Tag Archives: cities

Soot pollution may cause as many as 3.2 million premature deaths a year

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 17, 2012

Soot pollution may cause as many as 3.2 million premature deaths a year

By Philip Bump

Morgan Burke

There are several factors that probably contribute to what the Atlantic Cities refers to as St. Louis’ “asthma epidemic.” High rates of smoking, for example. And: air pollution.

The number of children suffering from asthma in the St. Louis metropolitan area is nearly three times the national average, according to Asthma Friendly St. Louis, a community program designed to help school-age kids and teens manage respiratory illness. Despite the efforts of several community initiatives, the disease is often poorly managed because of a lack of access to care and educational resources. …

In East St. Louis, which sits across the Mississippi River from St. Louis in Illinois, asthma rates are among the highest in the nation, and experts suspect that this is linked to the high rates of pollution and poverty in the city. 44 percent of East St. Louis residents live on incomes below the federal poverty line.

CDC

Missouri asthma hospitalization rates.

The link between pollution and asthma — a terrifying, occasionally deadly inflammation in the lungs — is well-established. But the effects of pollution, particulate soot pollution, may be much broader than previously understood. From the NRDC’s Switchboard blog:

A new study in The Lancet, developed by an international group of experts, finds that outdoor air pollution, especially fine particulate matter (soot) contributes to more than 3.2 million premature deaths around the world each year. …

This new, more refined study also finds that:

Air pollution ranks among the top ten global health risks associated with mortality and disease.
Most of the premature deaths due to air pollution are in China and other countries in Asia. In fact, air pollution is the 4th highest risk factor right behind smoking in East Asia.

But outside of Asia, the risks are still high. Globally, outdoor air pollution ranks as the 8th highest risk factor for premature death, posing a greater danger than high cholesterol.

The study was timed, coincidentally or not, to go public as the EPA announced new restrictions on soot pollution, dropping the allowable standard of small particles by 20 percent — a step that could save 15,000 lives a year.

The group Abt Associates also unveiled Air Counts, an online map that allows visitors to assess the effects of soot reductions in various cities around the country. Dropping the amount of particulate matter in New York City by 250 metric tons a year could save 67 lives — and more than half a billion dollars in costs. (In heavily polluted Beijing, a similar drop would have less of an effect, saving only 29 lives.)

St. Louis is not included on Abt’s map, so it’s hard to say the extent to which lives might be saved by the EPA’s new standard. But in a state that sees a higher rate-of-death from asthma than the rest of the country, particularly among African-Americans …

CDC

… even one life saved makes the calculus worth it.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Soot pollution may cause as many as 3.2 million premature deaths a year

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Midwestern cities are setting new records for days without snow

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 14, 2012

Midwestern cities are setting new records for days without snow

By Philip Bump

Shutterstock

Even hoping for a snowman this large is optimistic.

Having lived in a snowy region, I certainly understand that snowfall can be a pain in the ass. It’s great while falling, to a point, and great when sitting in large drifts in the yard preventing egress to school and/or work, and then terrible when you have to shovel it or see it in dark, muddy piles by the side of the road or struggle out into it to go to school and/or work.

So this news is a mixed blessing: Cities across the Midwest are setting new records for the number of consecutive days without measurable snowfall.

Chicago is the most notable entrant on the new records list. The city is now in its 285th straight day without accumulation — passing the record of 280 set in 1994. (City government isn’t complaining, given how much it is saving on snow removal.) Champaign-Urbana, Ill., is at about 283. Lincoln and Omaha, Neb., are both in the low 300s. Des Moines broke a record set in 1889, entering its 285th day today.

NOAA

Snowfall over the last 72 hours.

Part of the problem is the drought, which affects snow as well as rain. And with much of the area still under severe drought conditions, even negligible precipitation is unlikely.

Drought Monitor

From USA Today:

National Weather Service program manager Jim Keeney said the country’s drought conditions this year are to blame for snow not sticking to the ground.

“At this point it doesn’t matter what falls from the sky, snow or rain,” he said. “To get precipitation would be beneficial for a chunk of the country.”

He also noted some cities that have seen snow are well below their averages this time of year.

Minneapolis usually has about 11 inches of snow on the ground by early December – but the measurement stands at less than an inch right now. Green Bay, Wis., is more than four inches off its normal snowfall.

The other problem is stubbornly high temperatures. This map shows the past week’s new high temperature records (red) and new high minimum temperatures (yellow). It’s a smattering, but still suggests warmer-than-average-temperatures across the region.

HAMweather

Even if precipitation fell, if it’s not cold enough, that water won’t fall as snow.

Why are temperatures so high and the drought so persistent? Well, that’s subject to rigorous, thoughtful debate. Scientists would likely suggest that they are symptomatic of a changing climate, though, of course, particular local weather variations are not uncommon. Republicans, on the other hand, would blame sun spots. So who knows.

In short: those kids in Illinois and Nebraska dreaming of a brownish-gray Christmas: your wish is likely to come true. But if you were also wishing for a few snow days? Better luck next year.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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New Yorkers create three pounds of garbage per person per day

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 13, 2012

New Yorkers create three pounds of garbage per person per day

By Philip Bump

Twelve years ago, New York City residents created nearly four pounds of garbage per person per day. It was broken down as follows:

27 percent thin pizza crusts
20 percent tourists
18 percent surliness
14 percent unused Mets tickets
11 percent lox
6 percent rejected New York Post headline ideas
4 percent ticker tape

Today, good news: The figure has declined to less than three pounds a day, about 12 ounces of which is recycled material. That’s an estimated drop from 32 million pounds of garbage a day to 25 million pounds.

Not that the city is all that happy about it. From The New York Times:

While that’s the lowest amount since at least 2000, the cost of collecting and disposing of the garbage has remained relatively constant, ranging from a low of about 70 cents [per person per day] in 2002 to a high of more than 80 cents in 2008. In 2012, the average cost per person daily was about 75 cents. The cost figures are all in 2012 dollars.

Refuse accounts for most of the garbage, but recycling, which is more expensive per pound, makes up nearly half the daily expenditure.

Independent Budget Office

Click to embiggen.

Not only has the amount of garbage dropped, so has its number of components. According to an expert whose name we will make up if pressed, this is what comprises the city’s garbage now:

83 percent artisanal things of various kinds
17 percent rubble from Sandy

Some progress, anyway.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Ohio fights a multi-front war against blight

by Myrna Posted on December 13, 2012

Ohio fights a multi-front war against blight

By Susie Cagle

Good samaritans in Ohio may be getting a reprieve from potential misdemeanor charges.

Today the state House is voting on a bill that would allow people to clean up vacant, blighted properties without fear of a trespassing charge. This measure essentially gives residents more power to improve their neighborhoods, harnessing NIMBY instincts for good. From The Columbus Dispatch:

Some residents hesitate to take care of the properties around them because they risk trespassing charges, said Tiffany Sokol, office manager of the nonprofit Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp., which boards up and cleans up vacant properties. The bill would allow individuals to clean up blighted land or buildings that have clearly been abandoned.

“Very ugly, nasty places,” [said Sen. Joe Schiavoni (D), the bill’s sponsor]. “These properties are an eyesore, a danger to their neighbors.”

mbmatt356

Blight in East Cleveland.

The Rust Belt is only getting rustier, and Ohio communities have tried a number of strategies to fight neighborhood blight. Yesterday, The Columbus Dispatch and a city website published the names of negligent owners of more than 100 blighted properties. The city called it a fight for neighborhoods.

City Attorney Richard C. Pfeiffer Jr. said anything is worth a try.

“If it gets their attention, good,” he said.

In Cleveland, officials are rehabbing the shrunken city by aggressively tearing down houses, not fixing them up. From National Journal:

“Trying to convince my colleagues that demolition was the right way to go was against everything we had been taught,” said [city council member Anthony] Brancatelli, who spent his time at [Cleveland’s] Slavic Village Development Corp. focused on building, not destroying. “We built 500 new homes and rehabbed about a thousand and the market was good,” he said of his early years. But then he saw the market change. And he saw the speculators swoop in and devastate the neighborhood he loved. “There was the mentality of this wild, wild west of real estate that defies any logic that I grew up on,” he said.

He also saw the devastating impact on his neighbors. He still gets emotional about his dealings with one elderly woman who had lived in the same small house for 80 years with her family operating a butcher shop in the front of the house. But now she was the last member of the family in the house and needed to move out. “That,” said Brancatelli, “was probably the hardest thing I had to do was tell this poor woman that all we were going to do is tear it down. … She just cried.” …

[Jim Rokakis, former Cuyahoga County treasurer,] became an unlikely champion of demolition over rehabbing the abandoned houses. “By 2007, it became obvious to me that this was a war,” Rokakis told National Journal. “We had lost. And now we had to bury the dead. And ‘bury the dead’ meant taking these houses down, many of them functionally obsolete.” The logic, he said, is inescapable. “If you live next to a foreclosed house, your house is worth 10 percent less. If you live on a street with multiple foreclosed properties, your house isn’t worth 10 percent less. Your house is just worthless.”

While other progressive bastions of urban idealism wring their hands, Ohio is picking itself up and getting shit done. As Richey Piiparinen writes at New Geography:

[T]his groundedness, this Rust Belt-ness, it’s not a settling or a lack of aspiration, but rather — for Clevelanders populating the city that never knew its heights — a chance to look around and see nothing but work to do, and an opportunity to do it. There are a lot of fresh eyes around. The city psychology is changing. And I think this may save Cleveland, because people are no longer waiting for Cleveland to save us.

The Rust Belt may be gritty, beat-down, and other patronizing adjectives we seem to reserve for post-industrial American cities, but there’s a lot of hope in it yet.

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From bike shares to urban farms, Philadelphia is on the rise

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 12, 2012

From bike shares to urban farms, Philadelphia is on the rise

By Susie Cagle

It’s been a banner year for urbanism in the City of Brotherly Love.

A West Philadelphia project led The New York Times’ piece on brownfields redevelopment today, and a new report released this week finds that the city’s community development corporations are cleaning up blight, rehabbing houses, and adding millions to Philadelphia’s tax base.

Yesterday, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter (D) officially launched a city Office of New Urban Mechanics dedicated to city innovation and problem-solving. “New Urban Mechanics will have the flexibility to experiment, the ability to re-invent public-private partnerships and the strategic vision to create real change for Philadelphia. I am excited to establish the Office of New Urban Mechanics as a civic innovation tool for urban transformation,” Nutter said in a statement.

Like a lot of “urban innovation” initiatives these days, that is really vague! It could encompass everything from apps for tracking and fixing potholes to brainstorming around some of Philadelphia’s big projects still in the works.

One big project: a bike share! Philadelphia wants to get one rolling. From the local CBS affiliate:

The city envisions getting a business plan together by next spring, then selecting a vendor, with the first bikes hitting the streets in 2014.

“We will need $3 million of city capital money,” says deputy mayor for transportation Rina Cutler, “then we hope to raise an additional five or six million in federal, state, and private funds.” …

Cutler says they’re still working out how users will pay for the bicycles. Credit or debit cards might ensure that the bikes don’t get stolen, but she says they also want to figure out a cash model or cell-phone technology for payment that shows up on your phone bill, so they don’t eliminate low-income users.

Or the office could help set up a new city land bank to fight blight and grow Philadelphia’s urban core. In October, the Pennsylvania state legislature passed a bill paving the way for a Philly land bank. A recent surge in demand for central city housing has motivated the city — with its 40,000 vacant lots — to establish the bank. But there’s no telling yet if the bank will give preference to big developers or small nonprofits, or put everyone on a level playing field.

Things are looking great for Philadelphia! Except maybe (maybe!) when it comes to the city’s burgeoning urban agriculture scene. This summer, the city approved new zoning rules that acknowledge upwards of 350 community gardens and farms spread across 753 different parcels. From Next American City:

Recognizing urban agriculture as a legal land use category helps bolster support for its practice. [Allison Blansfield, farm manager at The Enterprise Center,] says that the real evidence that the zoning code works better is that more problems don’t come up. According to Amy Laura Cahn of the Public Interest Law Center, cultivated vacant parcels are no longer just vacant lots, but are now legally recognized as urban agriculture.

This represents a major shift in the dialogue on vacant lands. Cahn notes that on the whole, the new code is a very positive step, with details needing to be ironed out over the next year of implementation.

But of course, issues remain.

Obtaining permits to build necessary garden infrastructure like retaining walls and fences is still really difficult, and new pending amendments to the code might undo much of this year’s progress and jeopardize more than a fifth of the city’s already-operating farms and gardens.

As it relates to urban agriculture, the changes would outlaw community gardening and urban farming in areas designated commercial mixed use, i.e. commercial corridors … The new code that had made it simpler for gardeners and farmers to be in compliance might now have the barriers built back in.

Come on, Philly — adding extra red tape for urban farmers is not innovative at all. Dig in, get your hands dirty, and please come back with something besides more apps. Please.

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Forecast for the Northeast by 2070: Much warmer, much rainier winters

by Myrna Posted on December 12, 2012

Forecast for the Northeast by 2070: Much warmer, much rainier winters

By Philip Bump

Yesterday, four places in the Northeast saw record high temperatures, two in New York and two in Massachusetts. Over the past week, the number of record temperatures was much higher, spread throughout western New York and into Rhode Island. That’s because, in the Northeast, late fall is the new late summer. And winter is the new fall.

According to scientists from the University of Massachusetts, that pessimistic assessment will probably be accurate for the region by 2070. From the press release:

A new high-resolution climate study by University of Massachusetts Amherst climate scientists, the first to apply regional climate models to examine likely near-term changes in temperature and precipitation across the Northeast United States, suggests temperatures are going to be significantly warmer in all seasons in the next 30 years, especially in winter. Also, they project that winters will be wetter, with more rain likely than snow. …

Overall, the researchers say the region is projected to warm by some 2 to 3 degrees C by mid century, with local changes approaching 3.5 degrees C in winter. Precipitation will go up as well, particularly in winter, but again not uniformly across the Northeast. …

“The only clear signal of change for precipitation is noted in winter, which appears to be heading toward wetter conditions, consistent with current trends,” [Michael Rawlins of the Climate System Research Center] says. Winter precipitation is projected to rise significantly above natural weather variability, around 12 to 15 percent greater from southwest Pennsylvania to northern Maine, with the exception of coastal areas, where projected increases are lower.

“But we shouldn’t expect more total seasonal snowfall,” he adds. “Combined with the model-projected temperature trends, much of the increase will occur as rain. We’re losing the snow season. It is contracting, with more rain in early and late winter.”

Having grown up in the Snow Belt — a region that traditionally gets massive lake-effect snowfall during the winter — I just want to say: That sucks.

Here is how the researchers think temperatures and precipitation will change. Both diagrams break down change by season, comparing a 1971-2000 baseline to 2041-2070.

Temperature increase, in Celsius. Click to embiggen.

Winter in much of New York state could be as much as 3 degrees C warmer. Meaning a 50-degree F day is now 55.5 degrees.

Precipitation change, in percent. Click to embiggen.

And across the entire Northeast: 14 percent more precipitation.

When I was a little kid, the city where I grew up was blanketed in a massive blizzard. That was 1977. One hundred years later, such a thing may be unheard of, in a region that might as well be renamed “the Rain Belt.”

The author, a while ago.

Source

Assessment of regional climate model simulation estimates over the northeast United States, Journal of Geophysical Research

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Community health centers rise up from toxic brownfields

by Myrna Posted on December 12, 2012

Community health centers rise up from toxic brownfields

By Susie Cagle

If poor communities aren’t living in the shadow of active industrial pollution, they’re often living in its graveyard. Industrial polluted brownfields are fenced and festering from California to Maine, frequently situated near low-income residents. When developers come to clean up and build on the sites, too often they plan projects that will push out rather than benefit the people who live nearby.

Massachusetts Dept. of Environmental Protection

A brownfield in Worcester, Mass.

But today The New York Times points to a different kind of trend in brownfields development: building health centers for low-income local residents on sites formerly occupied by meatpacking plants, gas stations, and factories. These kinds of projects stand to bolster communities, not just property values, and they’re still serious investment opportunities for health-care companies.

[There’s] a nationwide trend to replace contaminated tracts in distressed neighborhoods with health centers , in essence taking a potential source of health problems for a community and turning it into a place for health care. In recent years, health care facilities have been built on cleaned-up sites in Florida, Colorado, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Oregon and California.

“These health care providers are getting good at it,” said Elizabeth Schilling, policy manager for Smart Growth America, an advocacy group. “They have internalized the idea that this is an opportunity for them.”

Because these sites are contaminated, many qualify for government tax credits and grants, providing health centers with vital seed money to build. Community health centers, by design, exist to serve populations in poor neighborhoods, where there also tend to be available but contaminated properties like old gas stations, repair shops and industrial sites.

In fact, many of the country’s 450,000 contaminated sites, known as brownfields, are in poor neighborhoods, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. These tracts are disproportionately concentrated in poor communities because contaminated sites are more difficult to redevelop if property values are depressed. Banks are often reluctant to finance construction on a property that might require a costly cleanup.

Brownfields projects can qualify for redevelopment grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development plus tied-in HUD loans and state grants. Florida in particular has promoted the construction of health centers on brownfields with tax credits of up to $500,000.

“The concept in Florida has proven to be not only needed, but viable,” said Michael R. Goldstein, an environmental lawyer in Florida who specializes in brownfield redevelopment. “We are just at the beginning of the journey here. I predict that in the next two years we’ll have close to two dozen across the state.”

How do you improve an impoverished, troubled community for the people who live there now and not the people who would move there if it were less impoverished, less troubled? (Coughgentrificationcough.) This is a question that governments ask almost as infrequently as developers. Grant-qualifying brownfields development projects can be anything from pricey restaurants and mixed-income condominiums to these health centers. If this health-center trend continues, especially in unlikely Florida, it might encourage other communities to redevelop around the needs of their actual residents.

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Different breeds of urban agriculture duke it out in Detroit

by Myrna Posted on December 12, 2012

Different breeds of urban agriculture duke it out in Detroit

By Susie Cagle

On Tuesday, the Detroit City Council voted to sell about 1,500 city-owned lots to the Hantz Woodlands project to plant trees as a beautification effort.

Supporters say it’s just what Detroit needs: large-scale blight removal and reforestation to reinvigorate the post-industrial wasteland with urban innovation. Detractors say it’s a land grab that jeopardizes a local fast-growing urban farming movement and stands to displace low-income residents of color.

ThisisAGoodSign

One of Detroit’s already-thriving urban farms.

Multi-millionaire money manager John Hantz now has a deal to purchase the lots from the city for $300 each – about eight cents a square foot, which is very, very cheap, even for beleaguered Detroit.

From The New York Times:

A Web site set up by Mr. Hantz, a wealthy entrepreneur, to advance his proposal says the farm would return the city “to its agrarian roots.” The repurposed lots — cleared of blight and planted with roughly 15,000 hardwood trees — would establish an economic zone, raise property values and return vast tracts of abandoned land to the city tax rolls, according to Mike Score, the president of the venture, Hantz Farms. Ideally, the enterprise has signaled, it would eventually become a major source of local food …

Saunteel Jenkins, a City Council member who favors the proposal, argues that the city needs to think in new ways. “Farming will be one of the many things that be part of Detroit’s reinvention,” said Ms. Jenkins, chairwoman of the council’s Planning and Economic Development Committee. “The auto industry used to be our bread and butter, but now we have to diversify.”

But In These Times reports that about 100 people still live in the areas that Hantz plans to demolish, clean, and plant full of trees by next spring. And some Detroiters object to the plan for other reasons:

Local organizers believe the devil is in the details. “Hantz is definitely linked up to the gentrification of the waterfront,” says Lottie Spady, associate director of the East Michigan Environmental Action Council. The land up for grabs is adjacent to Indian Village, a white upper middle class neighborhood filled with grand Tudor and Beaux Arts homes, where former auto barons once made their home. (Incidentally, it’s also where Hantz currently resides.) It’s also a mile away from the Detroit International Riverfront, which underwent development to become a tourist destination and now hosts waterfront luxury condominiums. “A major city planning effort underway shows a green way running through the land to connect to the river,” adds Spady, “Hantz and the city are in cahoots, and the people are losing out.”

City Council member Kwame Kenyatta told The New York Times: “Just because we have vacant land doesn’t mean we should turn Detroit into a farm.”

But many Detroit residents who are far less wealthy and well-connected than Hantz want to do just that, except without the kicking-out-poor-people bit. Community land grabs, not millionaire land grabs!

Detroit’s community garden and urban farming scene is positively blooming, and it stands to grow even more in 2013. Last week, the city’s Planning Commission approved a new zoning ordinance that would officially recognize the city’s gardens and farms, as well as create new ways forward for creating larger farms and reusing vacant buildings. The new rules would also allow for sale of the goods and produce grown. The City Council will vote on the new rules in January.

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Gas line break creates massive fireball in W. Va.

by Myrna Posted on December 11, 2012

Gas line break creates massive fireball in W. Va.

By Philip Bump

WOWKTV

A natural-gas transmission line in West Virginia ruptured this afternoon. From WOWKTV:

[An] explosion rocked Sissonville shortly before 1 p.m. today, setting several homes on fire and forcing officials to issue a shelter in place for local residents.

The explosion caused huge flames to race throughout the area, lapping both sides on Interstate 77, which has been closed to all northbound and southbound traffic.

Sgt. Michael Bayless with the West Virginia State Police said the investigation into the cause of the explosion is still ongoing and very preliminary. He said crews with Columbia Gas are working to shut off the pipeline to control the fire. However he said that process is very delicate because they don’t want to reignite the explosion.

So far, no injuries have been reported.

The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward is tweeting updates; we’ve compiled information about the blast below.

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Rural America: Poorer, less populous, less powerful — but now with fracking!

by Myrna Posted on December 10, 2012

Rural America: Poorer, less populous, less powerful — but now with fracking!

By Susie Cagle

It is the best of times and the worst of times for rural America. On the one hand, they’re the only ones among us who’ve been getting richer lately. Thanks, fracking!

iboh

From USA Today:

The nation’s oil and gas boom is driving up income so fast in a few hundred small towns and rural areas that it’s shifting prosperity to the nation’s heartland, a USA TODAY analysis of government data shows. …

Inflation-adjusted income is up 3.8% per person since 2007 for the 51 million in small cities, towns and rural areas.

The energy boom and strong farm prices have reversed, at least temporarily, a long-term trend of money flowing to cities. Last year, small places saw a 3% growth in income per person vs. 1.8% in urban areas.

Small-town prosperity is most noticeable in North Dakota, now the nation’s No. 2 oil-producing state. Six of the top 10 counties are above the state’s Bakken oil field.

“Give us a little shale, and we’ll show some pretty good income growth, too,” says Bill Connors, president of the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce in Idaho.

Connors’ comment leads us to the other hand: Rural areas without energy reserves are suffering. Across the country, poverty rates are higher in rural areas than in urban areas, according to the USDA. About half of rural counties have lost population over the last four years, and that’s led to a loss of political clout as well. According to the Associated Press and TV news exit polls, rural voters accounted for only 14 percent of the Nov. 6 electorate (and more than 60 percent of them went for Mitt Romney).

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, formerly the Democratic governor of Iowa, told a Farm Journal forum last week that rural America is “becoming less and less relevant.” From the Associated Press:

He said rural America’s biggest assets — the food supply, recreational areas and energy, for example — can be overlooked by people elsewhere as the U.S. population shifts more to cities, their suburbs and exurbs.

“Why is it that we don’t have a farm bill?” said Vilsack. “It isn’t just the differences of policy. It’s the fact that rural America with a shrinking population is becoming less and less relevant to the politics of this country, and we had better recognize that and we better begin to reverse it.”

For the first time in recent memory, farm-state lawmakers were not able to push a farm bill through Congress in an election year, evidence of lost clout in farm states …

“We need a proactive message, not a reactive message,” Vilsack said. “How are you going to encourage young people to want to be involved in rural America or farming if you don’t have a proactive message? Because you are competing against the world now.”

That’s right, farmers: You’re not feeding America, you’re competing against the world!

Vilsack, who has made the revitalization of rural America a priority, encouraged farmers to embrace new kinds of markets, work to promote global exports and replace a “preservation mindset with a growth mindset.”

If you play Vilsack’s speech backwards, it’s actually just a low drone of, “Corn, soy, corn, soy, corn, corn, corn, soyyy.” Great for parties.

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