Water, water, anywhere?

If you want a sure thing product to market, it should be something everyone needs and wants and that they can’t get anywhere else. Using this marketing model, men have gotten rich, nations have risen, war has raged. The product that first comes to mind is oil. Whether from whale blubber in the 18th century or black gold in the present, oil has been a sure-thing investment. But oil is on the way out, I think. There is only so much of it in the world and a lot of it is floating in the Gulf of Mexico not doing anyone much good.

If I were looking for the next big thing, I’d have to bet on water.

But, wait, you say, isn’t water free and ample? Maybe today it is, here in the river valley, but what about tomorrow?

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Contributed photo

The cast of “Laughter on the 23rd Floor,” currently playing at the Forestburgh Playhouse in Forestburgh, NY, careens hilariously through Neil Simon’s satire on the McCarthy era.

Contributed photo

Songbird Jessica Wagner wows the crowd with her interpretation of “Cabaret” at the Forestburgh Playhouse tavern.

Life is a cabaret

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In attack mode

“Turn on the TV, we’re under attack.” As September began, James J. Lee attacked the headquarters of the Discovery Channel, taking hostages and issuing a list of demands, in which he attacked “Kate Plus Eight,” among other things. Apparently, he felt that Mother Earth herself was under attack, and he didn’t think that Discovery programming attacked global warming or overpopulation hard enough. So, police attacked in response, killing Lee. Al Sharpton attacked Glenn Beck for trying to co-opt Martin Luther King’s legacy, evangelical Christians attacked Beck for being a Mormon and Beck attacked President Barack Obama’s faith as “a perversion of the gospel.”

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