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Transforming sound
When I close my eyes, my TV becomes a radio.
Sparrow
Phoenicia
Liberals divert
Several weeks ago, Meyer Rothberg responded to my challenge where I asked our liberal writers to give their thoughts on the Biden mental health scandal which, by the way, could easily be seen as a much greater “threat to democracy” than any such allegations made against Trump, since we had a circle of incompetent imposters running our country into the ground, apparently instead of Biden. Instead of accepting the challenge, Meyer immediately changed the subject to a totally unrelated and silly contest asking all liberal writers to suggest what the “N” might stand for in my middle name. Obviously, Meyer had no defense for his hero’s countless mental failures as well as a defense for his fake news sources who intentionally covered it up by failing to investigate and comment on what was crystal clear to all our eyes as well as the eyes of his devious lame streamers.
Regarding Matt Frisch’s letter telling me I’m changing the subject, I was raising only one issue, Biden’s mental health scandal, and asking for all liberal writers thoughts. Instead, Matt resumes his railing against Trump on issues that may or may not have validity because it’s too soon to know whether further facts and investigations will validate Matt’s allegations or not. So, like Meyer, Matt changed the subject while offering no thoughts, comments, or defenses on Biden’s mental decline and the obvious and intentional cover up by his fading lame streamers, confirmed by continuing ratings declines as well as firings and major shakeups in remaining staffing.
Matt also criticizes the locking up of students for calling out Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people. That’s NOT what they’re getting locked up for. In reality, they’re getting arrested for obstructing the education process for ALL students, not just the Jewish students. They’re also being stopped in their tracks for causing property damage as well as physical and psychological abuse of Jewish students, AKA clear anti-Semitism. Yet, Matt and his Democrats try to identify this atrocious behavior as an exercise of the mob’s First Amendment rights because this hateful and dangerous disruption and abuse is merely part of “peaceful demonstrations.”
I agree with Matt that Trump has not succeeded — yet — at mediating peace in the Russia/Ukraine war. At least he’s trying which is more than the Biden/Harris administration was ever capable of. I definitely say that Trump’s promise to end the war on day one was a ridiculous, absurd and egomaniacal statement!
Finally, Matt says Trump has failed to deliver on his promise to deport illegal criminals. Since Matt’s TV is no longer working, I have to let Matt know that this promise has been a huge success to date, and continuing.
John N. Butz
Modena
Be open to listening
Last week, I met a woman in Kingston who said she paid no attention to the news because she thought “both sides” of the political equation were problematic. Digging in a bit further, it turned out she did have a news source: a single, partisan commentator whom she didn’t even recognize as having a highly politicized slant.
As a school librarian, I spent nearly two decades teaching children the importance of evaluating information sources. So, what about adults who live inside information silos? Adults whose only information sources feeds them propaganda instead of news? I’ve tried to imagine what my worldview might be if I’d had a steady diet of slanted information.
For instance, on the May 2024 morning after Trump was found guilty by a jury on 34 counts of falsifying business records, I was eating breakfast in a restaurant that also served up Fox News to its patrons. There was not a word of the convictions that concluded the trial that had captivated the nation. The only Fox News story that morning was a tortured attempted to connect children’s reading deficiencies to the Biden administration’s program to encourage electrifying the nation’s school bus fleet.
What this means, I believe, is that all of us who work hard to stay informed need to be getting the truth out in any way we can to fellow citizens.
I don’t know if I changed the mind of the woman I met last week about the truth of what is happening in our country, but she was open to listening. It was a start and I plan to talk to her again.
Charlotte Adamis
Kingston
Covertness
We’ve seen history’s great clandestine operations — the Allied invasion on D-Day, the Manhattan Project, the U-2 spy plane and the Abbottabad Mission. Each, a moment shrouded in secrecy for reasons of national security or strategic advantage.
And now, we have the police reinvention commission — assembled by Supervisor McKenna, yet absent from the town’s website. A commission bound by confidentiality, its meetings closed to the public.
Why?
Howard Harris
Woodstock
Trump to LGBTQ+: Let them die
Trump-generated violence assaults us from all sides.
• Democratic elected officials assassinated and wounded in Michigan, and arrested elsewhere.
• The office of the president debased by inflammatory statements like a direct threat on the life of the leader of Iran, with rants like “we are not going to take him out (kill!), at least for now.” This is not how a sane person speaks.
• ICE luring people to obligatory court hearings, withdrawing the charges, and in the hallway outside the courtroom having masked and non-uniformed thugs arrest allegedly freed individuals for deportation.
• The cutting by two-thirds of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives personnel responsible for monitoring gun sales. Keep in mind: every day, 327 people are shot in the U.S.; of those, on average 117 will die; 23 of those shot are minors; 1 in 5 Americans say they have had a family member fatally shot; access to a gun at home increases the risk of suicide death by 300%; and, with only 4% of the global population, the U.S. makes up 35% of global firearm suicides. (Source: Brady Campaign.)
But the oddly cruelest headline from yesterday was the cutting of funds providing specialized support to LGBTQ+ callers to the 988 suicide prevention hotline. As noted by the NYT, “the option for L.G.B.T.Q. support was established in 2022 based on a recognition that gay and transgender people experience distinct mental health issues — often driven by family rejection and societal discrimination — and have disproportionately high suicide rates.”
The NYT reported that the hotline “would maintain the same overall funding of $520 million, but not direct any to an L.G.B.T.Q. section, which accounted for a small portion, $33 million,” or about 6%.
The overriding motive for Maga seems to be cruelty. This feels to me unusually so. “Let them eat cake” is now “Let them die.”
William Weinstein
New Paltz
That parade could have been an email
Suckmess — use your head…
Come on everybody! This was way too important not to attend. Our Forefathers said, NO MORE KINGS! In the shadowed halls of power, a flame burns low, a spark of truth in a world of shadows and show. When the visage of betrayal wears a familiar guise, our hearts ignite with righteous, unyielding cries.
A clown in a crown of lies, a puppet of greed, Mocks the sacred vows, dishonors what we heed. He stands upon the stage, a jester turned thief, Stealing honor, dignity, and all that’s beneath. Yet in the storm of rage, a voice begins to rise, A call for justice echoing through the skies. For those who serve with valor, with courage unbowed, the truth remains steadfast, resilient, proud. Let’s not allow the darkness to drown the light we hold, nor let the coward’s tale be the story told. For honor is a fire that cannot be contained, and truth, a river that forever remains. So, march on, with hearts unchained and free, Against the tide of lies, a stronger unity. In every word of truth, in every deed of grace, lays the hope to heal this wounded place.
Neil Jarmel
West Hurley
NY OSC has to create two scores, individually they don’t tell a whole story
In 2023, the Village of New Paltz’s good (low) state comptroller fiscal score of 8.3 was driven by receiving five points for having debt service that represented 20.34% of our total revenues for the last three years. Having 20% or more adds five points. Our rate improved from ’21, ’22 and ’23 as follows: 24.9%, 18.3%, and 17.9%, to generate the three-year average of 20.34%.
The state comptroller ranks towns and villages as “susceptible” to fiscal stress if they score between 45 – 54.9. The next levels of stress are “moderate” (55 – 64.9) and “significant” (65 – 100). Our single-digit score received the ideal “no designation.”
The village has actively invested in our community for the last ten years. The bulk of our investments have been for sewer and drinking water capital projects. We have no sewer debt and about $10 million in drinking water debt. The largest investment occurred in April 2019 when we borrowed $3.85 million for the water filtration plant. There was another $3 million in debt that paid for the new fire station, to augment the $5 million in grants from NYS. The village’s goal is to have the fire station all paid off during FY 25-26, and have the fire department’s reserve fund at +$1.4 million after May 31, 2025.
The New Paltz Fire Department debt is paid for equally by the village’s general fund and town-outside-the-village taxpayers. However, all of this fire station debt sits on village books, significantly impacting the village’s “debt service as a percent of total revenues” rate of 20.34% which added five points to our fiscal score of 8.3. There was impact to the village’s fiscal score, and perceived creditworthiness, but the village chose to take on all the debt because we knew it was more cost efficient, and therefore, in the best interest of town-wide taxpayers.
Both scores were ideally low but neither of the state comptroller’s fiscal scores for New Paltz, zero for the town and 8.3 for the village, tell a whole story.
Mayor Tim Rogers
New Paltz
Winston Farm rezoning hearing
The public hearing held by the Saugerties Town Board on June 18, to receive public comments on the revised Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) submitted as part of the SEQRA process, was well attended by supporters of the sponsors for rezoning Winston Farm for the stated purpose of selling it off in parcels to unknown developers for potentially large-scale but undefined development. This I would call the “anything goes” not to mention the “get rich quick” development proposal.
Critics of the EIS were also out in force, pointing out the multiple serious flaws in the document, many of which, in their opinions, discredit it sufficiently to make a vote to approve rezoning by the town board unwise. The prevailing view of opponents of rezoning seemed to be that, if development there must be, it has to be responsible to the SEQRA process, which it is not, and appropriately scaled. Several speakers mentioned the historical and study-based legitimacy of the 75% open space requirement (the EIS proposes only 50%). This would be the “less-is-more, responsible and appropriate” development proposal.
The (DG)EIS can be accessed on the Town of Saugerties website at https://saugerties.ny.us/other/winston-farm, although it’s not for the faint of heart. (Think about reading the fine print when your credit card company sends you its “changes in terms” notifications.)
Anyone with reservations about the kind of rezoning change the owners of Winston Farm are requesting should make their views known to the town board before public comment period ends on July 28. Comments specifically about the DGEIS must be made at winstonfarmcomments@saugertiesny.gov (or by US mail to Saugerties Town Hall, c/o [Supervisor or Town Clerk, 4 High Street, Saugerties NY 12477) to be considered.
There will be a second public hearing at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, July 14. People can attend in person or on the zoom link available on the town website.
More information is available on the Citizens for a Beautiful Saugerties website at beautifulsaugerties.com.
Janet Moss Asiain
Saugerties
Teamwork is important
Dear Erin Moran: As I write this letter, we do not yet know who the Woodstock Democrats are electing for the position of Woodstock supervisor in the June 24, 2025, primary election. But I will go ahead and respond now to your June 18, 2025, HV1 Dear Laura Ricci letter to the editor that was in response to my June 11, 2025, HV1 letter.
You and I can both agree that you have done some positive things for Woodstock. But the point of my June 11 letter was to state who I believe, of the three Woodstock supervisor candidates, is the best to be our next supervisor. Even though there are positive things you have done for Woodstock, you also have a significant list of people you have seriously disrespected, causing people to disrespect you in return. While I can appreciate you as a contributor in Woodstock, I also recognize that Woodstock needs leaders who are respectful and respected.
During this campaign, I believe you have been coached to hide that part of you that attacks and disrespects. But I believe that part of you is still inside you and clearly came out in your June 18 letter. My June 11 letter said you repeatedly and publicly disrespect me. Your June 18 response was to publicly disrespect me once again, proving my point.
As a town board member, and as a Woodstocker who cares about Woodstock, I will work with anyone who puts Woodstock first. Teamwork is important. People with personal agendas and/or people who regularly disrespect and/or attack others, in my opinion, don’t belong in Town of Woodstock leadership positions. Hopefully voters accurately recognize which candidates fall into which categories when they go to the polls.
Laura Ricci
Woodstock
How should New Paltz grow?
Driving up Route 32 North Chestnut in New Paltz to shop at My Market, the shock is palpable. What is that monster building at 145 Chestnut Street, and why is it in New Paltz? The New Paltz of beautiful old buildings, residential streets and views of the mountain wherever you walk or drive. It’s hard to believe the planning board and its chairs, now and when the proposal first appeared, unequivocally, professed enthusiasm for these projects. The planning board is considering another monster, Westview, property contiguous to 145.
Why has there not been weeks and months of discussion, like there was over the proposal for Zero Place, so the villagers could give input about how we would like to see Route 32 North developed? We need more time and more notice.
In any development, infrastructure must be considered first.
How is our little sewage treatment plant going to handle the effluent flowing into the Wallkill River from such a huge project? Our drinking water already is often brown and tainted with gravel and an oil smell. Traffic on our streets is already burdened beyond capacity.
Amanda Grotto, running for a second term as town supervisor is an engineer. Someone with her expertise and knowledge will be needed to address the challenges of supervising state of the art infrastructure that all this new construction will require. As well as an esthetic that is representative of our historic village and town.
Brenda Bufalino
New Paltz
I know the smell of unjust war
I used to believe “All you need is love” — like it was armor. Some wore the lyrics like a second skin. Some sang it. Some protested. I went to war.
Vietnam wasn’t an idea for me. It was blood on the boot tread. It was names I can still taste when it rains. I didn’t argue about unjust wars — I lived inside one. That smell doesn’t leave you. It’s not just napalm. It’s policy burned into bone.
I hear the headlines now — bunker bombs dropped six of them. GBU-57s. Twenty million dollars each. B-2s to deliver took billions of dollars to make. Precision, they say. Progress, they whisper.
But what they really mean is profit. Break a country, then get paid to fix it. War is capitalism’s sacred loop. When the wealthy run out of creative ideas, they go to war. It’s the one investment that always delivers — missiles in, contracts out, futures secured, blood converted into dividends.
If we’d dropped that much in cash — greenbacks instead of explosives — half the country would be buried in green paper. Can you imagine what the poor in Iraq or Gaza or Vietnam could have done with that kind of money? Instead, we leave them rubble and call it reconstruction.
I didn’t come back from the war with clarity. I came back with questions that never stop echoing. Maybe I envy the ones who just protested. They had clarity. Morality wrapped in placards. I had a rifle and doubt.
And now we drop bunker bombs like punctuation. Every crater is a closing sentence to a story no one wants to finish reading. We call it defense, but what are we defending? A dream? A portfolio? A myth?
I know the smell of unjust war. It’s not heroic. It’s hollow. It ends where memory refuses to follow.
Larry Winters
New Paltz
Homeless in Woodstock documentary
During the ongoing heat wave I have to ask has the Woodstock town supervisor taken every possible measure to keep Woodstock’s citizens safe? This would include our homeless community, some of whom now find themselves living baking in tents in the woods whilst others sleep in broken-down vehicles which become like ovens during hot weather. Some homeless are long-term members of our community and will not or cannot leave Woodstock to go to Kingston or any other town’s cooling centers . This week, our homeless have been offered a seat in police dispatch room by our Woodstock supervisor during the ongoing heat wave. What happens if they pass out on the chair and fall to the floor? Will the town have another lawsuit on its hands? What happens if our police dispatcher needs to have a private conversation and our homeless folk are in the dispatch room? It is not our police dispatcher’s job to babysit our homeless in a room not much bigger than an old phone box. Yet this is the total of what our supervisor has offered our homeless during the winter and throughout this heat wave.
In a progressive town with a vigilant supervisor and town board our homeless community would be top of the list of people taken care off closely followed by the disabled and elderly. But it’s very clear that neither the Woodstock supervisor nor the town board have the will to do this. Except for Marie Elena Conte we do not have a caring town board in Woodstock but instead an ambitious, hard-hearted group of politicians who are also very much divided into two separate and opposite camps . With each camp regularly scuppering any efforts for progress that the other camp might suggest. Abraham Lincoln once said, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” This statement has never been more true than the situation today with the Woodstock town board.
Please attend Mountain View Studio at 7 p.m. on Saturday June 28th for screening of the Documentary Homeless in Woodstock Last night in The Van. The film documents the lives of five of Woodstock’s long-term homeless during the Covid pandemic. After the screening we will have a Q & A panel discussion to discuss with the audience possible solutions to Woodstock’s ongoing homeless problem. All proceeds on the night will be donated to Family of Woodstock and Clubhouse Poughkeepsie.
Chris Finlay
Woodstock
New Paltz Police Department: A model of integrity
I would like to lift up the New Paltz Police Department for protecting the integrity of the men and women charged with public safety. I was upset to hear about the charges brought against a New Paltz police officer. I believe everyone is entitled to due process regardless of job or status. It gives me confidence that our police workforce is maintaining the highest ethical standards. While I would expect nothing less of chief Matt Sutton, it is affirming to know the New Paltz community has that to rely on.
Tara Fitzpatrick
New Paltz
Acknowledging Saugerties
I just finished reading HV1’s June 18th issue with coverage of the recent “No Kings” demonstrations from around our area. The placement, space dedicated, interviews and photos were inspiring and eye catching. It was gratifying to know so many folks are motivated and involved. But the coverage was not as complete as it could have been.
At the corner of Main and Market in the Village of Saugerties there have been similar demonstrations initiated by Indivisible Saugerties since the original “Hands Off” event in early April. There were more than 450 folks at that first event! While the numbers were smaller some other weeks, there continued to be a gathering every single week with a crescendo at the June 14th “No Kings” themed event which drew nearly 500! …that on the same day as many other opportunities presented themselves to make oneself heard. Many went on from Saugerties to swell the ranks at Academy Green later that day. And we haven’t stopped — there were 50-60 of us out again at Main and Market the following week June 21 — and we’ll continue gathering.
As well as being consistently held, our numbers have been equal to or greater than those mentioned in your June 18th article, yet you made no mention of Saugerties at all. It’s not really about a numbers comparison that I bring this up, it’s about bringing awareness so that others might know we are there with opportunity and inspiration to join. Word of mouth has brought many, indivisiblesaugerties@gmail.com is a place one can make contact to be put on the mailing list to be kept abreast of, not only demonstrations, but other actions that can be taken. But there was missed opportunity in not being recognized in equal part by your paper of our locally related, and certainly newsworthy, activities. Reporting Saugerties activities alongside the others would have gone a long way in spreading awareness for those who might be wanting the fuller picture.
Just saying, we’re here, come join us…
Skip Arthur
Saugerties
Many thanks to all involved with the New Paltz Pop-Up Puppetry Fest
Many thanks to those who braved the rain and ventured out to the very first New Paltz Pop-Up Puppetry Fest on Saturday, June 14th, at 122 Main Street. We had a wonderful time, and with your help, raised several thousand dollars for our Afghan neighbors to support their resettlement efforts here within our community.
It was a large effort, filled with countless acts of generosity. Our professional puppeteers, Dov Manley’s Up in Arms, Brad Shur’s PaperHeartPuppets, and Andy Gaukel Puppetry donated their time and artistic genius in puppet shows that thrilled us, made us laugh and cry, and most of all, made us think. Other local puppetry greats, Amy Trompetter of Redwing Blackbird Theater and Patrick Wadden of Arm of the Sea Theater donated puppets for display in our “Mini-Museum of the Giant Puppet.” Our tent was filled with Robin Larsen’s gorgeous and gigantic Stone Mountain Puppets, thanks to the efforts of Gwyneth and Stephen Larsen and Jennifer Russell of the Center for Symbolic Studies.
Very special and heartfelt thanks go to Livia Vanaver and the Vanaver Caravan youth group, who graced us with their dances and led all the puppeteers in a puppet processional and pageant. Carrie and Apple’s music filled the air, (amplified by volunteer technicians from Flickerfilmworks.)
We’d also like to thank the incredible artists of Roost Arts Coop, who transformed our newspaper bunraku puppets into spectacular and whimsical puppets. Your efforts, and those of the community members who helped make these puppets, raised $1000 for the Afghan relief effort!
We are also grateful to the Afghan families who created a delicious traditional meal for festival goers, and for all those who baked for our bake sale. Dry Fly Cafe donated gluten-free and vegan treats to support the cause, and Greenway Recycling Services helped us to reduce our solid waste, and taught us how we can do it better next year!
Early childhood educators, Martha Tobias, Robbie Puglisi and Barbara Washin worked tirelessly at the children’s puppet workshop, helping 50+ children to take home a puppet of their own! And we can’t forget the hard work of our 13 young puppeteers from the Chrysalis Puppet Theater Workshop, who participated in ten weeks of puppet classes and created an original puppet show called “Talking Trash!” with puppets made from recycled materials. Andy Gaukel, shadow puppeteer extraordinaire, donated his time as our resident puppeteer for the ten weeks of our series, as did our hardworking middle school interns, Saskia and Mariam.
We are deeply grateful to Gordon Pine, who let us take over his beautiful new/old “center for the arts” at 122 Main Street for the two weeks leading up to the puppet fest. Marion Pine herself must have been smiling down to see her home so transformed into a place of puppet artistry, community and joy. Gordon’s vision of “a place to create, right in the heart of downtown,” is coming to fruition, with the Roost Arts Gallery and the Creative Perch downstairs, and the Chrysalis Puppet Theater Workshop and Marion’s Nest (a rentable workshop space) upstairs! Thank you, Gorden!
All of us within Plutarch for Refugees hope that the New Paltz Pop-Up Puppet Fest will become an annual event. Be on the lookout for more fun to come next spring!
Finally, we are so grateful to Livia Vanaver for her steadfast belief in this project. As she said to me the day before the fest, “It’s all for the children.” We want to dedicate this first pop-up puppet fest to Bill Vanaver, who was with us in the spirit of art, advocacy and creativity, especially when Livia played her Limberjack to the delight of the gathered children.
Rebecca Burdett
Director Chrysalis Puppet Theater Workshop
Volunteer with Plutarch for Refugees
Elimination of the Montessori program at George Washington Elementary
I am writing to express my deep concern about the recent decision to discontinue the Montessori program at George Washington Elementary (GWE) in Kingston.
As a retired early childhood educator, I have long recognized the exceptional quality of this program. In my years working in Kingston schools, news of a child’s acceptance into GWE’s Montessori program was always met with excitement and gratitude by families. It was therefore shocking to learn that the program was abruptly terminated during the board of education meeting on June 4th — despite families having already been notified of their acceptance for the coming school year.
Superintendent Paul Padalino cited financial concerns, suggesting the school was receiving disproportionately high funding. However, this comparison was misleading. The Montessori program includes mixed-age classrooms, enrolling both three- and four-year-olds as part of a UPK program. State regulations require lower student-to-teacher ratios for these age groups, and the additional staffing is funded by the state — not the district. This critical context was absent from the discussion, leading to a deeply flawed decision. In a region already suffering from a shortage of high-quality early childhood education, eliminating a proven and successful program is not only short-sighted but harmful to families and children. I strongly urge the district to reconsider and reverse this decision. Our children — and their futures — deserve better.
Edith Bolt
Saugerties
Graceful Aging: The Hawk 1
I look up from my book, and suddenly out the window — no more than 20 feet away — I see a big bird has landed on the peak of a trellis on which we have started purple passion flowers; it is surveying the turf below our bird feeder where moments earlier small sparrows, mourning doves and a chipmunk had been feeding on fallen seeds.
My body registers the surprise, the shock really, before my mind can name what I am perceiving. Then the neurons fire and the label comes: “Hawk”! Then the phone comes out of my pocket and I snap some pictures. I am already domesticating this experience — something to post to others — but also I am aware that I am holding off the question that trembles in this encounter: “What does this mean?” For it is reflexive for me to take this as a visitation, an omen. In that fundamental certainty, I know I will, sooner or later, ponder the pertinence of this experience, this interruption.
What I have been reading at the moment of this encounter is a book about aging called Winter Radiance. The hawk has appeared in relation to that deeply personal and widely shared experience in my life subsumed under the term “graceful aging.” The recognition comes that I am two months short of 84, the age my mother died, the age my ailing father came to live with Susan and me before he died months later. The hawk lands like an exclamation point in the midst of my life, a feathered arrow from the blue, quivering.
Might the meaning I make personally of this encounter also belong to the “we” with whom I think about these matters in Graceful Aging? I sit with this riddle; I let it resonate in memory and imagination. Now, weeks later, I know one thing for sure: the hawk has brought in its wake the word “overview.” Perhaps the link came to me in the folk-way we talk about “overview” as “a bird’s eye view.” What does the bird’s eye view have to do with my aging, and perhaps ours?
I find that the beginning of the answer is contained in the question. An overview gives us perspective from which the jangle of parts are seen in some relation to one another. We see the whole, the pattern, the story. Perhaps, in regard to my aging and to ours, we need to get some distance from the churn and chaos, the anxiety and disruption, the fixations and the fret of aging in order to remember something we keep forgetting, something vitally important that comes only with an overview … the bird’s eye view … the hawk’s eye view …What do I see from that altitude? What would you?
Peter Pitzele
New Paltz
Starving the children
The United States has reached a new low in its foreign policy. We are starving tens of thousands of children to death in Gaza. First we destroyed their schools and colleges. Then we blasted their houses into dust. We demolished all their hospitals and medical facilities and destroyed their access to potable water. At this point, we have turned the Gaza Strip into a killing field, with millions of Palestinians digging through the rubble just to find their children.
Of course, there have been other holocausts in history. But even the Nazis tried to cover up their mass extermination of Jews and Romany. Towards the end of World War II, they buried millions in secret graves. Even the Nazis knew that their slaughter was beyond any boundaries of human kind. Even the Nazis knew enough to feel shame.
We, as citizens of the most powerful military empire the world has ever seen, have complete access to pictures and stories of this Palestinian holocaust. Our mainstream media doesn’t dwell on it much, but the charnel house of Gaza isn’t kept a secret. An internet search of “children” and “Gaza” will fill your mind with the unbearable images of our country’s war crimes. Yet few in our government seem to care very much. They sit around and spout Israeli talking points while collecting their hundreds of thousands in bribes from Zionist billionaires.
And we are oblivious to what our government is doing, as we turn a blind eye to this wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people.
Fred Nagel
Rhinebeck
Ebbing Blue
Blue of day evaporating,
running down to dark.
All day long minutes
stretched joyfully
like clouds in blue.
The sky afforded us
the leisurely breeze,
this afternoon in stasis.
We sat and gazed
at the fat blue sky.
It’s faded now with
the coming darkness.
The lining of blue ebbing
from what we took as
an ample ocean of time.
Patrick Hammer, Jr.
Saugerties
Join the family! 
