The views and opinions expressed in our letters section are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Hudson Valley One. You can submit a letter to the editor here.
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Hudson Valley One welcomes letters from its readers. Letters should be fewer than 300 words and submitted by noon on Monday. Our policy is to print as many letters to the editor as possible. As with all print publications, available space is determined by ads sold. If there is insufficient space in a given issue, letters will be approved based on established content standards. Points of View will also run at our discretion.
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Thanks for keeping it green and clean
Town of Saugerties Supervisor Fred Costello Jr. and town board members Leeanne Thornton, Peg Nau, Mike Ivino and Zach Horton would like to thank the listed participants for their involvement during the Green & Clean days which were held on April 13, 14, 20 and 21 through their collection of roadside litter along town roads to aid in the beautification and greening of Saugerties.
Volunteer team captains — Bob Howe, Barbara Krzywonos, Amy Feinberg, Phyllis Clark, Barbara Hammerstone, Annie Hoffstatter, Jessica Brott, Jennifer Mangione, Ted Suttmeier, Elin Menzies, Donna McClain, Kathy Bridges, MaryAlice Lindquist, Jon Light, Beth Woodard, Team Saugerties Central School District, Donna Mehalak, Laura Howard, Marilyn Walls, Eddie Johnson, Melanie Gardner, Sherry Dietz, Mike and Cindy Saporito, Diane O’Malley, April Richers, MaryAnne Wrolsen, David Budd, Bill Barr, Sarah Fitzsimmons, Mike Harkavy, Nicole Sagazie, the Saugerties Democratic Committee and the volunteer team members who helped these individuals with the project.
The Town of Saugerties is very fortunate to have such an asset as these volunteers that have pitched in to do their part for the community.
A special thanks goes out to the transfer station manager Doug Myer and his employees for the collection of the gathered roadside litter and for accepting/disposal of the litter.
Terri Wood, Secretary to the Supervisor
Saugerties
Bucket lists
In the shadowed corridors of my mind, where the cobwebs of unspoken truths and the dust of disregarded dreams accumulate, I wander, carrying the weight of a bucket list not written on paper but etched into the essence of my being. This list, a symptom of my generation — a generation that danced on the edge of oblivion, with the Vietnam War as its macabre partner — has become a testament to a life lived in the shadow of mortality, a constant reminder of the capitalist machine that feasted on the marrow of our youth.
The bucket list is a beacon for those who have weathered the storms of conflict and emerged hungry for the tangible, the seen and the experienced. “See it, do it, pay for it before you go,” becomes the mantra, a clarion call to consume life before life consumes us. Yet, beneath this surface-level quest lies a deeper, more treacherous path that leads not outward into the world but inward into the labyrinth of the self.
“Why did we turn out expecting all the fixes, all the illnesses, all the answers, to come from those selling them?” This question echoes in the halls of my consciousness, a specter haunting the modern psyche. We look outward for salvation, healing and purpose as if the elixir of life is purchased with currency rather than cultivated with introspection and self-compassion.
I’ve realized that the proper bucket list is not one checked off with a pen but one lived with the heart and the soul. It is a journey not to the world’s wonders but to the heart’s hidden chambers, where the most profound truths lie buried under layers of fear, regret and unspoken desires. It is a quest not for external validation but internal peace that comes from confronting the dragons, guarding our deepest fears and embracing the beauty of our imperfections.
As the philosopher Kierkegaard once mused, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” In this spirit, I see the bucket list not as a collection of destinations and experiences but as a series of revelations and awakenings. It is a call to explore the uncharted territories of our inner landscapes, unlock the safes of our minds and express the love and care we have hoarded for too long.
In the end, the most profound truth that emerges from the ashes of this exploration is not one of sweetness or light but of acceptance and understanding. The bucket list, with its unfulfilled desires and unattained goals, is but a mirror reflecting our complexities and contradictions. It is a reminder that the most significant journey is not the one that takes us around the world but leads us back to ourselves, to the core of our being, where all our unanswered questions and unhealed wounds reside.
Thus, as I tread this path less traveled, I am guided not by a list written in ink but by a compass etched in my soul, pointing me toward the true north of self-discovery and authentic living. In its most profound incarnation, the bucket list is not about checking off experiences before we depart this world but about embracing the entirety of our being, with all its flaws and fables, pain and poetry.
Larry Winters
New Paltz
Revise the story we’ve inherited
The concept of rapture is fundamentally flawed because an Earth without religious nuts would be Heaven.
Neil Jarmel
West Hurley
Carrying their load
Ten percent of truck drivers are saints.
Sparrow
Phoenicia
$1.2 million in SUNY impact aid
We have made eight annual requests and been successful five times, securing a total of $1.2 million in SUNY impact aid.
SUNY impact aid in the state budget provides direct help to New Paltz’s town-wide taxpayers with police, fire and rescue expenses.
2016: Our history with SUNY impact aid began in April 2016 when our village board of trustees wrote and passed a resolution “Commending Governor Cuomo for extending impact aid to SUNY host communities (Cortland and Oneonta) and urging for passage of the SUNY impact aid bill.”
2017: Our first official request for SUNY impact aid occurred in 2017. We lobbied our representatives in Albany but were unsuccessful.
2018: Senator Bonacic was able to secure $200,000 for New Paltz so we received it for the first time that fall.
2019 & 2020: Senator Metzger and Assemblymember Cahill represented New Paltz to secure $200,000 each year.
2021 & 2022: We lobbied all our representatives in Albany but were unsuccessful.
2023 & 2024: Senator Hinchey and Assemblymember Shrestha represented New Paltz to secure $300,000 each year. Extra thanks to Senator Hinchey for making sure our requests were in the Senate’s one-house budgets to make this important aid possible.
Mayor Tim Rogers
New Paltz
Social Security
Regarding the informative article by Rokosz Most highlighting proposed changes to Social Security benefits, I urge StateWide Senior Action Council members and other concerned seniors to contact their representatives in congress and ask them to oppose cuts to our Social Security benefits and to raising the retirement age. To phone your representatives in Washington, call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard operator at 202-224-3121 and ask to be connected to your senator or representative. The operator will ask you for your zip code and put you right through to their office. Give your name and, as a constituent, express your disapproval of these proposed changes.
Martha Steuding
Olivebridge
Misunderstanding genocide
Steve Romine and other ceasefire advocates are still very silent on a ceasefire giving Hamas a victory.
In researching the ten most horrible genocidal events in history, they all have a couple things in common. First, they involved the SOLE intentional killings of millions of people. Second, and more importantly, they all involved the deliberate and well organized killings which was the oppressors ONLY goal. No other concurrent goals were included such as fighting terrorist groups or defending a country after being attacked by another country. In other words, these genocidal events are not at all comparable to the Gaza situation.
The Genocidal Convention of 1949 to which Steve refers had no clear definition of genocide. The need for the convention was based upon the Nazi genocide against six million Jews. This event, of course, fits the original definition of genocide. Now, with Steve’s many referenced “experts,” even including some Jews, it seems apparent that they are altering and expanding the definition of genocide in Gaza events to justify their demand for a permanent ceasefire. Again, if what’s happening in Gaza was REAL genocide, the IDF would allow NO aid to reach ANY Palestinians and the IDF’s ONLY mission would be to kill as many Palestinians as possible, with Hamas not even being an afterthought.
Other writers disagreeing with Steve, the latest being the excellent online letter of 4-17-24 from Rowan Dordick, have clearly shown that the imbeciles cheering “from the river to the sea” are calling for the extermination of Israel. Some of the morons at Columbia University are threatening violence against Jewish students with the vile brainless chant of “every day will be an October 7th for you,” and even a direct call for “killing all Jews.” And now, we have another milk toast Ivy League president only saying “I prefer they not use these words,” rather than clearly standing up and taking action against these radical pea brains. I think another Ivy League president may soon be biting the dust, unless she can find her spine. Going to useless virtual classes is not even a slap on the wrist. And, as of this day, the same situation has begun on Yale’s campus. Isn’t the Ivy League just a wonderful place to send your kids to develop independent critical thinking!
And, with all the above behaviors and incidents, there’s NO anti-Semitism going on? Yeah, right!
John N. Butz
Modena
Zero sum game
In game theory or in any conflict or competition that involves two contestants or antagonists there is the term called a zero sum game, where neither party comes out at the end as a clearwinner.
The product of today’s zero sum game is now our present day environmental apocalypse, whereby all the injuries and ecocide perpetrated on the creatures on the land, in the air and in oceans, rivers and streams are multiplied exponentially until a Terran Holocaust is visibly manifest upon all regions of the planet which no living thing can endure or hide from.
The growing imperium of mankind’s kingdom has become an abhorrent blight upon the once good earth that no previous extinction event can ever compare to, except perhaps during The Great Dying of The Late Permian Period 251 million years ago when only 4% of marine and terrestrial life survived a massive global warming climate change catastrophe lasting millions of years.
The food chains, food webs and complex intricate living relationships between all the world’s creatures in the biosphere are being severed systematically by accelerating climate change and the domination of Homo sapiens until the very marrow in the living bone extant in the existing DNA of life is now threatened by the widespread indifferent aggressive arrogance of the Super Ape undermining the dynamic biological foundations of a four-billion-year-old evolutionary paradigm on this pale blue dot revolving in space we call home.
Let’s not kid ourselves. Environmental threats now materializing in the Hudson Valley; the impending Woodstock National project, Winston Farms, destructive logging in Lake Katrine, creeping urban blight devouring Kingston and Ulster County, OSI’s and DEC’s efforts to develop more open space for outdoor recreation are growing existential knives cutting into the living fiber of Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountain ecosystems. Ironic in that we just celebrated the 54th Earth Day amidst the ho-hum hoopla of climate change apologists and blah blah do nothing politicians.
The Coup de Grace to the Hudson Valley and the Catskills may very well be the last move of New York’s environmental zero sum game with the micro-chip industry and lithium ion battery industry pushed by Hocus Pocus Hochul and Biden that will invade degrade and permanently poison the remaining cleaner estuarine, riparian and Hudson River ecologies with heavy metal, PCB’S, PFOA’S and other chemical contamination of groundwater aquifers, lakes and streams in New York State freshwater natural resources, which water polluting companies, like IBM and GE started poisoning back in the 60’s and 70’s.
We, as residents of the Hudson Valley and the Catskills, have an ecological ethical responsibility not to become pawns in a zero sum game where every living thing and every human being comes out the loser. We owe it to ourselves and to future generations not to watch helplessly as giant corporations despoil the earth and inherit an impoverished biodiversity resulting from human greed and apathy. The earth should not be our final battlefield in a zero sum game between Mother Earth and our species.
Victor C. Capelli
Ulster Park
A parade of fools
More 2,000-pound bombs for the genocide. And more jets to drop them on helpless and starving Palestinians in Gaza. Biden comes through once more for the Israel the oppressor, for the pariah of the 21st century.
Genocide Joe will be running against the fascist, racist, would be dictator, Donald Trump. It is a parade of fools for the majority of sane Americans who refuse to starve tens of thousands of children, but don’t want a crazy dictator either. Another lesser of two evils moment for the long suffering electorate?
It is more than that. We are presented with two very old men, whose life experiences have been war and crony capitalism. They embody some of the worst excesses of the American Empire since World War II. And they can hardly remember what they did yesterday.
Meanwhile, the very richest own just about everything there is to own. Three people in the US have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the nation. There is rampant hunger, homelessness and lack of medical care for millions, while half the nation’s federal budget goes to making war on the rest of the world.
Late stage empires seldom work very well. Roman citizens were impoverished by the endless wars of the first century, while their emperors got crazier and more dangerous. Life was hell except for the very richest, who barricaded themselves against the stricken masses. Our own government is little more than 75 years of war crimes, disguised as a functioning democracy.
Fred Nagel
Rhinebeck
Ulster health commissioner must be an MD
Three years ago, at a community forum in Gardiner, I asked then county executive Pat Ryan why the residents of Ulster County were obliged to leave the county to receive quality health care. He told me I wouldn’t like it but he didn’t have a good answer.
I still don’t like it and nothing has changed.
Now, an amendment before the county legislature would make things worse by downgrading the primary requirement for Ulster’s public health commissioner.
Proposed changes to several longstanding laws aim to remove the requirement that the Ulster County health commissioner be a licensed physician. This follows the recent retirement of Ulster County Health Commissioner Dr. Carole Smith.
The proposed changes will likely face a vote of the Legislature at their very next meeting.
Such a change would severely weaken an already inadequate medical situation for our 187,000 or so residents: Ulster County has two poorly-rated hospitals, one in Kingston which was even not open for a time, and the other, a trauma center in Ellenville, which is inaccessible to much of the county.
We have no full-time forensic nurse to assist sexual assault victims, no facility to handle serious cardiac issues, no hospital to provide hip or knee replacements, no geriatric center to serve our seniors and no birthing centers for young families.
Even well-known public officials leave Ulster County to receive quality health care. I can name them.
If there was a catastrophic weather event, or a terror incident with mass casualties, the county would need a physician to direct the medical response. That should be someone familiar with the daily health needs and capacity of the county — not a part-time locum.
If requiring a licensed physician as health commissioner is viewed as a way to save money, let’s rethink that. Spend money here. Save money elsewhere.
The people of Ulster County deserve a health commissioner who is medically and legally responsible; not only an MD but who has good administrative and emergency skill sets. We can find such a person — and we should — to replace Dr. Smith.
However well-intended the idea of amending these laws might be, I can see no justification. In counties like Dutchess or Westchester, which have robust healthcare infrastructures, it might make sense. Not in Ulster.
Nor is it clear why I was the only speaker on this matter at the legislature’s public hearing for this matter on April 16. It surely has wide-ranging implications. And after I spoke, the public hearing was closed. That seems shortsighted for such a vital issue of public interest and accountability.
Why not reopen the public hearing and let our friends and neighbors express all of our views on the need for independent medical expertise and a viable healthcare future here? After all, any lives we save will surely be our own.
Jane Schanberg
New Paltz
Cuts to Consumer Directed Personal Assistant Program are concerning
I’m a 36-year-old disabled man using the Consumer Directed Personal Assistant Program (CDPAP to pay my home care workers. These hard-working, dedicated and loving individuals are the reason I am not stuck in a nursing home, and keep me in my community where I hold a job, advocate for the disability community and contribute to the economy.
As the state budget negotiations come to an end, I am very concerned about the amount of misinformation thrown around about the program, particularly that it is riddled with fraud. The most recent report from the office of the Medicaid inspector general reported only $46,000 in fraud from the program out of $37 million worth of cases they studied. In contrast the report found $19.1 million in fraud from middle-men insurance companies who get most of the state’s Medicaid homecare money and dispense it to the home care providers.
The numbers don’t lie. It is less expensive to keep people in their own homes, where they live much happier and healthier lives, than to take away that care and force them into nursing homes. The governor keeps trying to make cuts to CDPAP that would cause great harm to the vulnerable individuals who use the program — and to the hardworking and already underpaid home care workers whose wages she proposes cutting back. The governor has seen the report and knows that her proposals have no basis in fact. Why continue to make these cuts?
Zack Hilty
New York Association on Independent Living
Truth and faith
Regarding Rowan Dordick’s letter “Anti-Zionism is antisemitism” in last week’s HV1, I beg to differ. First, the Pierre-Bloch and Cassou quotes are obviously biased opinions and assumptions, and not necessarily fact relevant to all anti-Zionists. Second, Rowans use of ”perceived injustices to Palestinians” turns a blind eye to the very real injustices over the past 75 years where brutal oppression of an apartheid system kept Palestinians from having any real hope for a better life. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Bishop Tutu, an expert on apartheid having lived through it, upon visiting Palestine recognized the dire plight of Palestinians as the same as black South Africans under apartheid there (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2019.1673606). President Jimmy Carter wrote about Israeli apartheid in his 2006 book Peace not Apartheid. To say “perceived injustices to Palestinians” is clearly dishonest in light of documented facts. Third, as the political Zionist movement arose, the majority of the orthodox Jewish community, especially the Hasidim, viewed Zionism as heretical. Zionism was in fact a secular movement trying to establish a secular state and why it was opposed by deeply religious Jews who wanted Jewish Law to be the law of the land (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haredim_and_Zionism). Certainly there are anti-Zionists that are anti-Semites, but not all are, as Rowan’s letter erroneously asserts in limiting simplistic black and white terms. Fourth, genetic studies show
Palestinians, like Israelites, existed in Israel/Palestine back 3,600 years before Palestine was “carved out of the defeated Ottoman Empire” (https://www.ted.com/talks/nathaniel_pearson_the_splendid_tapestry_how_dna_reveals_truths_ancient_lasting). The Allied victors did so to make a “national home for the Jewish people”, but on the condition, which Rowan omits, “it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” (Balfour Declaration 1917).
Obviously history has shown that condition has not been met, and actually the reverse has been visited upon the Palestinians with brutal oppression and documented land theft under the guise of Zionism. Speaking the truth is not being anti-Semitic.
Regarding Tom Cherwin’s letter, I empathize with his thoughts and dilemma. Tom eloquently speaks about, helplessness against major odds. Yes “faith” gives power to go on and face the odds stacked up against the truth seekers, the righteous and those trying to right injustice.
Christians like Martin Luther King Jr., Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Nelson Mandela, Sojourner Truth and many others did remarkable things in the face of death using their faith. I also believe in the life hereafter, the majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ and the spiritual Kingdom of God, like my aforementioned heroes did. To the unbeliever like Tom, I would respectfully say seek the Kingdom of God (Mat. 6:33NKJV) to rise above human travails and to have a much richer hope above and beyond eating, drinking and being merry in this life.
Steve Romine
Woodstock
The Real RFK Jr.
I admit that I am a third-generation registered Democrat voter. With that revealed, did you know that Big Pharma accounts for 70% of the legacy media’s annual advertising income? Okay, RFK Jr. and the ANTI-VAXXER lie. He has gotten the annual flu vaccine on a regular basis, and his children are all vaccinated. Years ago, RFK Jr. had a multitude of mothers contact his law office complaining about how their children were ‘vaccine injured’. Kennedy knew nothing of this, but after persistent requests from a large number of mothers encouraging him to look into the situation; he agreed to look at the scientific data.
What he found was very alarming. He consulted with experts in the scientific community and found that some of the childhood vaccines were not tested sufficiently for safety. There were little long-term effects studies and no placebo tests. He ended up in court fighting over 500 cases against Big Pharma on behalf of these parents. He became the enemy of the pharmaceutical companies. Kennedy then co-founded the non-profit organization: Children’s Health Defense to further study and protect children from possible vaccine injuries.
He also battled corporate polluters of the Hudson River and was lead attorney for Riverkeepers and other environmental groups. He was named a “Hero of the Planet” by Time Magazine. He also received the Sartisky Award.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was also hired to fight Monsanto in court on behalf of a janitor in California who got cancer from spraying RoundUp on his job. Kennedy won his family $89 million and in another Monsanto case the jury awarded $2.3 billion to another RoundUp cancer victim.
He has spent over 40 years fighting for our health safety, for the environment and for justice and equality in America.
So why all the bad press and even media blackout of his campaign? Let’s just say that the industries that he has taken to court don’t want to see him in the White House. They control the purse-strings of legacy media. He is also taking an even number of votes away from both Biden and Trump. Biden accuses Kennedy of being “a right-wing nut” and Trump calls Kennedy “an extreme progressive.” This is all laughable, and RFK Jr. has a higher favorability rating in the polls than his two opponents.
Whether or not one wants to vote for RFK Jr. is not the point. His campaign needs 100,000 signatures in the next several weeks to simply get on the Ballot in New York.
We have the Constitutional Right to be able to vote for the candidate of our choice and not vote out of fear for the lesser of two evils.
Donny Kass
Boiceville
Brilliant
While the ditch, bringing water and electricity from Tinker Street to the Comeau addition, was opened, why didn’t McKenna add the telecommunications cable that currently runs through the trees? It would have eliminated numerous town office’s communication outages.
And is McKenna going to restore the land that was disturbed during the digging of the ditch to its previous state, or is he going to leave it disturbed in an attempt to reduce the shock of people seeing the new addition to the Comeau building? You know the addition, the one that looks like it should be housing chickens or storing firewood.
Howard Harris
Woodstock
Duration haiku
Magnolia petals:
our tourist season begun,
outlasting these blooms.
Patrick Hammer, Jr.
Saugerties
The meaning of otherwise
A recent Supreme Court hearing addressed whether to overturn the prosecution of Joseph Fischer. Fischer was a member of the violent, Trump-incited mob that invaded the Capitol intending to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. This invasion involved the injury and death of police officers, a mob carrying a gallows with the stated intention of hanging Vice-President Pence and the death and injury of police officers. The work of Congress was obstructed for many hours. Fischer was charged with obstruction of an official proceeding.
The relevant law has two sections. The first part makes it a crime to corruptly alter, destroy or conceal evidence to frustrate official proceedings. The second part makes it a crime to “otherwise obstruct, influence, or impede any official proceeding.” The justices are divided in their perspectives. One group argues that the law concerns only the destruction of evidence, the other that the second section was written to include any other form of obstruction.
The heart of the case, unbelievably, is the meaning of otherwise. Prosecutors say it means “in a different manner.” After all, obstruction of official proceedings need not involve the destruction of evidence; obstruction may take other forms.
Against any common understanding, Fischer’s lawyers argue that otherwise actually means similarly, which means that the second part of the law must involve the destruction of evidence.
The commonsense meaning of similarly makes it an antonym of otherwise, which means “in a different way.” We learn from the Oxford English Dictionary that the first recorded use of otherwise, originally a three-word phrase meaning “in other ways,” was an utterance by King Alfred in 888 CE. Succeeding definitions run through to the late 19th century. Across one thousand years, not one definition of otherwise means or even implies similarly. The defense created its own definition and expects us to believe it. Yet some justices appear all too ready to swallow it whole, to provide cover for Fischer and his fellow rioters when they speciously argue that a violent invasion was actually a pleasant visit by tourists who, conveniently, did not destroy evidence.
If the Supreme Court has its way with the word otherwise, turning it into its opposite, then the successful prosecutions of more than 300 October 7 perpetrators will be in jeopardy, as well as two federal counts against Donald Trump.
A Russian-Republican rattlesnake invaded the Capitol, a vicious, venomous strike at the corpum sacrum of American civil society. A Russian-Republican python, in this case five corrupted, Supreme Court ideologues in service to an American Taliban, seeks a return to a fictive white nationalist nation that defiles our commonsense heritage.
Vote Blue all down the line and help to restore our democracy.
William Weinstein
New Paltz
Hummus or Hamas?
According to three of my old college buddies who were Palestinians and moved back to Gaza right after graduation; all the genocide protesters are 100% wrong. My three friends have been corresponding with me faithfully since we all graduated from college. They have kept me informed about how fanatical and brutal Hamas has been since they were elected in 2006. My friends told me about ‘honor killings’ whereby Hamas would shoot gay people and shoot any woman who was suspected of infidelity. I was informed about how Hamas controls all the ministries and gives them highly inflated death tolls to turn the world against Israel. Hamas controls what’s taught in the schools and brainwashes the children to hate Israel and hate Jews.
My three Palestinian friends tell me how Hamas’ lies and propaganda that are repeated by the media have hijacked the emotions and critical thinking of naive and well-intentioned people around the globe who are passionately yelling genocide.
According to my Palestinian friends, there is no genocide. They shared how Israel gave warnings for citizens to clear out of an area they were going to bomb in pursuit of the barbaric Hamas terrorists and Hamas would not let the civilians leave that area. Hamas uses them as human shields. When civilians do get killed in the process, Hamas has their ministries drastically exaggerate the number of citizens killed.
My three friends shared the history of how Israel has been attacked with suicide bombers, rockets and missiles since its inception in 1948. After Israel was attacked in 1967’s Six Day War by five Arab nations and defeated them all; Israel had to create some form of occupation to protect its citizens. All of these historical facts are confirmed by acclaimed author and independent journalist Douglas Murray among others who have been reporting from the battle front. All these facts and history are also confirmed by the eldest son of a Hamas co-founder. Mosab Hassan Yousef was raised in Hamas and defected to the United States as a young man. He emphatically supports Israel and exposes the barbaric beliefs and actions of Hamas to non-Jihadist Palestinians and H\Jewish people everywhere. Yousef confirms the fact that Hamas’ Charter states that they are to eliminate Israel and all Jewish people world-wide.
My Palestinian friends are not only horrified by what Hamas does, but they are horrified by the perhaps well-meaning but totally ignorant protesters in America and elsewhere who are on street corners yelling support for Hamas and “Kill the Jews.” My friends maintain that these protesters don’t seem to know the difference between hummus and Hamas.
Donzello Berelli
New Paltz
What’s happening?
You will all probably agree that one of the greatest evils in life is to kill a child.
Last Sunday, according to BBC News, 15 children from one family were killed as the Israeli military forces bombed Rafah in Gaza bringing the death toll in Gaza to 40,000 people. This means that 1 out of every 100 children have now been killed in Gaza. This percentage is equivalent to and the same as if 600,000 children were killed in the USA. Yet, the USA continues to send Israel billions of dollars in military aid to continue doing this.
What state of mind are our government leaders in that they would continue to fund this slaughter of the innocent. What state of mind must Israeli leaders have in order to carry this out?
Chris Finlay
Woodstock
Columbia arrests and suspensions
The Columbia University president’s draconian decision to arrest and suspend a hundred-plus Columbia and Barnard students who participated in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment brings back memories of the ’60s, and not the good ones.
The sight of students being arrested for protesting genocide (and if you dispute the term, consider the ever-climbing noncombatant death toll of 34,000) is a reminder that the young — inexperienced, impassioned, idealistic beyond what the powers-that-be have ever been willing to accommodate — often serve as the moral conscience of a nation.
I applaud the conscience of the Jewish undergraduate at the Encampment who proclaimed, “Judaism means standing for the liberation of all people. And ‘Never Again’ means never again for anyone;” and I cheer on the Ph.D. candidate who insisted she was standing by the morals and ethics her Jewish faith had ingrained in her. These two women aren’t antisemites or self-hating Jews, but proud and outraged Jews who weep over those 34,000 Palestinian deaths and mourn our Jewish heritage’s and Israel’s reputation and future being dragged by Netanyahu and his masters of war through the killing fields of Gaza (and, increasingly, the West Bank).
I don’t know what threats of violence or antisemitic sentiments the protest may have engendered, and I don’t mean to minimize them. The presence of the Encampment no doubt gave license to some with other agendas to voice or act out long-standing grievances and prejudices; this is a side effect of most legitimate protests, and must be regulated. And I recognize that distinctions between “legitimate” and “illegitimate” can get murky.
But given the continuing genocide, voices must nevertheless be raised. And there’s got to be a better way than arrest and suspension to allow those voices — those student voices; the voices and conscience of our future — to be heard and heeded.
Tom Cherwin
Saugerties
Hit and run on Glasco Turnpike
SPEED, THUMP, YELP — is this you?
To the person who was speeding on Glasco Turnpike heading west at around 3.45 p.m. on Friday afternoon.
Just as you revved your engine to gain speed for the hill up from Lower Byrdcliffe,
Please come pay your respects.
You hit my dog.
You sped ahead.
You left her in the road.
I wonder why?
To die?
Maybe quietly
So no-one would know?
You disobeyed two state laws
Speeding
Hit and run
Well done
You got away
Scot free
So you think.
But you transgressed an even bigger law
The universe is ever watchful
You know who you are
It was a loud thump
A white dog against black asphalt
Hard not to see
In broad daylight
Plus she yelped
You left her there
For why?
How hard is your heart?
Please come pay your respects
You know where we are.
Carmen Ringelmann
Woodstock
Make bees’ day with No Mow May!
Anyone with a lawn has the wonderful opportunity to play a personal role in giving a springtime assist to The Pollinators, especially the bees and butterflies upon whom the agriculture that sustains our own lives depends.
Pollinators are in trouble. Many factors (including but not limited to the warming climate and lethal pesticides containing neonics — a list of which is available through Friends of the Earth) account for the dramatic decline in their numbers and the grim prospect of a second “silent spring.”
But there’s a sweet, easy and effective way we can help those tiniest of agricultural workers get a good start in life. Pollinators need the nutrients on and in the tender grasses of spring. Yellow dandelion flowers are one of their most vital nectar sources!
If we simply postpone mowing our lawns (or even just a section of a parcel) for a few weeks until the end of May, young butterflies and bees will be able to nourish themselves to the max and robustly carry out their job on our behalf. Please contact the Gardiner Environmental Conservation Commission for additional information if needed.
Choosing No Mow May might also inspire interesting conversations with our children and neighbors, and a whole new perspective on honey.
Janet Kern
Town of Gardiner Environmental Conservation Commission
Join the family! 
