so. Instead, it chose to ignore its responsibility to safeguard the citizens of this community and to protect the natural resources there," said [former DEP Secretary John] Hanger.

The Guardian says a hearing on a permanent injunction is scheduled for March.

I would like to say that what the Guardian describes is un-American. But given some of the stuff that goes on in America these days, I'm not confident that's the right turn of phrase.

Saturday grab-bag

● New Old Keynesianism: A typology by John Quiggin.

● Education is not the way to end poverty. (If it were, it would be working by now.)

● The best arguments for God's existence are actually terrible.

Video of the week: If Georg Cantor ran a hotel ...

Quiz

What is sacred?

1. Nothing.
2. Something.
3. Everything.

Justify your answer.

The geography of flyover country

A couple of months ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a story about a new generation of large, high-tech distribution centers that companies are building to cater to online shopping. Here’s how the article begins (The bold at the end is mine): 

They are rising in farm country west of King of Prussia like giant garrisons positioned to deploy packages to shoppers up and down the Atlantic Coast: automated warehouses of herculean proportions aimed at moving online orders to people's doorsteps in just hours.

Philadelphia's Urban Outfitters Inc. is among a rush of titanic store-based retailers spending staggering sums to open online fulfillment centers closer than ever to customers, in a red-hot patch of Pennsylvania along the state's toll-free I-81 spine.

Ahem. Let’s have a quick look at Google Maps, shall we? (Click to enlarge.)

Point A is King of Prussia. Point B is the site of what will soon be Urban Outfitters’ new fulfillment center, now being built in greater metropolitan Gap, Pa. (pop. 1,931). Point C is Carlisle, the “red-hot patch of Pennsylvania” that the Inquirer is referring to, where distribution centers have indeed been rising like giant garrisons for decades now.

                                                     

Gap, Pa., is right in front
of that plateau in Texas.

Note the way Interstate 81 heads northeast from Harrisburg to Hazleton and Scranton. Note that this is nowhere near Gap. I assure you, none of the 1,931 people in Gap think they are on the I-81 spine, or anywhere near it. Their most convenient access to said interstate is back toward Harrisburg, a good 55 miles west on Route 30.

And while both Gap and Carlisle are technically west of King of Prussia, I don't think anyone who lives in the middle of the state would think of lumping them together. It’s sort of like thinking of Los Angeles and San Francisco as being a short drive apart, rather than the roughly six hours they actually are.

Everyone has myopia about where they live, which is why everyone gets the joke in Saul Steinberg's famous New Yorker cover. But understanding Urban Outfitters’ site choice involves realizing that it’s not on the I-81 spine, yet it still makes sense. (Thanks primarily to Route 30, which feeds eastward into the network of interstates around Philadelphia and all up and down the East Coast.) The Inquirer muddled the very geographic point that it should have gotten right.