You know of that liberal stronghold in the hills of NY state?
Oh yes, indeed. I had the intense displeasure of spending an entire year in Ithaca, NY 14850.
I have a sister who lives there and she invited me up to regroup after a very rough spot in my life: "A change of scenery will do you good". After a few months in Ithaca I was able to secure employment, doing a $40,000/yr. job for $20,000 and relocated to the only "affordable" housing I could find, out in the boondocks of Spencer, NY. There I was able to burn black rocks for heat, pay $400/mo for electricity to run a light-bulb, water heater, and television and had snow on the ground from Halloween to Mother's Day. When things thawed out in June, I packed all my worldly possessions in a U-haul and moved my ass back to GA. Gratefully so.
You have my heartfelt sympathy for your year of internment
It was quite an experience and one I don't wish to revisit.
I went fishing in Cayuga Lake and caught a decent sized bass, carried it back to my sister's place where I planned on fixing it for dinner. My sister came in while I was cleaning it and informed me that none of the fish from the lake were fit to eat, can't remember if it was PCB's or Mercury, but WTF, here I am in this supposedly pristine hippy-city and the food is toxic. Go figure.
Using our oceans, lakes, rivers and streams as an industrial sewer is turning out to be a very bad thing for living critters, us included.
As a teen, we lived in Bergen County in NJ. During the Summer we would go to Sandy Hook Beach on the Jersey shore until it was routinely closed due to medical waste washing up on the beach. At that time, NYC would load all their garbage in barges, take it out in the ocean and dump it.