Newsletter for the Alumni and Friends of
Hicksville High School Hicksville, New York

The Editors:
Buffalo Bob Casale '61	Linda (Piccerelli) Hayden '60
Pat (Koziuk) Driscoll '56	Bob (Gleason) Wesley '61

Contributing Editors: Bob Gillette & Walter Schmidt

Webmaster: Roger Whitaker

To contact the editors, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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HICKSVILLE VIETNAM WAR ERA MEMORIAL - PROJECT UPDATE

29 March was the 5th Anniversary of National Vietnam War Veterans Day,
as Americans united to thank and honor Vietnam veterans and their families
for their service and sacrifice.  

This date is a fitting choice for a day honoring Vietnam veterans. It was chosen to be observed in perpetuity as March 29, 1973 was the day United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam was disestablished and also the day the last U.S. combat troops departed Vietnam.  In addition, on and around this same day Hanoi released the last of its acknowledged prisoners of war.

There is nothing new to report for the month of March, 2022. However, with spring in the air, we will be in touch with school officials in April to determine a date for the Memorial's Dedication Ceremony.

We'll let everyone know once we have a dedication ceremony date that has been officially approved by school officials. We will also give everyone as much advance notice as possible, in the event they wish to attend.

Currently, the Memorial stones can be viewed in the Hicksville Memorial Gardens on an individual basis at the south side of the Hicksville Middle School on Jerusalem Avenue.

Additional donations will continue to help us cover the cost of the Dedication Ceremony gathering for school district and local official dignitaries, as well as to honor donors who have made very significant contributions to the Memorial. Further donations will also help with maintenance and upkeep of the Memorial for many years to come.

The project will be officially complete once we are able to conduct the Dedication Ceremony at the Memorial.

Please visit the Honoring Our Veterans tab of this newsletter for the full update, along with information on how to mail in a donation.

On behalf of the Project Team,
Joe Carfora, HHS 1962

The Newsletter

Photo Gallery

National Parks in the USA

Birthdays & Anniversaries

Memory Lane

 Summary of Life

GREAT TRUTHS THAT LITTLE CHILDREN HAVE LEARNED:

1. No matter how hard you try, you can't baptize cats.
2. When your Mom is mad at your Dad, don't let her brush your hair.
3. If your sister hits you, don't hit her back. They always catch the second person.
4. You can't trust dogs to watch your food.
5. The best place to be when you're sad is Grandma's lap .

GREAT TRUTHS THAT ADULTS HAVE LEARNED:  

1. Raising teenagers is like nailing jelly to a tree.
2. Wrinkles don't hurt.
3. Families are like fudge...mostly sweet, with a few nuts
4. Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground...
5. Laughing is good exercise. It's like jogging on the inside.
6. Middle age is when you choose your cereal for the fiber, not the toy.

GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT GROWING OLD:  

1. Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.
2. Forget the health food. I need all the preservatives I can get. 
3. When you fall down, you wonder what else you can do while you're down there.
4. You're getting old when you get the same sensation from a rocking chair that you once got from a roller coaster.
5. It's frustrating when you know all the answers but nobody bothers to ask you the questions...
6. Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician.
7. Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.

THE FOUR STAGES OF LIFE:

1. You believe in Santa Claus.
2. You don't believe in Santa Claus.
3. You are Santa Claus.
4. You look like Santa Claus.

SUCCESS:  How true this one is.

• At age 4 success is...Not piddling in your pants.
• At age 12 success is...Having friends.
• At age 17 success is...Having a driver's license.
• At age 35 success is...Having money.
• At age 50 success is...Having money.
• At age 70 success is...Having a driver's license.
• At age 75 success is...Having friends.
• At age 80 success is...Not piddling in your pants.

Pass this on to someone who could use a laugh.

Always remember to forget the troubles that pass your way, AND NEVER forget the blessings that come each day.

Casale's Corner

How Dairy Farmers Are Cashing-In On California's Push For Cleaner Fuel

Dairy farms that capture methane from their cows' manure can earn valuable pollution-cutting credits through California 's Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

Rich Pedroncelli/AP

California is trying to cut greenhouse emissions from the state's cars and trucks, and in a controversial twist, its efforts are putting cash in the pockets of dairy farms across the country.  It is the result of an odd but lucrative trade: pollution cuts on farms, in order to satisfy limits on emissions from California 's roadways.

Among those that could reap a windfall is High Plains Ponderosa Dairy, in southwest Kansas .  The dairy's thousands of cows spend their days and nights inside long barns.  "They've got fans and cooling in the summertime, and they're warmer in the wintertime, but because of that, when your cow's poop, it goes on the concrete, and we can collect it all," says Greg Bethard, the dairy's general manager.

Right now, that manure goes into big storage ponds called lagoons where bacteria feed on it and release a gas called methane.  Methane is the main ingredient in natural gas, burned in home furnaces and stoves.  It is also a powerful greenhouse gas.  It does not persist in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, but while it does, it traps eighty times more heat, helping to drive climate change.

Later this year, though, the dairy's manure will instead flow into big tanks, called anaerobic digesters, which will capture most of the methane.

The captured methane will go into a natural gas pipeline that's located just a few miles from the farm. That pipeline is connected to gas pipelines in California , which is essential for it to participate in California 's emission-trading system.

California 's Low Carbon Fuel Standard sets increasingly strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions from transportation fuels used by California 's cars and trucks. Oil and gas companies, which sell gasoline and diesel fuel, must satisfy these caps on emissions.  They can satisfy the law by selling less gasoline, but there is also another option; they can pay for cuts in greenhouse emissions somewhere else.

This is where the methane-capturing equipment at Ponderosa High Plains Dairy comes in.  The dairy is building it through a partnership with the oil company Shell. When they capture methane from manure, they will be awarded pollution-reduction credits - partly for reducing their methane emissions, and partly for delivering a less-polluting fuel for use in California 's transportation fleet.

California 's oil and gas companies can buy those credits to cancel out their own emissions.  The dairy also will earn clean fuel credits through a separate federal program called the renewable fuel standard.

For High Plains Dairy and Shell, these emissions credits could be worth tens of millions of dollars a year, although the value of those credits does go up and down, depending on demand.  "If you take today's value [of the credits] and extrapolate it out, yes, there's profits to be made," Bethard says.  "But I still think, long term, our primary business is still going to be milk."

Because its manure ponds release lots of methane, Bethard's dairy is set up perfectly to take advantage of this opportunity.  There is more pollution to eliminate, which means more profits to be gained by doing so.  Dairies or beef cattle operations that keep cows outside, allowing their manure to dry, or those that allow cows to graze on pasture, don't generate as much methane from manure.

Aaron Smith, an economist at the University of California , Davis , decided to examine the impact of emission credits on such dairy farms. "I had heard people saying this was kind of a big deal, and I sort of put off looking into it for a while, because I was thinking, 'How big of a deal could it really be?'" he says.

When he calculated the potential revenue from emissions credits, "I was stunned," he says.

The value of these pollution-cutting credits could amount to a 50% boost in revenue over just selling the cows' milk. Smith published the result as a blog post titled "What's more valuable: A cow's milk or its poop?" It quickly became the second-most read article on his website, only trailing a taste-test of fast-food chicken sandwiches that Smith and his daughter carried out.

Smith says that the generous subsidies for dairy-derived methane might lead to a paradoxical and unwelcome result. It could persuade dairies to expand, adding more cows, and producing more manure.  This is particularly worrisome because cows also release methane by burping it out as they digest grass, and those emissions cannot be captured.

This is not what California 's emission-trading system intended.  "If you have a program that creates incentives to generate more pollution, then you're not going to get the benefits that you want," Smith says.

Smith says he's not sure that these credits are, in fact, persuading dairies to expand. But considering the potential revenue, he says, it certainly could happen.
A coalition of environmental justice groups is now mobilizing to stop it. Brent Newell, an attorney with one of those groups "Public Justice" wrote a petition to the California Air Resources Board (CARB) demanding that it stop issuing credits to dairy or beef or hog farms for capturing methane.  "The solution is not to commodify it, so that cows and hogs are pooping money!" he says.

Newell says these credits benefit the biggest farms, which are the biggest polluters, "and it harms the health and welfare of communities that experience all the air and water pollution that's associated with the factory farm system."

According to Michael McCully, a consultant to the dairy industry, farms need at least 3000 cows to produce enough manure to justify building an anaerobic digester. In a 2021 article published in Hoard's Dairyman, McCulley wrote that the emissions-trading programs could make it harder for small dairy farms to survive, since they have difficulty taking advantage of this new revenue stream.

Last week, California 's environmental regulators denied Newell's petition. Richard Corey, CARB's executive director, wrote that the current emissions trading system is working as designed, encouraging farmers to capture methane emissions.  In fact, data from another climate-related program in California show that money invested in manure digesters had the greatest impact on greenhouse emissions, at the least cost. However, Corey also said that CARB will take a fresh look at these criticisms and decide whether the program needs tweaking.

Oregon and Washington , meanwhile, are moving toward launching their own emissions-trading systems, which could further boost demand for manure-derived methane.