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Sunday, October 18, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Salem loses Super Nationals
Monday, September 21, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Town begs to die
TREECE JOURNAL
Welcome to Our Town. Wish We Weren’t Here.
Mark Schiefelbein for The New York Times
Mayor Bill Blunk, of Treece, Kan., is pressing for a federal buyout of the town.
By SUSAN SAULNY
Published: September 13, 2009
TREECE, Kan. — Mayor Bill Blunk sees no reason for sugar-coating his opinion when asked to describe this town.
Mark Schiefelbein for The New York Times
Buyouts closed the nearby town of Picher, Okla., above, where piles of mining waste dominate the scene.
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“It’s dead,” he said. “Wasted land.”
Almost anywhere else on the map, such bluntness could cost a politician re-election. But not here. Mr. Blunk has the near-unanimous support of the population, 140 people or so, who are perhaps singular among residents of municipalities in that they all want out of theirs.
“I’d be happy to go as anyone,” said Randall Barr, a retired sand company worker. “You can’t do anything with this land. What good is it?”
For most of the early part of the 20th century, this little city in the southeast corner of Kansas had the feel of a rollicking boom town, its prosperity coming from land rich in lead, zinc and iron ore. Part of a vast mining district where Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma meet, Treece and its twin city across the Oklahoma state line, Picher, became the unofficial capitals of a zone that in its heyday produced more than $20 billion worth of ore — much of it used for weaponry to fight World Wars I and II.
But when the last of the mines closed in the 1970s, Treece was left sitting in a toxic waste dump of lead-tinged dust, contaminated soil and sinkholes. On a hot summer day, children can be seen riding their bikes around enormous mounds of chat — pulverized rock laced with lead and iron. It is the waste product left over from mining that is the cause of so many problems here. Uncontrolled, it blows in the wind.
Treece and Picher — which is the much larger of the two towns, once home to 20,000 people and separated from Treece by only a gravel road, the state line — became part of adjacent Superfund sites that the Environmental Protection Agency has been trying to clean since the 1980s.
In Picher, the remediation of the land has proved daunting. In a move without many precedents, the federal government decided to buy out and relocate nearly the entire population, which had dwindled to 1,800 by 2000, leaving a dusty ghost town where the social and economic hub of the area used to be.
But the buyouts stopped at the Oklahoma line. Treece remains similarly contaminated, but now even more isolated. Officials in Kansas have been practically begging the federal government to move Treece’s impoverished people, mostly the children and grandchildren of old miners, but to no avail.
“You can turn and see one block away is Oklahoma, unsafe,” said Pam Pruitt, the city clerk. “They got bought out, and we didn’t? It’s incredibly unfair. The people here, if they wanted to leave, they can’t. They can’t sell their property. They can’t get bank loans to fix them up. They’re just stuck.”
The E.P.A. does not see it that way. The agency favors rehabilitation of the tainted soil in Treece, which mainly entails cleansing the top layer of sediment.
Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas and a staunch advocate of the buyouts, said he likened the strategy to “throwing a fancy rug over a hole in the floor.” He believes that it would be more efficient to simply move the people, which would cost an estimated $3.5 million.
Nonetheless, the agency says that it can accomplish the soil cleansing in 10 years and that Treece residents are safe in the meantime. In Picher, however, government scientists found that extensive waste deposits could not be remediated for several decades, and that residents would be at risk during the cleanup, hence the need for government-assisted relocation.
“They are two independent sites from the way we look at it,” said Mathy Stanislaus, the assistant administrator for solid waste at the E.P.A.
Mr. Stanislaus said that in Picher, the residential areas were interspersed with mining waste sites, but that in Treece, the residential areas were away from pollutants. Still, he said, the agency is “taking a hard look” at the residents’ concerns and will continue to evaluate their situation.
Such explanations do nothing to ease the worry of the people in Treece. In addition to living in fear of lead and other poisons, they lost their stores, gas stations, some public services, jobs and their social outlet with the demise of Picher.
That town ceased to be an official entity on Sept. 1. Only a few die-hard residents remain, unconvinced of the health risks or unhappy with their buyout offers.
They live in a gothic landscape of varying degrees of disrepair. A few residents walked away from well-kept properties just last week, while most others took buyouts years ago, leaving dozens of houses to collapse upon themselves. Stray dogs wander. Faded signs announce places that are no longer: the Picher Mining Museum, the Church of the Nazarene, a 24-hour truck stop.
“I had a perfectly good house,” said Vickey Phillips, who moved out of Picher four years ago. “But they said it was full of lead.”
The psychological impact of Picher’s move on Treece has been overwhelming.
“They are in essence one town,” said Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, who grew up north of Treece and is pushing for the buyouts. “Yes, there’s a state line that divides them, but that’s a man-made distinction. It is very much one town.”
About 100 miles northeast of Tulsa, Treece is entirely residential, with the only public building being its two-room clapboard City Hall. Most of the population, which has a poverty level more than twice the national average, is feeling increasingly depressed about the isolation and a sense of creeping abandonment.
“There’s nothing here but a City Hall, honestly,” said Regina Palmer, 24.
A 1993 study found that 34 percent of the children tested in Picher had blood lead levelsexceeding the point at which there is a risk of brain or nervous system damage. Government efforts to do something to clean the chat piles began in earnest then. But similar studies have never been done in Treece.
Only now is the E.P.A. testing the air quality and lead levels in residents’ blood. Agency officials arrived in town last week.
“It’s about 10 years too late,” Mayor Blunk said.
Glenda Powell is among those hoping for a buyout. “My father was one of the last miners,” she said. “He died of cancer, and so did my mom — bad lungs. This has always been home, and I don’t know where we’d go, just a place where we can breathe.”
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Super Nats 2010
SALEM - The date has been set for next summer's big car event, the Quaker City Super Nats.
Salem Mayor Jerry Wolford and Quaker City Raceway owner Dan Swindell announced their decision Wednesday to hold their events Thursday, June 10, through Sunday, June 13.
The event will include activities at the Quaker City drag strip followed by more events downtown throughout the evenings.
In a release, the men called the event the "first annual" and the date is a weekend earlier than the traditional date for the Steel Valley Super Nationals, which they recently announced a split from following the expiration of the final year of the contract with the previous promoters.
Wolford also announced Wednesday that Director of Public Service and Safety Steve Andres will serve as the After Party's overall coordinator. However, businesses, organizations and those individuals interested in participating and planning the event are invited to attend a meeting for the After Party, which will be set for a date later this month. Vendors and entertainers interested in participating have already begun to step forward, although many more will be needed.
Both Wolford and Swindell were eagerly discussing some possible plans for the upcoming event on Wednesday, although details are not yet being released.
The announcement came in contrast to rumors published on the Web site of the "Crusin' Times" that CORE Promotions was in discussions again with Swindell to renew the Steel Valley Super Nationals' contract.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Bubbles… Martha Says,
Blowing the perfect bubble depends on equal parts science and magic. With a few twists of wire, you can make fantastic bubble wands and spend long, lazy days practicing your technique. The best bubble solution is 10 cups water to 4 cups dish-washing liquid, plus 1 cup Karo corn syrup.
For large wands, you'll need plastic-coated wire coat hangers and either floral netting or plastic-coated chicken wire. Hold the hook at the top of the hanger, and pull the bottom down so that it forms a circle. Cut away the hook and twisted neck of the hanger with wire cutters; you should have about a 31-inch length of wire. With needle-nose pliers, twist a tiny hook into one end of the wire. Bend that end around, and hook it on the wire about 9 inches from the opposite end, forming a 7-inch-diameter circle. Squeeze the hook with pliers to fasten, and straighten the end to form a handle. Cut an 8-inch-diameter circle of floral netting. With pliers, fold the netting's edge tightly around the frame, snipping off any sharp ends.
For small wands, use 18-gauge cloth-covered wire cut to a length of 15 inches. Bend the wire into a lollipop shape, securing the end of the wire where the loop meets the handle with a dab of glue. To make a star, divide the circle into five even increments, then crimp with pliers. To make a heart, crimp only the top center of the circle. A tin can, with its top and bottom removed, also makes great bubbles -- carefully trim any sharp edges, dip one end in solution, and pull through the air to make one long bubble.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
And again!!!
ohnny Depp and Tim Burton to Vamp It Up in 'Dark Shadows'
by Matt McDaniel 
July 29, 2009
Three of the most talked-about things at Comic-Con last week were vampires ("New Moon" and "True Blood"), another movie pairing director Tim Burton and Johnny Depp ("Alice in Wonderland"), and updates of cult '60s TV shows ("Doctor Who" and "The Prisoner"). So how excited fans would get if all of those elements could be combined into one movie?
Apparently, we'll find out when Burton and Depp team up for the big-screen adaptation of "Dark Shadows," the Gothic soap opera about vampires, ghosts, and monsters that ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971. Burton confirmed this last Thursday when he presented footage from "Alice in Wonderland" to a capacity crowd at Comic-Con's cavernous Hall H. He said "Dark Shadows" would be his next project, "if I ever finish this one here."
Before Lestat, Angel, and Edward Cullen, there was Barnabas Collins, a 175-year-old vampire who stalked the town of Collinsport, Maine pining for his lost love. Originally, the character of Barnabas, played by Jonathan Frid, was only intended for a 13-week story arc on "Dark Shadows," but he caused such a sensation with viewers he became the lead character for the next four years. The show spawned two movies in the early '70s, a revived series in 1991, and a pilot that was not picked up for series in 2004.
Depp would play Barnabas, a role he told Collider.com has been "a lifelong dream for me." Depp has said he loved the show as a child: "I was obsessed with Barnabas Collins. I have photographs of me holding Barnabas Collins posters when I was five or six." Depp has been pursuing the movie adaptation for years, buying the remake rights through his production company, Infinitum-Nihil.
Burton has also spoken about his fascination with the original show. He told the Los Angeles Times, "It had the weirdest vibe to it. I'm sort of intrigued about that vibe." He also spoke about the recent influx of vampire movies: "It's like any great fable or fairytale, it's got a power to it... There's something symbolic about it that touches people in different ways."
While both Depp and Burton seem excited to start work on what will be their eighth collaboration, production might have to wait until after Depp finishes work on the fourth "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie. Disney's Head of Production Oren Aviv said in an interview with ComingSoon.net that filming will start in April or May of next year, with a release planned for 2011. Aviv says the intention for the next movie is to "scale it down, because we can't get bigger... I want to kind of reboot the whole thing and bring it down to its core, its essence, just characters."
So it may be a while before Depp bares his fangs as a vampire. If "Dark Shadows" also hits theaters in 2011, it could be up against the final "Twilight" film, "Breaking Dawn." But if it's delayed another year, audiences might be over their bloodsucker addiction. Still, it seems that if anyone can create a dark, atmospheric, and entrancing vampire tale, it would be Johnny Depp and Tim Burton. To preview the fantastic sights of their version of "Alice in Wonderland" coming next March, watch the teaser trailer below.
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