EXTRA...

RFK, Jr. too controversial for EPA; Gallery closes; Brooklyn's savior scattered here; Malaysia's top blogger freed; Crusing The Sound in a new boat; Cahoon Museum touted again

TODAY's quote:
"There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed."    
                                                    ~Mohandas K. Gandhi

RFK Jr.: Too controversial for EPA?

"Robert Kennedy calling me a traitor would be like me calling Robert Kennedy a patriot."
                      - Sen. Jim Inhofe

Some energy and environmental lobbyists are worried that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s controversial past would thwart his Senate confirmation if President-elect Barack Obama tapped him to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

A well-respected climate lawyer, Kennedy has also been in the spotlight for his controversial environmental statements. Last year, for instance, he said that global warming skeptics should be treated as "traitors," which garnered the ire of Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, whose deep skepticism about the causes of climate change is well-known.

Ptown's oldest gallery closes

Painter Harvey Dodd says it’s time to call it quits with his Harvey Dodd Gallery at 437 Commercial St. and he’s going out with a bang. On Sunday, Nov. 9, Dodd will have a day-long party and then close his doors forever. Nov. 9 is more than just any other day, it’s Dodd’s birthday, his 75th, and he says that’s a fitting time to step back. This is Dodd’s 50th year of making art in town.. Banner.

"Robert Kennedy calling me a traitor would be like me calling Robert Kennedy a patriot," Inhofe retorted on Fox News.... Kennedy was also arrested for heroin possession in the 1980s - a point that will not escape the critical eyes of Senate Republicans eager to block his appointment.

"Considering the times we live in, it seems like everyone of a certain age has had a drug issue," said Jim DiPeso, policy director for Republicans for Environmental Protection. "There are enough questions senators can ask him about EPA law enforcement that I'd hope they'd just stick to the issues."

One sticking issue for some environmentalists is Kennedy's reputation as a NIMBY, a "not in my back yard" supporter of renewable energy. Kennedy drew the ire of the international environmental group Greenpeace and others after he opposed construction of a wind energy farm off the coast of Cape Cod that would have marred the view from his family's shoreline home... Politico.
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Man who saved Brooklyn to have ashes scattered here
Malcolm Chesney is dead at 87

"He used to always say he wanted to be composted,"
                   - Chesney's wife

Malcolm McKay Chesney, Jr., who was integral in saving Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope from overdevelopment by encouraging people to fix up brownstones in the 1960s, died in his Heights home on Oct. 30 of Alzheimer's disease. He was 87.

Chesney, an economist by training, ultimately led the economic research division at the Brooklyn Union Gas, now National Grid, where he was "instrumental" in creating the company's "Cinderella Program," which invested in real estate developments and created model homes that used gas-powered appliances and heat, said National Grid's U.S. Chairman Bob Catell.

"He used to always say he wanted to be composted," said his wife, Thelma Baldassare Chesney, laughing.  To a degree, he will get his wish: the family will scatter Chesney's remains at a family house in Cape Cod... The Brooklyn Paper.
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Malaysia's top blogger released from detention

Raja Petra Kamarudin (pictured July 2007) has been investigated by the police for comments posted on his website, Malaysia Today. In the background is Raja Petra's wife, Marina Lee Abdullah.

Malaysia's leading blogger, Raja Petra Kamaruddin, was Friday released from detention under controversial internal security laws after a court ruled the government had no right to hold him.

Raja Petra, a vocal government critic who had been held at a notorious detention camp since September, wept and embraced his family after being freed by the Shah Alam High Court.

"I'm realy glad it's over. I'm really tired. The judge's decision proves that there was no justification for my detention," he said, calling for an end to the Internal Security Act (ISA) which allows for detention without trial.

"We have to fight all-out and get the ISA abolished," he told reporters.

Looking haggard and dressed in a brown T-shirt and jeans, Raja Petra was garlanded by dozens of supporters outside the court before stepping into a maroon Rolls Royce provided by a supporter to ferry him home.

"It's a great day for human rights and fundamental liberties," said Malaysian human rights commissioner Denison Jayasooria... Breitart.
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From whimsical to serious at Cape Cod art museum

Whimsical, American Primitive motifs galore

The whimsical paintings of Ralph and Martha Cahoon, filled with sailors, ships, lighthouses and mermaids, would be reason enough to visit the Cahoon Museum of American Art. But the collection also contains some masterpieces of marine painting, tonalism, impressionism and folk art.

In the 1930s the Cahoons established a business in Osterville selling and decorating furniture, using a technique called "rosemaling" that Martha had learned from her Swedish father. When a customer suggested that their furniture designs would work well as framed art, a new career began. They painted on masonite, a hard surface that was similar to the wood they were used to.

Mermaids became the trademark of Ralph Cahoon, who died in 1982. Their dainty breasts exposed and lower quarters curled into a decorative scroll, Cahoon's mermaids knit, golf, fish, cook, pick apples and fly kites. In Megansett Tea Room pearl-draped mermaids sip from teacups at one table, poodles at their feet, while their colleagues at another table play cards. Bon Appetit depicts four mermaids in a well-stocked kitchen busily preparing a meal; the one emptying a bottle of wine into a large pot looks suspiciously like Julia Child... Providence Journal.
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We take the new ArrowCat 30 on a New England dream cruise
Through Woods Hole to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket

This was an entirely new experience for me: cruising across Buzzards Bay-the infamously nasty body of water that separates Cape Cod from the Massachusetts mainland-on a beautiful, late-summer, blue-sky day at 35 knots. I say again: 35 knots. Not on a Cigarette or a go-fast boat, but a cruising boat. A boat that, in fact, three of us were going to live on for the next few days as we headed over to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, some of the premier cruising destinations in the United States.

Oddly enough, perversely enough, as we left the dock earlier at Tripp's Marina in Westport Point, Massachusetts, I hoped Buzzards Bay would do its thing and toss us around a bit in its usually short, ugly chop. That's not because I like to suffer. Given my druthers, I'd be happy with calm seas and fair skies for the rest of my life. But I did want to test our boat, a brand-new ArrowCat 30 that is, as its name states, a 30-foot catamaran. The ArrowCat is by Robert Hill, the famed New Zealand designer who's developed ocean-going catamarans for the rugged waters down there for more than 25 years... Motorboating.