Reflections on Cape Charles and the Eastern Shore
Festive Friday Flatfooting at the Lemon Tree Friday, 6-8 PM December 14, 2018
Flatfooting and fiddles? It must be Festive Friday Flatfooting Fun for the whole Family! Come make old-time music with your feet while you move to the rhythm of live bluegrass music.
Complimentary refreshments/ cash bar
Everyone welcome. Complimentary refreshments/cash bar.
301 Mason Ave., Cape Charles, VA 23310 * 757-331-4327 * team@lemontree.gallery * @lemontreecapecharles
It’s the season of giving and the pressure to find just the right gift can be stressful. When it seems like everyone on your list already has everything they need, what do you give?
One option is the experience gift. Here on the Shore, we have been seeing more and folks looking for experience vacations where they can come for a week and really get to know the history and culture of our unique area.
A researcher named Thomas Gilovich at Cornell University has spent more than a decade trying to understand why experiences have the ability to contribute to happiness so much more than material purchases. Along with another researcher, Matthew Killingsworth, he published this research in the Journal of Psychological Science showing that experiences provide more lasting happiness than material possessions.
The beauty of giving an experience is the special value they have in creating lasting memories, which is something that most material objects cannot do.
The Mirror has been asking what kinds of things people would like for an experience gift. Below are a few of the responses. If you have your own ideas, please comment!
1. Theater season passes
2. Gift card to restaurant for the family
3. Trampoline jump passes
4. Zoo membership
5. Full session for new sport (gymnastics, football camp, etc.)
6. Trip to the bookstore to pick out new books
7. Local + national state park passes for a year
8. Plane ticket to visit someone special (grandma, aunt, etc.)
9. Pass to an art museum
10. Cooking class for kids
11. A farm stay
12. Tickets for child + friend for a local play
13. Pottery making classes
14. Out of country airfare + accommodation (if you want to be truly indulgent)
15. Swim lessons
16. Aquarium yearly pass
17. Subscription box
18. A train ride to somewhere they’ve never been
19. Musical instrument + lessons
20. Flower or herb seeds to plant a garden
21. Ballet classes
22. Ceramic painting class
23. Payment for summer camp
24. A language learning app or software
30. Gift for charity, let the child decide where to give
31. Miniature golf adventure
32. Indoor climbing excursion
33. Mommy + me music classes
34. Tickets for Disney on Ice
35. Passes to the local waterpark
36. A book bundle
As Cape Charles, and the Eastern Shore lean more and more on tourist dollars to survive, is this expansion being done at the expense of locals and their lifestyle?
It’s not just our little village, but other places around the world are grappling with the same problems. Venice is struggling under the strain of huge tourism numbers–the city is now talking about charging tourists to access even the city’s central square — Piazza San Marco.
According to advocates for a tourist access fee, the city suffers when cruise ships bring in large groups of tourists who then crowd into Piazza San Marco, disrupting local commerce and creating inconvenience for the locals. What’s worse, these tourists, it is claimed, do not spend enough at local shops and retailers to cover the material and immaterial costs of their visit. Locals, of course would not have to pay to access these areas.
Venetians are now looking for a way to manage the flow of tourists and their impact on the quality of life of the locals.
Local business groups argue these fees are detrimental to what should be a public place, that the main square, “should be part of the cultural heritage of the whole world.”
We get it. These fees are really just an additional tax on tourists, and that is bad for business.
The tourists themselves, who of course want free and unfettered access to these spaces, make similar claims.
In her article in Travel “Why I’ll Boycott Venice If it Charges for Entry,” Jackie Bryant notes that to charge a fee would be to limit “access to a literal and figurative representation of a city’s life force,” and that urban public spaces ought not be “commodified,” owned, controlled, or characterized by any limitations on access.
On the other side, the UK’s Independent, Justin Francis has noticed the aggressiveness of this position:
This arrogance in tourism extends to turning a blind eye to the disruption that such massive numbers of tourists cause to local lives. Venetians are becoming notorious for being hostile to tourists, but have these tourists paused to consider why a local might feel that way?
In my view, the local person has more right to enjoy walking freely through their city — where they live and pay taxes — than a tourist. This is their right. As such, Venice must protect these rights and ensure that the crowds are not so vast as to destroy the ability of local people (or tourists, for that matter) to enjoy the square.
But, charging people to see a popular tourist destination, such as the British Museum or the Louvre, is not unusual.
This does sound like a new and first world problem. In the past, there was no practical need to control tourist access to our town. The wear and tear on the infrastructure produced by the small number of tourists was not large enough to be worth the trouble and inconvenience of controlling access.
But things have changed. The influx of tourists was never imagined by the people who built this town and its public spaces.
Right now, the discomfort is really minimal, and the strains on local population and local infrastructure is short term and manageable. If tourism doubles, triples or quadruples or is cubed, what will living in this town really be like?
306: Traditional date of the martyrdom of Saint Barbara. Although her actual provenance was suspect enough to be removed in 1969 from roster of official Saints, she remains the Patron Saint of artillerymen, miners, explosive workers, and others whose jobs carry with it the risk of sudden and violent death.
771: Death of Carloman I (b.751), younger brother of Charlemagne, who held half of the Frankish kingdom on the death of their father. The brothers did not get along well, and when Carloman died- rather conveniently, but not the result of foul play– Charlemagne forcefully annexed the region to become the sole king of the Franks.
799: King of the Franks, Charlemagne, grandson of the great Charles Martel, holds an audience in the north-central German city of Paderborn with the embattled Pope Leo III, who fled Rome under persecution by the nobility of that city. Leo requested the protection of the powerful French king, and Charlemagne reciprocated with a vow of fealty to the papacy, which included a promise to forcibly re-install Leo in Rome. The meeting today began a chain of events that culminated in Leo’s re-installation as Pope, and him, in turn, proclaiming Charlemagne as the Protector of the Roman Empire. He thus became the first Holy Roman Emperor, a title that remained essentially intact through multiple dynasties over the course of 1,120 years, finally ending with the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which stripped the Austrian Royal family of any lingering claim to the throne.
1466: Birth of Genovese Admiral Andrea Doria (d.1560), remembered not only for his exploits at sea against the Ottomans and Barbary pirates, but as the leading politician of the independent Genovese Republic.
1667: Birth of Irish novelist, satirist, political gadfly and eventual clergyman, Jonathan Swift (d.1745). A prolific writer, his best known work’s characters remain staples of contemporary political criticism: “Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships!”
1783: With the Revolutionary War successfully concluded, General George Washington bids farewell to his military staff at New York City’s Fraunces Tavern
1803: France and Spain execute a secret clause of the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso, transferring title of the Louisiana territory from Spain back to France.
1824: the 1824 presidential election this day is sent to the House of Representatives for decision under the terms of the 12th Amendment. Four men ran for the office: General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee; former Senator John Quincy Adams, son of President John Adams and long-serving envoy of the United States; former Senator William H. Crawford of Georgia; and Kentucky Representative Henry Clay, “The Great Compromiser” and Speaker of the House of Representatives. None of the men achieved a majority of Electoral votes, although Jackson received a plurality, with Adams a close second. You would be correct if you thought that between today and the time of the House vote, a great deal of politicking went on; when the vote finally came on February 9th, Adams won on the first ballot.
1829: British Governor-General of India, Lord William Benetick issues an edict that all who abet suttee will be guilty of Culpable Homicide. British administrators in India were disgusted and vexed by the seemingly intractable practice of new widows being burned alive on their husband’s funeral pyre. Nearly thirty years later, General Charles Napier, serving as Commander-in-Chief India, was quoted with a thought that should remain front and center when arguments move towards multi-culturalism and political correctness: “You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”
1864: A few miles south of Nashville, Confederate General John Bell Hood orders his troops into a frontal assault into entrenched Union positions on the high ground just outside the town of Franklin. Both sides begin the fighting with around 27,000 troops. The Battle of Franklin becomes an unmitigated disaster for Hood, with over 6,200 casualties, 1,750 of whom are killed. Union losses number 189 dead of their 2,300 total casualties. As night fell, the Union forces made an orderly withdrawal into the next layer of Nashville’s defensive works, completely foiling Hood’s strategy of breaking the Union lines.
1872: Around 600 nautical miles west of Portugal, the British merchantman Dei Gratia discovered the brigantine Mary Celeste abandoned, drifting under shortened sail, with no sign of a struggle on board or any damage beyond slightly torn and weathered sails. The ship’s longboat was also missing, and three barrels of its cargo of denatured alcohol were broken open. The ship’s log remained aboard, although the ship’s papers were gone. A prize crew sailed her to Gibraltar, where an Admiralty court tried to make sense of the mystery of her abandonment and the proper disposition of the vessel after her discovery. The story captured the public’s imagination; stories of ghost ships proliferated, including a famous version by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who intentionally mis-spelled her name as Marie Celeste, and added some delicious details, like finding the table still set and food on the plates. The ship continued in service for the next 13 years under 17 different owners, and ended up wrecked on a reef near Port-au-Prince, most likely as part of an insurance fraud scheme.
1874: Birth of the one of the Britain’s greatest, Winston S. Churchill.
1885: The U.S. Patent Offices recognizes Dr Pepper as a commercial drink. It beat Coca-Cola by a year. 10-2-4.
1913: The Nation’s first drive-in gasoline station- designed, owned and operated by the Gulf Refining Company- opens in Pittsburgh. Prior to its opening, gasoline was usually purchased at pharmacies or hardware stores.
1934: A British steam locomotive nicknamed The Flying Scotsman becomes the first steam locomotive to officially be clocked at a speed over 100 mph. Although the train made a cameo appearance on the Island of Sodor with Thomas the Tank Engine, it only showed up on television in the person of its double tender configuration. The machine is maintained in operational condition at Britain’s National Railway Museum in Yorkshire.
1935: Birth of professional neurotic, as well as a movie-maker, Woody Allen.
1955: Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on the bus, and is subsequently arrested. Her run-in with white authorities was not the first of its kind, but it was carefully designed* to force a confrontation and to present the problem of segregation to a national stage. It succeeded, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott in the months that followed.
1959: The Antarctic Treaty is signed by the 12 nations participating in the International Geophysical Year (IGY), opening it for ratification by member states and others who will abide by its provisions. Antarctica remains the only land mass on the planet that is considered non-sovereign, and thus is part and parcel of the Global Commons- the regions of earth and space that, by belonging to no-one, are free to be used and exploited by everyone. The other Commons are the high seas (including the airspace over the high seas), exo-atmospheric space, and increasingly, the realm of cyber-space. The latter presents some complications, as it does not exist with the physical realm, and is dependent on engineering protocols and physical equipment** to function. One of the interesting questions in this regard is whether the State in which a server operates bears liability for the data that passes through the server.
1990: Napoleon Bonaparte’s cross-Channel dream comes true as “Chunnel” drilling machines from France and England meet 120 feet under the seabed of the English Channel (ou La Manche, si vous preferez).
Science and Philosophy Seminar of the Eastern Shore of Virginia has scheduled its next seminar, “Medically Assisted Treatment of Opiate Addiction.” The free 90-minute seminar will be at 12:30 p.m. on Friday, December 14 in the Lecture Hall of the Eastern Shore Community College, 29300 Lankford Hwy, Melfa, VA 23410.
Dr. John Bulette will talk about old, new, and different theories of addiction, and then about short-term treatment and long-term recovery.
Bulette practices psychiatry here on the Shore.
NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — Efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay will soon get a boost in funding.
The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency said Monday that more than $13 million in grants are being awarded to bay restoration and conservation programs.
The health of the nation’s largest estuary is improving after decades of poor health caused by pollution. But the bay still faces challenges when it comes to preventing manure and storm water from flowing into the watershed.
Some of the projects supported by the grants will focus on helping farmers and towns to continue to reduce runoff.
The states in the bay’s watershed are Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia as well as the District of Columbia.
The Environmental Defense Fund just published a new resource to make getting started on sustainability seem less daunting. Developed with input from a diversity of experts and stakeholders, including members of the dairy industry, Water Quality Guide for Dairy Sustainability in the Chesapeake Bay [PDF] provides dairy cooperatives and processors with tools and training to make measurable environmental and economic progress.
This guide explains the important steps that dairy processors and cooperatives can take to improve water quality, including:
With the information and additional resources identified in the guide, cooperatives and processors can move forward on water quality regardless of their size, budget, or whether or not they have a dedicated sustainability expert on staff. Working with government programs and nonprofits identified in the guide, as well as connecting with trusted farmer advisers, are cost-effective options.
The dairy industry is vital to the Chesapeake Bay region’s economy, culture and environment. Proactively addressing water quality is vital for the near- and long-term wellbeing of the dairy industry, the communities that depend on the sector, and the quality of the region’s natural resources.
As pressures on the dairy industry mount, the recommendations in this guide will help dairies advance meaningful solutions to water quality challenges, realize economic value from sustainability and meet growing demand for corporate stewardship.
This June, Gov. Ralph Northam signed a state budget bill that gives 400,000 low-income Virginians access to government health insurance. This is happening not just in Virginia. US states continue to expand Medicaid, including”red states” like Utah, Nebraska, and Idaho.
The recent expansions of Medicaid, however, are just the latest step in a quickly expanding government-funded healthcare apparatus that has been growing for decades. Government-sector healthcare makes up half of all healthcare spending in the United States.
Using data from the OECD’s 2015 Health Statistics report, government spending in the United States accounted for 48% of overall health spending, compared with an OECD average of 73%.
U.S. government-sector spending (mostly Medicaid, Medicare, VA, etc.) matches most other OECD countries and is on a par with Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Austrian, New Zealand, and others.
According to the World Health Organization, per capita, government spending on healthcare is the fourth highest in the world.
So, any argument that considers ours a “free market” in health care is not accurate.
The U.S. healthcare market is expansive, expensive, and dominates the industry. With so many Baby Boomers going on Medicare in the near future, and with the continued expansion of Medicaid, it won’t be many more years before a much larger majority of healthcare spending is done by governments.
This is not new, but part of an established trend.
The US is currently approaching levels of public spending that will rival those of some nations that offer what we like to consider socialized healthcare.
The problem is that as the federal government becomes the largest single payer for healthcare purchases in the US, there is no longer any functioning market pricing system in healthcare. The industry is now dominated by government contracts, government spending, and government regulations on healthcare services.
Prices respond by going up because healthcare is heavily subsidized by various government interventions. Subsidized goods and services experience growing demand as the cost — as perceived by consumers — goes down. In most other government-controlled healthcare systems, costs are controlled by denying care or making folks wait in long queues.
America now has an enormous “public” healthcare system–socialized medicine is here, so market-based healthcare instead needs to carve out a niche in a government dominated sector. The discussion is now one of “de-regulation,” “flexibility,” for a truly free fee-for-service economy to develop.