Free Public Seminar on Estate Planning & Planned Giving Saturday, May 9th, 2pm Harwich Community Center, #100 Oak Street, Harwich, MA 02645 Featured Speaker: Brooks Thayer, Esq. Facilitated by Robert F. Smith, Esq. Join attorney Brooks Thayer of Latanzi, Spaulding & Landreth PC (www.latanzi.com) who will discuss an introduction to estate planning generally, including:

• wills
• reserved life estate
• health care proxy
• power of attorney
• and other topics of interest to people making long-term decisions about their quality of life, property, and other assets
• special opportunities for painless planned giving in these turbulent times
• selected sample documents available

RSVP for this special May 9th seminar by emailing Michael Lach hct@cape.com or calling 508-432-3997. This free, public seminar is co-sponsored by The Compact of Cape Cod Conservation Trusts (www.compact.cape.com) and Harwich Conservation Trust (www.HarwichConservationTrust.org).

We need help manning a VCS display table at the Wampanoag Environmental Health Consumer EXPO 2009, on Saturday, May 16th from 9AM – 4PM, in the Edgartown Room, of the Harbor View Hotel in Edgartown. Please call 508-693-9588 or email marticamv@aol.com if you can help us for a couple of hours. Thanks.

Study says many creatures use same turning principle

WASHINGTON - A hawk moth can fly fast, slow, up, down, sideways, even backward. It can hover. It can easily position itself at an open flower swaying in the breeze. Its entire life is an aerial show. Human engineers would love to make a tiny flying device, a little robot insect, if you will, with even a fraction of the flying prowess of a hawk moth, a hummingbird, a bat, or a fruit fly.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/
articles/2009/04/14/
how_do_animals_fly_science_deconstructs_simple_stability_rule/

Protecting the earth’s nearly 4 billion hectares of remaining forests and replanting those already lost are both essential for restoring the earth’s health, an important foundation for the new economy. Reducing rainfall runoff and the associated flooding and soil erosion, recycling rainfall inland, and restoring aquifer recharge depend on simultaneously reducing pressure on forests and on reforestation.

There is a vast unrealized potential in all countries to lessen the demands that are shrinking the earth’s forest cover. In industrial nations the greatest opportunity lies in reducing the quantity of wood used to make paper, and in developing countries it depends on reducing fuelwood use.

http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/Seg/PB3ch08_ss2.htm

THE GRUMBLING by Boston cabdrivers about being forced to buy hybrid taxicabs sounds trite and shortsighted when compared with what's happening in San Francisco. As Boston drivers packed City Hall last week to protest a mandate for an all-hybrid, fuel-efficient fleet by 2015, taxi drivers 3,000 miles away are downright cheerful about being the nation's first big city to put hybrid taxis on the street.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/
editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/04/14/
a_tip_for_cabbies_hybrids_will_pay_off/

The cost of fueling vehicles and heating and lighting buildings is one of the largest fixed expenses for Cape towns in these days of shrinking municipal budgets.

It's one reason towns have turned to renewable energy, although paying for wind and solar power technology, and finding a place to put it, has stifled many towns.

Now, the Cape Light Compact, which buys electricity and administers efficiency programs for most residential customers on the Cape and Martha's Vineyard, wants to help Cape communities take advantage of up to $10 million in state funding.

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/
pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090411/NEWS/904110313/-1/NEWS01

Last month Congress allotted $170 million to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — an unprecedented funding pool for the fisheries service — with the goal of creating several thousand jobs.

Warren Doty knew he wanted a piece.

“They said, we want jobs,” said the Chilmark selectman and member of the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group. “And I thought, okay, let’s go, I’ll give you jobs.”

http://www.mvgazette.com/article.php?20682

Few saw it coming, but the General Assembly approved a sleeper environmental bill that will require thousands of homes in Maryland to install more costly nitrogen-removing septic systems to keep the polluting nutrient out of rivers and the Chesapeake Bay.

Bay advocates are hailing the septic legislation's passage as a significant boost for the beleaguered Chesapeake, coming as it did near the end of a legislative session dominated by budget woes.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/
politics/bal-te.md.septics15apr15,0,7763430.story