“One of the best parts was this little play area right in the center of town that had three wooden play structures–a library, a school house, and a firehouse. It totally inspired imaginative play, but also physical (ladders, a pole to slide down in the fire house), and we could have spent the whole morning there.”

Thanks for the note to Clara and company, but I have to give a special smile at the blog’s report of the temperature of Cayuga Lake: “a chilly 70 degrees”. I’ll take a chilly 70 degrees with gratitude during these hot summer days.

Also see the first two videos about the zombie outbreak in Trumansburg.

The end of the 2nd installment of Trumansburg Rising promises a 3rd, concluding episode. Can Trumansburg survive?

In communications with the Federal Communications Commission, it’s another matter. According to Free Press, Mike Arcuri is one of 74 Democrats in the House of Representatives who have signed their names to a letter to the FCC urging against adoption of standards for Internet media that would establish net neutrality.

Net neutrality is a term that refers to the ideal that the Internet ought to be the same for everybody – at least in terms of the quality of its delivery. Net neutrality is opposed to telecommunications efforts that would set up a two-class Internet, one for big corporations that have enough money to pay for their web sites to receive access to an elite network of special power, and a second-class Internet for everyone else.

The letter Arcuri signed was written by telecommunications industry lobbyists. That in itself is cause for concern.

Roberts says that he’s waiting to see how district Democratic Committees and labor unions sifting out in the aftermath of Mike Arcuri’s move to work with congressional Republicans in voting against Barack Obama’s health care reform legislation. Of course, that vote is not the only reason that growing numbers of Democrats and other progressives oppose the re-election of Congressman Arcuri. Arcuri has a consistent record of opposing progressive legislation. Arcuri voted against climate legislation last year, for example, and just before he voted against health care reform, he voted in favor of extending the worst abuses of George W. Bush’s Patriot Act – without any attempt at reform at all.

Mr. Roberts, if you’re looking for an indication of the attitude of Democrats in our district toward Representative Arcuri right now, I can point out that, although there have been comments here expressing disgust with Arcuri, not one local Democrat has stepped forward to defend Arcuri from criticism. Whether or not you challenge Arcuri from the Working Families Party, Arcuri won’t win this election. He lacks the enthusiastic support from his own party’s voters that he needs to win, especially considering the narrow margin of victory he had in 2008, a year he had Obama’s coattails to ride. There will be no free ride for Michael Arcuri this year. Les Roberts need not worry about being an election “spoiler”. Mike Arcuri has already spoiled it quite well enough for himself.

Other photographs of our area can be found through the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Just search for “Finger Lakes”.

As someone who tried, and failed, to sell his home last year, I offer my sincere best wishes to anyone who is trying to sell a house these days. Those wishes come with a big dose of skepticism, however.

It will take more than a video gimmick to sell a house in current economic conditions. The following YouTube video has been online for four days, and in all that time, it’s had only one visitor – and that visitor was me.

I’ll say this in favor of the house on Cayuga Street: Trumansburg is a great place to live, and the people on Cayuga Street are great neighbors. Buying that house, you’ll be getting a heck of a lot more than the “simple country pleasures” promised in the video. Perhaps if the video connected the house to the considerable strengths of Trumansburg’s community, it might be more successful.

The video, while not very eventful, does have a nice kind of serene quality to it, and it shows us a very different vision of the waters that make our town’s eastern border.

Here’s a second video from the submarine, this one looking down toward the bottom of the lake:

It seems that they’re still looking for volunteers… but you’ve got to sign up today or tomorrow to meet the deadline.

Natural gas industry lobbyists say that there’s no reason to think that there’s ever any risks associated with fracking. People who live near wells where fracking has occurred complain of damaging changes in water pressure, as well as a nasty oily film in the water they drink. Then there’s the case of a couple in Ohio, living on the Marcellus Shale, whose house exploded because of natural gas leaking out of their drinking well after fracking was done near their home.

Right now, Halliburton (yes, that Halliburton) claims an exemption from laws that would otherwise require the company to report the toxic chemicals found in the fluids used in the fracking process. U.S. Representative Diana DeGette plans to introduce a bill to Congress that would close that loophole.

The natural gas under Ulysses isn’t going anywhere. Will residents be willing to wait to sign leases until a new law provides them with more information about the substances that they, and their neighbors, may have to deal with?

10 to 15 ago, however, getting this kind of video advertisement on the Internet would not have been considered a simple kind of thing at all. The framework is now in place for a significant shift in local media for Trumansburg and the town of Ulysses.

When a small local company like Miller’s Building and Remodeling can get video advertisements online for free and a complex web site with methods for interaction with customers for less than the cost of a little square of paper printed once a week, can traditional local media survive without adapting?

When teenagers can produce and upload a video like the one below using the name of our town’s only grocery store in the description, can local businesses afford to keep their old advertising strategies?