Woodstock CT Café

I passed this scene on my way home from work at 4:45 PM. Looked pretty bad. John

Hey Mrs. Leavitt,

I just got a message from my friend who told me a flat-nosed Woodstock bus with a woman driver got rear-ended on 171 a half hour ago… sounds like the SUV got pretty beaten up and bus just has a fender-bender but that the people are OK. Have you heard about it?

Hey Buddy!
I just got in from the yard…. I waited around for Mrs. Paradise to get back. No injuries on the Bus #2. The car was apparently totalled. People from the car were transported to the hospital. Mrs. Paradise is just really exhausted by the whole event. Didn’t get any info on the condition of the bus, but didn’t get the impression that there was too much damage. I’m pretty sure it was ‘drivable’… but it’ll still need to be gone over with a fine-toothed comb. All in all, it was okay for us (WPS- students, staff and property). Hoping that the injuries to the people in the car are minor and that they are doing well.

Becki

Romeo Blackmer said: “…the use of the ‘Synthetic Marijuanas’ like K2 and “Spice” are being looked at by the DEA as possibly causing deaths. These chemical “copycats” of marijuana have contributed to recent deaths/suicides among users.”

From John

I put ‘synthetic’ in semi-quotes because this term can be a mis-nomer when the amateur chemist has no idea what he has synthesized.

No doubt many readers of this article have heard about the “frozen addicts” of Santa Cruz CA. Santa Cruz is about 25 miles southwest of the western edge of San Jose where I was once Scientific Director of the California Institute for Medical Research (CIMR) located behind Santa Clara Valley Hospital.

One of our investigators was Bill Langston, MD, an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology at Stanford University, 15 miles up the San Francisco Bay penninsula next to Palo Alto where Becki and I lived in the 80s and 90s. You can find him on Google and Google images along with references to the 1980s PBS Nova production and the book on this interesting story.

Bill was the physician on duty at the back door emergency entrance across the street from CIMR. I used to enter the hospital through that back door quite often eight years later. Often I was met with a jolting shout out from a handcuffed and chained criminal lying on a gurney waiting for medical attention. Well,  one day, around 1980-81, Bill was there on duty when some very strange patients seeking attention staggered in.  Bill, a specialist in degenerative neurological diseases immediately recognized their symptoms as being like that of severe Parkinson’s disease. But these staggering patients were fairly young and after interviewing the people that brought them to the hospital, Bill learned that their symptoms came on very quickly. By contrast, Parkinson’s symptoms develop slowly but progressively over decades.

Bill quickly learned that these were heroin addicts that produced their own heroin and sold it on the streets of Santa Cruz. Like good chefs, though, they tasted their own product as a kind of ‘quality control’ before they distributed to others.

The police and Langston visited the home of the main Nobel honcho to see what they could find. What they found was a laboratory in the basement where the synthetic heroin was cooked up. They found pages ripped out of a chemistry journal that described the method for synthesis of synthetic heroin there in the lab. These pages led the investigators to visit Stanford’s Lane Medical Library on the center of the Stanford campus, a library where I spent many hours pursuing answers to my own scientific questions. The investigators went to the relevant journal issues and found that these pages had been torn out from these very issues.

I knew the chemist, Ian Irwin, who had determined the chemical structure of the compounds in this precious stash of heroin that was going to make these Santa Cruz ‘chemists’ rich. He found basicly two predominant compounds, one was heroin and the other was a compound eventually named MPTP. These two compounds were present at approximately 50:50 ratios.

Left to right: Ian, MPTP, and Heroin.

There’s an interesting picture of the crime scene in the basement lab where the ‘synthetic heroin’ had been made. A large wall thermometer in the picture read 90 degrees, too hot a temperature for optimal synthesis of synthetic heroin… but who’da thunk it.

After several years, Bill was able to explain the neurotoxicity of MPTP. Experiments on animal models sadly demonstrated that MPTP destroyed the substantia nigra of the lower part of the brain irreversibly. The substantia nigra is the site in the brain where a defect in dopamine metabolism causes Parkinson’s disease.

The only solution for these victims of their own greed and stupidity was a BRAIN TRANSPLANT! But no donors lined up.

from John

Former Editor, Walter Bird, would have had a field day with this. I read this “Letter of discontent” in the November 18th Villager today and could not resist responding. According to the author of this “Sound Off” the Academy is telling its students that ‘marijuana will kill you’. It would be interesting to learn exactly what the Academy is telling its students on this issue.

I was fortunate to be associated with Linus Pauling who often stated that that Vitamin C could cure your common cold or cancer. I admired Pauling and fully understood what he was doing. He was telling the National Institutes of Health to fund nutrition research which essentially had been ignored before his advocacy, but not after. He believed that nutrition was the most formidable problem in the world and there can still be no doubt about this even today. As for the multi-vitamin I take every day along with millions of others, I call it the Linus Pauling tax.

I don’t know what the Academy is telling its students about marijuana, but I am with them on this issue. I had one water pipe smoke of marijuana back in 1980. It was very pleasant but I never felt the need to do it again. I have concluded that if K-8 and HS students developed the practice of smoking marijuana, you can kiss their productive lives good-bye. I strongly believe this even though I am in favor of medical use of marijuana. To me use of marijuana by teens and young adults is tantamount to giving up on life because these kids are too immature to understand this whether they believe they are immature or not.

Funny thing but a client of mine asked me to look into the relationship between the psycho-active component of marijuana and suicidal ideation. I discovered about 200 papers using this terminology together in the title and abstract. Read the rest of this entry »

CPWF Forum introduction by Lindsay Paul

Bill Sowka introduces each candidate.

Use this icon to get full screen video

Introductory statement by Democratic BOE Candidate John Dlugosz

Introductory statement by Democratic BOE Candidate Cliff Davis

Introductory statement by Democratic PZC Candidate Earl Brazeal

Introductory statement by Republican PZC Candidate and Chairman Jeff Gordon

What’s the same in these two water tests:

• same testing service
• same water

What’s the difference in these two water tests:

• I asked the testing service to visit the house to collect the tap water for the test present in the lower image.
• I did not ask this vendor of well drilling and plumbing equipment for the test present in the upper test.
• After the upper test result came in, I was presented with a quote of $3500 to fix the water in the upper test.
• The upper test was taken from water from the basement holding tank before it went through my filter.
• The lower test was taken from water from the kitchen tap.

If you are three weeks away from selling the house with the upper test, what would you do when you have an iron content 22-fold higher than recommended (RL heading)?

I chose to have the test re-done. The lower test was only 2-fold above the recommended limit … but the damage was done. We had to remediate but not with the local company performing the upper test.

I hope that the company that did the fraudulant test is reading this.

from Con

Wait – I may have … gotten it backwards (I hope so!).

Someone else read the website the opposite: that all values went down (if so, I never expected that) because one column reads “Current Value” and the other column reads “2010 Value” – I reckoned that because this had not been officially implemented with regard to Tax Bills and because the bills always key off the last 6 months (not current) that the “2010? meant ‘new’.

So – after my little hissy fit, I might be wrong (it would be worth it for lower taxes!).

Many of you probably know that the recent Revaluation of Woodstock Properties for Tax Assessment purposes (performed by a third-party service provider named Tyler CLT “along with the Assessor”) seems to be complete and the New Assessed Values of Woodstock Properties can be found Online at the Websites listed below.

Imagine that: Assessed Values and therefore Property Taxes, have gone UP! A quick, unscientific ‘survey’ of various properties indicates that Assessed Values have risen from 15 – 30% (the website shows ‘current’ Value and “FY 2010 Assessed Value”).

The Assessor/Appraiser representing the service provider who performed the Reassessment sent notices and came to my propert(ies) and entered each house and building for a comprehensive Assessment. I expected values to rise (they always do, regardless of reality) – that is the nature of Tax Assessments. It’s all like a game of leap-frog: 1st, raise the Mill Rate, wait a while, 2nd raise the Assessed Value, wait a while, Repeat; but I did not expect such a steep increase!

It goes without saying that from the time of the last Assessment to this recent assessment, America, Connecticut and Woodstock have experienced a precipitous decline in property values and a depressed residential property market. Are they saying that they were far too low last time or that values truly did rise 15-30% ? What possible justification is there for such a dramatic increase in values and therefore Taxes!?!

I guess it must be the old ‘We need the money’ justification (or more likely ‘We are out of money’. OK, reality bites – but this does not seem the appropriate mechanism for obtaining needed funds. Yes, increases in Mill Rates is highly unpopular and often fail flat, but arbitrarily increasing property values to meet fiscal goals flat-out degrades the Assessment process and undermines the credibility of any future assessments (or did they have no credibility to undermine because of past behavior?)

I can see no reasonable justification for such an increase in property values done in the 4th or 5th year of the Great Recession and highly depressed property market, where the average home/residential property has actually declined 15-30% (I understand not everyone will agree with that specific number, but the notion remains the same regardless of the actual decline: values have declined precipitously). Whether the town should raise more revenue from residents through property taxes is a separate discussion and I do pose that question.

An artificial increase in assessed values done primarily (or even solely) to increase tax revenues. even though such increase flies in the face of reality and market conditions, seems short-sighted and kind of dishonest.

What do others think? Was this reassessment done properly? Are the new assessed values accurate and correct?

Here are the websites:

Main Website (then click on “Enter Online Database”):

http://data.visionappraisal.com/WoodstockCT/DEFAULT.asp

Woodstock Values Database Website (Enter Name or Address, etc):

http://data.visionappraisal.com/WoodstockCT/search.asp

You can search the database a number of ways: Enter a name and see all properties owned by that person (these are Public Records), Enter a property address, by Map/Block/Lot/Unit, etc., etc.

Is this an issue that will cause uproar? Will everyone simply accept the new values and pay up? Does the town’s fiscal position affect people’s view on property value assessment or should it be 100% objective and performed without regard to anything but the actual value of the property, period? Thanks.

People are having difficulty with this link which I used successfully this morning and tonight. Has anyone else used it successfully? It’s interesting to listen to. John

CPWF Forum Audio – CPWFforumNov072011.mp3 Click to open and then click on the mp3 download button at upper right.

Introduced by Lindsay Paul and moderated by Bill Sowka.

This is the audio from the CPWF-sponsored Candidates Forum held on Monday Night, the night before election day featuring Jeff Gordon, Earl Brazeal, John Dlugosz, and Cliff Davis left to right pictures.

It would be nice to see a good turnout for this event. John

from John

Since this has been batted around on Facebook, I thought I should fess up.

Counter-clockwise from the top left: Tricycle, Rolly (dog), Munchie, Lilly, Button, Muffin, and Tabasco at the window sill.

This was published in Sports Illustrated. Perhaps it is relevant to Academy Football. See the Article here.

Bissinger also has a strong opinion about the Penn State problem.

My verson of “Friday Night Lights.”

The other night I enjoyed the movie “Friday Night Lights” – a 2004 movie starring Billy Bob Thornton about the economically depressed west Texas town of Odessa and its ‘heroic’ high school football team, the Permian High Panthers. There is also a currently running TV serial by the same name with some of the same actors. The movie (and TV story) is interesting to me because the story is about an Odessa football team facing overwhelming odds culminating with a trip to the Texas state championships in Houston - no small feat given the popularity and brutality of high school football in Texas. But I am attracted to the movie, also, because of the memories evoked by the scenes of Odessa and Ratliff Stadium where a lot of the football takes place and where I had one of the most thrilling experiences of my life. No, I’m not dreaming of heroic fantasies for myself, but I am going to talk about something that is a part of me - a part of me that I think both Rich Foye, Kim Caron, and Francis Baran can appreciate in addition to the football. Read the rest of this entry »

from John Dlugosz

Charter will connect up to the town hall of any/all the towns they serve–but there is a cost. Several years ago they did a presentation to Woodstock on this, but the town choose not to pursue funding a connection back to Charter. Depending on a number of technical considerations, the cost can be as high as 15k, or even more. This would not include cameras, switchers, etc–or the folks to run them. In other words, the signal (picture, audio, character generation) would have to be created (live), then passed into the box from charter (located at one location in town hall), which would then convert it and send it down the fiber back to the head end in Windham, then back out to cable subscribers on Channel 13 in Woodstock. Towns have taken a variety of approaches to this–Mansfield has purchased a high quality remote studio with 3 cameras, switching, etc. Other towns, a single camcorder connects up to the system. Woodstock can request an estimate of the cost for this connection–there would be no charge for such an estimate. Note that this would be to the town hall–not the Middle School where BOE meetings typically occur. Also–as the high school for the town, WA has their own channel, CH 17. They could theoretically broadcast from there–either live or recorded–but if live, presumably events would need to take place there.

There is, potentially, grant funding available to support the sort of build-out necessary as described above. The PEGPETIA Grants (Public, Educational and Governmental Programing and Education Technology Investment Account) are available (see: http://tinyurl.com/cpapdoj which opens to a word file) via the Department of Public Utility Control. I’ve been told it can take quite a while to process proposals for this funding, and that the state typically raids these funds to make up budget shortfalls elsewhere. Read the rest of this entry »

See the NY Times.

“Show me a smart, competent young professional woman who is utterly derailed by a verbal unwanted sexual advance or an inappropriate comment about her appearance, and I will show you a rare spotted owl.”

Here’s the correct link to the November issue.

Please see the Pomfret Times online: http://www.thepomfrettimes.org/pomfret-times-news-nov.html

See the page 1 story on the Wolf Den Farm.

Daryl Hartman designed this website and I was impressed with the simplistic and easy to use format. This newspaper has been in existence for about 14 years, and is published once a month.  It has a lot of good information about Pomfret, and from time to time, has information about our whole area.

13 selected recommendations:

1. Institute full-day kindergarten statewide.
2. Replace the existing system of lifetime teacher tenure with five-year renewable contracts.
3. Consider student performance and teacher evaluation along with seniority (instead of seniority alone) when deciding which teachers are laid off for budget cuts.
4. Grant local school districts taxing authority.
5. Set minimum size for school districts to ensure no district is too small to provide quality programming.
6. Increase use of technology in classrooms.
7. Permit students to receive course credit for educational work done outside the classroom (e.g. foreign language tutoring).
8. Base advancement and graduation on demonstrated competency rather than number of hours in the classroom.
9. Provide parents, early childhood educators, day care providers and pediatricians with training focused on supporting children’s growth in literacy.
10. Get teachers involved in the design and scoring of state assessments.
11. Have teachers and administrators in K-12 districts work with area colleges to ensure students are prepared for higher learning.
12. Structure the first year of teaching internship-style, with strong, consistent coaching by peers and experienced teachers.
13. Allow school districts more flexibility with their calendars.

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