Letters to the Editor: 07.28.16

Racist Colorism

Montauk

July 22, 2016

Dear David:

I was truly appalled at Irene Silverman’s article on the Freetown meeting last Sunday. Ms. Silverman’s racist preconceptions permeate an article that should have been about people coming together to record memories of an important neighborhood to East Hampton’s history. Instead, the article dwelled on the same kind of racist colorism that ended the Montauk Indians existence as a tribe in 1912. 

Two years ago I was interviewed by Ms. Silverman regarding the George Fowler house and was told “surely you’re a white person,” to which I responded that there were no known white people in my family. Perhaps, I thought, she had never experienced someone like me, had never seen the films “Pinky,” and “Imitation of Life,” or did not understand that people of color do not count those who forced our great-grandmothers, or other relatives, sexually as “family.” But I thought she was intelligent enough to understand. Wrong.

At the interview I had given her a photo of George Fowler Sr. steering the gondola with Thomas Moran’s wife and daughter as passengers. On the following Wednesday, I received a frantic call from Ms. Silverman stating that the photo could not be run because “everyone in the (Star) office says it’s a photo of a white man.” Shocked, dismayed, and unbelieving, I did Ms. Silverman’s job for her by citing the museum reference chapter and verse and telling her where she could find it online. 

I attended the Freetown meeting only to be interviewed by the team of interviewers and to share my unique — even karmic — experiences as a member of the Freetown community. I was not interviewed by Ms. Silverman. My Freetown experiences started because I was raised in the foster home of Nellie LaPorte (God’s gift to children) and her husband, Francis, who were related to the Fowler family by Joe LaPorte’s marriage to the daughter of George Fowler Sr. 

It was not until I was near 40 years old that I learned that my Devine family were descended from William Fowler, George Fowler Sr.’s, grandfather. And it was not until several years after that that I learned that, on my mother’s side, I was related to, or associated with, a large part of the black community from Dinwiddie County, Va. 

No one who has not experienced it knows the deep existential pain and suffering of not knowing who you are. Nor does anyone who has not experienced it know the absolute joy of being delivered from that hell by the hand of God acting to reveal not only your identity but the meaning you were placed in a specific place at a specific time and for specific purposes.

Ms. Silverman once thought George Fowler Sr. looked like a white man. In her article, she reported that he is believed to be the last “full-blood” Montaukett — a term that is meaningless to us in the tribal context today. I would suggest she read the description of his father, which I referred her to two years ago, in the transcript of the New York Supreme Court case that took our rights away. I think she will learn something.

Ms. Silverman said we found cousins that “we never knew existed.” That’s just hogwash. All the Amityville Fowlers, Brewsters, and Devines are my relatives and we may not have met one another, but we all know that fact. 

Finally, I want to be perfectly clear. It appalls me, at a time of particularly dangerous racial discontent, violence, and misconceptions, that such an article could be written in the 21st century. I am who I am, and who I say I am. If anyone does not believe it because they have racial preconceptions that make it impossible for them to accept that, it’s too damned bad! 

 Truly yours,

 JIM DEVINE

Product of Colonialism

Brookhaven

July 25, 2016

Dear East Hampton Star,

I greatly appreciate your coverage of our Mapping Memories of Freetown event, held on July 17 at the East Hampton Historical Farm Museum. Our goal for the event was to draw attention to the Freetown neighborhood and to bring past and present residents together with descendants to begin a discussion of the diverse history and experiences of the Freetown neighborhood.

The event was also designed, in part, to inform the local community about the importance of the Fowler-Horton house to Native American history and to the history of the Freetown neighborhood and to gather community feedback about preservation and interpretation of the site to guide the town in its future plans with the site. 

This event marked the beginning of our broader research into the reconstruction of Freetown history from a community perspective. Through the collection of oral histories and mapping of residents’ and descendants’ memories, we hope to explore the lived experiences within this working-class neighborhood, where the intersectionality of race and class have deep, historical roots. Although our research is locally based, we believe that the stories and histories of Freetown have a broader implication for understanding American working-class history.

I was disappointed to see that so much of your article covering our event focused on race and the physical features of Long Island Native American people. Native American identity is not a purely racial category. Native tribes are not racial groups. In fact, the racialization of Native American people by non-native people is a product of colonialism that unfortunately continues to negatively impact Native American identity, culture, and political autonomy. 

Make no mistake: Race affects the lived experiences of native and non-native people, but not as an exclusively biological category. Race is rather a social category — a means through which inequality can be validated based on physical features. 

Furthermore, by emphasizing the physical features of Montaukett and other native people in your article, you are detracting from the larger goal of the event, which was to begin a discussion of a more inclusive American history. The same can be said for your tangential remark on the “disputed chiefs” narrative: What relevance does this have to the reconstruction of an inclusive Freetown history, at an event where native and non-native people arrived to take part in the day’s events? 

Again, I do appreciate your willingness to cover our event, and for allowing me the space to talk about some of these historical issues in greater depth. It is very important to have accurate information about this shared with the public. 

I also hope to correct two other errors in your article: I completed my doctorate at the City University of New York Graduate Center, not at Farmingdale State College. I also did not excavate the Indian Fields site; the site was investigated by archaeologists in the 1970s, and I used the archaeological data from their excavations for my dissertation on Montaukett history at Indian Fields and Freetown in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Sincerely,

ALLISON MANFRA McGOVERN

Farmingdale State College

Rules of the Road

East Hampton

July 19, 2016

Dear Editor,

It’s me again, the guy who likes to complain about the share-the-road myth. Those who have read my past letters on the subject know my basic position. For those who don’t, in a nutshell it’s that “share the road” is only possible in certain places in our area and then only if everyone follows the rules of the road. For example, I cannot fathom how you can expect bicycles and cars to share a narrow road with little (six inches or less) or no shoulder, particularly if there is no grass margin. Yet on several such roads there are signs saying “bicycle path” or “share the road.” I won’t hash out old ground — you can probably dig up my old letters in the Star archive if you really want to read them.

What I do want to remind people of is that there are too many people, both visitors and locals — bicycle riders, motorcyclists, auto drivers, joggers, and pedestrians — who simply ignore or just don’t know the basic rules of the road. These rules were developed for everyone’s safety and to make sure everyone can have a good time and stay alive and in one piece. So far this year, I came around a blind curve on Scuttlehole Road in Southampton Town (luckily only at 20 miles per hour) to find an entire group of 20 or so motorcycles crossing the road all at once. They had a stop sign and I did not. The posted limit is 35 m.p.h., but most people take that road 10 or even 20 m.p.h. faster. Had I been going any faster, I would probably have not been able to stop in time.

The other day on a side street by the East Hampton I.G.A., I was stopped behind another car at a stop sign. A cyclist on a racing bike came out of nowhere from behind me and went right out, ignoring the stop sign, and nearly got hit by the car, which was making a right turn. Even if the driver did see the bicycle, the cyclist was going too fast for the driver to react, and it’s only by dumb luck that there was not an accident. I also watched as the same cyclist went through a red light across four lanes of Pantigo Road traffic onto Egypt Lane without even pausing or slowing down. 

Twice this summer I have witnessed cycling groups flying out of the side street by what is now Osteria Salina (previously Saracen) onto Montauk Highway without even pausing at the stop sign. 

Every time I drive past the side street by the church across from CVS and the post office, I keep my hand on the horn, because all too often autos, bicycles, and even joggers don’t stop or even pause at the stop sign. 

I think you get the picture. What I want to stress is that though all the websites and tourist brochures may talk about how fantastic our area is for riding, what they fail to mention is that only certain roads are really wide enough to be properly shared — Montauk Highway (Route 27) and Route 114 come to mind as the best ones. Most of our back roads are riddled with potholes, and what little margin there may be is often cracked or littered with pebbles or sand, which racing and touring bicycles generally need to avoid. 

Thanks to our swelling summer population, there is no such thing as a truly quiet back road anymore, and both cyclists and cars must count on encountering one another here. It’s also here that both cars and bicycles are most likely to ignore traffic regulations such as speed limits and stop signs. And yet many of these roads, which are not really bicycle-friendly (or car-friendly, for that matter), are designated bike paths. Please tell me how this makes any sense. 

I was once an avid bicycle rider. My family has owned a house here since the 1960s and I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s riding to Montauk every weekend if I could. That stopped in the late 1980s when cars began running bicycles off the road. I myself was run off the road six times on purpose. I stopped riding altogether by 1991 because I was having too many close calls with crazy drivers.

While I agree that there is nothing better than an afternoon on a bicycle, unless it’s an afternoon of fishing, such activities should be pursued with both safety and comfort of others in mind. That’s what Share the Road generally means. And the fact that you can do something doesn’t mean it’s actually a good idea, like bringing a bucket of chum on a diving excursion in shark-infested waters. 

Well, that’s enough. Thanks as always for reading. Wishes to all for a sane and safe rest of summer.

MATT HARNICK

On the Street

East Hampton

July 24, 2016

To the Editor:

If you’re walking on Newtown Lane past the ice cream store, Zimmerman and Cittanuova, Calypso and Michael Kors, you will be sure to encounter the rogue retailer Orogold. You will be faced with having to interact with the fake, duly concerned salespeople and forced to sample their less than perfect face creams. On the street. It’s the worst form of business practice one can encounter. Yet oh, so clever.

You will be handed a pack of cream, and if you take it they will offer you more. If you stop, you’re doomed. Advice is to smile and keep walking. It’s their phony business model, attempting to lure you into the store. They do it everywhere, even in Barcelona. You stop and wait while they retrieve another packet of “gold” for you. And if you do stop, they notice they can help your eyes in particular. They will vulture-like scan you, promising you youth. Invite you inside to wait.

If you’ve been waiting for the packet it means you’re already inside sitting on a chair with a half facial about to begin. And you wonder how did this happen. A $3,000 number is about to resonate all over your skin dilemma. 

You’ve been had! None of the products work. Speaking from one who has had this happen. Stick with Chanel or Clarins. This product and their insane sales practice should be illegal.

Once inside you will be looking for an escape route, I promise you. 

We don’t need this type of bad business, especially in our town. I’ve surveyed women who say they look away when passing the store. Everyone says the same thing. It’s annoying, imposing, and rude. And our town has no idea this is their business model — as usual. Hawking on the street. 

It doesn’t belong here. I suggest we ask them to either keep themselves and their samples inside where they belong or leave. 

Orogold, please go back to where you came from. It’s beneath us. Because I prefer not to turn my head to avoid bad behavior. 

JACKIE LEAK

Price of Admission

Amagansett

July 25, 2016

Dear Mr. Rattray:

I may never know why you butchered the ending of my previous letter, rendering it virtually incomprehensible — especially since the dialogue quoted therein is and was virtually verbatim. Maybe that was your birthday surprise for me. How can I thank you?

But that’s not why I’m writing, Mr. Rattray. Nor am I writing to share my special insights on the current political landscape. If you close your eyes and try to imagine what I’m thinking and feeling, you will be correct. Same goes for my 48 readers (yes, the number is ticking up again. Welcome back!).

I’m writing to comment on a short piece I recently read in the current issue of HC&G (Hamptons Cottages and Gardens, if you don’t know: “Celebrating 15 Stylish Seasons”!). The item I’m referring to appeared under the sub-headline “Party With the Jet Set,” which talked about the newly opened Pierre’s Upstairs, an exclusive dining and cocktail lounge above, of course, Pierre’s restaurant in Bridgehampton. 

It will be “quiet, classy, and elegant, like Saint Tropez, with international lounge music,” according to Pierre Weber, its owner. I love international lounge music and sometimes listen to the Hotel Costes radio station on Pandora!

A lifetime membership, according to the publicity blurb, will cost $12,000 per couple, but an annual membership is just $6,000 per couple for a one-time joining fee and “yearly dues of $2,000. Plus, lifetime members are allowed to bring up to three (3) guests when they come, or two (2) guests for annual members.” Wanna go in together on a lifetime membership, Mr. Rattray? Let’s do it!

To quote my new favorite topical comedian, Sebastian Maniscalco, “Aren’t you embarrassed?” Imagine being among the very first members, seated upstairs, grooving on international lounge music, waiting to see who ponied up for the price of admission. And wondering, “Hmm, did they go for the lifetime, or just the one-year? I couldn’t possibly ask. Bet it was a year. Suckers.”

Far be it from me to be hatin’ on the friendly patrons of Pierre’s. Although that’s what I just did, now that I reread the above, so apologies to all — let’s meet for a cocktail at the Corner Bar in Sag Harbor. Drinks on me!

Should social elitism go unchallenged, Mr. Rattray? No, it should not.

Let me report that I’ve recently initiated discussions with the ownership of Brent’s General Store, which, unlike Pierre’s, is located south of the highway at the gateway to fabulous Amagansett.

What is being proposed is a private “club” area upstairs in the iconic building, where frequent customers of the establishment will be able to dine and meet in comfort and privacy, perhaps discussing the remaining work of the day, whether completion of a concrete pour for a new building, installation of a septic or irrigation system, planting a hedge row, whatever.

Lifetime members of the Brent’s Lounge will pay a one-time fee of $75 — less than the cost of one admission to a Leon Russell show at the Talkhouse. Members will be able to bring as many guests as they want, provided they are over the age of 3. 

Music playing in the Brent’s Lounge will alternate between WLNG (but no “Swap and Shop”) and WEHM (but no “Unplugged” crap). Members will be able to bring their bagels, egg sandwiches, potato salads, ham and Swiss on a roll, and Brent’s legendary fried chicken buckets up to the lounge, where a fresh coffee station will await them. (A modest “corking” fee will be charged to those bringing their own Thermoses or water bottles.)

Will Brent’s Lounge take off? Too soon to tell. I’ll certainly keep you updated on my discussions with ownership. I will say that my own colleagues are excited to be among the first members, if given the opportunity. And what I’m saying to them is, “Hey, capacity of the room is going to be 86, so every time you pop in for a lottery ticket, an Irish Times, or a six-pack, ask about the lounge!”

Members only,

LYLE GREENFIELD

‘Off the Table’?

Springs

July 24, 2016

Dear Mr. Rattray,

I was startled to see last week’s headline “C.D.C.H. Space Off Table.” Really? C.D.C.H., the Child Development Center of the Hamptons, is off the table? Memo to the Springs School Board and its lawyers: Not so fast, guys.

Ms. Dayton is new to the Springs School Board, having served only one year before becoming president this month. So, let me give her some advice.

First, the Springs community does not agree that the C.D.C.H. solution is off the table. We expect our elected school board officials and our elected public representatives to work togethero find a way to make C.D.C.H. work for the people of Springs. The board must reach out to Senator LaValle and Assemblyman Thiele today.

Second, the board’s law firm, Ingerman and Smith, may have been hired by the school board, but they are paid by Springs taxpayers. While lawyers need to give good legal advice to their clients, capable, serious, independent lawyers also work very hard to find ways to make difficult or seemingly impossible situations work. If Ingerman and Smith is not capable of this, they need to be replaced. An independent professional law firm that has the interests of not only the school board, students, parents, and staff, but also the taxpayers, needs to be retained. There are many law firms in this state and country; the board needs to find a better one, and fast.

Third, if school districts can only lease property from one another, the board needs to work the phones and talk to, I believe, the Wainscott School District to see how an arrangement can be made.

Fourth, if having a contract with Scope Education Services allows the Springs School to use space at the Most Holy Trinity building, then the board needs to figure out a way to get Scope or other nonprofits to act in the same capacity for the C.D.C.H. space. I am confident some Springs residents would be willing to create such a nonprofit if it would advance the C.D.C.H. solution. Just let us know. 

Ms. Dayton advises Springs residents to adopt a wait-and-see approach‚ while the board turns its full attention to an expensive and grandiose project. With a possible cost of $35 million to Springs taxpayers, Madam President, we don’t have time to wait. 

With BOCES data showing a reduction in student population over the next years, with the current superintendent leaving by the end of this year, and, of course, with the conflicted selection of the architectural contractor, the board needs to pursue vigorously and exhaust every possible alternative solution to the school’s current and future space issues before it embarks on an expensive and compromised solution.

CAROLE CAMPOLO

A Legal Technicality

Springs

July 22, 2016

To the Editor:

The Springs School Board’s lawyers have advised that it cannot take over the Child Development Center property because it’s out of the Springs School District’s boundaries. So we have a school supposedly bursting at the seams unable to take over an existing vacant school property that would meet the district’s current need for space. Ironically, the district has been busing 30 students to that same school building for years. Apparently that was okay, because the Child Development Center was run by another legal entity.

This is absurd. A legal technicality is standing in the way of an obvious solution that could alleviate crowding in a lot shorter time frame than the obviously preferred school board solution, which is to stick Springs taxpayers with the cost of a new school building. Do you think maybe our legislators and other marvelous legal minds could come up with a middle-ground solution? Lease or rent the property? Seek a one-time exception to the regulation (which makes no sense anyway)? Can our representatives in Albany get on this and pass up a few ribbon-cuttings to do the people’s business?

Ruling out the C.D.C.H. option quickly, its tracks covered by its attorney’s opinion, the board has rushed to begin planning for this new school with contracts steered toward a firm that seems to have a very favored position in the minds of board members. We’re talking about a building that will not be ready for two years, minimum, and that will further burden Springs taxpayers, who already carry the major cost of educating this town’s children.

Topping off this lunacy, we’ve learned that the crowding at the Springs School is peaking and that enrollment will drop over the next few years. But the empire-builders will have their new school, and that’s all that’s important.

JON CLEMENS

Leo v. General Electric

Springs

July 11, 2016

Dear David,

It was a pleasure to read Sidney B. Silverman’s recollections of the polychlorinated biphenyl lawsuit against General Electric, which resulted in over 600 settlements to fishermen who had been adversely affected by G.E.’s dumping of PCBs in the upper Hudson River. Sid conducted a masterful class action suit against as formidable an opponent as one can find. At the very end, G.E. agreed to an out-of-court settlement in order to avoid a jury trial before a jury made up of Suffolk County residents, very many of whom would have been related to commercial fishermen. The case, by the way, is identified as Leo v. General Electric Co., if anyone wants to look it up.

To the fishermen badly hurt by the closing of the striped bass fishery, many settlements were in amounts ranging from $50,000 to $180,000, and enabled many commercial fishermen to buy new gear and boats and to enter other fisheries, such as lobstering and conch-potting. Today, striped bass are no longer tainted by the PCBs that were dumped in the river, the spoil sites having long ago been silted over, so the PCBs do not enter the marine food chain.

One small point of correction: It was my father who had a lifelong career as a “Mad Man” at the advertising firm of B.B.D.O., then situated at 483 Madison Avenue. Me, his son, had a career as a book editor (last at Grove Press) before becoming a commercial fisherman in 1978.

Best regards,

ARNOLD LEO

Secretary

East Hampton Baymen’s Association

Action on Water Quality

Wainscott

July 25, 2016

Dear David,

As a member of the East Hampton Wastewater Management Advisory Committee that studied East Hampton’s water quality problems for six months, I was dismayed by your editorial (“The Gift Horse Needs Examination”) urging “waiting until next year, or the year after that” before authorizing using a portion of C.P.F. money for water quality projects. Although your concerns about further development and the fallibility of elected officials (not necessarily the current ones) are generally valid, to defer funding because of those concerns would be the proverbial tail wagging the dog. 

Whether one accepts the Lombardo reports on townwide wastewater management in their entirety or not, one cannot help but conclude that the vast majority of septic systems and cesspools polluting our water bodies and our drinking water are individual systems for single-family homes.

• Over 60 percent of approximately 20,000 developed properties in East Hampton may still be using cesspools, which have not been permitted since 1973.

• Over 8,000 properties may be contributing to excessive nitrogen loading of the town’s water bodies, according to Lombardo’s analysis.

• At least 3,000 properties with a variety of “wastewater needs” can be addressed with individual on-site wastewater treatment, according to the Lombardo reports.

• Over 2,000 large-capacity systems are subject to regulations that, if enforced, could require them to upgrade to systems that filter out nitrogen and many other impurities. The Suffolk County Health Department has already approved advanced treatment systems for them.

• Over 1,000 properties may have possible drinking water problems due to small lot size, and therefore inadequate separation of wells and septic systems. (The committee believes that another 1,279 properties with high groundwater may be at risk.)

By comparison, just 656 properties in Montauk and East Hampton Village, out of approximately 20,000 developed properties townwide, have been recommended for community wastewater systems.

Enforcement of existing regulations should be sufficient to incorporate the latest nitrogen-reducing technology into large-capacity systems serving businesses, apartment buildings, high-density housing, schools, and other organizations that produce 1,000 gallons or more of waste per day, without using C.P.F. money.

Although impairment of our water bodies is the most visible result of obsolete wastewater systems, the most disturbing aspect is that cesspools and malfunctioning septic systems have beendraining into our drinking water aquifers for over a century. And the travel time of wastewater from septic or cesspool to aquifer can exceed 50 years. That means that even if we fixed every cesspool and septic system on the East End today, the quality of our drinking water would continue to deteriorate for years to come!

The cost of upgrading an unknown number of individual septic systems and cesspools in East Hampton could be hundreds of millions of dollars. Some believe that individual homeowners should bear 100 percent of the cost of upgrading to their septic systems. But this begs the question of how or whether those on limited income would pay the cost. Others therefore, and I count myself among them, believe that only a public-private partnership can achieve results on such a large scale within an acceptable time frame.

So, while the concerns you have raised about the use of community preservation funds may be valid, I believe they pale in comparison to the damage that will be done by delaying action on water quality for even a year. And one year’s delay could lead to another and another and so on. The committee recommended several action items to address public health concerns as well as individual watershed studies, which also cost money. Some of us feel that an even more aggressive timetable is called for, which will not happen without funding. 

With a 2-percent cap on tax increases and an administration trying to reduce the town’s debt burden, there is no comparable source of funds on the scale of C.P.F. receipts to help finance desperately needed solutions to townwide surface and drinking water pollution. 

PETER A. WADSWORTH

Black Lives Matter

East Hampton

July 21, 2016

Dear David,

Black Lives Matter is a poor representation of blacks in America, including black families in Bridgehampton and East Hampton. If you ask people, mostly black, who live in the worst areas of New York City, who they are afraid of, they would say each other, not the cops. Until that truth is addressed, Black Lives Matter is a fraudulent organization funded by liberal elitists who want to perpetuate the fallen state of fatherless black families, to maintain their political careers.

Don’t get fooled again,

DANIEL EARL EVANS

Explosive Documentary

East Hampton

July 24, 2016

To the Editor:

Sensing it was important to take the trip, I traveled an hour from East Hampton to the U.A. Hampton Bays movie theater on Saturday night. Instead of spending my dollar to see what pets do when we are at work, I yielded to the hottest political wake-up call since the book “Clinton Cash,” by Peter Schweizer. Mine eyes have seen the glory of Hillary’s America! 

Dinesh D’Souza, fresh out of prison, has returned to the cinematic stage with another explosive documentary, “Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party” (PG-13). Wow, give the kids a real history lesson on the leaders of the Democratic Party, from its founder, President Andrew Jackson, to President Obama. Amazing facts emerge as to the historical Congressional voting records that document the Democratic Party’s adamant opposition to freeing black slaves, its unyielding resistance to women’s civil liberties, its support and participation in the Ku Klux Klan, and its Democratic Supreme Court Justice constitutional ruling to sterilize “the undesirables.” 

“The Democratic Party has been the party of slavery, segregation, lynchings, forced sterilization, and I could go on,” says D’Souza in an interview with Vanity Fair. “People don’t know this.”

The myths that the Democrats have a long history of supporting blacks, immigrants, and women’s civil rights are false, according to D’Souza, the creator of this riveting documentary — factually false. Black lives apparently never mattered to the Democrats. Moreover, the documentary shows, in order to get the support of the growing black voter demographics, Southern white President Lyndon B. Johnson purposely spun the tale so that the Democrats in the 20th century would be perceived as the party of social justice and the Republicans would be perceived as the party of racism. D’Souza’s research shows that the opposite is true. It has been the Republicans all along, and still to this day, who have stood by the principle of “natural rights,” given by the Creator to all men and women in America.

I congratulate United Artists movie chain for it openness to show “Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party.” The next movie I would like to see playing in East Hampton U.A. movie theater is “Vaxxed,” a socially critical documentary that is whizzing through the nation’s theaters like a rogue planet. Having been selected this year for Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Film Festival, then suddenly yanked the day before its premier showing, “Vaxxed” has since become the film to see, documenting the hard evidence of fraud committed by the Centers for Disease Control whistleblower scientist, Dr. William Thompson, and his co-authors, at the instruction of the C.D.C. administration, to deep-six the damning data that there is indeed a link between vaccines and autism. 

Every physician, every parent, those who vaccinate and those who don’t, must see “VAaxxed” and wake up to another corruption at the federal level whose over-the-top vaccine schedule of 49 vaccine doses by the time a child is 6 years old is the fundamental cause of the autism epidemic that will reach one out of two children by the year 2032, if not stopped, according to the M.I.T. researcher Stephanie Seneff. And every American patriot must see “Hillary’s America: The Secret of the Democratic Party,” which is extended at the U.A. Hampton Bays 5 movie theater through tonight, show times at 1:15, 4, 6:45, and 9:30.

EILEEN DANNEMAN

A Race to the Bottom

East Hampton

July 25, 2016

To the Editor:

In last week’s issue of The Star, Jay McGlynn takes Donald Trump to task for his verisimilitude, or lack thereof, as if Hillary Clinton is a bastion of veracity herself. News flash: This is politics. They all lie. Hillary misremembered being shot at on the tarmac while disembarking with her daughter, Chelsea, in Afghanistan. She lied directly about deleting her emails. Worst of all, she lied to the victims’ families of the Benghazi attacks, sticking to the fictitious spin story of a viral YouTube video when she knew for a fact it wasn’t true. The woman has no soul.

This letter is not an endorsement of Trump; it only aims to keep things in perspective. Sadly, we are left with deciding whose lies are the least egregious. This presidential election is a race to the bottom, and you will have to vote your conscience as to which swamp you want to swim in. You have a choice between a liar and a criminal or just a liar; it’s sort of like deciding whether you prefer the septic tank or the cesspool. 

Notable in Mr. McGlynn’s letter is the comparison of today’s present-day hostility toward Muslim immigrants for “Catholics and Mexicans for Germans and Irish” immigrants of the past two centuries. Here’s another news flash, the aforementioned immigrants of yesteryear were not donning suicide vests intending to blow up American citizens and creating havoc on their adopted homeland. Instead, they worked hard and willingly assimilated into our society and did not wish to institute their cultural laws into our society. 

According to the Koran, all non-Muslims are Kafir. According to the Koran, the Kafir is to be hated, mocked, enslaved, tortured, and worse. It is perfectly acceptable to lie to a non-believer as they are basically considered subhuman. Treaties with Kafir are of no consequence in the land of Islam, it is valid only until it is not, as determined by a believer. These are the teachings of Mohammad. Roughly 60 percent of the Koran delves into the treatment of the Kafir according to their prophet. 

What part of the liberal mind-set does not understand this? The Islamic world is still stuck in the medieval ages and even moderate Muslims have to filter through all this hate, subjugation, and misogyny. It is not hard for the depressed and disenfranchised to become radicalized. On this, Trump is correct: Until we can figure out what to do with this problem extreme caution needs to be taken. This is not scare tactics, it is simple common sense. Protect our citizens first. 

JOHN PORTA

To a New Day

Southold

July 16, 2016

To the Editor: 

I was in the hospital for a long time, almost two months. I had viral pneumonia and couldn’t get air to the brain. They put me in an induced coma and attached me to I.U.s and tubes were placed down my throat and up my nose. 

One minute I was in the safety of my home, unable to write to The Star and couldn’t understand why. I didn’t realize I was so sick, and couldn’t get the words out. My son recognized it and brought me to the hospital in Riverhead, where I was in I.C.U. for a while. Family stood around and cried. The doctor told them I wasn’t going to live though the night, but there was a miracle and I did.

He told them I was too much weight for my small frame and I had to lose in order to breathe. Being on oxygen for many weeks, I lost 35 pounds! I wasn’t to get down to high school weight. They suggested a tracheotomy. I was almost going to go through with it, and had a complete turnaround and refused. That too was a miracle.

I was on a C-PAP [continuous positive airway pressure] machine for weeks. It tore a part of my nose and skin was hanging. A nurse knew what to do and pulled on it about a foot and my nose went back to perfect condition, another miracle.

The last room I was in was the best. I got over being scared, and my roomie’s name was next to mine on my family roots. It was really fun to find out, and therapy was. The exercise took my pain away and I began to like the therapists. I was in therapy for a long time and changed from night to a new day. 

Now I am home, and it is great, I can write again. You don’t know how that makes me feel, to write The Star again.

Regards, 

ANITA FAGAN