Dryden Is Home

House Pic - March 8th, 2008

House Pic
Originally uploaded by dmakar

An ice storm slammed Dryden, Ithaca, Lansing, Trumansburg, Danby, Groton, all a lot of other places throughout the fingerlakes yesterday. I spent some of the day in the city of Ithaca (taking pictures and shopping) and some of the day on the couch watching "The Wire" and some of the day sitting in the house with Arjan and without any electricity and some of the day picking up and moving large branches from the driveway and some of the day driving in the snow and some of the day handling fire calls for downed wires in the Varna Volunteer Fire District (downed live wires HUM REALLY LOUD).

We went to bed without electricity and wondered how we would keep the house warm without a wood stove or any backup plan to our natural gas furnace that requires electricity to run.

At 6:30am the power came back, I raised the thermostat (the inside temperature had sunk to 51 degrees), shut off all of the lights, and got back in bed under a pile of blankets.

Pictures of the ice on things around the house here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmakar/sets/72157604078386008/

This is a town where...we hold meetings in public!

The Ithaca Journal used their Daily Opinion column from their editor to comment on government meetings - Dryden government meetings to be exact. Some highlights (read the entire editorial):

-About a week ago, we saw a rare occurrence in Tompkins County. A town board — in this case Dryden — broke from its routine and held a regularly-scheduled meeting away from Dryden Town Hall.

-Last Wednesday, Dryden met at the Varna Volunteer Fire Company. It was the first of at least a few meetings the board will have in different parts of the town (the largest town in Tompkins County). In April, David Makar proposed that the town board should meet at one of the town's four community centers or four fire stations every other month.

-Hopefully, the Dryden Town Board is successful in its pursuit, and other boards — school boards included — follow. It may increase interest in government affairs and allow more community members access to their elected officials.

One of the Varna Volunteer Fire Company members that attended told me later that he had to step outside during part of the meeting - he was number 57 in a room that had the legal fire capacity of 56. He was keeping track and stepped out as others came in.

I was really happy to see a good turn out from the local media, not for me personally, but so that people that couldn't attend the meeting could find out about it from other sources. The Ithaca Journal, Tompkins Weekly, The Dryden Courier and WHCU all had reporters listening and staying late to ask questions after the meeting. There were public hearings, department reports, committee reports and resolution review and passing. I felt good having public participation and it reminded me of the annual town meetings that are held each spring in Berlin, Massachusetts where I grew up. These meetings become informative and educational, but also social and community building. Perhaps the more we understand about actions, the better we can respond to those actions.

I hope that we can continue these public meetings in community centers and fire departments in 2008.

Town Board Meeting

Hi Mom,

Today is an exciting day in Dryden. This morning over breakfast I read an article on the cover of the local section of the Ithaca Journal with the title, "Dryden Town Board to offer insight to local government". The article goes on to mention tonight's July town board meeting at the Varna Volunteer Fire Station. Some details of the article include:

-David Makar, a member of the Dryden Town Board and a resident of Bethel Grove, was concerned his neighbors and other town members did not understand the interworkings of their town government.

-Makar proposed a resolution to the board in April to meet at one of the town's four community centers or four fire stations every other month. Varna, Etna, Freeville and the Village of Dryden have fire stations, while Bethel Grove, Varna, Etna and Ellis Hollow have community centers.

Varna was chosen for the July meeting specifically because of the tensions that exist between the western parts of the town and the rest of the town. Residents of the western hamlets of Varna, Etna, Ellis Hollow and Bethel Grove, among other areas, frequently feel isolated from the town government, Makar said.

-Many residents in that part of town have addresses in the Ithaca ZIP code, Makar said. Their children go to school in the Ithaca City School District, and, by car, they're 14 miles from the Village of Dryden.

If you or dad want to read the full article, you can visit their website and see the article here. The meeting is at 7pm tonight with a tour at 6:30 of the fire station. There has been light rain this afternoon and hopefully that will cool off the building - they don't have air conditioning - so I'll be bringing some water to the meeting. Funny though I guess - - bringing water to a fire station!

In other news, Arjan is having a good time in Turkey - she's been emailing me almost every day. The garden is exploding with peppers, the kitty cat still isn't sleeping through the night (waking me at about 4:30am), and  my trip to see you and dad is still on.

Have a good rest of the week, see you soon!

Dave

Training Started

Last night was graduation. Twelve fire company members from Tompkins County completed Scene Support Operations.  The 27 hours of classroom and hands on training does not mean we are done with training - it means we have just started.

The instructors came from across the county and are all professional full time fire fighters who are giving back to the county by spending time training us rookies. Training and education is so important in getting to a point where things become "common sense". We were trained how to do specific tasks, but we were also trained to look at bigger goals and to meet those goals. The specifc steps are important, but it wasn't until we started to understand the scene of operations at a larger level that we started to do things better.

Twenty-seven hours does not make a perfect scene support fire fighter. I myself made mistakes in our final evolutions last night. Mistakes that I am glad I made. I am glad I made them on a training course. I am glad I was able to have the time to step back and learn from the mistakes with some of the most trained and able instructors in the county. I hope I learned things in my mistakes that will help me be a better scene support fire fighter. All of these mistakes are what gives me the confidence and ability to do things better when I will need to help you.

Here are a couple quotes I like on this subject:

Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. Winston Churchill

The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top. Dr. Joyce Brothers

A series of failures may culminate in the best possible result. Gisela Richter

Error is discipline through which we advance. William E. Channing

If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner. Tallulah Bankhead, actress

The Fire Companies do not want robots. They want fire fighters. The instructors want to build men and women who are prepared to fight fire, to work together and to save lives.

Before our class culminated with applause and celebration with certificate presentations we paused for a moment. It was a rare gifted coincidence that we graduated on September 11th, 2006. Five years earlier we were all doing something completely different in our lives. Yesterday we 12 made a great step forward in doing something new with our lives. Something less selfish and inward and something more outward and giving. It was inspiring to see men and women from age 17 to mid-50's, from military recruiter to attorney to chaplin stepping up to do what they could to act locally.

If you've ever considered helping out - contact your local fire company - volunteers are always needed.

I joined the Varna Fire Company in June to try to give back to the community that I call my home. Today I am a little bit more prepared to do that. Past posts:

Knots and Ladders - July 27th, 2006

My first post about visiting the Varna fire department - June 24th, 2006