Money, Ticks and magic mushrooms
By Will Collette
Charlestown to share
in $200K federal grant for shoreline improvements
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DEM will partner with
Save The Bay and The Nature Conservancy to complete designs and permitting for
nature-based improvements such as increasing native shoreline vegetation and
restoring wetlands, as well as removing damaged infrastructure and
reconfiguring vehicle access points.
No word yet from the Charlestown Citizens Alliance
(CCA) whether they will allow Charlestown to accept the money or the help. The CCA has NOT taken a position on
shoreline access to avoid offending some of the
CCA’s major donors especially in Quonnie.
Further, if the feds spend the money on shoreline access
at Quonnie, what does that do to the fake Central
Quonnie Fire District’s claim that only its members may use the beach? This
phony,
property-tax dodging “fire district” (no fire trucks or firefighters) is at
the heart of the CCA’s core support.
In 2014, the CCA Council majority adopted the “Slattery Doctrine” under which no federal or state agency can do anything in Charlestown without the CCA’s (meaning their Council majority) permission. I am not making this up.
Since Charlestown is conspicuously missing from the list of “partners” AND
since the CCA has a vested interested in keeping its Quonnie campaign donors
happy, maybe this will be the first formal invocation of the “Slattery Doctrine.”
Another CCA regular
bails out on Charlestown
Before long, the town’s CCA problem may resolve itself as yet
another CCA regular has sold out and left. Julie Carroccia who served two
terms (2016-20) as a CCA Town Council member sold her Lakeside Drive house for
$588,000 on August 6. She bought the house in January 2015 for $238,000 so she
more than doubled her money.
Here's irony for you: there's a letter to the editor running in today's Westerly Sun entitled "CCA candidates 'committed to Charlestown.'" Yeah, right. Until they're not.
My compliments go to all those CCA people who have displayed
their love for Charlestown by moving out.
Cliff Vanover is RI
Monthly’s Tickmate of the Month
“I used to get 50, 60
bites a year,” he said, as well as Lyme Disease five times and an allergy
to red meat caused by a lonestar tick bite.
He described a near death experience when he ate a hamburger
and got an anaphylactic response. Ruthie saved him with “some heavy-duty antihistamines.” “I really should have gone to the
hospital, but I didn’t – tough guy,” he claimed. Personally, I would have
used a different description that begins with "a" and ends with "e."
At the end of the article, Cliff says he now stays out of
the woods in summer and hikes on the beach instead. But nonetheless says “this year, I‘ve had about 30 bites, and I
had Lyme Disease this spring.”
If you’re not a “tough guy” like Cliffie, you should check
yourself over carefully for ticks when you come in from the outdoors and remove them before they settle in for a
bite. Use repellent. And if you do get bit, take a preventative dose of doxycycline
within 24 hours of the bite to prevent Lyme Disease. Otherwise, do what Cliffie
does and get a Benadryl® from Ruth.
Flip is flipping out
Now that Charlestown state Rep. Blake “Flip” turned himself
into just another spoiled rich guy by “retiring” from office, he seems to be
losing his mind to boredom.
I still follow his Twitter feed and can report the following:
After tying into an anti-transgender thread, Flip made this announcement:
My only question for Flip is “why stop at airports”
Then there was Flip’s fervent plea to Sen. Jack Reed and the
rest of our Congressional delegation to legalize psilocybin to use on veterans. Psilocybin is the hallucinogen
in “magic mushrooms.” Not sure why Flip is so obsessed with this drug. Could it be
that Flip did his own psilocybin research while getting his B.A. at the University ofArizona.
Here are his Tweets:
That's quite a string! Flip's obviously pretty worked up over this issue!
So, first off, I’m not a huge fan of drug prohibition since it really doesn’t work.
And yes, there is a Johns Hopkins study that does say they had some promising results.
But one study is just not enough to make the huge jump from a research study to widespread use of an extremely powerful, if not dangerous, psycho-active drug.
As the Johns Hopkins researchers themselves caution:
“The researchers emphasize that further research is needed to explore
the possibility that the efficacy of psilocybin treatment may be substantially
longer than 12 months.”
Plus there are myriad federal agencies that would need to sign
off, not the least of them the FDA which has to rule on safety and efficacy and
the DEA who currently classify psilocybin as a Class I drug.
Oh Flip. Get a job why doncha!
Shakin’ all over
Southern New England had its fifth
earthquake in the past four months. On Saturday, September 27, a 1.8
magnitude quake in eastern Massachusetts was felt (barely) in Fall River. All
of the quakes have been small – the biggest was a 2.5 magnitude in Narragansett
on May 14.