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Selling a nightmare
A campaign flyer arrived in my mailbox last week! A multi-page glossy one, with photos of three men on the front page. Aren’t the 2024 elections over, I asked myself. But (as anyone with a mailbox in Saugerties and beyond knows), what I was looking at wasn’t promoting candidates for office, it was selling a project whose well-heeled supporters have taken unheard-of measures to promote. Are they getting nervous?
Without commenting on the project it touts, the overdevelopment of Winston Farm in Saugerties, I’ll stick to the flyer itself. It’s full of misleading “information” that leaves out crucial points. For example, the environmental impact statement it mentions twice as having been submitted to the town board was an embarrassment which was roundly rejected as inadequate and incomplete. This they fail to mention. And the ongoing “collaboration” with the town board on a resubmission crosses ethical if not legal lines, in my opinion. Should the town board be assisting an improved document which they themselves have to review?
As for the “developers” themselves, they have clearly and publicly stated that it is their intention to increase the value of the property by many multiples by getting it rezoned as a Planned Development District (PDD) in order to sell it off to actual developers who would build the hotels, retail space, housing, industrial space, performance venue and campground. The three owners/investors are in the business of making money, pure and simple, without doing the dirty work themselves. Any more benevolent intentions they may have will be overridden by the prospect of making this immense profit. Their reputations aside, would you buy a used car from anyone offering a deal like this?
On to page two, where all the completely unnecessary and unlikely-to-succeed projects are listed. I would like to focus on “retail space” (250,000 square feet) and note that, while the Ulster County Chamber of Commerce loudly supports this project, the Saugerties Chamber of Commerce does not. They are keeping very quiet about it, but I’d bet it’s because many of the members of the local chamber are threatened by the possibility, again unnecessary, of big box store competition. What kind of benevolence does that sound like?
There’s so much more, but just a quick note that the water tests are inadequate (done on a well outside the property in a season of abundant rain) and the traffic study leaves a great deal to the imagination. How the two-lane highways leading to and away from the site would not have to be widened (think: eminent domain) to accommodate either the massive, disruptive, multi-year construction or the hugely increased traffic afterwards, if the business projections turn out to be correct, which is highly doubtful. And all roadway changes would be made at public expense. Is this how you’d want your taxpayer dollars put to use?
In other words, a kind of scam is afoot here. The devil is in the details of the PDD, still in the planning stages, what it allows and more important, what it doesn’t allow. Concerned citizens are working hard to have a voice. Please check out beautifulsaugerties.com for more information about how you can push back and have an influence before it’s too late.
Janet Moss
Saugerties
Heads, I win . . .
Surprising that we haven’t heard any apologies from the regular Trump supporters in this column that election results are reliable after all? We were subjected to four years of claims that the 2020 election results had been hacked by the Democrats and Trump had actually won. This election, the results were reversed with Trump narrowly winning the battleground states that Biden won in 2020. So when Trump wins, election results are reliable but when he lost, it could only have been through Democratic cheating?
When Biden recently hosted Trump in the White House and said that the 2024 election was fairly decided, if he were a little less of an institutionalist, he would have added that the 2020 result was also correctly decided.
What to make of Trump and his supporters four-year claim that the 2020 election was stolen? I leave that to our regular Trump-supporting contributors to explain. Do we still agree that lying to benefit yourself is wrong or is that belief another casualty of Trump’s return to power?
Matt Frisch
Arkville
The power of words
We socialist poets call ourselves “verse workers.”
Sparrow
Phoenicia
Letter of thanks from your neighborhood florists, Jay and Rita
It is with immense gratitude and love that we announce the closure of our beloved shop, Jarita’s Florist at the end of December.
As your neighborhood florist for nearly 50 years, it has been our incredible privilege to bring beauty to countless weddings, proms, funerals, holidays and daily affirmations of love. It has been the honor of a lifetime to share in these precious moments and milestones.
We opened our shop doors in the heart of Woodstock, NY on July 7, 1977 with enthusiasm and an aspiration to celebrate life through flowers. We enter this next chapter of life with pride and fulfillment.
To our community and customers: thank you for your loyal support and enduring appreciation. We will keep you in our hearts always.
To our staff past and present: We could have never done it without you. Your talent and hard work was unmatched. You made the long hours, inclement weather, big events and day-to-day effort both possible and joyous.
We want to extend a special thank you to our current team. Sarah, words cannot fully express our gratitude. You have been our rock for more than two decades, bringing light and warmth to everything and everyone along the way. Sharon, you are an absolute joy to work alongside and gorgeous floral designs have brought beauty to so many people’s lives. Caitlin, it has been amazing to see your creativity shine and we can’t wait to see where it takes you. Angelina, we are grateful for the determination and enthusiasm you bring to Jarita’s.
Jarita’s has been the backbone to our lives for so many years, as we raised our children, watched our grandchildren grow and formed lifelong friendships.
As we close our shop doors, we look ahead to a bright future and back on a beautiful past.
Rita Sands, Designer/Owner, Jarita’s Florist
Woodstock
Why?
Believe it or not, there is a part-time Woodstock police officer, performing non-police functions under the direction of Supervisor McKenna, who is being paid his full salary.
Howard Harris
Woodstock
Price of ignorance
In the shadow of a tarnished crown,
Where promises drip like old paint peeling,
We stand in line, waiting for groceries,
Stomach rumbling, echoing the silence —
Do you hear it? A choir of disappointment.
MAGA said change was coming, instead we found
The same bitter taste served on a gold platter,
Fingers crossed, voting for theatrics wrapped in bluster —
The lifeboat is leaking, the sun’s sinking faster.
You tore at the seams without catching the tide,
“Make America Great Again,” you declared,
But who could you really believe? The puppeteer pulls strings —
Without a hint of shame or care for my brother/sister in fields;
Who harvests our dreams while you dine on deceit?
Inflation painted your choices in neon light —
Ignorance cloaked as hope in a glittering wrapper;
Did you think he’d steer us clear of this storm?
All he brought was a tempest and rusted anchors.
So here we are, seated at this festering table:
Thanking our heroes while drowning in debt.
What will it take to correct this broken compass?
Stand up! Speak out! Tear down these walls!
This era is marked not by leaders but by those who lead blind;
Chop holes while they sip champagne and tell us all’s fine —
A reckoning waits just beyond that horizon’s edge.
Will it be only whispers that rise with the tide or will we scream?
A deeply felt “thanks” to all you who were upset by inflation so you voted for Trump again and were willing to overlook everything else he has done or said. You actually thought he would do better.
Just a reminder, he has NO mandate, he didn’t even get 50% of the popular vote. Trump eyes fewer ethics guardrails or transparency in the second term. I am so disappointed in the direction this country is going. And here we are again! Of the billionaires, for the billionaires, by the billionaires. True originalists.
Neil Jarmel
West Hurley
Do we really have a choice?
Residents of the New Paltz Central School District will vote on a proposed capital project to repair, upgrade and enhance the district’s school buildings and grounds. There are three propositions.
Proposition One focuses on general building upgrades, plus new bleachers and locker room renovations at the high school. Proposition Two includes improvements to the athletic fields at the high school and middle school, as well as air conditioning upgrades for the high school and middle school auditoriums. Proposition Three is the construction of an indoor pool facility at the high school. A “Yes” vote for Proposition One is required for the other two propositions to pass. If all propositions are approved, the capital project will cost taxpayers over $48,000,000.
Consideration of an environmentally sustainable approach to facility upgrades was dismissed early in the development of this capital plan. LED lighting, called for in Proposition One, is a step in the right direction and way overdue. Proposition One also calls for Lenape’s roof to be replaced. This would be a great opportunity to install a solar array. Air conditioning improvements are included for two auditoriums in Proposition Two, but there is no mention at all of air conditioning, preferably air-source heat pumps, for any classroom. To approve any air conditioning upgrades, one has to vote “Yes” for Proposition Two, which focuses on improvements to the district’s athletic fields, which are also long overdue. However, the installation of artificial turf on Floyd Patterson Field may not be the most fiscally responsible or environmentally sustainable solution to upgrading the poor condition of the existing natural grass surface. There are also health concerns that have led many professional sports teams to abandon plastic grass. But, if we vote to upgrade the air conditioning in our school auditoriums and if we feel strongly that we need to invest in our athletic facilities, we will have to vote “Yes” for artificial turf.
It would be wonderful to have a pool available for our swim teams and swimming lessons for our district’s students. But should we be asking our residents to foot the bill to build an aquatic center when many have a legitimate concern about being able to provide food and housing for their families? Such a facility would also add to our carbon load while we should be doing everything in our power to reduce it.
There has been no statement from the district addressing the mandatory transition to an electrified school bus fleet, which could cost an incredible amount of money while taxpayers are still paying for this capital project.
I support maintaining and improving the educational facilities that provide a second home for our students and teachers. I also believe in second chances. By voting “No” for all the propositions, I hope that the board of education and its consultants will take a more sustainable approach to the capital project. The school district should consider establishing a sustainability committee made up of faculty, students and community members to bring creative and environmentally sound solutions to the table during the development of capital plans and maintenance projects now and in the future.
Mark Varian
Gardiner
SUNY New Paltz and community relations
Here are last week’s notes from presenting to the SUNY New Paltz Strategic Planning Committee as mayor on the topic of “Community Relations.” To keep it moving, I tried a David Letterman-esque top-ten list.
I wholeheartedly believe our community is richer with SUNY New Paltz and vice versa. To maintain an active and open line of communication, local officials and SUNY’s administration meet monthly and make sure we have each other’s phone numbers. Here are my top ten favorite topics we have chewed on during the last ten years:
10) I disfavor a narrowly drawn definition for the word “family”: We are stuck using the word “family” as it is an entrenched term in NYS Uniform Building Code. Think single-family, two-family, multi-family, etc. But we have charged our local building and planning department to focus on whether living spaces are safe. We do not want to know whether you live like a 1950s era TV household, how you split your WiFi bill, or which adults share a bed with other adults.
9) Time of day sounds: Students, families, young professionals and grey-haired folks like me all have different rhythms and schedules. No one should mow their lawn at 5:30 a.m., no one should scream and yell on their way to enjoying New Paltz’s nightlife, no one should raise music volumes so their neighbors can hear it unless they have provided a polite heads up and all are in agreement it will be turned down at a reasonable hour.
8) Celebratory sounds: However, in our community with young people and students, enjoyment of some noise or music a few times per year, that doesn’t go too late, including graduation weekend or the night back after summer break, should not outrage us local lifers where we call the police.
7) Public bathrooms: Treat public bathrooms like they’re yours and that you care about the person cleaning them. There have been instances of student parties where nearby public bathrooms are used and abused, and business owners, having nothing to do with the revelry, are left feeling burnt having to do extra clean up. Use the bathrooms, support all the local businesses and mind your party mess. This should include discarding red solo cups or shot-gunned cans on the street or in bushes and in front lawns.
6) Sending material to the sewer plant: While we are talking bathrooms — only flush the four ‘Ps’ — poop, pee, paper and puke. Protect our multi-million dollar sewer facility and toss dental floss, tampons, sanitary pads, condoms and all wipes (baby, makeup, and cleaning wipes) even if they’re labeled flushable, into the trash.
5) Rentals are inspected for safety: All rental properties in the village (long-term or short-term) are required by local law to be inspected for safety by our building department. Renters should ask to see the latest inspection reports. Landlords should proudly market their properties as having been inspected for safety.
4) Volunteer firefighters: If a fire alarm is pulled accidently, a smoke detector gets triggered from applying perfume or axe body spray, or because someone passed out while making late-night spaghetti and the water evaporated burning the pasta, New Paltz’s firefighters who show up are leaving their warm homes and are 100% volunteer, unlike the paid firefighters you may be familiar with from where you grew up. Please respect and thank them.
3) Metered municipal water: We used to have inaccurate water metering for ballfields and some university buildings. We worked with the university and moved to using nine master meters, instead of over 50 individual meters. Accurate metering helps us afford replacing old leaky or tuberculated pipes. Watermain projects are costing $3 million per mile.
2) Sewer plant effluent when university is in session: We are taking a closer look at the effluent quality of the treated water discharged from the sewer plant into the Wallkill River. Our plant is highly regulated by the State DEC but we would like to better understand patterns in effluent quality that may result from cleaning disinfectants used by the University.
1) Say yes to student writers: My policy has always been to say yes to any SUNY New Paltz student who needs to speak because they are writing a story for the Oracle or completing a school assignment. I see this as part of our unique and important responsibility as elected officials in a college host community. Impressively, on numerous occasions, I have found student coverage of local events or issues to be some of the best at capturing nuance and details.
It is exciting and motivating to have this front row seat working closely with SUNY New Paltz. Thank you.
Mayor Tim Rogers
New Paltz
Practicing the sacred
A friend handed me
a laughing Jesus card.
Jesus wept. That I know.
But I don’t recall reading
He ever let go and had
a good laugh.
What in the world
would Jesus have
to laugh about? What
in God’s name would
make Him smile?
Our Big Blue Marble
tottering through space,
surely cracked, rocked
with famine, pollution,
war, and hate.
Perhaps He’s laughing,
showing His pearly whites,
even through bitter tears,
because He can still see
a few who know Him
and practice the sacred:
Paying It Forward.
Patrick Hammer, Jr.
Saugerties
This week’s revelations
I read about the incoming Trump administration with growing consternation. Here’s a sampling of some of this week’s revelations.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s lawyer once petitioned the FDA to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine.
Time magazine named Donald Trump its “Person of the Year.” Though one has to read beyond the headline to realize it, the title is not necessarily an honor, but is given to “the individual who, for better or for worse, did the most to shape the world and the headlines over the past 12 months;” previous recipients include Stalin, Hitler and Putin. But Trump has played the designation for all it’s worth — or rather, in his fashion, for more than it’s worth — and those of his fans who know about it will crow about it.
The billionaire publisher of the liberal-leaning Los Angeles Times threatened to kill an editorial criticizing Trump’s cabinet selections unless it ran alongside an editorial taking the opposite view. The paper’s editors — those who hadn’t quit weeks before when the publisher, like Jeff Bezos at The Washington Post, refused to allow his paper to endorse Kamala Harris — were “baffled,” and the editorial never ran.
Conservative commentator Scott Jennings joined the Los Angeles Times editorial board, with other conservative hires to follow.
Amazon, Meta and Open AI are each donating $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Trump tapped Kari Lake to lead the Voice of America, an agency founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and respected for its political independence and objectivity. Trump attacked VOA during his first term, and many of its employees are “very disturbed” by the idea of Lake’s becoming their boss. About Lake — an election denier, anti-masker, vaccine naysayer and immigration hard-liner who has called journalists “monsters” and vowed to be their “worst frickin’ nightmare” — Trump wrote on his Truth Social site: She will “ensure that the American values of Freedom and Liberty are broadcast around the world fairly and accurately, unlike the lies spread by the fake news media.”
Democrat John Fetterman joined Truth Social and called for Trump’s pardon in the hush money case.
Our country, like so many others, is careening right, and to stand the old adage on its head — as Trump is doing to America — “Right Makes Might.” Not the meek but the mighty shall inherit the earth.
And Kari Lake shall be the Voice of America.
Tom Cherwin
Saugerties
Join us in our efforts to restore safe, drinkable water
Attention residents of greater Woodstock! Woodstockers United for Change has initiated a petition to the Woodstock Town Board demanding that they take proactive steps to effectively address the PFOS contamination of our drinking water (https://www.change.org/p/should-the-town-of-woodstock-proactively-address-pfos-in-the-municipal-water?).
First detected in 2021, the most recent level of PFOS contamination in our water supply hovered just below the most restrictive limit of four parts per trillion as set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has concurrently stated that no amount of PFOS is safe to drink. We are still awaiting the promised quarterly report on where the levels stand now, but PFOS doesn’t just disappear, and testing the levels alone is an inadequate response. What is needed is professionally conducted source testing, to know where the toxins are coming from, something the board majority has refused to do. One can speculate that the reason for their refusal to order such testing may well be the political fallout that would come if the toxins were to trace back to the Shady dump, which they’ve also refused to responsibly address for years.
It’s also important to note that the public might still be in the dark about this health crisis were it not for our publicizing it, including publishing a fact sheet on the devastating effects of PFOS consumption (www.woodstockersunitedforchange.com) and organizing a politically independent town hall to share accurate information and address public concerns. Among those potential effects attributed to PFOS exposure are testicular, breast, kidney, ovarian and endometrial cancers, non-Hodgkins lymphoma and childhood leukemia, liver disease, hormonal disruptions, accelerated puberty and fetal and neo-natal developmental defects. Members of our group were also responsible for uncovering and correcting three separate reporting inaccuracies that could have further forestalled the town’s response.
While at this point the maximum “allowable” limits of PFOS contamination set by governmental agencies, often as much for reasons of practicality and politics as for public health, do not force the town board to take more aggressive action, we believe it is morally incumbent upon them to do so to protect the health of their constituents. For these reasons, we ask you to join us in our efforts to restore safe, drinkable water, for ourselves and our children, by signing our petition.
Alan M. Weber
for Woodstockers United for Change
Woodstock
Neil and Tom … Just can’t let it go
In his letter last week, Neil Jarmel’s opening two sentences are quite interesting. He says: “It’s disturbing to see. The most unqualified people in positions of power.” He thinks he’s describing Trump and his cabinet but he just unwittingly described the characteristics of the four-year Biden/Harris three-ring circus.
Neil states “Trump’s cabinet ministers have no experience in their new positions.” That’s exactly the point, Neil! Nowadays, conscience, common sense and knowing right from wrong seem to be much more important than “experience.” The sins of the past and present will require the independent eyes of non-swamp members with enough business/military experience to root out any cancers and corruptions from BOTH sides of the aisle. What did Biden’s “experts”, with alleged experience, do for our economy, military and national security? … obviously next to nothing!
Neil goes on with “Trump’s cabinet nominations will still lead to a long-term brain drain from government services.” By past and current government “services,” does Neil mean the brains behind the following, just to name a few? $356,000 spent on “whether Japanese quail are more sexually promiscuous on cocaine.” Or, $880,000 spent to find out “why, exactly, snails choose to have sex.” And according to our own Government Accountability (who knew?)Office, there were $247 billion in “payment errors” in 2022 and $236 billion in 2023. Does anyone doubt that DOGE will have a field day?
Like Neil never did anything wrong which he regrets, right? Neil has, no doubt, learned from his mistakes and grew, like many of us have. However, he extends no such understanding, atonement and growth for Trump or any of his cabinet picks. Nice of Neil to be so open minded and gracious.
And, Tom Cherwin has an awfully funny way of professing hope and wishing the best for the new Trump administration. Again last week, Tom tears into Trump and his cabinet picks with not a thought of even giving them much of a chance, at all … and they’re not even on the job, yet!
Finally, if even very briefly, Jo Galante Cicale managed to take a page out of Neil Jarmel’s TDS thesis by using all the anti-Trump/conservative monikers we’ve also been hearing, ad nauseam, from the lame stream media for the past eight years.
There is very good potential for a much more successful America … even if Neil, Tom and Jo are not very interested.
John N. Butz
Modena
Laugh? Or cry?
I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry at your coverage of the “Anti-Trump” non event held on the Green last weekend. Aside from the fact virtually no one turned out except a few politicians, the quotes from Woodstock county legislator Jeff Collins were noteworthy. Jeff states that the poor and needy are going to take the hit when Trump cuts back federal money to Ulster County.
“We get $47 million in the county from the federal government and that is going to disappear.” Jeff states. “ We are screwed! “ he added.
I believe this is the same Jeff Collins who first floated raising his and his legislative colleague’s salary by 137% in the current proposed county budget. This staggering amount he claimed could be taken out of the county fund balance this year. Not sure how it would work in subsequent years because he didn’t say.
When Jeff failed to get support for that whopping increase, he came back with support for a proposed salary increase of 15% which passed.
So, if Ulster County taxpayers are keeping score, on Saturday afternoon in Woodstock, our county legislator Jeff Collins warned us the needy and most vulnerable were doomed by Trump winning the election — and then, on the following Tuesday evening, he voted himself a pay increase of 15%.
Laugh? Or cry?
Michael Veitch
Woodstock
Winston Farm debacle
Well, well, well … as I live and breathe, guess what came in the mail. A four-page, glossy (to impress us?) compilation of bullshit that “Winston Farm’s Respected (?) developers are trying to shove down the throats of Saugerties citizens for their advantage.
Citizens of Saugerties, open your eyes and begin to understand what their proposed changes will create. I am certain that many of you are aware that Saugerties proclaims Saugerties is “Climate Smart Saugerties” and at the same time these developers will be destroying one of the only large tracts of land that remain.
The aquifer that is our water source lies beneath the fields, the trees that will be destroyed — they help purify the air we breathe, the wildlife will be sacrificed but Saugerties is going green. Yep, green as in the money these “respected” developers will reap and the citizens will have to pay through taxes being raised to pay for all the roadwork required to accommodate traffic that will overwhelm our roads. And oh so much more relative to development.
There are endless reasons why the prospect of this development will fail to live up to the hype being presented. Glossy pamphlet notwithstanding. The endorsements of HVEDC, Ulster County Chamber of Commerce, do they surprise you? How about the quality of life for our citizens of Saugerties??? Once begun, it cannot be undone.
We are the buyers of this hype and, as the old saying goes — buyers beware!
Marjory GreenbergVaughn
Saugerties
Netanyahu and Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels did everything possible within his power to hide from the German people and the rest of the world from what the Nazi regime were doing to the Jews before and during World War 2. The merciless and horrific slaughter of six-million Jewish men, women and children was mostly hidden from the German people and the rest of the world until Germany was totally defeated.
Today, the slaughter continues with Benjamin Netanyahu replacing Goebbels as Israel’s minister of propaganda justifying the systemic killing of thousands of men, women and children in Gaza. But Israel’s slaughter of the innocent is slightly different in that it has been live screened to the rest of world. How can genocide be live screened as the rest of the world stands idly by?
We obviously learned nothing from the atrocities carried out by the Nazis. Is it because the USA, the most powerful country in the world, supports Israel and supplies the bombs and bullets that allow such a genocide? Or is it the well-oiled Israeli propaganda machine that is comparable in its techniques and success only to that of Germany’s Joseph Goebbels? Either way, it is yours and mine taxpayer dollars that pay for those bombs and bullet as it was the German people’s taxes that paid for the slaughter of six-million Jews. This makes all of us complicate in the world’s first ever live-screened genocide. How does it feel?
Chris Finlay
Woodstock
Elites and Juan Soto
Conventional wisdom says that with the triumph of Donald Trump, America joined populists worldwide to cleanse their societies of “elites” and “experts” who have demeaned them. What better way to reject and defeat their enemies than to elect a felon and traitor. The despised elites are said to include think tanks, journalists, government bureaucrats, not-for-profit agencies, educational institutions, sometimes corporate leaders and billionaires and others. These targets claim to know better and dictate policies that affect common people and, worse, elites feel their ideas and their work deserve higher status and compensation. Elites, populists are coming after you.
Strangely, they don’t seem to be coming after Juan Soto, the ex-Yankee baseball player who just signed a 15-year, ¾ billion-dollar contract with the New York Mets. They aren’t coming after mediocre baseball players commanding $25 million annual salaries. They aren’t attacking top professional basketball stars who earn tens of millions for an eight-month schedule. Certainly, they don’t seem to be offended by celebrities from TV, movies and music who throw multi-million-dollar parties and sometimes toss fits if their wishes aren’t appropriately accommodated.
Almost anywhere in the world those who can live lavishly or display skills at the highest level would classify as elite. It seems that in America we accept, even venerate, some elites and will fork out the gobs of money that supports them. Why? Seemingly because these elites entertain us. Look at Donald Trump.
The pitchforks are out, instead, for institutions and people, some not especially well-compensated, who traffic in ideas and values. The rise of populism tells us we’ve lost our trust in science, communicators, political leaders and experts of all stripes who sometimes tell us things we don’t want to know. But you can hear the excited rumblings already, baby, about the first, inevitable billion-dollar home run artist on the diamond.
Let’s just be honest about which elites we cheer and those we jeer.
Tom Denton
New Paltz
Thinking about Christmas
“From now on all generations will call me blessed.” (These words were spoken by a young and pregnant peasant girl as recorded in the Gospel of Luke)
“Think about it.” That was my response to a friend of another faith who stated that the prophecies of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures are not predictions of future events but “scripts” that were followed, in order to make them happen. From this perspective, biblical predictions are not true descriptions of future events: rather these events occurred because people knew they were written and made efforts to “fulfill” them in an attempt to prove their religion was true. Although many consider such a notion plausible, perhaps consideration of the following prediction, found in the New Testament will cause some to question this plausibility. The Gospel of Luke, nearly 2000 years old, records the words of a Jewish teenaged peasant girl named Mary (Miriam in Hebrew). Mary’s words include the following prediction: “From now on all generations will call me blessed.” The reason for this “blessedness” was the child within her womb. In considering this prediction there are two things to think about: A record of the words of anyone in the first century is unusual and no other record of the words of any other peasant, young or old, exists. Furthermore, the child within this Mary’s womb, Jesus, was conceived while she was unmarried and this child would, as an adult, not only be declared “illegitimate” and a false prophet by the leaders of Mary’s faith community, but also found guilty of sedition by the Roman government, and suffer the ignominious death of crucifixion under Roman law.
Because of this, no one outside of her time and locality should have ever heard of Mary, much less, in future generations, have ever thought of her as “blessed.” With this in view, I asked my previously mentioned friend who lives in a country nearly 6,000 miles from America, if he knew the identity of a woman who is known as the “blessed” mother. Although he did not know the names of the mothers of any of the Caesars, Voltaire, Lady Gaga, the Dali Lama, the Pope, or any American president; he knew that the name of the “blessed” mother was Mary, the Jewish peasant girl. Indeed, over the past 2,000 years, people of every generation and nation have come to know the name of the “blessed” mother and her son, Jesus, a crucified Jew. (It is interesting to note that although there were countless Jews and Gentiles crucified by the Romans, the only other persons’ names we know of this group are Dismas the “good thief” and Peter and this only because of their association with Jesus.)
Christmas celebrates the reason the name of Mary, has been called blessed in this and every generation: the life, death and resurrection of her son, Jesus of Nazareth. This resurrection was not merely the revival or resuscitation of a corpse that would one day die again. Rather, it was the resurrection of a “spiritual” body with physical properties that was no longer subject to the corruption of aging or death. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus is a reason to celebrate for those who are convinced of its truth: For they vindicated his claims that he lived and died so that the sins of all the people of the world who believed in him — throughout all generations — would be forgiven and, even though they died, would, each, receive an incorruptible and eternal body like his own. Because of this, the Christmas season is a time to consider the implications of the fact that the impossible prediction of a teenaged peasant girl came to pass. And, in light of the promises of forgiveness of sin and life eternal made by her son, whose birth the day celebrates, Christmas is also the day in which skeptics of biblical prophecy and all others who are troubled by their sins and thoughts of death and judgement, have another opportunity to really “think about it.”
George Civile
Gardiner
Be thorough and accurate; be hopeful
The December 11, 2024 edition of HV1 reported on the vote for allocating remaining ARP funds in Woodstock. What was missing is the fact that Maria-Elena Conte, along with Bennet Ratcliff, have been advocating for funding for the Woodstock Film Festival, the Woodstock Playhouse and Woodstock Chamber Orchestra for months. Much thanks to them for their efforts, even though a larger amount of funding would underscore the importance of the arts in Woodstock. Oh, by the way, it would help with the “trust factor” if more information is given by the town board regarding how the proposed trust fund for the arts will be administered and by whom. It is worth mentioning that affordable housing remains a huge issue in Woodstock and the efforts of everyone involved in working to alleviate the problem is appreciated.
As we all approach the end of 2024 and will move into 2025, keep a focus on a positive journey–with hope. At a minimum, reflect H-O-P-E as we all can genuinely help-one-person-everyday, and sometimes that one person might even be ourselves.
Terence Lover
Woodstock
Reflections on trust in a digital age
Trust is fragile, often built on a thousand invisible signals we rarely notice. The subtle tilt of a head, the cadence of a voice, a fleeting glance — all are clues we unconsciously weave together into certainty. Yet, these clues dissolve into pixels in our computer-mediated world, leaving us grasping for meaning in the void. The motherboard, despite its name, offers no nurturing embrace, and the voice of a friend flattened into text feels hollow as if the soul itself has been stripped away.
In this digital wilderness, we attempt to bridge the gap with emojis and exclamation points, desperate to inject humanity into the sterile language of machines. But tone cannot truly be typed, and eye contact cannot be streamed. These primal signals — the ones we’ve relied on since we first gathered around fires — have no algorithmic equivalent. Without them, trust becomes a leap into uncertainty, like stepping onto a bridge we cannot see.
Consider this: what if our relentless reliance on technology isn’t evolution but a kind of devolution — a retreat into Plato’s cave, where the shadows on the wall have become our reality? We trust these shadows — these avatars, these profiles — because we’ve been taught to, but trust built on illusion is no trust.
And yet, there is a curious paradox: the more we rely on digital tools, the more we hunger for the tactile, the physical, the real. I’ve seen this in the resurgence of handmade crafts and in the quiet reverence for voices that carry warmth and wisdom. People crave what technology cannot give — a handshake, a shared silence, a look that lingers long enough to say, “I see you.”
But here’s the twist, the left-field idea that may unravel your certainty: perhaps the machines are not the problem. Maybe they are mirrors, reflecting the fractures already within us. If we cannot trust the face on the screen, perhaps it’s because we’ve forgotten how to trust ourselves.
The nuance of trust is not found in code or connection speeds. It is in the spaces between words, the breaths we take before speaking, and how our eyes say what our mouths cannot. To rediscover trust, we must relearn how to see, hear and be human again.
Larry Winters
New Paltz
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