The term “peak oil” was coined in the 1950s by Marion King Hubbert, a geologist for Shell Oil. The theory represented a hypothetical bell curve in which our use of oil would decline when discovery of new reserves could not keep pace with our use of existing reserves. Oil after all is a finite resource. However, Hubbert's theory of peak oil has been proven wrong numerous times, even as recently as 2020. Today, however, and unfortunately for the environment, new oil exploration technology and extraction methods continue to increase proven reserves and have pushed a potential peak oil date far beyond our lifetime.

PALISADES FREE LIBRARY
Member of the Ramapo Catskill Library System
19 Closter Road, Palisades, NY 10964
845-359-0136 www.palisadeslibrary.org

Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of sovereign Ukraine on February 24 triggered a flow of refugees not seen since WWII. Most are women and children, and all need a numbing list of services. Neighboring countries have been welcoming, but the need will continue for months, possibly years, to come. Residents of Palisades are finding ways to help.

Every year in May, school districts across the state hold annual budget votes and school board elections. This March, the South Orangetown Central School District will be holding an additional vote where they will put before the public a separate bond vote.

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Your friends at the Palisades Community Center wish you and your family continued good health. Are you new to the area? Welcome! We invite those who do not receive our e-blasts to e-mail us at PCC@palisadesny.com to receive Palisades alerts and event information.

Dear editors,
I would like to connect with one of your writers, Blythe Anderson Chase, who wrote a story (May, 2021) called “Palisades Cemetery: Stories Behind the Stones.” My cousin happened to come across the article today in a Google search of our great-grandfather’s name, Max Krawchuk. The article that Ms. Chase wrote was about his tombstone and his life story. I’d like to know where she found out all of this incredible information!

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OLar Noso (“Our Home” in Galician) has left its cozy, pub-like cubbyhole in Piermont. Relocated to Northvale, New Jersey, it is a four-minute drive from Palisades. You can park easily in a big parking lot, and you might actually get a table because it’s much bigger. Many things are unchanged from the old location: the menu is pretty much the same, payment is cash or check only, and the service, mostly provided by the owner’s two sons, continues to be, shall we say, a bit rough-edged.

Volunteers and Thrift Shop Donations Net Library $7,230
We are fortunate to have dedicated volunteers who commit time to the Tappan Zee Thrift Shop. Volunteer hours and donations made on the library’s behalf exceeded our 2021 partnership goals and had the added benefit of keeping many household items and clothing from our landfills.

RoCA celebrates its 75th anniversary:
Initially called The Rockland Foundation, it was re-named Rockland Center for the Arts in 1972. Its goal throughout has been to provide opportunities for all people to experience and participate in the cultural life of our region through classes, exhibitions, performances and camp. Upcoming activities include:

No matter how much I curb my usage, why am I not able to reduce my energy bill? We’ve all tried the different suggestions that come from our local O&R utility: turn down your thermostats, better insulate your homes, fix drafty doors and windows, choose an energy supplier that offers competitive rates. The list is endless and while helpful there is one thing you are not being told and there seems to be nothing you can do about it.

There are private wells in all parts of Palisades. In mid-December some residents, including me, received a letter from the Rockland County Health Department advising homeowners with private wells of a possible Volatile Organic Contaminate (VOC) in their drinking water. The VOC identified is Tetra-chloroethene (PCE). Amy Isenberg, Rockland County Environmental Health Specialist, said the location of the contamination cannot be provided, the law only requires that homeowners be notified within a 1⁄4 mile radius of the identified contamination. This letter also provided a list of companies that will test water at a cost that varies widely and wildly. That’s it. What you do is up to you. Relying on the county to send a letter about something this important via the US mail is not ideal. I know because over the years there have been a couple times we’ve gotten a letter about possible contamination. At that point, I take a deep breath, go to ShopRite, buy gallons of water, call one of the water professionals listed on the letter and hope for the best. It’s a bad approach.

You heard it here—Orangetown now has an easy, clean way for residents to recycle household food scraps. It might just change our notion of what qualifies as garbage. Think about it—most of what gets tossed is food scraps: spoiled vegetables, plate scrapings, bones, peels, rinds, and occasionally, the muck from some weird jar in the back of the fridge. With a food scrap recycling program, that organic material is composted into nutrient-rich fertilizer and returned to the earth. So waste is no longer waste. It’s soil. That change of mindset is a first step towards reducing the amount of waste we generate.

Palisades Community Center
675 Oak Tree Road Palisades, NY

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Your friends at the Palisades Community Center wish you and your family continued health and very happy holidays.

Are you new to the area? Welcome! And to those who do not yet receive our e-blasts, we invite you to e-mail us at PCC@palisadesny.com to receive Palisades alerts and event information.

Marina and Samantha
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Any animal lover will enjoy reading Four Lives + Two, Our Lives with Our Furry Friends, by Marina Harrison, Cristina Biaggi and Gianni Biaggi. The privately printed book is beautifully laid out on pages with colored backgrounds and includes pictures of the family’s pets and their owners and stories of the animals’ lives. Marina, Cristina and Gianno had an idyllic childhood, living in a villa in Italy with a goat named Misti, a cow, a bunch of parrots and an aviary containing countless birds. Lizards, snakes and turtles lived in the garden, and the family had many pet dogs, as well as monkeys.

The famly as chldren with their pets Lady and Liu.
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Zain Ispharazi, who lived in Palisades for seventeen years, obviously loves to write, has a fertile imagination and enjoys traveling. As a child, he spent time exploring and playing in the woods in Tallman Park. He started out studying anthropology in college, which led to an interest in indigenous peoples. That led to visits to tribes in the Peruvian rainforest, where he spent two years in snatches over the five-year period between 2012 and 2017.

Manhattan’s Hudson Square district is rich in history. It borders Soho to the east and the Hudson River to the west. To the north is Chelsea, Canal Street to the south. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, it was one of the most fashionable parts of town with the largest concentration of Federal and Greek Revival townhouses in the city. One hundred years later, the neighborhood had become industrial with warehouses and the establishment of a printing center. Change was afoot again when in 2013 the area was rezoned for taller buildings, attracting ongoing construction such as ABC Disney headquarters at 4 Hudson Street and Google’s new campus at St. John’s Terminal situated along the river.

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Palisades Free Library
Member of the Ramapo Catskill Library System
19 Closter Road, Palisades, NY 10964
845-359-0136
www.palisadeslibrary.org

We have been hearing a great deal about climate change lately, especially after the damage sustained from Hurricane Ida. While flooding from large rain events has become an all-too-common scenario, it was Superstorm Sandy, in 2012, that exposed our vulnerability to sea level rise and storm surge. It isn’t difficult to follow the still-warm trail back to humanity’s altering of Earth’s atmosphere, to assign at least some of the blame. Sandy was a Category 3 storm at its strongest, but upon landfall in our area, she was categorized as a post-tropical cyclone with hurricane-force winds. Even at that reduced ranking, the damage inflicted on our region was profound. The storm-surge impact in Piermont, coupled with downed trees and power outages, affected our area for weeks. All told, Sandy was estimated to have cost a whopping $70 billion and killed 233 people from the Caribbean to Canada. In the years since Sandy, we have witnessed an increase in droughts and fires in our western states, and extreme rainfall and flooding in the east. Large storms are increasingly common in all seasons. These types of events come with real costs, not only in monetary terms, but in our decreasing sense of security and safety in the places we choose to live.

We thought we were safe here. Until now, Palisades hasn’t suffered much from the damaging effects of climate change: mudslides; tornadoes; forest fires; droughts; severe heat waves and floods. Sea-level rise and warm- ing temperatures have affected us, but gradually. We felt lucky to live here. But that changed on September 2, when Ida visited our area.

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Palisades Community Center News
675 Oak Tree Road

Palisades Schoolhouse Celebrating 150 years! 1870-2020
Palisades Community Center Celebrating 50 years! 1970-2020

Board members:
Carol Baxter, President Michele Balm, VP Sunny Park, Secretary Carol Knudson, Treasurer Sabelle Frasca, Karen Godgart, Leo Keegan, Jeff Levine, Lynne Sandhaus, Honorary Board member: Virginia McCauley Rental Coordinator: Eileen Larkin Ileenog@aol.com 845.359.6589 Website: www.palisadescc.org