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. Submit a letter to the editor at deb@hudsonvalleyone.com.
Letter guidelines:
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.
Although Hudson Valley One does not specifically limit the number of letters a reader can submit per month, the publication of letters written by frequent correspondents may be delayed to make room for less-often-heard voices, but they will all appear on our website at hudsonvalleyone.com. All letters should be signed and include the author’s address and telephone number.
Crazy times
My goal is to be an anti-therapist: to make everyone slightly crazier.
Sparrow
Phoenicia
A lost ring
Thank you so much to the people who helped my husband and I search for my ring. We were at David Amram, The First 80 Years at the Orpheum in Saugerties and before it ended, I realized my special ring was gone, gone, gone. When the lights came up, we started to look for it and a number of kind folks also looked. Thank you, whoever you are, for your time.
It is mysterious as it was a snug fit — the indent it left on my finger has remained for weeks. Somehow this silver ring left my finger here in Saugerties, probably at the Orpheum.
There is no stone — a silver band with letters carved out, and it was a gift from a dear friend who died ten years ago. It is not of special financial value, it is personally important.
The Orpheum folks took our contact information and I followed up with a call. Still not found, still a mystery how it even left my finger. If you happen to have found it and not known what to do with it, please do get in touch with me/let the folks at the Orpheum know. I would be so very appreciative.
May the coming time be filled with your heart’s desire — with moments of joy, delight and peace and vibrant good health.
And may goodness ripple out around the world.
Ruth Hirsch
Saugerties
Senior parking ticket fiasco
I am a “senior citizen” and a student of the Lifetime Learning Institute. Some of my classes meet at Vandenberg Hall on the SUNY campus with parking on Tricor Avenue and Hasbrouck avenues. I would like to make a big complaint about the new system of parking payment. The parking spaces are no problem, it is the payment. The recently installed parking app does not work properly and not all the time. I have received two parking tickets, at $20 each, thinking I had paid the right amount and pressed the right button. This makes parking rather expensive. In addition, there are parking meters which happily take your quarters but do not register the time. Planned village income? Since there is little alternate parking, I may have to forgo attending the last class of the session. I refuse to pay the parking ticket extortion offered by the Village of New Paltz.
This new parking system adds an unnecessary burden on many of the senior citizens who have done so much for this community. Will the village do anything to relieve this situation?
Ginny Gravatt
Gardiner
Woodstock please take the survey
Have you responded to the Woodstock short-term rental survey yet? The Town of Woodstock’s Zoning Revision Committee (ZRC) would like to hear from you.
Please tell us what you think about Woodstock’s STR laws by December 15th: www.tinyurl.com/2024strsurvey.
Your opinions are valued.
Laura Ricci
Conor Wenk
Jude Sillato
Joe Belluck
Woodstock Zoning Revision Committee
Many thanks from the Maya Gold Foundation
The Board of Directors of the Maya Gold Foundation would like to thank all attendees and sponsors for a warm and inspiring evening during our third annual fundraiser on November 13. This year, we were pleased to honor retiring New York State Assemblymember Aileen Gunther with our Spirit of Community Award for her tireless efforts to support teen mental health. We also recognized graphic designer Sarah Snow with the Spirit of Service Award for her artistic donations since the Foundation’s inception. In addition to the soul, New Orleans funk and swing of renowned local band Soul Purpose, participants were also entertained by the teen punk group Mona Freaka, comprised of students from Woodstock and Saugerties.
Thanks so much to The Greenhouses at Audrey’s Farmhouse for the wonderful venue and to New Paltz Mayor Tim Rogers and Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha for their attendance. Thanks to our sponsors: The Ride for Mental Health, Dawes Septic and Repair, Take the Leap Dance Studio, Handmade and More, Wellness Embodied, The Disgruntled Chef, The Living Seed, Alfandre Architecture, Rock and Snow, Huguenot Financial Consulting and The Law Offices of Robert F. Rich Jr. Thanks also to these businesses for providing raffle items: Inquiring Minds Bookstore, Jacob’s Music Center, Gadaleto’s Seafood Market and Eatery, Uptown Attic, Mudd Puddle Coffee Roasters and Crust and Magic.
A very special thank you to all the artists who donated work for our silent auction. In addition to providing a beautiful backdrop to the event, they helped us to raise additional funds to support programming to benefit Hudson Valley teens. As always, we do this in the memory of Maya and in accordance with our mission, to empower youth to access their inner wisdom and to realize their dreams.
Mala Hoffman
on behalf of the Board of Directors
Maya Gold Foundation
Trump win result of media amnesia and silence
Each week I thumb through the paper hoping to see an article with even a scintilla of information about the 2024 election. And, as per usual, nada.
Instead, we have two full pages covering the Bard conference, on organizing replete with speakers who never organized…a thing! Or if lucky, we got page after page of graduations, recording what graduates opined, and most of the time local information from the Hudson Valley, which while informative, gave nary insight into the disaster which was about to occur on 11/05/24.
Why?
If we listen to Geddy, author of the spread on Bard, it’s because this paper focuses on events in the Hudson Valley, quite succinctly, Ulster County. Gee, Geddy, isn’t Bard in Dutchess? Hmmm.
This rather truncated approach to news, is at once short-sighted and dangerous. Short-sighted because it assumes, national events don’t impact the Hudson Valley and dangerous because it impedes information and knowledge about key political, cultural and legal events which undoubtedly affect US — as in the people who inhabit the region HVOne allegedly cares about.
It is unconscionable this paper ignored the chaos of Trump and his Magites, but also the economic issues which brought many New Yorkers to his camp. It’s as if Geddy and friends believe that destruction of the DOE, DOJ, EPA won’t touch us here in the Valley. Cutting off federal funds to schools, exorcising prosecution of gender, racial, homophobic violence, destroying climate change programs — ALL will affect lives here in Ulster County and beyond.
It is troubling — this willful silence, a silence which contributed to an ill-informed populous — assisted in electing men such as Trump and JD Vance. It made me think of my politics professor admonition, claiming, “You get the government you deserve.” That might apply to Trump voters, but not to folks like me — folks who will be harmed, financially, physically and psychologically.
Thanks HVOne, not.
Kris McDaniel-Miccio
West Hurley
Efficient and fair measurement of the use of water
With the different apartment complexes being proposed, this law is becoming more important. In July 2023, the village adopted a new law to ensure the efficient and fair measurement of water, requiring property owners to install master water meters or pit meters when there is an increase in the number of buildings, businesses or residential units on a property. The law applies to all properties in commercial or residential zones where there are three or more buildings or businesses, or three or more residential units using the same water connection.
The law seeks to have master meters or pit meters (which can be the same thing) installed at property lines. Having meters at the property line makes owners responsible for and motivated to fix leaks in service lines to their buildings. This protects all ratepayers.
We saw a noticeable difference in the amount of water consumed once the change was made to master/pit meters for SUNY New Paltz in 2019. We worked with SUNY’s team to improve their meter reading process so village staff would not have to read meters at +50 service connections inside buildings and at ballfields. A plan was developed to install nine master meters where water entered the campus to more accurately account for overall usage.
With our new law, meters may not be installed away from property lines creating long service lines. Long service lines that are before meters could fail/leak. If leaks don’t surface, the collectively-owned municipal system endures the expense of the wasted water. When more water is metered, consumption spikes are noticed and leaks get fixed.
Mayor Tim Rogers
New Paltz
Thanks for your support
On behalf of the board and staff of the Elting Memorial Library, I want to thank our friends and neighbors for your vote in support of increased funding for our library.
The increase of $48,000 represents a 6.7% increase in municipal funding allocated to the library as compared to the present year. This increase will, among other things, help us better support and increase our staff, which in turn allows us to best serve our community.
We are deeply grateful and feel fortunate to be stewards of this well-loved cornerstone of our community.
Richard Heyl de Ortiz, President
Elting Memorial Library
New Paltz
McKenna et al.
Yankeetown Pond’s low level of water is not due to the hundreds of gallons of water that the drought has evaporated from the pond, but rather the tens of thousands of gallons that have been removed because of the installation of the levelers that were used to lower the pond’s level, as well as seepage through the damage to the dam caused by their installation
Howard Harris
Woodstock
To be a poet
Know why dark clouds
ink the sky and leaves
on trees turn over
on their backs before
each storm
Know how to write on
silk as well as tissue
paper and on the edge of
thin white paper plates
to keep the words flowing
Know the local tongue
and the slang — even
the greasy-gritty words
in your own hat-hanging
corner of the world
Know also a language of love
and despair beyond any words
Patrick Hammer, Jr.
Saugerties
That didn’t take long
When Donald Trump stormed into office in 2017, his record a blank tablet, doubters were advised to “give him a chance.” That would be the patriotic thing to do, so it was said. Today, we have a full list of particulars from his 2017-21 years. (It’s important to include the 2021 part.) We also have all of Trump’s campaign threats and promises and the quickly re-emerging Project 2025, tucked away when it was politically inconvenient. Should we now retreat and give this a chance (not that MAGA cares what we do):
• Cabinet nominations (Gaetz, Gabbard, Hegseth, RFK Jr.) whose sideshow escapades (sex trafficking, spy intrigue, provocative tattoos, brain worms) are secondary to their gross lack of experience for their positions, but understandable when issued by the carny barker-in-chief.
• Trump’s demands to bypass and override the Senate’s constitutional role (Article II, Section 2) to advise and consent to those nominees.
• The spectacle of the world’s richest man advising Trump how to dismantle the social safety nets that protect almost all Americans in one way or another.
As in 2017, Senate Republicans are threatened: What does their integrity mean to them? What shreds of power do they want to retain in the Trump presidency? Power, party, country — in what order? Senator Vance will escape these challenges, and in a slow boil will instead be tasked with championing Gaetz, explaining incoherent X posts, defending mass resignations of good men and women.
Trump will never enjoy sustained public approval. See the polls in six months. We don’t need to give him a chance for six months or one month. He has thrown the gauntlet. He will win if we despair. Don’t. The battle begins in January.
Tom Denton
New Paltz
Gaetz and Gabbard, oh my!
Surprising choices, Mr. Trump. Gaetz is being characterized as a bad dude, and twice awarded a bronze star (openly Christian) Hegseth has the sins of being about JFKs age, and a Fox TV favorite.
Lt. Colonel Gabbard makes no sense because she, what? Was a Dem? Can’t beat the snot out of Mayorkas defending our borders? Please. “I was just following orders?” (Younguns: that was the standard defense of defeated Nazi soldiers).
Calling a man Hitler is a disgrace. You scared people who lost family to that Evil. Shame is on you.
Gaetz needs to be compared to our current, sniveling, lying and obedient AG Garland. We know that Garland did nothing Biden did not want done, and everything he was told to do. Gaetz has taken a lot of abuse, maybe deserved, and helped take out one of my DC favorites, former House leader Kevin McCarthy. I am not thrilled, but unlike Trump One, who did not know how to work in the swamp, when Obama sicced the FBI on him before the inauguration, Trump 2 can drive the swamp machine, and his sons are all grown up, too. Savvy people, other than the way-overrated Secret Service, now have Trump’s back.
J.D. Vance is going to be the man who, if needed, will be ready. Our current Veep Harris clearly never impressed anyone. This election could have put a very unready person in a place she has no skills for. A fat pension for what?
Trump 2 is off to a very promising start. Accomplished people lined up to serve with him! MSNBC got a reprieve! Four more years!
Paul Raymond
New Paltz
There’s NO news like NO news …
What could go wrong? Two paths diverged in the woods. America took the psychopath. I have this image of more than 72.6 million thirsty people on a ship, and they just poked a hole through the hull and water is pouring in, and they are yelling, “Yay! Water!” A mad man is going to get absolute power and install his totally cult loyal cronies along with himself! The oxymoronic cabinet picks are incalculable. I say “incalculable” because Donvict is creating new, currently nonexistent, departments. “He’s not building a cabinet — he’s filling a junk drawer.”
Resist! Persist! Prevail! by whatever means you (we) can. Some things must be fought against, they cannot just be “lived with.” Looks like there may be brain worms in our future. Where will the presidential cabinet “who gets fired when” office pool be posted?
Neil Jarmel
West Hurley
Enjoy the show
After many days of parading incompetent choices in our New American Reality Show, I bet you’re pleased.
The strong man who alone can fix this is making sure we succeed.
The apprentice lives because he’s so good at hiring and firing the wannabes.
Even though with the 2019 finale, the spectacular deaths of one million plus Americans, we thought he jumped the shark. The show returns.
Feels great standing with our enemies in their unrestrained glee. So great to know we’ll forge a new branch of fascism where only certain citizens will have civil rights. Willfully break our past alliances.
And who wouldn’t want to pledge allegiance to the Don and to his will because we forgot we pledged once to the republic for which freedom stood.
Now tell yourself that it’s not you who will free “their” loss and pain. Just keep doing what you’ve been doing. Keep your head down, avoid reality but remember: you made sure complaining about what happens next isn’t possible.
Just wait for the next finale of foolishness to come where we erase the achievements of the 20th century and join the know nothings of the past.
Finally, maybe you’ll remember, as the re-run begins, the words of Pastor Martin Niemoller who cried after watching each group of protesters be removed by the Nazis, that when they came for him,” no was left to speak out for me.”
Enjoy the show!
Melanie Demitri Chletcos
Hurley
Reality is setting in
I’d like to compliment last week’s letters from John Quigley, Larry Winters, Paul Raymond, Ann Playfair, Tom McGee and Eric Glass. They so aptly summarized how and why we have gotten to where we are, now. After the disasters of the past four years, new leadership is unquestionably needed.
Like Tom Cherwin, I too hope and pray that Trump and his cabinet will make the right decisions in turning things around for the American people who demand changes, as evidenced by the overwhelming election results.
I had heard of the amazing life of Marty Klein but his last letter just magnifies his strong and admirable character. Even though I might not agree with some of Marty’s, Tom Cherwin’s and other’s viewpoints just as they don’t agree with mine very often, it’s refreshing to see that civil dialog can continue without us having meltdowns and total cancellations of each other requiring us to run to the nearest safe space with pacifiers and baby bottles like, sadly, too many young people feel the need to do. If some of these Gen Z and other younger people can’t handle the results of an election without yelling, screaming, “needing” counseling and a day off from school or work, how will they ever learn to live and survive in the real world?
And again, let’s look at the demise the CNN’s and MSNBC’s of the world. They’ve finally been caught with their “journalistic” pants down with many previously brainwashed viewers who, only now, see right through their bias and lies. As a result, CNN’s new CEO, Mark Thompson, is cleaning house — many layoffs, firings and possibly pay cuts which may even include some of their big name anchors. Obviously, Mark sees that the bias and fake news isn’t cutting it any more. Only eight years ago, CNN was the #1 cable news network (even ahead of Fox News) with 13.8 million viewers. Due to metastatic negative behavior since then, their viewership is down to a mere 800,000!
A few nights ago, I saw an interview with the CEO of the L.A. Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong. Even though he’d been CEO since 2018, the election results finally woke him up. He now sees a need to clearly and transparently differentiate news from opinion, while explicitly reporting on FACTS! Imagine that!
I can only hope that the leaders of the N.Y. Times and MSNBC experience the same kind of awakening. MSNBC’s president, Rashida Jones, has been in her position since 2021 yet has allowed the Joy Reid’s of the network to continue with their unfettered biased bashing of everything Republican/conservative. The MSNBC “legacy” media apparently hasn’t learned their lesson yet as they have attacked a good number of Trump’s cabinet picks while referring to the latest as “another passenger on the Trump clown train.” Doesn’t sound like the reporting of news to me.
Maybe it’s time for the MSNBC CEO to fire Joy Reid, for starters and even Rashida Jones.
John N. Butz
Modena
The hustlers
In a timeless old movie,
Sarah scrawls on a mirror,
Of sick men and their sick world:
“Perverted. Twisted. Crippled.”
Then she slashes her wrist.
I gasped in horror in 1961,
And I gasp in horror now.
But this time around
The gasp is lasting longer,
And I don’t know when it will end.
Since November fifth it’s felt like
America has cut her wrist
And is bleeding to death.
The same men who crushed Sarah
Are crushing our country now;
The same hustlers as always—
Stinking of money and power,
Rancid with raw ambition,
Their mantra “More, more, more!”—
Have perverted America again,
Twisted half of us to their will
And left the rest feeling as crippled
In spirit as sick men are in soul.
Because that’s what they do,
Just like in the movies.
But movies don’t last four years.
And this isn’t a movie.
Now, I wasn’t Little Mary Sunshine
BEFORE this swarm of muckety-mucks
Oozed out of the muck they swim in;
Today’s despair is fed by yesterday’s.
But in 2016 I was at least younger,
Had more muscle, zest, hair.
Eighty now, I thought I was done
With fighting these assholes,
With protesting and marching,
With writing and righting;
I’d fooled myself into thinking
My fellow citizens had wised up
To one asshole in particular,
An empty suit whose coattails
His sycophants seem sewn to,
Barnacles on a bully’s bottom.
But America and I got it wrong again.
So my rocking chair shall sit vacant,
My unfinished business die undone,
My despair dry its tears and take heart.
For I must yet again gird these loins
That once were put to happier use;
Now, having manfully served that end,
They must man up in another manner,
And cut these men down to their true size.
We must scrawl the truth on every mirror,
Then hold up these mirrors to reflect
The true picture, like Dorian Gray’s,
Of all the king’s men,
And the truest words to name them:
“Perverted”;
“Twisted”;
“Crippled.”
Game on!
Tom Cherwin
Saugerties
Headed in the wrong direction
Hitler’s Jews have become Trump’s immigrants. Although the crime rate among immigrants is lower than the national average, Trump portrays them inaccurately as murders, thieves and rapists. He uses immigrants as a way of mobilizing his base and distract them from his glaring faults.
The fact that his mother, grandfather and several of his wives were immigrants shows how far from reality he has strayed.
Like the Jews who were restricted to jobs like money lending, the immigrants do the work that the rest of America refuses to do — like the back-breaking work of harvesting fruit and other crops. They also take low-paying jobs that other citizens avoid. They are often paid less than the minimum wage since employers take advantage of their status.
People don’t realize that without immigrants, fruit will rot on the trees and with the tariffs there will be an extreme food shortage
Many churches have been offering sanctuary for the immigrants who are facing violence and persecution in their home countries just like the immigrants who have built this country in the past.
Their basic needs must be met. Food, clothing and shelter must be made available to everyone in this country, regardless of their status. Just as the immigrant’s freedoms should not be curbed, neither should ours. We have the right to clean air and water and should not have the impending extinction of our species to be accelerated by the needs of big business.
We must have the freedom to have our voices heard and not be at the mercy of an insane dictator who cares only about himself and his rich friends.
We have preserved our 248 years of democracy through many wars and crisis. We have fought too hard to protect our precious government only to see it dismantled by a demigod and his jackals.
So let’s talk to our neighbors and make them realize we are headed in the wrong direction and there is still time to correct the course and regain truth, respect and decency and peace and love for one another. There is a time for everything. Now seems to be the time to be tearing down, but soon it will be time to built up again.
John Rosett
Highland
The government we deserve
What if Harris, soon after accepting the nomination, had made it clear that as president she would not allow the US to continue to be complicit in the indiscriminate murder and deprivation of civilians in Gaza, or the displacement of West Bank Palestinians? What if the Democratic nominee had made it crystal clear that US foreign policy would align with her people-centered domestic policy? It would have represented a break from decades of Democrats professing humanism within our borders while exercising iron-handed military force and enabling right-wing tyranny abroad. Most Democrats in Congress voted in 2002 to give Bush authority to invade Iraq, with a disastrous result. Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State to Obama recognized the coup government in Honduras, leading to a decade of crime and violence there. Democrats have been schizophrenic in professing enlightened policies at home while exercising brute violence in the service of authoritarian rule abroad. Harris wasn’t about to topple this reality. So Democratic voters stayed home. And we will have the government where our brutality overseas will align with cruelty and tyranny at home. We may well get a taste of the harm and dysfunction we have wrought abroad.
Matt Frisch
Arkville
Answering HomeShare concerns
We at Family of Woodstock’s HomeShare program appreciate R Van Kleeck’s concerns (HV1 11/13) regarding protections for home providers in our program. We are happy to answer questions privately and publicly anytime. Home sharing is new in New York. There are more than 70 programs nationwide, many working for more than 20 years. Ours is the first in New York State.
Home sharing is not simply finding a renter for your extra space. Each “match” is carefully developed and the home provider is in charge of the choices at each step: who to meet; rent and task exchange; and the decision to move into a match. Both parties can agree or not agree to a match and either party can request to exit. HomeShare Woodstock currently has eleven matches in Woodstock, Saugerties, Olive and Shandaken.
Ours is a “high-touch” model, like everything else Family does. We do extensive interviews with all applicants and full criminal and credit checks through an accredited agency and check multiple references. Our team stays with each match, mediating issues if any arise, assisting with changes that naturally do occur. We have clear exit plans and remain involved. As we consult with our sister programs across the country, we ask about situations that “go south” as Mr. Van Kleeck describes. These are very rare and the organization helps if needed. Programs tell us they have had one truly difficult exit in 10 or 15 years. HomeShare Woodstock has managed three match exits in our three years, all smooth and on schedule. The participants have remained IN the program, some currently in new matches. As one of our providers states, “ I am particularly grateful for the program’s support in facilitating the creation of a comprehensive contract/agreement and guiding us through the entire process. The assistance provided to both parties in navigating this crucial step was invaluable.” We hope that testimonials like this one will encourage more home owners to consider sharing.
As we begin our process in Kingston, there will be different challenges than in our current, mostly rural, service area. We are developing a Kingston team to guide the process. We welcome Kingston residents who wish to help build community-wide understanding of home sharing. We have many volunteer opportunities! We are also hiring a program manager for our Kingston office, to start January 1. More information can be found on Family of Woodstock’s website.
Be in touch! We love your questions and welcome your help as we expand this unique housing program. Our emails are homesharewoodstock@fowinc.org or homesharekingston@fowinc.org.
Susan Goldman, Volunteer Coordinator
HomeShare Woodstock
Beautiful article by Bob Berman
I was moved by Bob Berman’s November 6th article titled “Unsolved Mysteries.” Mr. Berman humbly admits that astronomy lacks the tools necessary to “unravel the existential fundamentals.”
A different sort of perceptive capacity (tool) is required, one in which that which lies beyond the event horizon (or big bang) is understood to be a fullness, not nothingness. Through the mechanism of time, that fullness (represented by the zero) contracts itself into a seed, descends and then manifests in space. The unmanifest becomes manifest. The formula for this descent is 9.6,3, the sacred trinity. This perception is completely vedic in origin. It embraces not only the static poise of being, but the dynamic poise of movement/becoming. Time is seen not as illusion, or something to ‘transcend’, but as the mechanism by which the evolutionary process unfolds.
The work of the great Seers Sri Aurobindo and the Mother of Pondicherry sought to reverse the centuries-old trend toward transcendence as the goal of the spiritual quest. Earth is understood to be the planet destined to house the evolving human species, but not for the purpose of ultimately abandoning her. Continuing their work, Patrizia Norell-Bachelet, Seer, prolific author and Cosmologist (1938-2016) has gone deeply into the mechanism time employs to achieve this goal and its relevance to humans, particularly in her seminal works The Gnostic Circle and The New Way Volumes 1&2. In several articles and essays she discusses the big bang and why Science will never find the answers it seeks. What she calls a third poise is needed; something beyond both science and spirituality as we know it.
Interested readers can learn more at www.aeongroup.com and www.aeoncentre.com, https://archive.aeoncentre.com/vishaal/the-spiritual-and-scientific-conundrum, https://archive.aeoncentre.com/vishaal/the-supramental-synthesis-a-third-poise, https://archive.aeoncentre.com/vishaal/the-emerging-cosmos, https://archive.aeoncentre.com/vishaal/the-supramental-change, https://aeongroup.com/black-holes-time-gravity-and-purpose.
Jan Shapiro
New Paltz
Like it or not
Like it or not, nonprofits are the glue holding our community together. The recently proposed (and failed) H.R. 9495 nearly gutted the 578 active organizations serving Ulster County. The proposal would have given the Department of the Treasury sole authority, without due process, to designate any group as a “terrorist-supporting organization.” In so doing, targeted organizations would lose their tax-exempt status — and likely — the ability to deliver their mission.
To be clear. Shuttering nonprofits would sacrifice your neighbors. The one in ten who are hungry. The 16% of children growing up in poverty — of which 588 are homeless. The one in four women experiencing domestic violence. Do we accept denying so many the support needed to survive?
Beyond survival, imagine our community without arts and culture. Most places you see concerts (Bardavon, UPAC) or discover local history (Friends of Historic Kingston, Maritime Museum, Reher Center) are nonprofits. Imagine losing the natural wonders of our region, protected by Scenic Hudson (53,000 acres) or Mohonk Preserve (8,000 acres).
In addition to these services, the nonprofit sector is the region’s largest non-government employer. A report commissioned by the Hudson Valley Funders Network, shows ~140,000 people working in nonprofits. That’s 12 times the workers in the information industry, 9 times the real estate industry, 5 times the financial and insurance industry, 3 times manufacturing and administrative and waste services and 2 times construction and accommodation and food services. In 2018 they generated over $16 billion in revenues, held over $24 billion in assets and paid more than $7.4 billion in wages.
We rely on nonprofits to make life better. This week, they were placed on the chopping block — with Representative Ryan’s approval. If and when such a proposal is re-introduced, I hope everyone will join me in demanding our representatives vote AGAINST such legislation — and FOR our community.
Jackie Lieske
Kingston
Grateful to have known Susan Bolitzer
I am filled with sorrow to learn that Susan Bolitzer, the founder of Esopus Bend Nature Preserve (EBNP) in Saugerties and the not-for-profit Esopus Creek Conservancy where she served as president for more than ten years, passed away on November 15.
While filled with sorrow, I am immensely grateful to have known Susan as a neighbor, and especially to have worked alongside her as she began the years-long journey to establish and steward the preserve while creating and guiding the all-volunteer conservancy’s board of directors.
Her vision in the year 2000 to acquire the Schroeder farm and establish a 161 acre nature preserve, her skill in creating the conservancy and establishing a board of directors, her leadership in bringing the community into the process, her persistence in turning vision into reality are among the many qualities for which Susan shall be remembered and cherished.
Mary O’Donnell
Saugerties
Mandate? Not so fast
While we witness Trump nominating a sex trafficker, a Russian- and Syrian-aligned agent, a Fox television host, a puppy killer and an anti-vaxxer to top government positions, his supporters cheer him on with the cry that he has a mandate. This “overwhelming” victory is the third narrowest victory in 136 years. As of this writing, Trump’s popular vote is below 50%. And just 238,000 votes in three states would have delivered Harris the presidency.
This seismic shift and landslide win for Trump that Republicans are crowing about just isn’t reality. Trump won only one-third of all eligible voters and received fewer votes in victory than he received in his 2020 defeat. Nearly four in ten voters didn’t bother to vote. Truth is, apathy won the day.
The Trump cult can savor the president-elect’s win and celebrate his incompetent and dangerous nominees, but please don’t delude yourselves into thinking he has a mandate to destroy our democracy. The majority of Americans did not vote for Trump. And they certainly didn’t vote for his “co-president” billionaire Elon Musk.
Christine Dinsmore
Saugerties
Uncommon sense in Woodstock
I once found a cockroach in my sink. Having grown up in Ireland, I was freaked out. You fear what you don’t know and we don’t have cockroaches in Ireland. I became obsessed with finding out how the disgusting insect entered my apartment. After doing some local research, I found out that the landlord had been working on the septic system and my cockroach friend had left the comfort of his septic home in order to enter mine via my kitchen drain. It was also summertime which increased the chances of it happening. I felt satisfied that I’d found out where it entered and proceeded to block every sink in my home using rubber plugs. I also did some more research on Google and found out that a baking soda mix would prevent anything else from coming up through the plumbing. I duly poured the fizzing liquid down all drains in my home and tossed some essential oils into the mix just to be sure. Well it’s several years since this happened and I haven’t seen a single cockroach.
Whether it be a mouse, a cockroach or some other type of uninvited critter that enters our home, it’s always good to find its entry point if only for your own peace of mind. We sleep better as a result of knowing, and it creates a sense of safety and accomplishment knowing that nothing is crawling around on our kitchen cabinets or bedroom floor whilst you sleep.
Recently Woodstock’s municipal drinking water has been tested and found to have cancer-causing ‘forever chemicals’ above levels of considered safe by The New York Department of Environmental Conservation. The federal organization called The EPA have said that no amount of forever chemicals in our drinking water is safe. In response to finding that our drinking water is contaminated, the Woodstock Town Board, led by Supervisor McKenna, has tested our wells more frequently and found that the chemicals are still present every time. In response to finding this out, our supervisor has committed to do quarterly testing in the coming year, but refuses concerned residents repeated requests to investigate further by finding the source of those chemicals.
Testing our wells in Woodstock for contamination by forever chemicals repeatedly, no matter how many times, will not get rid of the chemicals or make our water any safer to drink. Just as finding cockroaches, mice or critters in your home alone won’t get rid of them either. You must tackle the problem at the source by finding the source of their entry point into your home. This is what’s called common sense or if you’re a member of the Woodstock Town Board, ‘uncommon sense’. Get your finger out supervisor and do source testing.
Chris Finlay
Woodstock
Yankeetown Pond
When the beaver dam at Yankeetown Pond was replaced by culverts, 13 million gallons of water were released from the 28-acre western portion. From the 120-acre bog area, there are millions of gallons less water. Less water for the small fish that feed the belted kingfishers and insects that feed the dragon and damsel flies. Less eggs and pollywogs growing into frogs that nourish green and great blue herons. Less vegetation for the painted turtles, bufflehead and mallard ducks as well as the Canada geese that raise their goslings in April, despite the large, menacing snapping turtles. Less food for red-wing blackbirds and migratory swallows that stop by in April. Will they become malnourished and die as do an estimated two to four billion birds a year by the whims of humanity? Probably. The beaver kit I saw with mom and dad in June will be looking for a new home. Good luck. The occasional eagle and osprey will be more occasional. Less of everything except mud.
The Supreme Court’s decisions of Sackett vs EPA to remove federal protection from tens of millions of acres of wetland; and the reversal of the Chevron Principle which allows judges to ignore sound, scientific logic will condemn the Arctic Wildlife Preserve to the same fate once we start to drill, drill, drill. Although it pales in comparison to the inevitability of more massive hurricanes, droughts leading to apocalyptic fires, and waters rising to drown our cities, the wanton assault on Yankeetown Pond in our backyard is truly heartbreaking.
Arthur DiNapoli
Woodstock
False prophets
Before anyone equates the 2024 presidential election results to a divine intervention he or she should be reminded of the numerous Bible passages that expose false prophets.
Jeremiah 14:14, “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination and the deceit of their own minds.”
Matthew 15:17-19, “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” “But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and those things defile the person.” “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, acts of adultery, other immoral sexual acts, thefts, false testimonies, and slanderous statements.
Given his history of adultery, theft, false statements and slanderous statements, Donald Trump’s rhetoric and criminal behavior has repeatedly undermined the sanctity of embracing moral and ethical principles. It is sacrilegious for him and his brazen disciples to proclaim that his ascension to power is the will of God. It is not. At this juncture, we must call out any immoral and unethical motives or acts put forth by those rejoicing in their arrogance and self-righteousness.
Paul K. Maloney
West Shokan
Ode to the ass-rider
We’re lucky to live where the seasons unfold,
where mountains turn silver, then verdant, then gold.
Who wouldn’t love driving these roads every day?
Each mile is a gift! But to my sad dismay…
Some things truly remain quite a stumper,
like YOU, ass-rider, glued to my bumper.
You raced up behind me, careening off Mill Hill,
as if terribly late for God knows what in Boiceville!
Oh, ass-rider, ass-rider, woe is you,
once again running behind—boohoo!
This can be the sole reason for which you proceed
as close as a bandaid, at breakneck speed.
May I suggest you set forward your clock?
Just forward five minutes would help quite a lot!
For then you’d be early at every turn,
and all the less rubber you’d have to burn.
For once you’d be able to enjoy your drive.
What a gift for yourself: to watch nature thrive!
Just a helpful suggestion, but I shouldn’t bother.
You’ll zoom past me at Dunkin’ and I’ll pick up another.
Tansy Michaud
Woodstock
Join the family! 
