SamPratt.com

Comparative Burgerology

Does healthy, organic food cost more than “regular” food? And what’s a hamburger supposed to cost around here, anyway?

Ever since Grazin’ revitalized a formerly-empty restaurant space on Warren Street, one has heard more than a few hyperbolic discussions about prices, with little actual relationship to the reality of the 21st Century cost of delivering a decent meal.

The chart below collects some representative menu prices for burgers in the region. For the purposes of a fair comparison, the price of a side of fries was included if those don’t come automatically with the burger:

As the hard numbers above show, the price of a burger in these parts can range from a low of $5.50 to a high of $13. The average burger price of the 15 establishments list above is $9.98—precisely 3 cents higher than than that of the Grazin’ all-organic, Animal Welfare Certifed burger.

In short, getting a healthy, organic, responsibly-created, locally-sourced, farm-to-table burger is no more expensive than eating at most any other non-fastfood restaurant in the area... which just points up the irrationality of some of the anti-organic voices in our midst. Those who denounce $9-$10 for a burger as outrageous clearly haven’t been getting out much lately.

Now some Rush Limbaugh listeners may cry foul, noting that they could get a slider and fries at McDonald’s or Burger King for even less than any of the prices above. Yes, you could... except those aren’t hamburgers. Those are reprocessed sewage patties masquerading as food. If you eat them regularly, you will almost certainly die early. And the price of that to your family and society far exceeds anything that buying organic ever could.

Local angles

Above: Ellsworth Kelly of Spencertown

A walk through the upcoming Stair Galleries auction of modern and contemporary work (April 30th–May 1st) is not only a fun way to pass a half-hour. It also includes a bunch of artists from the Hudson Valley, plus a few pieces depicting regional scenes...

William Wegman of Ghent:

Lynn Davis of Hudson:

Annie Leibovitz of Rhinebeck (portrait of Tom Seaver):

Edward Avedisian (R.I.P.) of Hudson:



View of Stoney Creek by Margaret Bourke White:



The Albany State House, by Stephen Shore:



Pine Meadow Lake in Harriman State Park, by Robert Ketchum:

 

Girl in Canaan, Connecticut by Anton Bruehl:

 

Six years ago tonight...

... it was Marty Davidson's 60th birthday. Also, the Secretary of State issued a far-reaching decision to stop the plant, and the Hudson aldermen voted to reject the company’s “community host agreement” which Rick Scalera tried to railroad through the Council for a third time. Five days later, SLC abandoned the fight. As I said in a Rural Intelligence interview last year,

Randy Daniel’s ruling was far more sweeping than we expected. He went beyond saying, “You are not going to build your giant cement plant here,” he gave specific recommendations for how Hudson should rezone its waterfront.  He recognized that compromise—a mix of recreation and heavy industry— would not work.  And he had fourteen thousand signatures to convince him that the public favored conservation and recreation.  He stated clearly that the waterfront should be for the people’s enjoyment, for ecological rebirth, and for sensible economic development.

Six years on, the City still has not followed those "immediate" instructions...

Now that we're almost as far removed from that date as the fight itself took, this may be the last such reminiscence until the 10th anniversary. But there's still many great memories of that long struggle, and lots left to do to preserve and protect this area from such threats.

Pictured above, from that evening’s events at City Hall and subsequent celebrations: Bob Blechman, Dorothy Lynn, Alan Skerritt, Ardal Powell, Monica & Bob Mechling, Peter Jung, Moisha Blechman, Alan Hamilton, Claire Oravec, Wilson McLean, Carole Osterink, Sarah Sterling, Sven Huseby, Byrne Fone, Ian Nitschke, Roy Volkmann, Peter Meyer, Sam Pratt, Barbara Ettinger, Ellen Thurston, Nora Hancock-Snead, and Julia Doyle.

Read about the whole saga here (PDF) and here.

Population Changes, 2000-2010

As promised, at the end of this post is a chart comparing the results of the 2000 and 2010 Census results by municipality in Columbia, Greene, and Dutchess Counties. Or, you can download the data as a PDF by clicking here. This table includes the raw numbers, the raw change in population, and the percentage change for each town (or city). This doesn’t include separate breakdowns for villages and other subdivisions within each town.

In presenting these simple comparisons, it should be noted that population figures are some of the most commonly-misinterpreted statistics cited by politicians and planners. To really understand shifts in population, one needs to look at larger universe of data and trends.

For example, population declines are almost always interpreted as bad news by civic leaders. But say a town’s population goes down while its residents’ average income or local sales tax revenues go up—isn’t that an improvement overall? What if the percentage of children under 18 goes down, while property values go up, improving the teacher/student ratios in the local schools—wouldn’t that also be an improvement?

One also has to look beyond the bottom-line stats to see if some key statistical method has changed, such as no longer counting prisoners in the local population, as has occurred in Hudson. (Without the 500-odd prisoners from 2000, Hudson’s decline in population is actually quite modest, more like 4%.) Taking a look at the results below, one suspects that there was some major redefinition of the Census’ definitions or borders for the Town of Milan, which surely did not lose half its population in 10 years.

In any case, here’s the three-county chart: