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mypiece1@mailcity.com

My Piece
 Matt LeBlanc (04-28-02)

The local pay phone at the local gas station. Have you ever used it? Have you ever even thought much about it besides the fact that the greasy black stuff on handle is disgusting? Well in certain small towns in more remote areas of New England and New York our good friends at Verizon, James Earl Jones not included, would like to rip out these phones that are not profitable. Excuse me? I was not under the impression that pay phones were there for profit. Stupid me, this is capitalism. Often in these smaller towns the ONE pay phone is the only means of communication for people who can not afford/don't have the opportunity to have phone lines in their homes. More importantly, Police, Fire, and Medical communications in the more remote regions are often not reliable, making the ONE pay phone the only reliable means to report emergencies or to call for extra help. These phones are not there for profit, they are there as a service for people in the community, and Verizon, while legally able to, has no right to pull them out. Local phone competition is coming Verizon, you will get your's.

Gordon Humphrey is the conservative and Betty Crocker Shaheen is the liberal, right? I was a little confused recently when Betty vetoed a bill that would ban MtBE, that additive in gasoline that makes fumes cleaner for the air but absolutely destroys the rest of the environment, making precious fresh water tables unusable. Interestingly enough, Gordon Humphrey, vying for the Republican gubernatorial candidacy, supports the MtBE ban across New Hampshire. Clearly, Mrs. Shaheen's "for the environment" stance is a lie, and while Gordon Humphrey has not taken a stance on the environment, his actions already tell us where he stands. Again, who's the liberal and who's the conservative here?
So the price of stamps is rising again. It's going to be 37 cents to mail a first class letter in our Union. In a Federal Government full of mismanaged departments, the Postal Service is by far the worst. Myself, a mule, and that chimpanzee Jane Goodall played with could manage the Postal Service better than these yahoos that are taking advantage of us, the people who pay their salary. If the postal service is in debt, they need to restructure until they are not in debt, not raise the price on the one thing they have a monopoly
on, first class mail. If there is anything in the government that sorely needs privatizing right now it is this organization.
Recently a third grader in a school district near Kansas City lost $5.00. To apprehend the culprit the Principal and the Teacher brought it upon themselves to strip-search the rest of the students in the class. The male principal strip-searched the boys, and the female teacher strip-searched the girls. These people should not be allowed near children, including their own, ever again. That is irresponsible, out of line, completely uncalled for, and just plain wrong. This undermines the value of trust that needs to be installed
in children that age. Furthermore, the parents of these children were not conferred with before their children were stripped naked for 5 dollars. Finally, children have rights too, and this was a violation of them. Is even the elementary school unsafe for our children now?
So that K-Mart on South Willow Street in Manchester, NH is finally closing. Bankruptcy or not, it was only a matter of time. I believe K-Mart has no one to blame but themselves for this one. The reason the South Willow K failed has nothing to do with Target or Wal-Mart, it has to do with the fact that last month if I entered the store it looked the same as it did in 1967 save the Big K sign on the front. Part of the reason Target and Wal-Mart succeed is due to the feel of the stores upon entering them. They are new, bright, and spacious. K-Mart doesn't have this feel, even in new stores, and unless you stay with the times history proves you fail. Thank for playing K-Mart -it's been fun.
I recently attended a hockey game in the Coach USA Center in Elmira, NY, and I must say the 2 year old arena is a wonderful place to watch a hockey game. The tickets were cheap, the hockey was good, the seats were great, and the sell-out crowd of 4,000 was wild from the moment the puck was dropped. Quite possibly the most brilliant aspect of the arena is its size. With only 4,000 seats including luxury boxes, the arena is just the right size for a small city like Elmira (pop: 33,000). This brilliant planning by city leaders is what led the Elmira Jackals to be the United Hockey League's most successful franchise last year, and what on a larger scale has revitalized Elmira while upstate New York continues to be plagued by economic depression. For all cities in upstate New York, small and large, Elmira should serve as an example. Through a first class arena and theater has come more commercial development in the form of shops and restaurants, adding to the whole package that has made the city the place to be once again.
Not to scare you or anything, but currently residing under Yellowstone National Park is a super volcano, a bed of molten lava covering numerous western states that is due to explode. Scientists have figured out that about every 600,000 years it erupts, and the fall-out from it is similar to something experienced from a nuclear bomb. The Western United States and parts of South Western Canada would be hit directly by the lava, and the rest of North America would see a permanent ash cover for at least a couple of years strong enough to block out the sun. Now I don't need to explain the implications of this, but lets just say it's about time to start building a fall-out shelter like they had in that Brendan Frasier movie Blast From the Past. The one catch is that when dealing with hundreds of thousands of years it is hard to pin-point a date. That means the super volcano could erupt tomorrow or a thousand years from now. It never hurts to be prepared though. Oh, and curious why you haven't heard about this yet? The federal government is trying hard to keep it quiet because they don't think, as citizens, we are capable of handling information such as this. If this starts exploding, will Homeland Defense Czar Ridge put us on color red alert?
Matt LeBlanc is from Manchester, New Hampshire, and he gladly accepts questions and comments at mleblan1@ic3.ithaca.edu
...local phone competition is coming Verizon... you will get your's...
MtBE... that additive in gasoline that makes fumes cleaner for the air but destroys the rest of the environment...
...myself, a mule and a chimpanzee could manage the postal service better...
...a strip-search over five dollars...
...I believe K-Mart has no one to blame but themselves for this one...
...the brilliant planning by city leadersi s what led to the Elmira Jackals to be the UHL's most successful franchise last year...
...Yellowstone's already got a geyser... how about a volcano?