EXTRA...

Leno lampoons tribe; Carly sings pain away; Forked tongues; Bus route money; Some H1N1 vaccine available; Barnstable changes town charter; Wind turbine to save MMR $6000k a year; Groping Fire Chief keeps pension; Willowbend pay in discrimination case

TODAY's quote: "An indian tribe in my own state of Massachusetts wants to stop the  construction of a wind farm because it will interfere with their view of a gambling casino they want to build."
- Jan Leno (7 minutes 23 seconds into video of the show.)

Red Man Speak with Forked Tongue*
Plight of Indians in Alaska hasn't reached Mashpee yet

Two Wampanoags paddling out in their genuine, imported from L.L.Bean, birch bark canoe to visit grandma's grave on Horseshoe Shoals.

At the committee hearings on the Kerry-Boxer Bill last week, Democrats dutifully trotted out Fawn Sharp, president of the Quinault Indian Nation of Alaska, who assured us that climate change would affect Native Americans more than most others.

"Tribes in Alaska are seeing their villages literally disappear from under them,” President Sharp told the committee. “The melting permafrost threatens to undermine their buildings and all they have ever built and owned. We think it is imperative that Congress take action to prevent this looming catastrophe.”

If things are that serious, apparently the news hasn’t reached the Wampanoag Nation of Massachusetts, which recently asked the Department of the Interior to block the 170-megawatt Cape Wind project off Nantucket, claiming the Atlantic Ocean is their “traditional cultural property.” (This is the project Teddy Kennedy spent his last years trying to prevent.) The New York Times could barely restrain its anger as it editorialized against the tribal claim on Monday... National Review.
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On votes changes Town Charter
Town of Barnstable voters approved the charter ballot question by the slimmest possible margin last night, 2,579 to 2,578. The changes will take effect in 2011 and reduced the number of town council members from 13 to 11 allowing a half dozen to be voted  by the entire town.

H1N1 vaccine supplies edge upward

Limited doses of H1N1 vaccine are trickling into SouthCoast via local practitioners and boards of health, but the vaccine is still being reserved for those most at risk for complications from swine flu... According to the DPH, more than 660,000 doses of H1N1 vaccine were distributed to providers in Massachusetts by late last week. That is a small percentage of the total 3.5 million doses of vaccine the state is expected to get this flu season.

The Wareham Board of Health announced that the H1N1 vaccine is now available for pregnant women and care-givers of infants under the age of 6 months. People in these target groups can register by calling Mary Devlin of the Cape Cod Visiting Nurse Association at (508) 957-7619... Standard-Times.
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Truro's former fire chief keeps pension after groping plea
The county retirement board will allow former Truro fire chief E. Thomas Prada, 66, to keep his pension although he pleaded guilty June 24 to grabbing a female police dispatcher's breasts while she worked, reports the Cape Cod Times.
The Barnstable County Retirement Association board made the decision Oct. 27 said county administrator Mark Zielinski.
   Prada was employed for 49 years with the call fire department, and for the last 20 years as part-time fire chief. His annual salary in 2007 was $33,000, according to town records... Herald.

Willowbend must pay up
in age discrimination case

Cape Cod's Willowbend Country Club engaged in age discrimination when it laid off its 59-year-old vice president of sales, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination has ruled.

The agency ordered that the former employee, Virginia DiIorio, should be paid a whopping $200,000 in addition to her $62,000 salary through her 65th birthday. Additional compensation money should include the equivalent of half of her 2005 bonus, the MCAD ruled.

The private golf and resort club in Mashpee has denied the allegations... Herald.
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Cape reps seek reversal of school transportation cut

Rep. Cleon Turner, D-Dennis, has authored a letter co-signed by 63 members of the House to Gov. Deval Patrick asking him to reconsider his cut to regional school transportation reimbursement.

The account was cut nearly 50 percent by the governor and represents a 63 percent reduction in regional school district aid since fiscal 2009. The Dennis-Yarmouth, Nauset, Cape Cod Tech and Upper Cape Tech districts are affected... The letter was also signed by State Reps. Sarah Peake, D-Provincetown; Demetrius Atsalis, D-Hyannis; Jeffrey Perry, R-Sandwich; and Timothy Madden, D-Nantucket... Harwich Oracle.
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Visitors toured of the 387-ton, 390 ft. wind turbine.

A new beginning for Mass. Military Reservation

Massachusetts Military Reservation officials celebrated the birth of a new era on Monday Nov. 2. The Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment (AFCEE) hosted a ribbon cutting ceremony on the base to unveil a new 1.5-megawatt wind turbine that will offset electrical costs at the military base by roughly $600,000 per year.

The ceremony also celebrated the success of the Installation Restoration Program (IRP), established in 1982 to identify and evaluate potentially contaminated sites which threatened groundwater in Bourne, Falmouth, Mashpee and Sandwich... Maj.Gen. Joseph Carter, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Environment said the event signaled "the official beginning of the new era in the use and management of the Massachusetts Military Reservation."

He said the turbine was the beginning of the reservation's efforts to become energy independent. "This facility can and will serve as a working model for the military and the public of the benefits that alternative energy sources hold for our communities."

The turbine stands approximately 390 feet from the ground and weighs 387 tons. It cost $4.6 million to purchase and construct the turbine... Bourne Courier.
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Haven't got time for the pain?
Carly Simon sings to patients at Plymouth hospital

"One of them asked for ‘Haven't Got Time for the Pain.'"- Carly Simon.

Carly Simon has a new gig, according to the British news agency Reuters. She is singing to surgery patients at Jordan Hospital in Plymouth while her beau of recent years, Dr. Richard Koehler, operates on them. Simon, whose "Never Been Gone" album was released last week, spends much of her time at her home at Tisbury on Martha's Vineyard. Koehler is a surgeon with offices in Plymouth.

Simon, 64, will board the ferry from time to time and journey to Jordan Hospital when Koehler goes to work.

Simon, 64, will board the ferry from time to time and journey to Jordan Hospital when Koehler goes to work. Reuters said in a report Monday that she occasionally dons scubs and surgical mask and soothes nervous patients in the OR by singing to them... Patriot Ledger.