Last month I wrote about an encounter with a black bear. They are shy creatures, and not especially dangerous, but I was nervous anyway.

Soon afterward, I spent a week up north in Michigan.

Here’s what greets you when you get off the plane at the Pellston Regional Airport. They’re stuffed.

PHOTO by Aidan Perret

In the spring, I wrote about the dangers of tanning.

The rate of melanoma in the United States has doubled in the last 30 years, according to the World Health Organization.

And so I interviewed Dr. David J. Leffell, a professor of dermatology and surgery at Yale University School of Medicine, who offered some other facts about your skin and tanning.

A tan is not a natural protection but a reaction to injury, he said. Ultraviolet radiation causes cancer.

As for vitamin D, you require only about five minutes in the sun to stimulate its production. You do use ultraviolet B waves to make vitamin D but only a small amount—though there is evidence that if you live in northern climates where there is less sun, you need oral supplements, especially if your skin is dark, he said.

As you can imagine he is at odds with the tanning industry.

“We have to hit back hard, as far as I’m concerned, because these people are spreading information that is harmful to my patients,” he said.

Now comes news that Gov. Sarah Palin had installed a tanning bed in the governor’s mansion. The Indoor Tanning Association immediately tried to spin this as a health benefit.

“While partisan bloggers and the sun scare industry will use this as an opportunity to undermine Gov. Palin and demonize the indoor tanning industry, the fact is that Governor Palin’s decision to get UV light from a tanning bed positively impacts her health,” it said in a press release.

Don’t be fooled.

From the World Health Organization:

“The highest rates (of skin cancer) are found mainly in those nations where people are fairest-skinned and where the sun tanning culture is strongest: Australia, New Zealand, North America and northern Europe,” it says. “One in three cancers worldwide is skin-related; in the United States, that figure is one in two. There are an estimated 1.1 million annual cases of skin cancer in the United States.”

PHOTO: AP/Mike Carlson

The presidential candidates are coming to New York City next month.

John McCain and Barack Obama will be the guest speakers at New York’s 63rd annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner on Oct. 16.

The dinner is hosted by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and honors Smith, the first Catholic to be nominated by a major political party to run for president. He was a Democrat who served as New York governor.

The speeches are traditionally humorous; the candidates typically poke fun.

Al Gore and George W. Bush attended in 2000. But in 2004, stand-ins represented John Kerry and Bush (former New York Gov. Hugh Carey for Kerry, Bush’s father for the current president.)

As the archdiocese’s spokesman, Joseph Zwilling said at the time: “the issues in this year’s campaign could provoke division and disagreement.”

Kerry of course was a pro-choice Catholic.

Here’s a quirky event if you have pets.

The Parade of Pets takes place on Sunday, Oct. 1, at the Richard Presser Park in Hartsdale on Central Avenue. Bring your animals to the Webb Field from 1 to 4 p.m.

One highlight: Funny Bone Competitions, among them The Mohawk for the most unusual pet hair. Trophies for the winners, ribbons for all participants.

Plus pony rides, food, vendors and other activities for you and your pet.

Admission is $5 a person; children 3 and under are free.

Proceeds will benefit Student Advocacy, a non-profit organization for students struggling with obstacles that prevent them from succeeding in school.

Kerene Reeves had worked with her mother, Carol Rabalais, at Aon Corp., the insurance company on the 98th floor of the South Tower.

Reeves survived; her mother did not not and Reeves still asks herself: “Why I was saved and not her.”

“I was just running late,” she said at the remembrance ceremony across from ground zero, and so she had not gone upstairs.

Reeves, who is 27 and lives in Cortlandt Manor, described her mother this way:

“She was wonderful, a great mom. She always had a smile on her face, loved her family, hardworking.

“She loved God,” added Reeves aunt, Patricia Tate. “She also loved God.”

Photo: Carol Rabalais

This flap over Barack Obama’s comment about lipstick on a pig is preposterous.

Here’s what he said—about John McCain’s promise to change Washington, D.C, no less: “You can put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig.”

And he continued: “You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still going to stink. We’ve had enough of the same old thing.”

Sarah Palin wasn’t belittled. No one was smeared, as McCain’s ad claims. Not even lipstick.

McCain’s campaign is howling with what Obama called phony outrage.

And the chatter of day has distracted voters from real issues—especially today, the war in Iraq.

This morning the president announced the withdrawal of 8,000 troops by February and a small troop increase for Afghanistan.

“His plan comes up short,” Obama said today of the new troops going to Afghanistan. “It is not enough troops, and not enough resources, with not enough urgency.”

And this from McCain:

“Senator Obama’s comments today demonstrate again his commitment to retreating from Iraq no matter what the cost. His focus in on withdrawal, not on victory.”

But what does victory look like?

McCain argues that the surge has brought about more than just a drop in violence.

“Political reconciliation is occurring across Iraq at the local and provincial grassroots level,” his “Web”:http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/FDEB03A7-30B0-4ECE-8E34-4C7EA83F11D8.htm site says. “Sunni and Shi’a chased from their homes by terrorist and sectarian violence are returning. The “Sons of Iraq” and Awakening movements, where former Sunni insurgents have now joined in the fight against Al Qaeda, continue to grow.”

Brian Katulis, a senior fellow for national security at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank in Washington D.C., offers a much more dire view in “The Guardian”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/10/iraq.usforeignpolicy newspaper today:

“The surge has frozen into place the accelerated fragmentation that Iraq underwent in 2006 and 2007 and has created disincentives to bridge central divisions between Iraqi factions,”he writes. “Moreover, rather than advancing Iraq’s political transition and facilitating power-sharing deals among Iraq’s factions, the surge has produced an oil revenue-fuelled, Shia-dominated national government with close ties to Iran. This national government shows few signs of seeking to compromise and share meaningful power with other frustrated political factions.”

This is what we should be talking about. Not pigs and lipstick.

PHOTO:

Pitbull in lipstick from “CafePress.com.”:http://www.cafepress.com

There’s a letter circulating on the Internet from a woman named Anne.

It begins like this:

“I have known Sarah since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child’s favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during her administration than about 99% of the
residents of the city.

She is enormously popular; in every way she’s like the most popular girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice and won’t vote for her can’t quit smiling when talking about her because she is a “babe”.”

The author is Anne Kilkenny, whom the “Anchorage Daily News”:http://www.adn.com/sarah-palin/story/518490.html described on Sunday as a “stay-at-home mom turned accidental celebrity. All because of a letter she wrote to friends and family about Sarah Palin.” As you can imagine, Kilkenney has been deluged by emails and phone calls.

(I got one copy emailed to me, but it is significantly different from the one that has been posted by the Anchorage Daily News and identified as Kilkenny’s letter.)

Here’s the full text of the “letter.”:http://community.adn.com/adn/node/130532

I once covered a church service during which the minister danced ingeniously around the ban on endorsing political candidates in houses of worship (a condition of tax exempt status.)

She couldn’t tell her congregation whom to vote for in this house of God, the minister acknowledged,  “but in my house…” and she went on to detail why she personally backed Hillary Clinton for U.S. senator.

Now a group of conservative ministers is challenging the ban, according to the Washington Post.

The drive is being let by the Alliance Defense Fund, a consortium  based in Arizona. The goal is to force the issue into the courts and ultimately to the Supreme Court.

“For so long, there has been this cloud of intimidation over the church,” Erik Stanley, a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund, told the Washington Post. “It is the job of the pastors of America to debate the proper role of church in society. It’s not for the government to mandate the role of church in society.”

Here’s the “article.”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/07/AR2008090702460_pf.html

I’ve written a few times about plastic bags—and about bringing your own cloth bag with you when you shop instead.

But I, like many other people, used those store bags for garbage.

What to do?

Here’s one solution—bags made from corn instead of polyethylene. GMO free corn no less. They are supposed to be 100 percent biodegradable.

I haven’t tried them yet, but here’s a Web site: http://www.biobagusa.com. They’ve got other products too.

Peggy Noonan says her “It’s over” comment did not refer to John McCain’s campaign. The truncated version of the conversation that appeared on the Internet took the comment out of context, she said.

You can read her explanation “here”:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122044753790594947.html?mod=todays_columnists

Here’s the video on YouTube. Decide for yourself.