On the New Paltz Facebook group today, the waters are uncharacteristically calm, and the good work of community seems to be getting done with a minimum of static. A couple of known gadflies and political pot-stirrers are in the mix, but both haunches and hackles are down, and decorum prevails. Maybe there’s something to this face-of-adversity stuff.
Heather posts about the baby owl that nature deposited in her back yard and very quickly learns that this is, in fact, a potentially urgent situation. She is given no fewer than five good experts to call. The picture of the owl is adorable and heart-rending, and one likes to think that, thanks to the New Paltz Community group this owl has a future to look forward to.
Both the mayor and the deputy mayor have posted, one a useful reminder about what and what not to flush in the village, the other dropping a link to some grim economic forecasting for a town economy based on tourism and a functioning physical college.
A lost DVD of Disney’s modern classic Frozen is recovered on the River-to Ridge trail and placed on top of one the parking divider posts in the Mountain Rest Road parking lot, where it looks rather like a stylish coaster or doily. Let’s all hope that disc is spinning at 600 rpm again by nightfall!
Sarah says she heard there was once a roller rink in New Paltz. It doesn’t take much to get the when-this-was-that nostalgia rolling in this old town. Some 244 comments later and my brain is a mist of freshly evoked memories. I’m playing under the streetlights on Prospect Street and buying Teaberry gum at Harris’ five-and-dime.
Dog (Everest): Lost, found.
Read more installments of Village Voices by John Burdick.
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