I can only speak for myself here. I don’t get out much so it’s not like I have my finger on the pulse or anything like that. But the whole name-switch thing kinda reminds me WHY I don’t get out much. And that is because way too many red white and blue bros are hootin’ and hollerin’ over all of this, convinced that Dear Leader has once again completely owned the libs, and showed them northern universal healthcare loving Hosers WHO THEIR DADDY IS. I’m talking to YOU TOO, GREENLAND!

(I will say that I was impressed that the cardboard cut-out of the Lakes that Trump had brought into the Oval Office for his signing ceremony managed to spell the names of the other lakes correctly. For this administration, this is progress.)

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—Dolly Parton

Some people have always been here, and we assume they always will be. It seems inconceivable that they too might be subject to the same rules of mortality as the rest of us.

I remember we were playing whiffle ball on the street when I was 11 years old, and my Mom came out on the front stoop of the house to tell us that Elvis Presley had died. My first instinct was to think “But Elvis CAN’T die.”

I’ve never really felt that way again until yesterday. Fifty odd years on I went to that same place. I immediately denied the news. Because Dolly Parton can’t die. Even suggesting such a thing seemed a bit like announcing that Mount Rushmore had vanished in the middle of the night.

One of the many things that sucks about this place is good people dying, and the rest of us despairing that their goodness will ever be replaced. All that’s left is a huge hole that we tar-paper over. The glow of memory keeps it tamped down for a time, but eventually the wind picks up, and the hole is left to fend for itself.

Dolly Parton was America’s un-crowned queen. She was born literally dirt poor, in a one room cabin with no electricity or running water. Her family stuffed cracks in the un-insulated walls with newspapers and mud to keep the chill out. That’s the difference between European queens and ours. Theirs required finery and a bloodline. Ours? An iron will, the willingness to get their hands muddy, and the voice of an angel. If a single person ever personified how this nation doesn’t need to be made great again, it was Dolly Parton.

And it wasn’t just her talent, which was titanic. Just like Elvis.

Or her almost ridiculous good looks. Just like Elvis.

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But we all kinda knew that Elvis was a bit of an asshole, too. The man dug himself into the seven deadly sins with a backhoe. He was beloved in spite of his flaws. Dolly was loved because she didn’t seem to have any.

Which of course is silly. Dolly let us see what she wanted us to see. Surely she was just as broken as the rest of us at times. Just as hard. Just as ruthless. Just as bewildered. Her closets filled with wigs AND skeletons. But she loved her family in private, toyed with her own playful persona in public, and never once took her fans for granted. I can think of no one else who could name an actual theme park after herself and still seem humble.

She made a fortune, and gave most of it away. Inspired by her father’s illiteracy, she founded the Imagination Library, which mails one free, age‑appropriate book every month to enrolled children from birth to age five. Each book was personalized with the child’s name. It currently mails out over 3 million books a month, all over the world.

Her “Buddy Program” gave $500 to every seventh and eighth grader who finished high school, dropping the local dropout rate in Sevier County, Tennessee from 35% to 6%.

She gave $1 million dollars to fund the Covid-19 vaccine.

She donated another $1 million for pediatric infectious disease research.

On and on it went, to anonymously funding band uniforms for Tennessee High School students, to using the royalties from Whitney Houston’s version of her song “I Will Always Love You” to support the local African-American community.

Nothing was ostentatious. Most was local. She may have had better shoes, but her feet never left the Smokey Mountains.

Her simple philanthropy should shame our current crop of billionaires, if such a thing were possible.

There’s a clip of Dolly at her rock and roll hall of fame induction ceremony, performing “Jolene” with Rob Halford of Judas Priest. And I have to say, it’s the most metal moment of Rob Halford’s career. He looked like a delighted child, and I mean this in the best way possible. Dolly’s ability to kick ass transcended musical boundaries, which is both why she belongs in the rock hall, and why I’m writing this to the strains of “Coat of Many Colors”, one of the most unflinching country songs ever written about rural poverty. Dolly belonged on both the biggest stages in the country, and on its ricketiest front porches.

Dolly Parton was the one thing this nation could agree on. Maybe her loss will kick-start some sort of dialog. To Dolly, there was no “us vs them”. There was only us. She reveled in her own uniqueness, and refused to judge anybody else’s. Everybody was welcome at Dolly’s table.

And ain’t that America?

In a bit…

—tf

It feels weird.

Both my girls are off into the workplace. The pressure is either off, or on. Depending on your personality, of course. They made it through the minefield of the classroom, and now they will spend the rest of their lives mumbling “we never learned any of this shit in school” to themselves. Just like the rest of us.

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It’s been the bottomless pockets of developers…vs Archbald bake sales, lemonade stands, T shirt sales, and a GoFundMe campaign that won’t quit.

Sometimes we may feel like Matt Damon as Odysseus lashed to the rigging of his ship. But the Sirens didn’t get him, and they won’t get us.

Besides, I like our chances. There is no stench attached to our money. We’re the good guys.

We were suspected easy marks. A valley of no importance. A place that could be rolled for a few paper bags filled with cash. To be honest, it’s not like we don’t deserve this reputation. NEPA pols have routinely grifted to their heart’s content, and if a few of ‘em ended up in prison, well that’s just the price of doing business. And you know what gives me hope in a sort of lunatic fringe way? The fact that the corruption has always been non-partisan. Republican? Democrat? Flip a coin on who might end up being frog-marched in front of the TV cameras next. NEPA is not red or blue, it’s fucking green.

So yea, all of that is true. But they misread the room itself. The “we the people” part of the equation. Past generations were bludgeoned over the head with the inevitability of all this. OF COURSE our elected officials would take what they could get. The skim, also, was the price of doing business. Which is how in the past guys who were actually under indictment could get elected and re-elected around here. Easily. With a wink and a nod.

The skim. In the movie “Casino” they called it “leakage”. And when it was explained to the Boss, his response was succinct.

“Leakage my balls…”

My generation no longer winks. We no longer nod. Our cynicism has instead cued up the eye-roll. “Leakage my balls”, indeed.

And so with Governor Shapiro making a surprise announcement yesterday….some sort of Dean Wormer “double-secret probation” warning for data center developers, my Spidey sense of bullshit started to tingle, and I immediately suspected he was being less than genuine. ESPECIALLY when he went on MSNBC and waxed poetic about some sort of “Field of Dreams” moment he had when he realized that these greedy fuckheads he had previously championed planned on building one of their Musk pyramids adjacent to a little league baseball field. Seems ol’ Josh just wanted to have a catch with his old man all along, and was stunned….STUNNED…..that such a thing could possibly happen.

“Is this heaven?”

“No, it’s Ed Staback park”.

Alas, it was a nice sound bite. And even if it was driven by the fact that being seen as pro-data center right now is about as palatable as being a Cowboys fan at an Eagles home game, it’s surely better than silence. Not much better, mind you, but better.

I don’t know what Josh Shapiro’s ambitions are. It’s been suggested that he has his eye on the Presidency. Perhaps. I don’t really care. What matters is that, as a politician, his actions are driven by pressure being applied. Whether that pressure is coming from Amazon whispering sweet-nothings into his ear, or thousands of pissed off Valley residents bombarding his office with phone calls and letters. Enough pressure always warrants a response. What seems clear is that Archbald is now on his mind. I’m not suggesting he gives a shit. Merely that ours is a situation that needs to be addressed by his office. Politically, I’m a realist. I don’t care if he cares about us or not. He’s not my Mom.

I only care that these things are never built here.

I’m not picking on Shapiro either. In his line of work there are no such thing as epiphanies. He doesn’t go to bed and get visited by three Dickensian ghosts and wake up the next morning inspired by the likes of Tamara Miscewicz-Healey. No. An aide brings him clippings and says….”this woman is becoming a PROBLEM…”, and the next thing you know he’s doing the round of news shows sounding like James Earl Jones right before he walks into the corn.

It was, in a word, panic.

As always, don’t pay attention to what any of them say. Focus on what they DO. Time will tell, but you cannot out-cynic me. So if I can suggest that yesterday’s news conference was a chink in the tech-bro-armor, then you can too.

In a bit…

—tf

If you are dumb enough to take medical advice from Donald Trump and RFK Jr, two of the dumbest men on planet earth, can we REALLY blame Donald Trump and RFK Jr for the fallout?

If your brain is so mis-wired that you can watch these fossilized fools gibbering (and sleeping) in the Oval Office to an audience of what appears to be bobble-headed automatons dressed like modern Stepford wives, and think “gee Mildred, I really don’t think we need to worry about the measles for little Jimmy anymore, because the guy with the dead bear head in his trunk says he’s just gonna catch autism from Fauci…”, when does personal responsibility kick in? This is, quite frankly, a level of dumb that I am not familiar with. There needs to be studies done. Perhaps some random brain scans to detect the CTE you might receive from nightly doses of Jesse Watters.

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I miss my Dad so much. There were a million moments like these. He just had a way of distilling stuff down to the bone. He could take something that was already settled in your head, and with a few words upend it like shaking a snow-globe.

It was always the advice of his that I didn’t take that would get me into trouble. He was like a wise old Yoda, straight outta Carbondale.

I don’t remember my Father ever being young. That’s the weird thing about us Gen Xers. We’re at the same age now as we remember our parents. And my Dad only got old all at once…..at the end. I seemed to wake up one day to a man who had aged 25 years. Before that he hovered between the two. His clothes never varied. Dress pants hung from the bureau dresser. Shirt and tie. Sensible shoes. His brylcreemed hair was the same style his entire life. I cannot remember him ever wearing a pair of jeans, or a t-shirt, or even sneakers. As kids we probably considered him hopelessly square, of course never imagining that our own kids feel the same way about us today.

He was never skinny, and he was never fat. He just looked like all Dads. A bit lumpy. He might cut back on the cheese and crackers until his pants start fitting again, but that was the extent of it. Always clean shaven. His hair was sprinkled with grey, but the color hung on for years. There were no secrets in a house of 6 kids, so there was nothing artificial going on. And just this morning when I woke up I looked in the mirror and I saw him staring back at me.

The same lumps. The same hair. The same lines.

I hovered just to make sure.

Yes, it was him.

My many fears keep me awake at night. I’m sure his did too. But we were never privy to them. His generation didn’t share such things. His gremlins remained locked away, and I don’t think even my Mom had the combination.

He watched his own father unravel, and would not emulate. So he simply pushed through. Whenever one of his kids fucked up, he ached, but he never exploded. He would remain stoic, and we all knew that forgiveness was a given. He was deeply religious, and only ever asked one thing of us. That we promise to join him in heaven.

I’m not much of a heaven guy. But if such a place does exist, this man is in the front row. Which is a good thing because I might need a hand getting through the door.

So yea, I’m his age now. The age of remembrance. My kids will carry this version of me with them. I’m not young. And I’m not quite old. Yet. And while my own gremlins are not quite hidden, I try to at least keep them squished under the bed. Our generation is a lot less discreet. Here I am in these pages prattling on, after all. But when the morning comes, nobody needs to know how long it took us to fall asleep.

After all, we didn’t shoot no deputy, either.

Maybe that’s our best defense.

My father was the most gentle soul I’ve ever known. It is possible to be tough without being hard. When he got sick we saw glimpses of what he’d kept hidden all those years, but even then he raged against the reveal. Even when sick his comfort meant nothing if he thought we were hurting. He never said “why me?” That question, I fear, is more a Gen-X thing.

I am not half the man he was. My fears get the better of me every day. He bludgeoned his with a shillelagh stick. To me he was the great Irish Chieftain, and I’m still pissed off that he had to get old. Because it reminds me that I’m getting old, too.

Oh what I wouldn’t give for that moment in the film “Field of Dreams”, where Kevin Costner gets to “have a catch” with the younger version of his father. I never really thought about why that scene always makes me cry.

I could hear him.

“Is this heaven?”

“No, it’s Carbondale…’

In a bit…

—tf

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The two guys who looked like extras from the movie “In the Line of Fire”.

Kinda twitchy. Well dressed. In dreadful earnest. Scanning the crowd intently. Surely these guys grew up dreaming of one day running alongside a motorcade.

“Private security guards”, he told me.

“How do you know?”, I said.

“I asked”.

Oh.

I’d forgotten that he’s a journalist.

“I wonder if they are armed”, I mused.

“I asked him that, too”, Chris replied.

“And”?

“He told me he couldn’t say”.

Ok, so ARMED security guards.

Chris then approached the nearest Archbald cop and asked if he was aware that a potentially armed security force was in the auditorium. Of a SCHOOL. The only way in is through doors that say NO GUNS on them. While Valley View sports teams were practicing inside an adjacent gym.

The cop was most definitely NOT aware. Neither, it would appear, was the chief of police.

I will be very interested to see how this plays out going forward.

I bring up this little interlude as a public service.

And to give you my spin on it. Which may not be what you expected.

Consider. Data center development goons look at the rather sordid history of this area, and figure Archbald in particular must be filled with hillbilly coal crackers so used to having our pockets picked that we’d roll over like pliant dogs getting a tummy rub. Some glib lawyers, a few glossy brochures, a few bags of cash, and some glitzy Power Point presentations, and in no time this place would look like an Elon Musk wet dream.

Well, that did not come to pass. Now they are afraid we are going to KILL them.

How the mighty have fallen, eh?

First they patronized us.

Now they fear us.

I like this. A lot.

In lieu of all this, it was not at all surprising that the Death Star immediately made a motion to recuse 6 council members for perceived “bias”…..apparently the 6 chosen were the ones who do the most eye-rolling during the seemingly never-ending testimony of “experts”. Last night’s version admitted to being paid $450 an hour, over $15,000 in total, to say, in effect….

“The last guy spoke of health and welfare of actual human beings, but none of that is relevant because we can thread the legal needle and get a permit even if we have to step over a few dead asthmatics…”

Ok, he didn’t really say this. But I swear that was the gist of it. The guy was a governmental rubber stamp stuffed into a suit a few sizes too small, and during the break when he went to the men’s room his secret service agent accompanied him, apparently fearful that an Oswald might be hiding in one of the stalls.

It was council member Lou Rapoch who finally, almost gracefully, lost his shit.

“What actual benefits do WE get out of these things”, he fumed. “Other than you people trying to kill us?”

The auditorium erupted with cheers, and the female lawyer for the Death Star objected to the characterization, which was ironic considering her own guys with guns were standing 20 feet away…..suddenly looking ready to vault onto the stage.

Before Rapoch got an answer the borough solicitor, who is no fun at all, called for a break in the action, suddenly looking like a guy who had eaten tainted lettuce.

It must be said that it’s a totally valid question, and that if anything the residents and the council have been treating these people TOO good. The private security thing really began to piss me off. They think some pensioner is gonna rush the stage and attack Campbell with a “No Data Centers” sign? Archbald police is already there. They cannot maintain order? How insulting. Fuck off with your goonery.

Council pushing back on your relentless streams of bullshit warrant recusals? Hoots and belly-laughs from the crowd gives you the right to invade my home with guns?

What type of dystopian bullshit is this?

When play resumed the attorney for the residents, along with people’s rep Tamara Misewicz-Healey, positively shredded their consultant, who was suddenly stuttering like Billy Bibbit, and once again I sat there wondering what the fuck are we even doing. How long would this thing be allowed to drag out? This was the 8th hearing for this campus alone. There have been scores of others. Is the intent to bore us into submission? Hope that the town’s GoFundMe campaign dries up? That we run out of T shirts? Who gets to say, “Ok, we’re done. Let’s vote”?

All that being said, will I be at the 9th meeting? I will indeed, and hopefully this time I have to pass through a metal detector so Clint Eastwood doesn’t mistake my Coke can for an improvised blow-gun.

We are not going away. We will not relent. If you are scared of us, your best (and certainly cheapest) course of action is to go back where you came from. You will be safe there.

You know….back to places with no data centers.

In a bit…

—tf

Rent. Food. Utility bills. Taxes. Gas. Pints of Guinness. Streaming services. You name it. Everything has spiked into ridiculousness. People used to rent because they could not afford to buy. Now they buy because they cannot afford to rent. I no longer leave the house. Every time I do it costs me $100. I…

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Actor, bandleader, solo artist, raconteur. A man filled to the brim with Irish soul. A man with a fiery Gaelic heart. I once described him as my generation’s Van Morrison, and I meant it. They call it the “yarragh”, the primal, soulful eruption in a singer’s voice where language falls away and raw feeling takes over. Van had it all to his caucasian-self. Until Glen Hansard came along.

He got his start busking on Dublin streets, and despite all his success, he somehow never lost that ground under his feet.

“We are all mortal”, as JFK reminded us. But we don’t expect these types of things. We don’t expect a generational talent to be plucked off his bike in the wee hours of the morning. I’ve lived and loved with Hansard’s music for decades. In all its guises. With his band the Frames. With his duo the Swell Season. And the wealth of solo material. Hansard could be tender, or sing like he was possessed by the furies. He was, by all accounts, a compassionate and generous man. Waterboys singer Mike Scott said Hansard "made your dreams come true".

That may be the best thing of all. That not being engraved on his tombstone would be a missed opportunity.

‘Tis a cruel world. The best are taken, and the worst are left to fester. At least it seems that way these days. It’s been a slog lately, and it was artists like Glen Hansard who made it less so.

And if I may be so selfish…..I don’t want these people to live forever. But I do want them to outlive ME.

*****

The world is filled with people of no value. No soul. No spark. The type that would steal the busker’s bills and coins. Narcissistic. Cruel. Dangerous. Ignorant. Often these people slither to the front of the line, and what we see reflecting back at us is our worst selves. Too many become transfixed by this gaze. It invites them to cut corners, to discard whoever is in the way. To climb the mountain to punch the echo. They collectively become a group that cannot feel the lash on somebody else’s back. Only when their own blood is drawn will they howl. They are easy to break because they were born with cracks. I am tired of these people.

Glen Hansard was a VALUABLE man. He added value to the world. He did not kick down. His songs overflow with empathy and grace. But I cannot help but feel that we are running low on his kind. We can no longer assume that he will be replaced. Now that he’s gone, there’s another tiny hole. And all of these tiny holes will one day fill the Albert Hall. When that happens, whatever this is down here will bust. The bad guys will have won.

*****

I’m a local guy. I remember local things. Everything is brought home. There’s a scene in the 80s Paul Schrader film “Light of Day”, which starred Michael J Fox and Joan Jett as rock and roll siblings. Their on-screen father, played by our very own Jason Miller, loses his wife to illness. In the hospital hallway he gently whispers to his son, “What am I gonna do now?”, and it’s a truly lovely moment. That scene played in my head this morning. That sort of bewilderment in the face of something that’s not supposed to happen.

How many times have we been faced with that moment over these last few years? And asked that same question….

Of course we know the answer. Keep on keeping on. If that hole cannot be filled, at least ensure that what we lost remains wherever the memories that make us smile are stored.

Get older, but try not to feel older. If you can manage this, you’ve got a fighting chance, son.

*****

So yea, all of this from losing an Irish singer. It seems silly that I feel this way on the other side of the ocean. But great art crosses borders with impunity. We feel the way we feel. I never did drugs. Music is my drug. My supply has just dwindled. This makes an addict nervous.

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice
You've made it now

I wish there was a place we could meet when we’re done here. It’s a lovely thought, heaven. Oh the jam sessions we could have. But I suspect that this is all there is, so it’s best to cling to what you love, just in case.

It’s best to listen to the songs now.

In a bit….

—tf

Government is broken…perhaps irretrievably so. The amount of damage one man can do surely staggers the ghost of the founding fathers, who thought of just about everything except “what if a really stupid guy gets elected and is surrounded by bootlicking, craven cunts?”

Take that Ben and Thomas Jeff. All the checks and balances in the world thrown into a bonfire, made “legal” by a judicial branch who would consider Nixon and Reagan pansy liberals who needed comeuppance. “America I love ya but you’re freaking me out” sang pop-punkers the Menzingers, in a song that I consider the 21st Century “This Land is Your Land”…

Oh, how do I steer my early 30's
Before I shipwreck, before I'm 40
Oh, ain't it a shame what we choose to ignore
What kind of monsters did our parents vote for?

We are the parents now.

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This has made me indescribably gloomy.

Not that I’m not generally gloomy…..but now I am indescribably so, which means I need to stop typing or else I’ll disprove my own point.

It’s no secret that I dislike birthdays. Always have. I want no fuss. No cake. No presents. No reminders that I am, indeed, old. I can be both grateful that I’ve made it this far, and unhappy with the ticking-clock portion of said journey. If I could go from 59 to 61 I would do so. There’s no need to rub it in.

Each decade hits, and spurs some type of reflection. Forty is the real middle age, although somehow nobody notices. Forty is the last gasp of forgivable immaturity. You still have the strength to do stupid shit and recover in time for work the next morning. With enough duct tape and Just-For-Men you can still hold your looks together. You still don’t need to buy all new belts. Forty is the last time you truly recognize your 20 year old self in pictures.

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I’ve lost track of how many meetings this has been. I think it was the 7th for this particular campus. Last night the public was finally given a chance to speak, although seemingly only because lawyers and consultants were late and time needed to be filled. This seemed a bit disrespectful, although not nearly as much as somebody parking a data center in your backyard. So we shrugged. The town took to the microphone and had their say.

A few of them really stuck out. A local real estate agent pointed out that even the threat of these things is already affecting markets. Her clients are scratching Archbald/Jessup/Dickson City off their housing search grid….unwilling to drop hundreds of thousands of dollars into a home whose value might plummet overnight. This before a single shovel has entered the ground. The collective shudder of existing homeowners in the crowd was audible. It served as a reminder that there are many tentacles to these things. If you were lucky enough to not be sickened by them, or to not be driven mad by their relentless noise, you could look forward to your home being worth what somebody in Dalton might pay for a garden shed.

Another woman who lives a mere half mile from the proposed campus showed up with pictures of her adopted son, who requires 24/7 oxygen. When air quality is poor the boy cannot go outside. She forced the developer’s lawyer to look at the photos. Demanded it. Her fears were on a different plane altogether. This wasn’t about noise or property values to her. It was a direct threat to the life of her child. She reiterated that there was NOTHING she would not do to protect him. It was a stunning moment that snapped attention back where it belonged. Corporate types are more comfortable with spreadsheets and numbers and legal loopholes. The plight of a mother and her ill child are not the types of things discussed in boardrooms.

Alas, the borough sound expert finally arrived. So that was the end of the public comments for now.

His testimony, in a nutshell…

These things will be fucking loud.

In all my years of doing this and studying existing data centers, I’ve never seen one as potentially invasive as what is planned here.

At this the developer’s lawyer seemed to panic. In his cross examination he stunningly suggested BUYING the properties most affected by the noise, and asked if that would allay concerns. The crowd answered for him. “We’re not for sale”, somebody yelled out. And the auditorium shook with, for once, glorious decibels.

This immediately called to mind Project Hazelnut — a proposed 15‑building data center complex in Hazle Township, Luzerne County. The developer offered a $10k bribe to every resident….payable only after the first data center went online.

Such offers are made when corporate balls are stuck in a vice.

I was stunned by the brazenness of it. The coldness of it. How contemptuous it was. But I was also overjoyed. Because this was the precise moment I knew this thing was dead. It was the only card they had left to play, and they were willing to play it out in the open. All of their carefully crafted PR….the Ryan Leckey pamphlets….the eye watering promised tax revenue….the jobs….the good neighbor vibes….laid bare like a shit on the floor. All they had left was “We’ll buy you…”

This moment alone was worth the literal DAYS we spent in this dark auditorium.

I can still hear that woman’s voice in my head as I type this. “We’re not for sale!”

It was the voice of my hometown.

The GoFundMe crowd just stared down the big boys. And THEY blinked.

As an addendum, and a bit of caution……

At one point their lawyer needed a moment, so while he stepped outside council allowed another resident to speak. He was gracious and thanked that body for all of their work, but gently suggested that if this particular expert had been brought into the first meeting, perhaps we would not have needed 6 more. Amen to that, I thought. The arc of the moral universe bends towards justice, but when it comes to local zoning, that bend is not always visible to the naked eye. It requires relentless pressure. No let up. And leaders like Tamara Misewicz-Healey. May she never have to buy another drink in this town.

But none of this would have been possible if that auditorium had been empty.

It never was.

In a bit…

—tf

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*****************************************************

The data center fight goes on. Yet another Wildcat Ridge hearing last night, and despite the sheer tedium of these things, the crowds have not diminished. In fact, last night’s hearing was the most crowded I’ve seen. It featured a Harvard educated expert on the health effects of hyperscale data centers. Such credentials do not come cheap. On cross examination he divulged that he was paid $10,000 to put his report together. I’m in the wrong line of work, Bubba.

I try to stay updated on these things. Seemingly every meeting is touted as one in which residents can step up and speak, but for whatever procedural reason that never happens. There is yet another hearing scheduled on this later this month. And so it goes…..a never-ending cavalcade of experts and lawyers droning on about OUR future, while we sit and grumble. One must grumble in silence, mind you. Erupt and you will be given a red card and an escort to the door. At times it feels like “decorum” is given more weight than the health risks associated with these fucking things, but that could just be me running out of patience.

I don’t mean this as a swipe at council. They are doing a job that none of us want. I’m sure they are every bit as pissed off as the rest of us. I admire their restraint and professionalism. Data Center lawyers expected pliable rubes. What they’ve found instead is a steely jury of their peers.

Anyway, I’ll try to cut through all the technical jargon and narrow down the guy’s testimony.

These types of data centers will surely make some of us sick, and may actually kill a few others while they rumble along. The number of potential ailments runs into the dozens. In his expert opinion the only way to ensure that our health will not be negatively impacted is to not build them at all.

I could have told you this and charged a lot less money, but one wishes to cross Ts and dot Is, so credibility is important. Plus, I didn’t go to Harvard.

Data center lawyers were allowed to cross-examine. The usual suspect, an insufferably arrogant male attorney (when you attend all these meetings, you get to know the actors), stepped aside and a fresh lawyer took over. She admitted right off the top that she’d only had a few hours to study the report. Letting the entire room know you are not prepared is presumably not the sort of thing one learns in law school, but it did elicit all sorts of jeers and hoots from the crowd. She attempted to compare hyperscale data center generators to hospitals and school buses, and at one point objected to the “relevance” of a question concerning our health and safety. She asked the witness if he used Facebook and Instagram, insinuating that anybody who does has forfeited the right to oppose data centers. I use electricity too, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna allow a substation in my fucking living room.

I actually felt badly for her, and can only assume that the lead attorney decided to teach her how to swim by throwing her off the diving board. When she finally said “no more questions” it was like being saved by the bell before the referee had to step in. We all collectively exhaled.

One of the most extraordinary things about these hearings is the almost contemptuous lack of preparation by the Developer’s legal team, as if they just assumed we’d be assuaged by fancy suits and a few power point presentations. Their work has been shoddy, lazy, and often devoid of much needed context. Last night they assumed they had won some sort of cheap rhetorical point when forcing the witness to divulge what he was paid, but merely served to underscore their own mercenary instincts. They seem to lack ANY self-awareness.

It might have been at this precise point in the proceedings that a guy in the crowd had had enough, and erupted like Mount Vesuvius. Asked to leave, he muttered curses the entire way up the aisle, and if I wasn’t afraid he might have killed me I would have hugged him. His outburst was what we all wanted to say, but didn’t. It was a collective “Fuck You” to this entire absurd situation. The man should never have to buy a drink in this town again.

There were 4 Archbald police cruisers there last night. I’m not sure what they are expecting. Rioting? Looting? A teen flash-mob? Other than some well deserved jeering, the town has behaved with incredible restraint and class, all things considered. When chastised by the borough solicitor, we meekly disengage. If I were on council I might spend half the night banging my head audibly off the table. Alas, our members have maintained their composure. They are better than me. And I’m grateful for that.

In other words, the town has not taken the bait. Our opposition has stayed within the guardrails. It is possible to fight cleanly, even when your opponent hits below the belt.

Once again, I was immensely proud of my hometown. And the better angels of her nature.

In a bit…

—tf

And it was going so well. Trump was otherwise preoccupied with his July 4th party and his new bribery plane, so the rest of us were left alone to enjoy the joyous spectacle of the world coming together face to face and discovering that we don’t actually hate each …

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I should not have to give my dog a benzo so Billy Bob can knock out a 12 pack while lighting his paycheck on fire. But there’s nothing new to this bit. There’s a reason business Route 6 is peppered with firework tents. NEPA Confederates go hard. The stars and bars are as ubiquitous around here as Penn State flags. Every year I force myself to not smirk over the blown-off-fingers stories that seep out on July 5th. Every year I fail.

I’ll try to do better.

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—Steve Goodman

Two hundred and fifty years of saints and sinners and rascals and rogues and a blueprint for how things are supposed to work, with all sorts of nod-nod-wink-winks for how things DO work. Rarely has this nation ever lived up to its lofty goals, but there’s always been a stubborn sub-set that figured Jefferson knew what he was doing when he put quill to parchment. Aside from his own compulsion to own other human beings, that is. Right from the start things were fucked up, in other words, and it’s been a struggle to keep this train on the tracks. Morality sprinkled with a hefty dose of old-testament cruelty has whipsawed us back and forth like a flag in the wind, and if every 2 steps forward results in 1 step back, at least there is a net gain. To some we move too fast. To others, too slow. But a nation HAS to move. Otherwise, it will wither and die.

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Probably 150 people showed up. They were infinitely patient, and only howled when howling seemed the only decent response. Which was often.

Early in this entire process the town was semi-fucked by some of its own representatives, but most of these people have since been smoked out, and current council seems united in opposition. The residents have self-hired their own lawyer. Our fight has become everybody’s fight. We’ve garnered national attention. Even our own Governor, who gazes longingly at lovely stretches of PA forest and thinks, “I wonder what Elon would pay me for that?”, was forced into an off-the-cuff PR visit in a failed attempt to calm the natives. Our upcoming Congressional race, featuring 2 blatantly pro-data center candidates, now features a flurry of “we’re not REALLY for data-centers….let me explain” statements, which is the sort of hypocrisy that drives right and left voters together into high school auditoriums on a Monday evening for 3 hours of technical tedium interspersed with moments of brutal fact-checked hilarity.

I’ll say it plainly. I never want to sit through testimony from another “sound expert” again. This is my 3rd meeting featuring this sub-section of our species, and quite frankly nobody should have to go through this more than once. My favorite bit is how they are introduced. Their handler ticks off their entire resume in agonizing detail. Education. Awards. Publications. Golf trophies. Whether they’ve ever kicked a puppy. This isn’t the Kennedy Center Honors, hoss…..can you just give a copy of the guy’s qualifications to council and move on? We’d like to get home before it gets dark.

And then it begins. The patter of buzzwords and insider jargon meant to either impress the bumpkins, or put us to fucking sleep. I suspect they’d take either option at this point. They circle and re-circle the same wagons and conclude with, and I’m paraphrasing only slightly here, “It won’t be that loud. Trust us…”

It’s interesting to note that all of this sound analysis focuses on singular structures. A single data center. One power plant. How loud they will be in isolation. What of the sound of ALL of these things in parallel? A power plant is this loud, but a power plant surrounded by 51 other fucking buildings and generators is THIS loud. As a collective these things are going to sound like the soundtrack to War of the Worlds. It needs to be thought of in this context. If these things are actually built, this town becomes a Jeopardy! answer.

(At the next meeting, can somebody on council take up this cudgel? Thank you.)

Now, I’m not suggesting that the sound guy is blatantly lying. I suspect there is wiggle room in his own head when he says what he says, mostly because he’s being paid to say it, but also because in the meeting he was asked by council….point blank….whether he would choose to live 850 feet from a 500,000-square-foot power plant. At this, he could only stammer like a terrified donkey. For a brief moment I almost detected shame. Almost.

Turns out the guy came up with all his calculations at his desk, using computer software, topography imported from an unknown source, and a series of incorrect assumptions. He repeatedly claimed in his testimony that the plant would be covered on three sides with forest to mitigate the noise, completely unaware of the fact that this forest has already been razed. He may or may not have been working from incorrect specs (the developer provided 2 sets, and he was unaware which set he was using), and not only did he not consult the borough’s own sound engineer on his findings, he was completely unaware that the borough HAD its own sound engineer. His numbers assumed one generator. The specs given to council specified two. When pressed, he admitted that, in the “hundreds” of these cases he has been involved in, he never once suggested that ANYTHING would be too loud. Which may or may not suggest that he’s a rubber-fucking-stamp for the industry, but I guess that depends on your level of cynicism, eh?

Council wasn’t really having it, pointing out that previous sound gurus provided them with 100+ page reports, while his was 7 pages. What type of equipment would be used? What guarantee is there that the developer wouldn’t simply choose a cheaper option, and thus render his numbers meaningless? No reply. One council member called the entire presentation “insulting”, which prompted the biggest crowd reaction of the evening.

Also insulting is that the zoning permit for the plant was filed on March 12, or one day BEFORE Essential Energy LLC actually existed. I’m no lawyer, but to me this is the definition of a “technicality”, no? If this thing ends up in court, how is this not a smoking gun?

The entire operation smells like the Dunmore landfill, and something still feels off. We need to keep the pressure on. This is our home.

In a bit…

—tf

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