More Business at the Port of Oswego

This is a view from the pedestrian bridge over the Oswego River toward Lake Ontario. The Port of Oswego is on the right side of the picture, while a cement storage facility is on the left. The Oswego lighthouse is just visible in the center of the background. The photo was taken in June 2006 for the website http://www.city-data.com

Things are looking up at the Port of Oswego on Lake Ontario. According to Sen. Charles Schumer, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has received $650,000 to perform much-needed dredging at the Port of Oswego, as part of a $6.5 million appropriation to the Corps for Great Lakes dredging. The removal of accumulated silt that is clogging the harbor will allow ships with heavier cargos to unload at the port. Now, a Canadian company is interested in developing Oswego as the only container ship port on Lake Ontario. Under this plan, large cargo ships would dock at the Melford Terminal in Nova Scotia and transfer their cargo containers to Great Lakes ships that would bring the containers to Oswego, where they would be distributed by rail and truck. According to the Administrator of the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation, the Melford Terminal will be fully operational in 2011 or 2012, and Oswego may end up handling three cargos a week consisting of 600 containers. This would require some expansion of the current port facilities and create some new jobs, which is welcome news for the City of Oswego and Oswego County. Oswego County's unemployment rate is the fifth highest in New York State.

Recently, the mayor of Oswego announced that UniStar Nuclear Energy Corporation had submitted a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a fourth nuclear power plant at Nine Mile Point in Scriba, New York, near Oswego. While not everyone is looking forward to yet another nuclear reactor on the shores of Lake Ontario near the City of Oswego, most local people are anxious for the jobs, including 4000 construction jobs, that this plant would bring. Some people find this willingness to have a fourth nuclear plant strange, but it's a genuine Oswego phenomenon.

Ravens and Rituals

I love crows and related birds. They're noisy creatures, but they're very smart, and they seem to be everywhere, city or country. In that way, they remind me of sparrows, another of my favorite birds. True, they're not particularly gorgeous, and they're anything but rare, but it's comforting to know that you can find them almost anywhere, even the parking lot at McDonald's.

I bet you didn't know that blue jays are members of the crow family, but they are. They're such beautiful birds, but their raucous cries betray their corvine origins. Corvine means "crow-like," if you haven't guessed already. I have crows, ravens and blue jays in abundance at my house in Oswego. They may be of humble origin, but it's nice to hear them in the mornings and know that at least some of nature's creatures have survived another day.

Crows are extremely intelligent birds. Here is a link to an article about the intelligence of crows, and recent studies have shown that crows can recognize human faces.

The photo above is of three ravens having a meeting in the snow. They look to me as if they're having a good gossip, or maybe they're complaining about the weather. There are ravens in my neighborhood, too. One morning a few weeks ago, a raven was perched on the roof of my garage, shrieking at some smaller birds sitting on the backyard fence. Then the raven swooped down into the yard, picked up one of Peterkin's dog cookies and left. Peterkin is my dog, a 6.3 pound Yorkie, who's pretty raucous himself. Ever since, I've been keeping watch to make sure that the raven doesn't come back looking to pick up Peterkin!

In 2004, I wrote the poem below, which seems to go pretty well with the picture, even though the poem refers to crows instead of ravens. Birds of a feather, and all that.

RITUAL

Three black crows greeted me today;
they flew all night from Babylon to get here.
I watch for them as soon as winter comes;
God only knows why they come back again.
Next year I'll watch for them once more,
like Dido waiting for her lover.

Crow-eyes follow me to sleep at night,
like black and shiny beetles on a twig.
Their evil faces leer at me, eyes full of spite;
I wish they'd stop. They make my dreams
too hard and sharp, like pins under my pillow.