Deregulation Deluge
Sag Harbor
November 23, 2024
Dear David,
The welcome rain last week didn’t do much to relieve the extraordinary drought the East End has been experiencing. The lack of rain extends to much of the state, harming agriculture and fueling wildfires even in New York City. Let’s contrast this with last fall, when New York was slammed with excessive rainfall and flooding. These swings of precipitation extremes are exactly what climate scientists have been predicting as the result of global warming.
With Donald Trump’s election, the unhappy metaphor is that we are now entering a drought in the fight against climate change, accompanied by a deluge of deregulation that will increase fossil fuel emissions. Trump has made those priorities abundantly clear, and his appointee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, will loyally implement policies to carry out Trump’s climate denialism — all the more reason that states and municipalities must step up.
Gov. Kathy Hochul needs to stick to her commitment to make New York a climate leader by signing legislation and implementing policies that will keep moving the state off fossil fuels. New York must continue developing our clean energy infrastructure to support electrification of heating and transportation.
A partial list of what Governor Hochul needs to do: sign the Climate Change Superfund Act and the ban on CO2 fracking, which have passed the Legislature and need her signature before Dec. 31 in order to become law; continue to award the largest possible contracts for offshore wind development; implement the Advanced Clean Trucks rule and speed the installation of necessary charging infrastructure; and support the Home Energy Affordable Transition Act.
More extreme and frequent floods and droughts are only some of the costs of climate inaction. With a hostile federal government coming in, we need climate constancy and leadership from Governor Hochul.
STEPHANIE DOBA
Tick Hall
Montauk
November 23, 2024
Dear David,
I was deeply saddened to hear that Tick Hall’s interior has been gutted by its new owner, the Hollywood producer John H. Williams. While the changes were permitted by the town and technically allowed, it is no less disappointing to see such a historic space altered so drastically.
Out here, it feels as though the extremely wealthy are unwilling to believe there’s anything more important than their own desires or preferences. Given the prevalence of megamansions, the frequent demolition of historic houses, and the abundance of “do-whatever-you-want” wealth, this kind of disregard is, unfortunately, not surprising. This mind-set too often comes at the expense of respecting the history of the places they inhabit and the legacy of those who came before them.
Tick Hall was more than just a property — it was a vital piece of our shared cultural heritage. Some places should be preserved, not for personal taste, but for posterity. Once lost, they can never be restored.
Thank you,
SARAH RUSSELL
From That Heart
Montauk
November 25, 2024
Editor,
Possibly to the dismay of some people, I would like to thank the Montauk Ambulance, East Hampton Police, and Southampton Hospital for saving my life. And, without Haley Devlin behind me and noticing my erratic driving, I would not be writing this letter.
Even though it was a clogged artery in my heart, from the bottom of that heart I would like to thank all the people who make Montauk the wonderful place that it truly is.
Thank you! I love you all.
A lucky man,
GEORGE WATSON
Not the Best Purpose
Wainscott
November 23, 2024
Dear David,
Despite ongoing litigation by residents endangered by the Maidstone Gun Club, a resultant court order closing the range, reckless violation of the prior lease, lead and other chemical contamination cited for at least 20 years (including in your newspaper as long ago as 2004), a letter from the Wainscott citizens advisory committee, and the public outrage of many residents, the town board is leasing 97 acres of public watershed to the gun club for 10 to 30 years. (No reason to conflate the issue of local police wanting somewhere handy to practice with the issue of a private gun club. These are separate issues entirely.)
The prior rate of $100 per year has been upped to perhaps $70,000. At $6,000 or so per month that’s still mighty cheap for almost 100 acres of East Hampton land — and surely not the best municipal purpose for it. The board ignored different offers of affordable housing and of a nature preserve on that site, for instance. No, they insist that there will still be outdoor shooting of rifles, pistols, and assault weapons despite 95 residences well within the target range of such bullets.
There is also a distinct possibility of wildfire, as just recently caused by a gun club in New Jersey. Beyond this folly, it is our understanding that a single club member is providing the cash, as the gun club is deeply in the red. Not sure who’s paying for the “cleanup” that the town is asking the gun club to do. Sort of like having the shooter clean up the crime scene, eh? Of course a gun club member is also bankrolling opposition to town-proposed airport restrictions. Strange bedfellows. Oh yes, I see the compatibility: Gun clubs and our airport (single-engine lead-fueled planes) both generate major lead contamination. So town board members, like many Hamptons “environmentalists,” are hypocritical when it comes to our environment — posing as nature lovers but acting as nature destroyers.
BARRY RAEBECK
Historical Place
Sag Harbor
November 21, 2024
Dear East Hampton Star,
The negotiation between the East Hampton Town Board and the Maidstone Gun Club for the terms of the club’s lease renewal, conducted for the board by Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, has not been easy or swift. The chief issues of public safety, accommodating law enforcement, and maintaining the shooting facilities for the club members have been thoroughly examined by both sides. Hopefully, the good faith talks with the goal of reopening the community and law enforcement services provided by the club are close to a conclusion.
These negotiations are between the club and the East Hampton Town Board. The Wainscott citizens advisory committee has no role in the discussions and no right to review the terms or decisions reached by the town board, though they certainly have a right to make their opinions known in a public hearing.
My daughters and I have been members of Maidstone Gun Club for several years and have been active participants in many of its educational, training, and shooting events. We value the club for its practical education, social life, and its facilitation of the longstanding traditions of gun ownership and practice on the East End.
We sincerely hope that the town and the club will agree to mutually beneficial terms and that the Maidstone Gun Club will be able to resume its historical place in our community.
Regards,
JOSEPH TREVISANI
Can’t Hike
Amagansett
November 23, 2024
To the Editor:
I so enjoy interpreting the language of other letter writers. This week’s topic is Alice Henry Whitmore’s missive about the Maidstone Gun Club. It is a short letter, rich in contradictions and misfired metaphor. “Sure, shooting can be dangerous,” Ms. Whitmore writes. “So can hiking.” This is rather delightful: The dangers to hikers are tumbles off steep trailsides, hypothermia, rattlesnake bites. The danger from shooters is they may accidentally kill hikers. It is a completely false equivalence. But (this is what makes this so much fun) the shooter-hiker correspondence has a real-world significance Ms. Witmore misses.
I can’t hike most East Hampton trails after summer’s end because hunting is permitted on and adjacent to them. Hiking is the most nonexclusive of uses (no one is unable to enjoy the trails because I am hiking them). Hunting is the most pre-emptive of uses. Again, a false equivalence.
That raises the question of why the town would honor, and so many of its citizens including, sadly, Police Chief Mike Sarlo, would be campaigning so forcefully for a right to fire bullets where they can hit houses. I can make a choice not to walk trails, but the homeowners are not turtles who can carry their houses to safety on their backs.
That Ms. Whitmore (who describes herself as a “70-something retiree who is terrified of guns”) would regard the right to shoot in a residential neighborhood as a liberty interest is but a small harbinger of things to come, of the eschatology or teleology (or some other -ology) of the Trump universe.
For democracy and sanity in East Hampton,
JONATHAN WALLACE
Pick It Up
Springs
November 25, 2024
Dear David,
What an intrepid and hearty group! Drizzly and windy weather could not deter over 20 of us, members of the East Hampton Sportsmen’s Alliance, East Hampton Trails Preservation Society, Ruta27, the high school environmental club, St Luke’s Episcopal Church, and the East Hampton Litter Action Committee (including honorary members) in joining forces to pick up litter at beautiful Barcelona Point on Saturday afternoon.
In only one hour, 10 bags of litter were collected. Many beer bottles, remnants of food containers, and of course the ubiquitous plastic utensils filled our bags. One bottle even became home to a mouse’s final resting place. Christmas wrapping paper, whether from years gone by or in anticipation of the coming season, was this season’s litter surprise. As always we wonder about the lone sneaker, single hiking boot, and used tire being left to mar our beautiful landscape.
The real story though is that members from our diverse community came together in a collective effort to make East Hampton litter-free. Working together to achieve a common goal is possible. Who would think litter could be the motivator for us to do just that. We are all part of the East Hampton community and we all care!
Join us in making East Hampton litter-free. Don’t toss. If you see litter, pick it up. Cover and secure your pickup loads. It’s up to all of us!
Sincerely,
CHRISTINE GANITSCH
East Hampton Litter Action Committee
Thankful
Amagansett
November 24, 2024
To the Editor,
The Detroit Lions are now 31-9 (pending Sunday’s game against the Colts) with two playoff wins. This was since the actor Jeff Daniels and former football star Peyton Manning filled a tub of whiskey inside the Ford Field end zone in early October 2022. This was as an offering to the late quarterback Bobby Layne, who was well known to have some libations during halftime of games.
Layne cursed the Lions in 1958 when they traded him following a championship season. They haven’t won another N.F.L. Championship (1957) or even appeared in any Super Bowl since its creation to date. The curse went as follows: Layne said the Lions “would not win for 50 years.” The symbolism? The Lions went 0-16 in that 50th year.
The next season after going winless, the Lions drafted Matthew Stafford. He went to Highland Park High School in Texas, the same as Bobby Layne, and though Stafford and his Super Bowl came the year he was actually traded from the Lions in 2021. The haul of draft picks with the exchange for quarterback Jared Goff just may pay off with the sports biggest prize. Cinema at its finest.
In between the Thanksgiving parade on Woodward, maybe I’ll sneak a shot of whiskey as I pass on Broadway the Honolulu Blue Crew (they are more than accommodating) as I head off inside Gate B to my perch inside Ford Field that has been mine for the last 18 years. Thankful for the little things, the big things, always my family. Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Let’s go, Lions!
Still here,
JOE KARPINSKI
Folklore and Fantasies
Springs
November 25, 2024
To the Editor,
Just a few centuries ago in England the average person believed comets were sent by angry gods to portend doom and gloom and harbored bad luck. Then in 1656, a scientist came along that wasn’t scared of comets. On the contrary, he thought they were beautiful. His name was Edmond Halley. He observed them with his telescope and studied their orbits.
After applying Newton’s new law of gravity, Halley figured out what was going on. Comets were not objects of doom and gloom sent by angry gods but instead were small planetary objects circling the sun in elliptical orbits. He was particularly interested in one comet and calculated it would return in 1758. In December of that year the comet that now bears his name brightly blazed through the night sky, putting Halley into the history books.
To this day, many people still believe in crazy folklore and fantasies. A religious group known as Heaven’s Gate, based out of San Diego, somehow came up with the idea that a spaceship was following comet Hale-Bopp and, if they killed themselves upon its close approach, they would be transported to the mother ship and catch a ride to Heaven. On March 26, 1997, comet Hale-Bopp blazed through the night sky in stunning fashion, while 39 members of Heaven’s Gate took poison, went to bed, and never woke up.
People like this in America have the right to vote. The problem is, they don’t have a good sense of reality and may pick a flawed candidate, then follow them blindly. Throughout history, many humans have been gullible, willfully believing in, and following authoritarianism without question. I would’ve thought with all the scientific knowledge we’ve gathered over the past few centuries we could finally get past that.
All scientists, whichever field they may be in, always agree with one another, so long as it can be proven with math. Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and Edmond Halley, all used math to prove their theories. Perhaps scientists and mathematicians should be the ones running the country, or at least have a major branch in it, as opposed to politicians who may believe comets bring bad luck or that your horoscope is fact rather than fiction.
JEFF HINES
All Americans
Sag Harbor
November 21, 2024
To the Editor,
It comes as no surprise that The East Hampton Star in last Thursday’s issue had a political cartoon depicting our next president, Donald J. Trump, in a conversation with President Biden in which President-elect Trump is depicted as Hitler. I would hope that after two assassination attempts and a victory in the presidential election that this sick comparison would stop.
Remember, we are all Americans and united we stand and divided we fall.
Thank you for your consideration,
RICHARD O’BRIEN
President’s Pantoum
It’s cunning to play
The con every day
Dealing the grift
With lights full blaring
The con every day
You’re in their pocket
With lights full blaring
Grievance the rocket
You’re in their pocket
So they keep cheering
Grievance the rocket
At last becoming
So they keep cheering
They’re in to stay
At last becoming
The help that you stiff
They’re in to stay
Dealing the grift
The help that you stiff
It’s cunning to play
TOM MACKEY
Propaganda Media
Westhampton
November 11, 2024
Dear David,
The news media create the reality in the minds of voters that they respond to. How do we reconcile First Amendment rights of free speech with the coexistence of propaganda media being fed by the adversaries of democracy?
There are no “alternative facts.” There are no “alternative Realities!” Differences of opinion are welcomed as the lifeblood of progress. Gaslighting, in reality, is the poison threatening our survival. One America News, Newsmax, Sinclair, Breitbart, and Fox do not operate in America’s — or your — best interests. Putin is thrilled, though.
Truly,
LANCE COREY
Snarky Attack
Springs
November 24, 2024
To the Editor,
The Star’s recent snarky, nasty attack on former Congressman Lee Zeldin was both vicious and ludicrously inaccurate. Contrary to The Star’s hysterical caterwauling, Mr. Zeldin will bring to the Environmental Protection Agency exactly what it has long needed: common sense, logic, a fact-based approach to environmental problem solving, and a concern for the constitutional rights of all those whose properties and livelihoods have been ignored or obliterated by the E.P.A.’s bureaucratic steamroller.
Let’s look at the doomsday prognostications of the green zealots and reality deniers upon whose fantasies and follies current E.P.A. policies are based. Despite endless predictions of imminent disaster, New York City is not under water, as we were assured it would be by those noted scientists Al Gore, the teenage wunderkind Greta, the Insufferable, and a host of other wackos. Arctic ice has not disappeared and has in some recent years actually increased. Snow still cascades in huge quantities in the Rockies and Sierras (it was predicted to disappear years ago). Storms and natural disasters have not increased in number or intensity in recent years, despite manipulations and fraudulent “adjustments” by the activists at NASA and NOAA. Oil and natural gas continue to be available in abundance, at least when we are permitted to access them. And on and on.
Policies based on these frivolous and disproven assumptions, like windmills in saltwater and hundreds of thousands of square miles of valuable land covered by unreliable solar panels, have caused enormous harm both to our economy and to the environment they purport to protect.
Mr. Zeldin will bring to his new task the same qualities of hard work, intelligence, fair-mindedness, and rigorous adherence to the law which he has displayed as a United States Army officer, as a state legislator, and as a congressman. The Star’s mischaracterizations of Mr. Zeldin’s qualities and abilities are just as flawed as the foolish E.P.A. policies it defends.
Sincerely,
REG CORNELIA
A Few Tasks
Springs
November 25, 2024
Hello Letters,
Late last night, at 3:11 a.m., a familiar voice left a very polite voicemail, from a “restricted” number, with a few tasks he’s asked me to help him with: “Please reconnect the Keystone pipeline. Bring along a 9/16ths-inch ratchet. Change the signs in every gas station in the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii, to $1.879 per gallon. Go to Home Depot and stuff in the trunk of your foreign-made Pilot as many 80-pound bags of high-strength, concrete mix Sakrete and drive to the Southern border (you can use my gas card) for finishing a job I started four years ago. Don’t forget your mixing trowel. Call Airplane Repo and take back all those beautiful F-16 jets left behind in Kabul Airport. I’m counting on you, my Queens paisan, to get this all done before my fourth term.”
FRANK VESPE