St. Lawrence County wants to `Elevate the Conversation,’ end the political divide
More highs than lows this winter will save me money on firewood
By Ken Tingley
The St. Lawrence County Democratic Committee is beginning a new speaker series Wednesday night in Potsdam.
It is called “Elevate the Conversation.” They said “it is a response to the negative and polarizing tone of discussion about serious subjects that directly affect all residents in St. Lawrence County, regardless of political affiliation.”
It’s a great idea.
If your local representative won’t talk directly to the people in open forums, then bypass them and set up your own event.
Imagine, serious Democrats and Republicans coming together to talk about coming together.
Why isn’t every county in the country doing these types of events?
Polls show most of us are sick and tired of the divisive nature of the politics, and the games the politicians play. So let’s talk about how we can come together.
I only know about this event for one reason: The St. Lawrence County folks asked me to be their first speaker.
“Elevate the Conversation” is an attempt to remove the wedge by promoting civil conversation on serious subjects between neighbors.”
After reading that description, I realized I had my work cut out for me.
For years I was a registered Republican, but I regularly voted for candidates of both parties. But my true party affiliation is with the newspaper reporters and editors I worked with for 40 years in communities like Plattsburgh, Oneonta and Glens Falls.
My message will be about community journalism and the need for it daily. More importantly, I ask: Who will do the journalism in the future?
I want to show them how our newspaper sounded the alarm about the problems facing our communities with good reporting and how our commentary and editorials often led to actions that benefitted the community.
I’ll talk about we told the stories of regular people and the challenges they faced.
Maybe, most of all, we were where the conversations started and continued for sometimes years.
Over the past decade newspaper resources have evaporated and the poison of national politics trickled down locally to the point where we were often not trusted or believed.
We are still seeing it today and it is something we should all be concerned about.
Many of our local newspapers have stopped running editorials and commentary because they are afraid to have a candid conversation with their readers. They can’t afford to make them mad anymore.
One of the reasons I started this newsletter was because I saw a void where that discussion used to be.
Our newspapers are not holding elected officials accountable anymore.
So who will do that?
Who will do the journalism we need to solve our problems?
Maybe, events like this are a great first step.
I’m hoping I can convince anyone listening that newspapers can be trusted.
That they have the welfare of the community at heart.
That they want to make a difference.
Over the years, my newspaper tackled important subjects like domestic violence, suicide, growing up gay in the North Country, underage drinking deaths, the opioid crisis, gun control and nursing home care.
We found these were issues that affected all of our readers.
Trusting the local media is a good place to start to rebuild the divide in our communities.
I’m hoping this is the first of many robust discussions.
I’m hoping the Democrats can convince Republicans like Rep. Elise Stefanik, Sen. Dan Stec and former congressman Chris Gibson to share their thoughts about the divide and how to continue the dialog.
This is an opportunity.
It’s nice to see St. Lawrence County leading the way.
“Elevate the Conversation” will be held Wednesday, March 22 at 6 p.m. at the NYST building at 59 Lawrence Ave. in Potsdam. And I will be signing books afterward.
Climate change?
My sense is that climate change has led to milder winters over the past deacade.
We heat with a wood stove in the winter. If I buy firewood for three straight years, I usually don’t need to buy more wood the fourth year. But after just two years, I don’t think I’ll need wood next year.
But here is something I have not seen before.
Our wood stove is located on a three-season porch, so if the temperature goes up to 40 degrees on any give day, we let the wood stove go out. That’s been happening a lot this winter. It has happened so much that we have had to use a lot of newspapers and kindling to restart the stove.
So here we are in March and we’re almost out of newspapers.
That either means we’ve had a lot of 40-degree days or the newspaper has gotten really thin.
If you want to end divisiveness you shouldn’t jump right into highly charged subjects like … ( wait for it) … the weather.
I’ve been having the same problem running out of newspaper with the woodstove at our shop. Mostly it seems like the paper is much thinner, but also we miss a delivery about one day a week. I don’t know if that is a business strategy to randomly wean us away from reading the paper in hard copy. In a pinch I’ll get a copy of the Chronicle to start my fire but I check who may be nearby when I pick it up so that nobody I know sees me pick it up.
Anyway, it looks like we’ll burn exactly a cord of seasoned hardwood this year which is maybe 10-15% less than usual. There is a more scientific way to judge the season. In the weather section of the PS there are statistics for Heating Degree Days which gives month and year to date numbers and the “normal” to compare it to. As of Sunday we had 5338 HDD compared to a “normal” of 6055, which is 717, or 11.8% fewer HDD than “normal” which is the average of the last 30 years. The insidious thing is that the “normal” gets updated periodically and as the climate gets warmer the “normal” goes up. So while we may be 11.8% warmer than todays normal we might be 15% or 18% warmer than 30 or 40 years ago. I don’t have that older info at my fingertips so I made up those numbers for illustration, but they’re probably not far off.
Climate is a touchy issue. I remember my boss at a local home panelization business saying “we won’t have to worry about that for 100 years.” I asked him if he had grandchildren. He didn’t fire me, actually, he thought about it and commented about it a day or 2 later. That was about 37 years ago and we’re worrying. So here’s the political part: Jimmy Carter tried to get us to wean ourselves from overconsumption, instituted CAFE standards on autos, put solar panels on the White House. Reagan derided him for instituting a nanny state and ripped the solar panels down, not to be replaced. Current news indicates the rumors of Reagan colluding with Iran to get elected may be true. In 2000 Al Gore won the popular vote but SCOTUS essentially gave the election to GWB over 500+/- votes in FL. And in 2016 Hillary won the popular vote but lost to Trump. Each of these elections had historic implications on our ability to manage our energy consumption and conservation policies, and every 4 - 8 years we lost that much more time to make small adjustments to our lifestyles. (Giving credit where due GWB signed the legislation eliminating wasteful incandescent lightbulbs, but GOP blames that on Obama) So now we are seeing the clear evidence of climate change in our daily lives along with the devastating and expensive effects of more powerful storms, sea level rise, etc. The changes we need to make now are far more drastic and expensive. These costs are disruptive and they are behind a lot displaced of political anger. People who called themselves “fiscal conservatives” are the ones who pushed costs onto future generations and just like compound interest the costs have compounded. The “fiscal conservatives” were the ones arguing against setting gas mileage standards for autos - standards that saved individuals and collectively the whole country. Maybe we need to stop listening to the “fiscal conservatives” because they cost us the most.
I think this is great-please let us know how it goes!