Turning Tides

I've got the ocean on my mind lately. Spending a day on the shore will do that to you - that salt air and that constant low tidal rumble stay with you long after you've left. I live within a day's drive of the Northern Atlantic, but I still only get there once or twice each year and each visit is a cherished memory.

This year we stayed on Cape Cod and spent a simply perfect day on Martha's Vineyard. I love my mountains, but I'd leave them behind for a life by the sea in a heartbeat.

When I got home and turned my attention to my radio show, I found a feature story on a Maine woman who has made her living harvesting sea snails, known as periwinkles or "wrinkles", in a sleepy little northern town called Lubec. I've been to Lubec - it's not a tourist town by the sea, it's a working village where the people rely on the sea for their livelihoods. But according to the story I found, fishing is dying there. As one species after another is overfished, the economy crashes further and Lubec's people are struggling.

Julie Keene and her son got by harvesting periwinkles - not getting wealthy, but not starving. Then the rockweed which is essential to the periwinkles' habitat began to disappear.

Apparently rockweed, that bladder covered seaweed that proliferates along the rocky Atlantic coast, is valued by industry as an emulsifier. Commercial harvesters are cutting rockweed off the rocks, leaving a barren landscape of stubs and wiping out a unique habitat.

Julie Keene, a rough, independent woman, has traded her harvesting basket for a camera and has been photographing the devastation left by the commercial harvesters. She testified at the state capitol in hopes of convincing legislators to ban the harvesting of rockweed.

She's not alone. There's a coalition trying to raise awareness of the issue.

There is a pile of swirling garbage hundreds of miles across in the Pacific. There's another in the Atlantic. Industry is scalping the rocks for the plants that grow there. There are environmental emergencies all around us. And it feels too damned big to do anything about.

But Julie Keene is doing something. We can, too, even if it's only to learn more and spread the word.

Friendly To Business

Just what is it government has to do to be perceived as "friendly to business"? There
are a couple of stories in my region that have me truly scratching my head.

The one that impacts tens of thousands of people is IBM - Big Blue has quietly been swinging the axe and negotiating to buy another company as it retools itself for a
new marketplace. When put in those clean terms, it makes sense, no? If your company has to change to continue to be competitive, you change it.

But thousands of jobs are being cut and there's a dismal atmosphere of uncertainty as workers wait to hear who's next. IBM's PR policy is not to comment on "rumors".
It's bad form in a recession and I wonder if it will come back to bite them when the economy recovers. The public has a long memory when it wants to.

Then there's the question of taking state money to grow a business. IBM is getting 145 million dollars in NYS taxpayer dollars in return for expanding its business in the state. Should it be giving that money back, as its laid off 900 people in the Dutchess County area alone this year?

Another small, but equally frustrating story comes from little Port Jervis New York. Kolmar Labs Group's CEO, Robert Theroux, was in El Paso Texas this week to accept a one and a half million dollar tax rebate offer from the city to move his
facility there. He told El Paso reporters that New York "isn't friendly to business." What he didn't mention was that he'd already accepted a million dollars in incentives from New York State to keep his plant and corporate headquarters where it is. That agreement included a promise to keep 500 jobs in Port Jervis, where it's been since 1943, and hire a hundred more workers.
The agreement, apparently, is not legally binding.


Gee, Mr. Theroux, what would the state have to do to be seen as "friendly"?