WIND FARM GIVES HOPE THAT WE CAN CURE OUR ENVIRONMENT CRISIS

You can call this posting Atlantic City Part 2 or you can call it Atlantic City and Our Environment in Crisis. As impressed I was with the casino and commercial development that I saw during my fiftieth high school reunion in Atlantic City in early October, nothing impressed me more than what I caught sight of as my wife Harriet and I were heading out of town in our rented dark purple Hyundai and back to the airport in Philadelphia.

There, to the right of the Atlantic City Expressway, were five giant wind turbines, each towering well over 300 feet in the air. That glimpse almost took my breath away, and I felt I had to know more about this awesome sight.

Atlantic City Wind Farm

Thanks to the Internet, I was able to find out a lot. Operational since December 2005, the Jersey-Atlantic Wind Farm is located at the ACUA (Atlantic County Utilities Authority) Wastewater Treatment Plant, near the Marina section. The five turbines stand 380 feet high, and each is capable of producing 1.5 megawatts for a total of 7.5 megawatts, enough energy to power approximately 2,500 homes. The equivalent of 23,613 barrels of crude oil are expected to be saved per day by the facility. Multiply that out over a year, and the number is an impressive 8,618,745 barrels. (Source: http://www.acua.com/alternative/)

That Atlantic City is the location of a wind farm, a wind farm that is making such a contribution to lessening our dependency on oil increases my pride in the fact that I once called Atlantic City home. About 20 years ago, I saw my first wind farm when my friend Brooks Townes, writer and photographer, took me for a memorable ride in his dark green Volvo sports car a hundred miles or so due east of the place where he was then living on Morro Bay in California.

No Al Gore Back Then

I was impressed with that facility as well, although none of those turbines were anywhere near as tall as those in Atlantic City, but the experience didn’t have the impact that it should have. Although I was well aware of the danger of the depletion of the world’s oil reserves back then and could readily see the value of a wind farm as an oil saving method, I was no Al Gore. The danger to the environment posed by hydrocarbon burning and the resulting elevation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was not in my range of awareness.

Now everywhere on earth the glaciers and ice caps are melting. They are melting as a result of the rise in the average temperature. And why is the average temperature of almost every spot on earth rising? Al Gore and every other creditable climate expert alive today has told us why. It is rising because of the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The increase in the carbon dioxide concentration is known as the greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide is the byproduct of hydrocarbon burning. In other words, the more oil and coal we burn, the more we are contributing to the greenhouse effect.

Polar Bear in Trouble

How much warming of the earth can we tolerate? How much melting of the glaciers and the ice caps can we tolerate? We are just starting to find that out. We already know that rising temperatures are having an adverse effect on some of the world’s flora and fauna. We know that low lying areas of the world with large populations such as Bangladesh and parts of Indonesia are especially vulnerable, vulnerable to flooding and the high loss of life. Animals that depend on the Arctic ice pack such as the polar bear are in grave danger because of it. At the same time, those communities that have depended on hunting on the ice packs of the world are faced with a radical change of life if they are going to survive.

On the other hand, global warming is resulting in longer growing seasons in areas on earth that previously were not as hospitable to agriculture as they are now or previously not hospitable at all. Examples can now be found in places like Greenland, northern Canada, Alaska and Siberia. The idea of Greenland as an agricultural powerhouse remains a startling concept, but some of us may live to see that reality.

What About Weather Extremes?

An increase in the arable areas on earth due to global warming is a positive, but what about the effect on weather? Are the increases in weather extremes—for example, between the areas receiving an excess of rain and too little rain, that is, between flooding and drought, such as we have been witnessing in the eastern United States—a temporary phenomenon or a permanent fixture of global warming? Are more powerful storms, that is, more Katrinas, what we have to look forward to?

Landfills and Overpopulation

The fact is that global warming is only one of the challenges we have ahead of us with respect to the environment. What to do about all the waste we have generated since World War II and have not made the effort to recycle represents another immense challenge. Landfills are no longer a satisfactory answer. A related issue has to do with population. We need to face facts. There are just too many of us, for example, too many of us to tolerate the continued use of landfills. I will be returning to these topics in upcoming installments of Mind Check.

As for the twin problems of oil depletion and global warming from hydrocarbon burning, the Atlantic City wind farm and the wind farms everywhere else show us a path to a solution. We must have our alternative energy forms. Not just wind farms, but solar power, power generated in outer space and beamed to earth, and nuclear power.

Overcome Nuclear Fear

Yes, we must overcome our fear of nuclear power and start building nuclear power plants again. An increase in nuclear generation of electricity will take us a long way toward putting a damper on the global warming danger. In this respect, we need to follow the example of the French and their commitment to this technology. As for the issue of nuclear waste, improved reprocessing procedures are showing the way toward lessening the nuclear waste challenge, but, yes, more research needs to be done on nuclear waste reprocessing to make the approach even more effective.

Nuclear Power and Fresh Water

Nuclear technology can do something else for us, and that is to fuel desalination plants. The droughts being experienced in many parts of the United States and many other parts of the world may be with us for the long term. Meanwhile sea levels are rising due to glacier and polar cap melting. Why not get our fresh water from the sea? No way do we want to fuel our desalination plants with oil or coal or any other hydrocarbon, and we don’t have to. Nuclear technology can do the job and take care of a large part of our electricity needs at the same time.

In this time of global warming and the resulting excess of salt water and deficiency of fresh water, we need to get busy converting the former to the latter. I hope that the message that lies just below the surface of what I am saying is coming through loud and clear. When it comes to the environment, we have an enormous amount of work to do. We need to quit wasting time and get busy.

To reach the author of Mind Check, write Stephen.saft@gmail.com.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen Alan Saft

ON THE BOARDWALK IN ATLANTIC CITY, THE THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS OF A FIFTIETH HIGH SCHOOL REUNION

I recently attended my fiftieth high school reunion in Atlantic City, the casino gambling center on the New Jersey coast. It was the first high school reunion that I attended, and what a mixture of emotions, thoughts and memories it awakened. I had had many reasons for not attending a high school reunion before, and one of them was that I saw myself as too busy earning a living to take the time to go. Another reason was that I had some less than happy memories of my time as a teenager in Atlantic City, many of which had nothing to do with high school per se.

By no means were all my thoughts negative, however. In fact wherever I lived in the ensuing years following graduation, I always felt some nostalgia for Atlantic City. As a lover of the sea and as a lover of performance and show business all my life, I was proud of my Atlantic City roots and was never hesitant to tell people about it.

Steel Pier, Quite a Phenomenon

One of the Atlantic City facts of my life that I have always been very quick to tell people about was my four summers working on Steel Pier in the food services department, known then as “the refreshment stands.” Back then, Steel Pier was quite a phenomenon—a huge entertainment complex that extended a half mile out to sea. It included three large theaters, one of them a vaudeville house presenting some of the best known performers of the day, the second a vaudeville-style venue for performing kids, and the third a first run movie theater.

Near the end of the pier was a huge dance hall where the best known big bands of the day could be heard and danced to. And at the very end was the water circus. Here divers demonstrated a bevy of Olympic style maneuvers as they plunged into the ocean, and here the famous diving horse made the audience gasp as it culminated every show with a jump into a large tank of water.

Business Reversal, A Wrenching Affair

My summers on Steel Pier then couldn’t help but form the basis of many of my happiest Atlantic City memories, but the circumstances of my family’s decision to relocate from Philadelphia just as I was about to start high school had a dark side. At the start of the 1950s, my father had suffered a business reversal, a wrenching affair that involved two other families—his in-laws, that is, my maternal grandparents, and the family of my mother’s sister, that is, my aunt.

As the major investors in the failed business, my grandparents took a severe beating. In their late fifties with their retirement savings severely depleted, they now needed some way to survive financially. They decided to take their remaining funds and to invest in a business they knew well from their earlier lives raising a family in a coal mining town in central Pennsylvania. They bought a small building in Ventnor, an Atlantic City suburb, took up residence in the apartment on the second floor, and opened a dress shop on the first.

In Poor Shape Financially

It was no accident that they had found their way to the Atlantic City area. One of my grandmother’s sisters, Rose Segal, had been a long time resident of Ventnor and had raised a family there.

My father, meanwhile, was having trouble getting a new career going in Philadelphia. Financially we were in poor shape. My mother saw my grandparents’ business as a possible salvation for our family. She would help her parents run the store in return for a small salary, and my father would start some kind of business of his own in Atlantic City. At the time, he told me that he was thinking of opening a hardware store. However, the reality was that he was not happy at all about leaving Philadelphia, and he would continue to complain about our having made the move for many years to come.

Best Job of a Lifetime

We found a house in Margate, another suburb, adjoining the marsh and the then undeveloped bayside, and as I have previously written, I quickly got swept up in the life of the bay including boat building with purloined house lumber. Meanwhile my father made no serious attempt to find work in Atlantic City, not that I could see anyway. Not too long after the move took place, as luck would have it, he would land the best job he would ever have in his life—as the Philadelphia-based East Coast manufacturer’s representative for a Minnesota manufacture of appliances, of which the home freezer was to be his hottest product.

Hence in 1954 I started the ninth grade at Atlantic City High School as an Atlantic City newcomer with a mother helping to run a dress shop in Ventnor and a father living five out of seven days a week in a combination office and apartment in Philadelphia. When my parents would get together in the house in Margate on weekends, the conversation would inevitably turn to the big issue in their lives. This was always the grist for my parents’ anger mill, especially my father’s, and he had a caldron of a temper.

Mother Holds Her Ground

My father would make clear how unhappy he was that we had made the move, and not backing down one iota my mother would make clear that she could not and would not abandon her parents and the dress shop in Ventnor.

By now, both of my grandparents were ailing, especially my grandfather who suffered from diabetes and a weak heart. And, it must be quickly added, that guilt over the business failure and the substantial financial loss incurred by my grandparents was still upper most in my mother’s mind.

No Unqualified Welcome

This then was the baggage I brought with me when I started Atlantic City High School. The social situation I found there is what I have come to believe was fairly typical. No, I was not given an unqualified welcome, but if I had expected that I would have been very naïve. I hadn’t gone to junior high or elementary school with any of these kids. I was an unknown. Given that fact, it is amazing that I did as well as I did socially.

First of all I was fortunate to have been accepted as a pledge by one of the two Jewish high school fraternities. Exactly how this came about is a mystery to me now. I did know, but I’ve long since forgotten the exact circumstances. However, it must have had something to do with family connections through my Great Aunt Rose, who was always “Aunt Rosie” to me.

Rough Pledge Experience

Through the fraternity, I had access to friendships and a social life, but first I had to get through my pledge year, which proved a rough time, particularly one less than wonderful hazing experience. This hazing experience left its scars, the worst of which were the emotional ones. These scars had everything to do with my decision not to join a fraternity when I went on to college.

I am speculating, but I now think that my less than happy experience as a pledge had to do not just with my newcomer status, but with the fact that I did not live up to expectation among certain segments of the fraternity. As a very tall person, I was expected to be an accomplished athlete, and in this regard I was a disappointment. I have always loved athletics as a participant as well as a spectator, but especially with regard to the ball sports where hand-eye coordination is important I just never measured up to my own or many others’ expectations.

Reality of Cliques and In-Groups

That said, I have to quickly point out that there is probably no secondary level school in the country and probably the world that does not have its cliques and in-groups. Atlantic City High School was no worse than any other secondary school in this respect and probably not as bad as many. Also I have to say that as a shy person I did not do myself any good. A more socially aggressive person might have been able to break through more barriers more quickly than I did.

Though barriers existed, by no means did I feel overly circumscribed. I remember many happy Friday and Saturday evenings, that is, once we got our licenses, driving through town with my high school friends and singing the latest hit songs at the top of our lungs. Singing was something I always enjoyed doing and continue to enjoy to this day. These drives would often include stops at a great pizza joint in the inlet called Maria’s and later stops at a Chinese restaurant in the center of the city where we would finish out the night with a succulent appetizer like roasted, bright red Sha-shu.

Great Swimming Adventure

During summer nights, one of my friends and I found a way to work off the excess energy in our teenage bodies, energy that remained despite our seven-day-per-week day jobs. We’d go swimming from his house on a lagoon in Margate. Our most ambitious feat involved swimming to the Ocean City bridge, a distance of over a mile in each direction. Swimming remains to this day my favorite form of physical exercise--swimming and ballroom dancing, that is.

And so these are the memories that I brought with me to my fiftieth reunion, held at the huge casino resort Trump Taj Mahal, a complex right across the Boardwalk from what remains of the Steel Pier, now strictly an amusement pier and maybe a third of the size of the original. As I rubbed shoulders with my classmates over a period of two days—about half of the original class appeared to have made it, half of a class that was not small by any measure--I was at first struck with feelings of self doubt. It’s a complex of feelings that I’m sure is not unique to me, a feeling that is bound to be awakened by something as momentous as a fiftieth reunion in almost everyone.

The Awful Reunion Comparisons

How did my life compare with that of my classmates? Had I come anywhere close in 50 years to accomplishing what some of them had accomplished? Toughest thought of all, had I come anywhere close to measuring up to my own expectations for myself? Also there were the memories of the classmates who hadn’t survived, who were taken from us much too early.

Soon, thank goodness, a more positive emotion took over. That thought went something like this: “Damn it, you enjoy this thing called a reunion. Fifty years---it is an amazing milestone.” That was followed by still more good feelings: “What a great group of people. I’m only sorry now that I didn’t make more of an effort to get to know more of them back then and then to stay in touch, but at least I’m starting to make up for it now.” Let us hope all of us have many more good years ahead and many more happy reunions.

As I say, one of life’s amazing milestones—a fiftieth high school reunion.

To communicate with the author, write to Stephen.saft@gmail.com.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen Alan Saft