Page 22 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • April 17. 2013 decision: No more pickups of cut grass. The cycle of “cut and bag” just ended unless property owners want to hire a private contractor, completely outside the municipal loop, and pay someone to cut and bag the grass. Wyckoff officials had considered an option when they announced earlier this year that there would be no more curbside grass pickups. They offered to foster a deal that would allow individual residents who wanted to pay the town’s contract out of their own pockets could have the grass collected on a fee-paid basis. In 2012, only 10 to 15 percent of Wyckoff residents left their grass clippings out for collection, and when confronted with pay-as-you-go, there was reportedly not enough interest to subsidize a single collection. Wyckoff has offered four possible alternatives: cut it and leave it -- mulching mowers do this best because they cut the grass into very small pieces; compost it, along with anything from the table that is not meat or dairy, so it becomes useful organic fertilizer; take it to the landfill in a car; or hire a private contractor. Two alternatives are good, two are not so good, but not one is perfect. Here is a fifth alternative: Stop growing grass. Plant something else that absorbs water, holds the soil in place, helps reduce the carbon footprint, and replaces oxygen. Think of the opportunities! Put in a formal English garden, a kitchen garden, an herbal garden, an Oriental garden, a miniature forest with ceramic pixies and elves and dragons -- anything but that monotonous mowed grass with the endless runoff into the storm drains or the neighbors’ basement -- or your own basement. In Allendale, Waldwick, and one section of Wyckoff, officials are conducting a friendly campaign to stop people from using sump pumps to illegally empty basement water into the sanitary sewers and to dump the water right back on the lawns so it goes back to the ocean. The campaign is important and responsible -- and in the long term, necessary. But it is necessary only because the area has been so covered with asphalt and roof shingles and so bereft of water-absorbing plants and trees that the natural drainage just does not take the water out of the flow soon enough. If the grass grew to its natural height -- figure about eight inches to a foot -- it would turn most of that water into more grass, but keep it out of the drainage system, and the oxygen generated by photosynthesis would not only reduce the carbon footprint but would cool things. We do not need to fly over the polar cap to understand that global warming is real. All we need to do is resolve to live without air conditioning for as long as we can endure. I tried it last year, but I didn’t make it. Of course, I turned it on only for the computer…I hate it when the computer screams. The idea that lawns scream is admittedly a mind-stretch, but anything that wakes people up to reality is therapeutic. Town leaders are gradually realizing that they cannot handle every problem by jacking up the taxes. The screams of the grass are inaudible and not at all obvious, but the kind of taxes that northwest Bergen County residents pay for decent schools and services should also guarantee the absence of flooding in basements that only used to get wet in 100-year monsoons. We cannot be sure grass screams, but if we stop cutting it, we can stop worrying about it. If you listen with your nose, you may be able to smell your lawn screaming later this year. Your conscience may make you wish you had listened to reason instead of your nose. This just in: Lawn grass screams when people cut it. This is scientifically established. What are we going to do about it? First, consider the awful facts. A recent PBS broadcast, “What Plants Talk About,” featured a panel of experts from the United States and Canada who reported on a strange discovery. Plants have no brains and no vocal cords, but seem to respond to outside stimuli in ways that, to some extent, mimic the emotions of humans and the higher mammals. The “scent of new-mown hay,” so beloved by people singing or listening to nostalgic songs about life on the farm, is actually a stress response to the cutting of grass. The mown grass sends out an aroma as a sign of stress. Plants are now called “green-leaf volatiles,” and cutting them, especially before they are ripe, causes them to respond by the releasing scents that some people used to find comforting. This sounds like the ultimate delusion of the so-called “tree-huggers,” but the people on the show included staffers of the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Alberta in Canada, and affiliates of the Max Planck Institute, who practice international peer-reviewed science rather than dabbling in responses to that other type of grass. These experts say lawns “scream” in the sense of releasing scent while being chopped. Some of the details are fascinating. One team examined the spotted knapweed, a desert plant that has a virtual immune system for driving away the hawk moth, whose caterpillars eat the knapweed leaves. The knapweed is so successful at warding off predators that it chokes out the wild grasses that domestic cattle feed on in the West, and ranchers have had to strike back by breaking the cattleman’s most violent taboo: sheep herding. In the days when the West was wild, cattlemen hated sheep and they hated sheepherders so much that they sometimes paid rogue cowboys to murder the sheepherders and find ways to get rid of the sheep. The sheep cropped the Plains grasses so close that the abundant grass died off during droughts and left nothing for the cattle or horses to eat. The sheep also walked into streams instead of stretching out their necks to drink from the banks, muddying the water so cattle and horses had to wait around to quench their thirsts. Sheep, however, are the reason lawns were invented. When rich families with ample land kept sheep -- especially in the British Isles -- the sheep ate the grass at one end and encouraged it to keep growing from the other. Sheep and lawn grass bonded synergistically. In those days, lawns made sense. Today, lawns make no sense unless you can get a variance to keep sheep. Instead of turning the grass into mutton and wool, the modern applications turn it into water bills, gasoline bills, and outdoor time that could be spent growing vegetables and flowers. Lawn care is a sort of habit some people have developed and cannot break. It is not a good habit. Cognizant of that – and rising property taxes -- the Wyckoff Township Committee recently came to a quiet Listen to your lawn Diabetes has taken center stage as the most-talked about public health crisis of our age. Endocrinologist Robin Goland, MD, co-director of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, will address this timely topic as the featured speaker at the Friends of BVMI Annual Spring Luncheon on Thursday, May 2. The event will be held from noon to 2 p.m. at the Hackensack Golf Club on Soldier Hill Road in Oradell. Friends of BVMI is a community educational and outreach group that supports Bergen Volunteer Medical Initiative, Inc. Tickets to the luncheon are $55 per person, with plus-giving levels for Patron at $75, and Benefactor at $100. Thirteen years ago, Dr. Goland began one of the nation’s most successful efforts to advance patient care, research, and education in the field of diabetes. The Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at Columbia University Medical Center, combining premier family-centered patient care and education with world-class diabetes research programs, opened in October 1998 under the direction of Dr. Goland and co-director, Dr. Rudolph Leibel. More than 1,500 patients with diabetes are seen monthly. The Berrie Center’s pediatric and adult patient population, now numbering more than 10,000 people, is extraordinarily diverse, including patients of diverse ages, ethnic backgrounds and socioeconomic status. The mission of the Berrie Center is to provide “the care until the cure.” The clinical space is directly adjacent to research laboratories working on the prevention, treatment and ultimately, cure of the disease. Because of close collaboration between clinicians and investigators at the Berrie Center, advances in research are made available to the patients as rapidly as possible. The Berrie Center is a leader in the recruitment of minority research subjects and Goland to speak at BVMI luncheon in reducing health care disparities, particularly in children with diabetes. A major focus of Dr. Goland’s work is on translational research and clinical trials in adult and pediatric patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Dr. Goland is also the J. Merrill Eastman Professor of Clinical Diabetes in the departments of medicine and pediatrics at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons, where she earned her MD in1980. She was subsequently a resident and chief medical resident at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and completed training in endocrinology research at Columbia. Her undergraduate degree is from Harvard University. BVMI provides free primary and preventive medical care to low-income, working residents of Bergen County who do not have health insurance or the means to pay for care. Volunteer physicians, nurse practitioners, registered nurses and other healthcare providers saw 1,000 patients in 5,000 medical visits in 2012. BVMI is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization, completely dependent on contributed income from individuals, businesses, community groups and foundation grants. Friends of BVMI was established in 2011 to promote and support the mission of BVMI through community outreach and fundraising and to offer enrichment opportunities to its members. “BVMI has demonstrated that it can make a huge difference for people who lack health insurance, while also offering a model for prevention, coordinated care and reduced cost in the long run,” said Ridgewood resident Heidi Ahlborn, MD, the founder of the group. Dr. Ahlborn also serves on the BVMI board and its Fundraising Committee. For more information about Friends of BVMI and to reserve space at the May 2 Spring Luncheon, e-mail friends@bvmi.net. Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: It was my honor to appear before the Midland Park Council recently to articulate our Post’s (VFW Post 7086), position regarding a proposal to change the 1 p.m. baseball start time to some earlier time. I suspect, and so did Post members, that the two groups come to this decision point from two diametrically opposed points of view as to how we honor the fallen: throughout the solemnity of the day, or by donning cleats three hours earlier. I think that we would all agree that baseball is a fine pastime, but I submit that our fallen having given their ultimate in the past, pass on to all of us, the living, as to whether we compromise away their sacrifice for some potential monetary reward that may be received from rejig- How to honor the fallen gering a baseball schedule, on this one day of remembrance and reflection. Our Post’s decision - Midland Park’s own Post - comes about with the individually framed photos of those who have given their all looking down upon us. We, you - have fathers, sons, and daughters, who have served or are serving. How comfortable would we be with offering them less...in total respect...in order to bring about an additional two baseball games? In a unanimous vote, our VFW Post respectfully asked the council members to vote their heart and conscience and hold any baseball start time to 1 p.m. during Midland Park’s Memorial Day observance. Bruce Strengberg Commander VFW Post 7086 Midland Park/Wyckoff