Letters to the Editor: 10.29.15

Looking for More Letters to the Editor? Click by category this week:

• Letters on the upcoming town board races

• Letters on the trustee election

• Letters related to the East Hampton Airport

• Letters on the proposed rental registry

E. Virgil Conway

Montauk

October 26, 2015

To the Editor,

Did you ever know a person of impeccable moral fiber, natural gravitas, keen wit and intelligence, yet always able and willing to laugh at his own foibles and mistakes?

A person who would meet every new day with joy, natural optimism, and a keen unshakeable belief in God, country, and the American way?

A person who enormously succeeded at each and every challenge and goal throughout life, and would eagerly and joyously share this good fortune in every way and manner possible?

A person who believed in love, responsibility, commitment, service, and practiced these simple virtues every single day of his life?

A person who others were immensely proud to call a friend, yet prouder still knowing he called you one too?

Did you ever know such a person?

I did: E. Virgil Conway, 1929-2015.

TOM BOGDAN

For My Husband

East Hampton

October 26, 2015

To the Editor,

I, with my children and extended family, would like to thank the many people who showed their love and respect for my husband, Tom Miller, after his death on Oct. 12.

The Amagansett and East Hampton Fire Departments, East Hampton Town and Village Police Benevolent Associations, and surrounding fire departments honored Tom with a caring event and reception at the Amagansett Firehouse. The outpouring of affection by the community as a whole touched me and was a caring tribute for our children to experience.

You all remain close to our hearts as we learn to live without Tom’s strong presence.

LIANNE MILLER

And family

In Need of Volunteers

East Hampton

October 23, 2015

Dear David,

East Hampton Meals on Wheels would like to thank East Hampton’s newest business, Stop and Shop, for their donation of $2,000, which was presented to us at their ribbon-cutting ceremony on Oct. 16. We are grateful that a newcomer to our community recognizes the vital service we provide to our homebound residents. We wish them well and look forward to their future support.

Meals on Wheels is currently in need of volunteers to pack and deliver meals each morning. Most volunteers commit to about two hours per week, but substitutes are also needed. We currently deliver meals to 65 clients throughout the town.

If you are interested in joining our wonderful group of volunteers who every day make a difference in the lives of the homebound, or would like to support us financially, please call the office, 329-1669, or visit our website, ehmealsonwheels.org.

Sincerely,

FRANK EIPPER

Acting President

Wonderful Movies

Southampton

October 25, 2015

To the Editor:

Our annual Hamptons International Film Festival brought us some wonderful movies and insight into the world as it is in 2015. “Palio,” about the famous Italian horse race held within the walls of the beautiful Tuscany city of Siena, was one of the best films. For 800 years this race has occupied the passion and the consciousness of Siena’s citizens. There are 17 contradas, or districts, in Siena that are each assigned a horse by a lottery drawing. The contradas then choose and pay jockeys to ride their horses. Colorful traditional clothing, the contradas’ anthems, their societal interactions, and the history of the palio are well portrayed in this fascinating movie.

The conduct of the race itself must come from its medieval origins, as the jockeys use their whips (made from a precious organ of an ox) to beat the other jockeys and horses, besides whipping their own steed onward. In addition, there is bribing going on right up to the time the race begins, to block enemy horses. Corruption is expected, whilst losing jockeys sometimes are attacked and/or manhandled by disappointed contrada members. Great stories are told by some of the past jockeys concerning their palio experiences, both good and bad.

My choice for the best work of the festival was the animated “Fulfilament,” about a different kind of lightbulb popping into existence. Each frame is exquisite in its composition, color, and draftsmanship, besides being a tale of discovery and visual transition running for eight beautiful minutes.

“Chuck Norris vs. Communism” portrayed Romania in the latter 20th century, when this European country was practically sealed off from the rest of the world. When the Communists took over, Romania had two television stations. One station was immediately eliminated, and the other become a propaganda tool, only broadcasting two hours per day. Romanians became starved for visions of the outside world, with smuggled videos filling the vacuum. It didn’t matter how fine each movie was. The clothes, the culture, the buildings, the music, the heroes and heroines gave people hope and encouragement as they struggled each day to survive in their impoverished, isolated country. One woman, Irina Nistor, gave Romanians comfort as she dubbed 3,000 movies, using her female voice for both male and female characters, translating all curse words as either “go to hell” or “get lost.”

I thought “The Russian Woodpecker” would address the environmental state of Chernobyl after the nuclear power disaster there in 1986. However, the title actually refers to a gigantic radar structure that didn’t work very well to detect incoming missiles and vessels, that was constructed before the nuclear reactor came into existence, at twice the cost. This award-winning movie presents the case that the “accident” that has been responsible for more than one million premature deaths from dispersed radiation actually was premeditated, via the head of the Soviet Atomic Energy Commission ordering an experiment that the reactor’s day crew refused to perform. But the night crew agreed to implement it. The title also refers to the characteristic sound that can be detected by receivers of radio waves, that jams communication in certain countries.

Michael Moore’s “Where to Invade Next” won the audience award for documentary film. It is not a military or anti-military movie, but an inspiring one, the camera going to female-run Icelandic banks, Norwegian prisons, to Italian employees discussing their benefit packages, showing how good things are going on out there in world beyond U.S.A. borders, bringing the images and ideas home via the silver screen.

“Last Day of Freedom” is an animated short that won the jury documentary award, depicting a black brother’s narrated story of his Vietnam P.T.S.D. younger brother’s unfortunately fraught life, and how he was treated after surrendering to authorities in California after committing a murder when he was mentally unstrung. He ended up with a handsome Caucasian blond-haired (but alcoholic) public defender who called his client the N-word, not wanting any blacks on the jury that sentenced him to death by fatal injection, which does transpire in the movie.

CONRAD MILLER

A FOIL Request

Springs

October 26, 2015

To the Editor,

The Springs School Board would like to address the concerns expressed by Mary Jane Arceri in her letter to the editor in the Oct. 22 edition of The Star.

Ms. Arceri, a retired teacher from the Springs School, submitted a FOIL request to the school and believed she had not been responded to in the legally given amount of time (five days). This was due to a misunderstanding on the part of our new district clerk, who thought that a verbal acknowledgement of receipt to a former colleague would suffice since Ms. Arceri had handed in her request form in person. It has been our practice to always provide a prompt, written acknowledgement, and going forward everyone, without exception, will receive one.

The district has up to 20 days to release the documents to the requester and Ms. Arceri received the information she asked for within that time frame. Had the district needed more than 20 days, we would have followed the law and sent a notice stating we needed more time, the reason why, and with the anticipated date they would be available.

New York State FOIL regulations are found on the Department of State website (dos.ny.gov), and our proscribed response for FOIL requests is located in Springs School Policy #1120 “School District Records,” the updates for which were formally adopted at the Oct. 19 meeting after an initial read-through at the Oct. 5 meeting. Ms. Arceri had initially raised her concerns at the Oct. 5 meeting, and after looking into the situation, we publicly responded to them at the meeting last week. It is unfortunate that our Monday night meeting was after your deadline for letters to the editor.

We take our taxpayers’ requests for information and our legal responsibilities very seriously, and we are confident that all future requests will be met in a smooth and timely manner.

Sincerely,

BARBARA DAYTON

Springs School Board Member

They Will Eat It

East Rockaway

October 26, 2015

Dear Editor,

We all owe our thanks to Marguerite Wolffsohn, as reported in the Oct. 15 edition of The Star, regarding the devastation that the local deer population is doing to our natural habitat. Simply put, if the deer can reach it, they will eat it. Thus, all the seeds that have germinated from trees, and other natural fauna, will be gone.

Can we for once put aside all the chest-beating on the part of the poor little deer and institute an intelligent hunting season? I remember a time in East Hampton when there was high-protein food in the larder for local hunters. Please, let’s be sensible and bring that back.

Sincerely,

STEVE HARWIN

Overabundant Deer

East Hampton

October 23, 2015

To the Editor:

The evidence about the impact of excessive herbivory on forests is heavily studied, scientific, and very strong.

Aldo Leopold, father of the field of ecology, began to worry about Wisconsin’s forests in the 1940s, and spent much of the last decade of his life trying to convince hunters and game officials to thin Wisconsin’s deer herds. In his famous and often quoted essay “Thinking Like a Mountain,” dated 1949, Leopold writes:

“I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise. In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers.”

“I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades.”

Since 1949, countless ecologists across the country have studied the effect of excessive herbivory on forests. Erecting tall fencing that excludes deer from a test plot and then watching to see what happens over time, inside and outside the fence, is the classic study. This has been done in temperate-zone forests across the United States and in the rest of the world, and there are countless such scholarly studies that one can find simply by searching the web for “deer exclosure studies.”

Another way to understand the impact of overabundant deer on forests is to compare the botanical composition of places where deer densities are low with similar areas where they are high. The Menominee Indian Reservation occupies an area of roughly 354 square miles in Wisconsin. The reservation always has permitted year-round deer hunting by members of its tribe, because venison is a key part of tribe members’ diets. Deer densities on the reservation are a fraction of that in the rest of the state and close to what ecologists deem ideal: 12 per square mile. Not surprisingly, botanical surveys of the reservation demonstrate a much richer abundance of native orchids, trillium, shrubs, and trees of various sizes, as well as a dense understory. This is a place where botanists note that one can’t see more than five feet into the understory.

The biologist Robert Askins, in his book “Saving the World’s Deciduous Forests” (Yale University Press, 2014), discusses the many points of pressure threatening today’s deciduous forests, deer among them. He points out that deer can be important in sustaining biological diversity in forests if their density is not too high. (The Menominee Indian Reservation is one such place.) But in many landscapes around the world, top predators have disappeared, with the result that excessive herbivory is a very real threat and danger to the survival of forest ecosystems and to the life they sustain when healthy. (Songbirds that nest and forage in the forest understory have declined severely, by up to 70 percent, in the 40 years covered by Audubon’s bird counts.) Askins points out that mature canopy trees will support high deer densities even as the understory disappears. Therefore, he concludes that humans have no choice but to manage deer populations at low densities in order to protect a diverse forest ecosystem.

The forests of the South Fork were cut to provide firewood to New York City and almost disappeared by the turn of the 20th century. Over the last 100 years they regrew, to be assaulted again by rampant real estate development that began in the 1960s and continues today. What remains of our forests, much of it protected now in preserves, is very definitely weakened by a deer population that the forest ultimately cannot sustain. Sadly, we may lose both if we do nothing.

JULIE SAKELLARIADIS

Really Scary Stuff

East Hampton

October 23, 2015

Dear Editor,

I was never scared of all the witches, zombies, and assorted goblins wandering around on Halloween. What really used to scare me was the meat industry. This is the industry that mutilates, cages, and butchers billions of cows, pigs, and other feeling animals, that exposes thousands of undocumented workers to crippling workplace injuries at slave wages, that exploits farmers and ranchers by dictating wholesale prices, then jails those who document its abuses through unconstitutional “ag-gag” laws.

It’s the industry that generates more water pollution than any other human activity and more greenhouse gases than transportation, then promotes world hunger by feeding nutritious corn and soybeans to animals. It’s the industry that threatens our public health with increased risk of killer diseases, that creates antibiotic-resistant pathogens by feeding antibiotics to animals, then bullies health authorities to remove anti-meat warnings from their public messages.

Now, that’s really scary stuff. But, instead of being scared, I decided to fight back by dropping animal products from my menu. I am no longer scared of the meat industry, and I invite everyone to join me.

EDWIN HORATH

Bigger and Worse

Amagansett

October 26, 2015

To the Editor:

Well, well. The Clintons come to Amagansett and suddenly emails start disappearing here too.

The zoning board apparently can’t keep its website functional to receive emailed comments and probably wouldn’t read emails from the public anyway. How convenient.

The development of the Principi property next to the I.G.A. in Amagansett is a big issue, since the rumored — but never confirmed — site there is allegedly destined to be a 7-Eleven convenience store.

It’s being pushed through by certain interests who want the I.G.A. to remove a barrier so the 7-Eleven crowds can pass into the I.G.A. parking lot to exit to Montauk Highway.

Why? Because the 7-Eleven driveway already feeds into Montauk Highway directly opposite the driveway of the McMahon medical office complex. It’s currently hard to make a left turn out of the McMahon driveway, given the traffic flow. The 7-Eleven traffic would make it dangerous, so the mandated confiscation of I.G.A. right of way would appear to solve the problem.

But wait. Allowing the traffic to go through the I.G.A. lot, creating a second egress, would also allow a more nefarious use of the 7-Eleven property: It could then house a McDonald’s or Burger King with a drive-through window! I believe this has been the agenda all along.

Clearly, the barrier between the I.G.A. lot and the so-called 7-Eleven lot should stay. Our community should act to prevent the future redevelopment of 7-Eleven into a McDonald’s. We’ve been had by the board and the 7-Eleven proponents; they’re not after a 7-Eleven, but something bigger and worse.

The zoning board should resign en masse; they’re obviously clueless or deceitful.

M. SUTTERHEIM



Gowdy Doody

Amagansett

October 26, 2015

To the Editor,

I originally thought of the chairman of the select committee, Trey Gowdy, as just a partisan politician who was looking to score points to advance his career, but after watching his treatment and behavior toward Hillary Clinton on TV I am convinced that he is a very disturbed and very dangerous man who should seek psychiatric help, and be barred from any legislative activity.

To quote a revered attorney during the McCarthy hearings, Joseph Welch, when addressing another crazy: “Have you no shame, sir?”

ROBERT BARRON

P.S. Gowdy Doody’s henchman Representative Jim Jordan’s disrespect for Mrs. Clinton in his interrogation of her was unforgivable, and should be noted when he (the only committee member in shirtsleeves, as if girded for action) is up for re-election.

Against Obamacare

Springs

October 21, 2015

Dear David:

For your information, several states launched new lawsuits against Obamacare. More than likely it will go to the Supreme Court. This new lawsuit has to do with the Obama administration, through the I.R.S., is imposing on states as a condition of continuing to receive federal funds for the basic Medicaid and Chip program. The states receive entitlement programs called Medicaid and the states cannot limit the number of eligible people who can enroll and they have to pay for all services covered under the Medicaid program.

It’s expensive. In taxes it’s 26 percent of the states’ annual budget. The Obamacare law called the Affordable Care Act, patient protection, imposes a “health insurance provider fee” on private insurers to help pay for this subsidy provided by the federal government to individuals purchasing health insurance. In 2014 the total amount of that fee was $8 billion, expected to increase to $14.3 billion by 2018.

The lawsuit projects the federal government will collect between $13 billion and $15 billion from the states over the next decade.

Each day in the newspaper I read more and more of the New York State health insurance companies are closing down. These companies were instituted by the Obama administration to insure New York residents that had no health insurance. After one year they are broke, and have their customers running for help.

In God and country,

BEA DERRICO

Planned Parenthood

Amagansett

October 25, 2015

To the Editor,

Why are our legislators allowing the president to cow them with the threat to shut down the government over funding of a nonessential, nongovernmental entity? The president wants to pass a budget that funds Planned Parenthood with $500,000 of our taxpayer money.

Planned Parenthood is a private business that is under investigation for the illegal selling of aborted babies’ organs and parts. This private business can then use much of these government funds to support politicians. Who are the politicians who receive the most money from Planned Parenthood? First, the president received the greatest share of these “bribes,” $12 million just to re-elect him (not to care for women’s health issues), with ousted Democrat Tim Bishop of New York next in line last year, and the money trickles down to other Democrats. A morally reprehensible arrangement any way you examine it.

Lynda A.W. Edwards

The Cost of Health Care

East Hampton

October 25, 2015

To the Editor:

Health care in the United States is about trying to put a square peg in a round hole. No matter how many different ways we try to make it fit, it never really works. Like gun violence, health care for our government is a mental issue. Our propensity to shoot each other is both genetic and cultural.

If Americans have access to guns they will invariably shoot someone, often themselves. Health care has a similar set of restraints that make it almost impossible to make it work the way we would like it to. Even though the rest of the Western world has figured it out we seem unable to do it. From the outside looking in, one could assume that we are incompetent, that we don’t really care, or that we are violently against the whole idea.

From a cost-analysis approach there is complete agreement that our system is too costly, two to three times the European systems. Reducing cost without changing the basic for-profit structure can only get done by reducing services or convincing our parents to die sooner. Even introducing real competition and economies of scale won’t do it. Only a single-payer, public/private mix has any possibility of reducing costs without severely restricting services and access. But reducing costs is a question of national priorities. Is that the goal, or is it coverage and access?

Obama tried to fudge the issue of priorities and satisfy both ideas. We could allow 30 million uninsured people to have health care if we shared the cost more widely. The real question was, were we concerned about the cost of health care or were we simply opposed to the idea of health care? Before 1965 we had no real public health care, and Johnson had to threaten and cajole to pass Medicare. Medicare was critical because it coincided with the movement to move our parents out of the house and into retirement facilities. Medicare became the salvation for a generation of parents who had almost no pensions and no one to care for them.

The belief that we were against health care has considerable credence when we look at the European systems. We could have adopted one of their models and cut costs in half. So the cost issue was kind of like Planned Parenthood or Benghazi, total bullshit. The rub was that some people who didn’t contribute or couldn’t pay would receive benefits, something supposedly un-American. Except that the federal tax system is all about the haves paying for the have-nots, and almost half the country survives because New York and California pay huge amounts of taxes.

The cost issue was really another piece connected to the redistribution of wealth. Wasn’t health care an incredible waste of money? What was the return on investment?

The question of our incompetence is obfuscated by the question of our exceptionalism. The cases for both are quite strong but in the past 40 years we have reached levels of incompetence that we have never before witnessed. But our health care mess is not about incompetence. It’s about our lack of social and cultural integration. Health care only makes sense when we believe that everyone is entitled to food, housing, and a healthy existence. Unfortunately, the American story has chosen a different direction.

NEIL HAUSIG

Articulate Superstar

East Hampton

October 24, 2015

Dear Editor,

Back from nine holes of golf, snuggled up in front of the TV with a lemon diet Snapple, I sat, mesmerized, and watched Hillary Clinton show the world why she will be a terrific president of the United States.

Sitting alone for 11 hours, in front of an antagonistic group of persistent, obnoxious congresspeople dedicated to diminishing her in the eyes of the American people, answering their every question, even the ridiculous ones — and there were an abundance of those — with calm, well-thought-out responses, she was the picture of a well-informed, articulate superstar.

Hillary never lost her temper, refused to be bullied, gave full, truthful answers, and kept her cool. In the end, she just overwhelmed her tormentors with her statesmanlike grasp of the issues and her experience, and she made them grasp for straws in order to use the questioning time allotted to each of them.

Can you imagine Donald Trump in that chair? Ben Carson? Carly Fiorina, Jeb Bush, or any of the Republican candidates for president? They can’t shine her shoes!

Just let them try.

RICHARD P. HIGER

And They Would Fight

Southold

October 26, 2015

To the Editor:

In 1919, Humphrey Bogart had a lot of dark, mopsy hair. He looked like he used a lot of Vitalis and it fell all over his forehead. He’d stand on his corners, 104th and 105th, and rant about a guy just the same as him, who played the bugle on 119th! There was a parkway that separated him, and he was 20.

This guy he knew drove him crazy (that, he’d control), and he’d complain to his father, the high-distinguished doctor. He would leave the area a lot and go to Queens Boulevard around Elmhurst, keeping his “moppy” do, wearing a green-black plaid shirt. He would go to an empty bar in gray of the morning and wait for a big six-foot cop, and they would fight.

There was such a difference. The cop made Bogart look almost little. You couldn’t tell whether it was a pose or a bloody nose, or whether it was playing or not. Huh! In the empty bar.

Thirty-five years later, I saw the big Irish cop at the same spot. I was returning home from school. My hair was in a pageboy cut, parted flat on the side, brown, and I wore a uniform. About five feet tall, the blue dress, dark with tie. I can still wear it!

ANITA FAGAN