When this millennial couldn’t reach his congressman

Temple graduate Ryan Epp is the creator of Snail Mail Congress which gets constituent concerns to elected officials using the postal service. (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY)


A few months ago, Ryan Epp wanted to tell U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey his concerns about Betsy DeVos, the controversial charter-school champion who Trump nominated to be his education secretary.
 

“No one was picking up the phone in his office. I called like 25 times in one day and didn’t get a response,” said Epp, 26, of Lancaster. “So I decided to write Sen. Toomey a letter.
 
And I did that, printed it out — and then realized I was out of stamps.”
 
So what did he do?
 
NewsWorks‘ Dana DeFilippo provides the answer:

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Frederick B. Lacey, who took on the mob, dead at 96

Former U.S. Attorney Frederick B. Lacey

Ted Sherman writes for the Star-Ledger:

Frederick Lacey’s son first began to understand the danger of the work his father was doing when four federal marshals unexpectedly took up residence to protect the family in their suburban Glen Ridge home.
As the new U.S. Attorney for New Jersey in 1969, Lacey quickly found himself making a number of powerful enemies.
Earlier in his career, as prosecutor he sent the widely feared and ruthless head of Murder Inc., mobster Albert Anastasia, to prison for income tax evasion. As U.S. Attorney, he soon was going up against the likes of Angelo “Gyp” DeCarlo, another major organized crime boss who controlled Newark, as well as the corrupt political machines in Essex and Hudson counties.
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BillyPenn’s list of Philly’s political protests in April (so far)

protestPaige Gross writes for BillyPenn:

We’re heading into the third month of Donald Trump’s presidency, and there’s no sign of slowing down for many resistance-themed events and protests in Philly.

Click here to see the ever-growing list 

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Recalling when oyster boats ruled Delaware Bay

Clyde Phillips, who was a waterman and his father was a waterman, in the area of Bivalve, NJ, shares stories about what it was like in the heyday of the oyster trade in South Jersey
Michael Bryant/Inquirer photographer.
Jacqueline R. Urgo writes for Philly.com:

BIVALVE, N.J. — When they look out over the languid Maurice River these days, Joan Riggin Harper and Clyde Phillips can still see the regatta of sorts that used to appear each Sunday afternoon, when hundreds of wooden boats would be under sail, racing out of the mouth of the river to get to oyster beds in the Delaware Bay to begin the work week of harvesting the shellfish.

“It was a beautiful sight … all those boats and sails on the river. I don’t even have to close my eyes to still see it,” said Harper, 93, of Upper Deerfield, as she stood on the docks of what is now the Bayshore Center at Bivalve. The site was once the center of a thriving maritime industry in which her family played a key role in the early 1900s.

“We’d hop in the car and go to Gandy’s Beach and wait to see Dad’s boat pass by Ship John Light. We didn’t care about seeing any other boat, though, we just wanted to see Dad’s pretty bugeye go by,” said Harper, recalling her childhood along the bay shore in Cumberland County in the 1920s and 1930s, during the heyday of New Jersey’s once-lucrative oyster industry.

“It was an amazing thing to see,” agreed Phillips, 83, of Mauricetown. “New Jersey boats had four corner sails, and they looked pretty under sail.”

“I always say that around here, people were defined by their boats, and many boats were defined by their people,” he said.

For more than two hours, they talked of people and things that are long gone — eccentric teachers they had in school, a factory that produced rope made of salt hay harvested from the surrounding marshland, how boats got their sometimes unusual names, the thriving grocery stores and small shops that sold ladies’ finery and men’s haberdashery in Port Norris.

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Seeking fields to farm in New York City? Just look up

Lisa W. Foderaro reports for The New York Times:

Back in the 1960s, Lisa Douglas, the Manhattan socialite played
by Eva Gabor in the television sitcom “Green Acres,” had to give up her “penthouse view” to indulge her husband’s desire for
“farm livin’.”

Today, she could have had both. New York City (the stores!) is suddenly a farming kind of town (the chores!). Almost a decade after the last family farm within the city’s boundaries closed, basil and bok choy are growing in Brooklyn, and tomatoes, leeks and cucumbers in Queens. Commercial agriculture is bound for the South Bronx, where the city recently solicited proposals for what would be the largest rooftop farm in the United States, and possibly the world.

Fed by the interest in locally grown produce, the new farm operations in New York are selling greens and other vegetables by the boxful to organically inclined residents, and by the bushel to supermarket chains like Whole Foods. The main difference between this century and previous ones is location: whether soil-based or hydroponic, in which vegetables are grown in water rather than soil, the new farms are spreading on rooftops, perhaps the last slice of untapped real estate in the city.

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2 NJ congressmen vow to fight Trump cuts at the EPA

Booker and Pallone — joined by environmentalists, NJ lawmakers, and four former governors — decry president’s attempts to cripple federal agency

 

epa pallone booker Rep. Frank Pallone at podium; standing to his right is Kim Gaddy of Clean Water Action. Sen. Cory Booker is at rear. Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight:
 Kicking off what is likely to be a fierce fight, environmentalists and two prominent Democrats in Congress yesterday vowed to oppose deep cuts in programs to protect the nation’s land, air, and water.

Standing outside an office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Edison and joined by legislators and local officials, Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. Frank Pallone called President Donald Trump’s proposed budget that would cut the spending on environmental programs by nearly one-third a devastating assault on combating climate change, Superfund cleanups, and efforts to reduce harmful air pollution.
The rally is the launch of a broad campaign to mobilize opposition to the cuts, which critics argue undermine decades of gains in cleaning up polluted waterways, smog-fouled air, and toxic waste sites.
Other prominent leaders also vowed to join the fray. Former Govs. Brendan Byrne, Tom Kean, Jim Florio, and Christie Whitman are calling on the state’s congressional delegation to prevent decades of environmental protection from being undermined. They plan to discuss the push to organize opposition to the cuts at their own press conference today.

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