Dreens and Eels
Bel Air, Md.
July 26, 2024
Dear David,
Reading The Star over coffee this morning, an article by your sister launched me off into a series of wonderfully vivid flashbacks. Bess’s July 18 essay “Le Deluge” and its imagery hit home on a number of fronts.
My father, Robert Reutershan, grew up in East Hampton in the early 1920s and ’30s. Life then was much simpler. Some of my dad’s favorite culinary treats included a few that are seldom seen on dining tables today. For him, boiled beef tongue and smoked eel probably ranked the highest among the local delicacies.
During the summer of 1970, I worked for Billy Vorpahl and his mother, Helen, at “Stuart’s” Fish Market, located next door to my maternal grandmother’s house on Oak Lane in Amagansett. It was an inspiring and very interesting experience that cemented my relationships with many of the men featured in Peter Matthiessen’s “Men’s Lives.”
While working for Billy, I remember a haunting and pungent scent that arose over the general fishy smells of the large cold room where the daily catches were iced and crated for shipment to the Fulton Fish Market in New York City. A specialty product, wrapped in waxed paper, was kept on ice back there, unadvertised, awaiting pickup by a select group of culinary aficionados.
A few of the local baymen sourced eels from Three Mile Harbor, Accabonac Creek, and elsewhere. Gutting and smoking them over a smoldering hardwood fire produced what looked like twisted golden snakes or dragons — appropriate for a Hokusai woodcut. But it was their scent that, once experienced, has never been forgotten. This was the scent often present in Billy’s cold room.
As a teenager, my buddy Jeff Plitt and I would often explore the dreens to the south of Sammy’s Beach and to the west of Goose Island in Mile Harbor. Winding throughout the marsh grass, the dreens were a suitable destination for young boys in small boats seeking adventure. First cut a few hundred years ago to drain the salt marsh for access to the grass, the dreens became home to many, many eels. Known only to a few, local baymen would paddle into them at night with fiery torches and long-handled multi-barbed spears. Attracted to the light and with the proper skill a good catch could usually be made. Hardwood-smoked, often served with horseradish sauce, for the initiated they made a delicious treat.
It is interesting this week that both you and Bess focused on marshes and dreens and the effect of the rising waters on both them and us. My wife’s and my summer home is on a marsh in an estuary of Assawoman Bay on Fenwick Island, Del. Since 1970, the water has risen almost a foot — with certainly more to come. A foreboding scenario awaits our children and theirs. I, like you, look out my window each morning to catalogue my herons and egrets and ponder the ever-rising flows of the daily tides.
Finally, the torrential downpour of May 15 was yet again another epic climatic event. My sister, Cynthia Marshall, called me the next day to tell me about it. Anywhere along the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, three and a half inches in as many hours is a noteworthy event.
I was sorry to learn of Bess’s loss of her ancient maple. In a funny way it was a loss for me, as well. I am certain that it was one of many conquests some 65 years ago when I lived on Edwards Lane next door to your grandmother, Jeannette Rattray. As a rambunctious 7-year-old, back then there were few, if any, trees in the neighborhood that escaped my vigorous ascent. And, of course, it is very hard to replace a century-old tree!
David, many thanks to you and your family for this wonderful and historic paper and the best of luck with Cerberus’s ongoing (and never-ending) maintenance and repair.
Warm regards,
CHRIS REUTERSHAN
Fond Memories
Hampden, Me.
July 26, 2024
Dear David,
Just got our hard copy of the July 18 Star and enjoyed the article celebrating the Fire Department’s 125th anniversary. The picture of the 1933 racing team at top of Page 12, as you might imagine, is special to Carol and me as it shows her great-uncle Jud Banister as past chief front and center in his dark cap. He was chief from 1930 to 1934 and thought the department could develop a competitive team. As Bucket Daniels details in his 2007 “East Hampton Long Island Memories” book, Len Bauer, just to Jud’s left, had recently moved to East Hampton and had experience with racing teams on western Long Island. Thus began a number of years of successful county and state competitive teams.
The team’s trophies are in cases at the department and note all the competitions and how East Hampton placed. At the time of this photo, Steve Marley had replaced Jud as chief and in 1954 would succeed him as mayor.
Thanks for triggering some fond memories of our research into the Banister family’s ties to East Hampton, starting with Jud’s older sister and Carol’s grandmother coming to teach in the Union School in 1901, followed by Jud in 1904. In 1910, all four siblings and Carol’s mother lived in an apartment at the corner of Main Street and Newtown Lane.
STEVE RIDEOUT
Fantastic Waste
Amagansett
July 26, 2024
To the Editor,
Years ago in Montauk, I heard Peter Beard the photographer-adventurer tell me, “Get to know nature before we discombobulate the whole thing.” And I once called dear Peter Matthiessen when the Chinese river dolphin went extinct, and he answered, “I’m afraid it won’t be the last.” We are running out of elders who knew the beauty of a more stable Earth. Recently, science has told us six out of the nine tipping points for the Earth have been passed. A vote for Democrats this fall is a vote for freedom and survival. It will be an existential election.
With 100-degree temperatures manifesting in the Russian Arctic, and dozens of people dead from the heat wave in the West, we are in new territory. As a whole, we are less environmentally healthy now than generations ago. Not just in earning power — except for grotesque amounts earned by a very select few recently on the stock market — but across the entire social spectrum. In 1990, America ranked sixth in the world for education and health care. Now, 27th and falling. And it is not just the recent eruption of the coronavirus which has made it so, it is the false promise of the American Dream which has nosedived.
America, we have sacrificed ideals to purely materialistic principles. We had the aspirations of the 1960s and we find ourselves at ground zero, almost having to start all over again. Except that, this time, the country and the world don’t have 10 years to experiment with. Today, existence is at stake, not just socially but environmentally. Humanity, its essence, is now an endangered species.
In 1982, as the media has made abundantly clear, slaughterhouse workers made $24 an hour. Today: $14. Cheap goods have replaced higher-paying jobs. Economists have studied the math of the social disparities and the unemployment rate, but America’s malaise runs much deeper. We have taken democracy for granted, and if things don’t improve by the end of the year, this experiment might run into the ground. Because today’s parameters are not just social and economic but run into the depths of our cells, our very biology.
Years ago on Baffin island, at an Inuit cooperative for artists who make some of the most remarkable lithographs on Earth, I spoke to a 20-year-old Inuit who showed me the town. He described how his people’s lives had changed and how his people’s culture had been turned upside down by outsiders, their way of life, and the changing climate. He emphasized how almost everything his people needed came from the sea and how strange it was that in America everyone was in the pursuit of bigger homes. He then said, “And then what?” We wanted bigger cars. And then what? And larger towns. And then what? His questions went to the heart of our character as a people in the south who waste too much and for whom the environment has always been out there, beyond where the eye can reach. Now, finally, in the last year or so, most people in the U.S. finally admit the reality of climate change and its enormous impact. But we have dawdled too much. It may be too late to make any larger-scale difference. We can only mitigate what nature will unleash in the coming decades. Most of the North Pole was covered in 10 feet of ice, as the early 20th-century explorers experienced. That may never come back in the time scale of human civilization.
For decades now, the fantastic waste of giantism — bigger houses, bigger cars, bigger earnings, bigger profits, bigger weapons, the demeaning monster of the superfluous — has held sway over the American psyche. And in the process we have become seduced, flummoxed, mesmerized, possessed, and even possessed by our possessions. But we are in danger of losing a larger reason for being — our ideals, and they are intangible. The struggle for democracy hasn’t been resolved. Nor can it be. We are too large. As D.H. Lawrence so astutely observed, “Men have reached the point where, in further fulfilling their ideals, they break down the living integrity of their being and fall into sheer mechanical materialism. They become automatic units, determined entirely by mechanical law.”
America is the unhappiest it has been in a generation or more. The size of one’s house doesn’t bring happiness. Debt is overwhelming. Many people cannot pay their water bills and evictions are soaring. Unemployment and homeless numbers are not where they should be. Lawrence offered — in strict contrast to the Puritan, native-killing sensibility — an alternative, which is that America should embrace the best of herself. His vision was one of inclusion. “Let America embrace the great dusky continent of the Red man.” And while the terminology may be awkward in America’s striving to fathom the enormous cosmology of her first inhabitants, he at least recognized the native mind as a force of nature, as great at the elemental grandeur that makes America unique. In his essay “America, Listen to Your Own,” he recommended that Americans not stand bewildered by Europe’s cathedrals but relish her “aboriginal spirit” that makes America truly great, her land. Nowhere in Europe is there a Grand Canyon. Nowhere else is there a Yosemite. Or Denali or any of her other treasures that are simply incomparable.
America now needs to fight for these. Her lands are not mere nature parks, or theme parks. Or Nature’s versions of Disneyland. They are the blood, bones, and sinews of what is left of this country. Disasters will befall the country under the torment of floods and fires but the mantle of America’s spirit, like that of her people, will manifest in the greater collective to safeguard what is left of life and her land ethic because it is eroding. As a contemporary version of the Great Depression looms, combined with climate change and a health crisis, we are being transformed into a bona fide third world country.
Prophetically, Lawrence wrote, “Now is the day when Americans must become fully self-reliantly conscious of their own inner responsibility.” Vote for those with vision, not those who make you fear the future. Vote for the inclusive, not those who separate and divide one person from another. And vote for the children and their ability to inherit posterity. It is not the size of the R.V.s and the length of her highways, nor the number of billionaires that make America great — it is the land that supports us all, its blood, its rivers and lakes and oceans, and its soul, the collective tangible dream that there is something greater than any one of us. It is the absolute horizon that makes this land possible and it is not just an ideal, it is real.
We have had a rugged but competitive individualism for too long. What used to be an abstraction, ideals of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, needs concrete answers: compassion toward others, active responsibility as citizens, and the pursuit of a viable planet. Otherwise, we all lose. The soil is withering. Hurricanes are getting stronger and more frequent. Liberty is being crowded out by the increasing Berlin Wall between those who have and those who have not. And happiness is hard to calibrate when the world is literally melting. We should discover a new impulse in the very needed realities directed toward saving life and revamping health care and education, saving those who cannot feed themselves, saving wetlands and streams and rivers from would-be polluters, getting off fossil fuel emissions so the 21st century makes it to the 22nd century.
What used to be abstractions are now very tactile ends and they affect everyone who breathes, not just the dispossessed or the superwealthy. What all our strivings should strive for is not the superindividualism but a greater rescuing collectivity. It starts by honoring the farmers who grow the food and immigrants who help collect the food and in many comparable ways. It is by renouncing bigotry and recognizing that the Earth has been under assault by our species for far too long. The ground is literally trembling and shaking and melting beneath our feet and we can no longer let the assault on Mother Nature continue.
The Doomsday Clock is set for a few seconds before midnight, when a generation ago it was 20 minutes before midnight. We have run out of time.
Ideals have existed in the mind. There is no equality as we had envisaged it. No oneness. No brotherhood of man. But microscopic enemies are multiplying at every turn and the soil is buckling everywhere. Biology and the environment are not abstractions. Now, the heart has to take over. It is the only organ that will rescue us from our divorce from the planet. An American encyclical following the pope’s “Declaration for the Earth” should be to acknowledge this fragile moment and have America reverse course with discipline and fortitude and integrity in the next few months. Integrity which we are surely lacking. We need to cohere into something larger — and fast, because the flag is starting to tear.
Otherwise we risk losing America and the world.
CYRIL CHRISTO
Human Kindness
East Hampton
July 24, 2024
Dear Editor,
On occasion, our empathy for one another is fully displayed.
On Sunday, July 22, my bike buddy Carissa Katz and I were riding our bicycles on the Montauk Highway heading toward Amagansett. I crashed, leaving me dazed and lying in the bike lane. In less than a few moments, three cars and an East Hampton police cruiser stopped and the occupants began giving me first aid. They were all strangers to me, but that did not deter them from providing the most sincere acts of human kindness: assisting an injured stranger lying on the side of the road. I did not get everyone’s name, but I do have some. Thank you, Andrey Trigubovich, Chris Ajemian, the police officer, the unknown couple, and my bike buddy.
THOMAS GALLMEYER
No Fair
Springs
July 22, 2024
To Whom It May Concern:
I have been a homeowner on Manor Lane in East Hampton for the last 37 years and was very saddened to hear that the Springs improvement Society board has decided to cancel this year’s Fisherman’s Fair. In previous years, this fair was always scheduled for the middle of August.
This fair became the yearly big summer event for Springs residents. Springs does not have many big events comparable to the Fisherman’s Fair. Therefore, I hope the Springs Improvement Society board will reconsider its decision and bring back this local treasured fair for future years for us Springs and East End residents to enjoy.
Sincerely,
MARIE DI IORIO
Tick Pandemic
Springs
July 29, 2024
To the Editor,
I found your article about the local company making tick repellent of interest. It’s not surprising that a town like ours with such a large tick-borne disease problem would also come up with a partial solution. Unfortunately, there is much more that needs to be done to reduce what has been called by some experts a pandemic.
One of the most sensible solutions would be to test the viability of four-poster tick-reducing stations that have been written about in the past by this publication. (“Targeting Ticks by Killing Them on Their Hosts,” May 19, 2022.) Various studies show they can have a meaningful impact on reducing the tick population. I’ve asked the town administration to explore this solution over the past few years and been told that it is either too expensive or that it is a county or state problem — neither is true.
North Haven has managed to increase its four-poster program over the last few years despite the hurdles put up by the Department of Environmental Conservation. Their data suggests that in some areas the tick population has been reduced by up to 80 percent. They spend up to $200,000 a year on this for a village with a tenth of our town’s population and budget.
At what point will the Town of East Hampton, with far more resources and people becoming sick, finally start to take the issue seriously? It is hard to read about how the town is considering spending $2 million on a new roundabout that even its own transportation manager suggests could be fixed with just two new stop signs, or the still sky-high $28 million proposed for a senior center when its budget not too long ago was only $10 million.
This type of fiscal folly needs to stop and some of the savings from these boondoggles should be allocated to true problems like the many diseases from the growing tick issue.
BRAD BROOKS
Flashing Signs
Amagansett
July 22, 2024
To the Editor,
I do not understand why East Hampton Town and Village pave and repave roads (which is good) but then rip them up after to install fire hydrants, water pipes, and speed signs, and to fix drainage. Then those newly paved streets are uneven and need to be repaved! Check out South Breeze as an example. Why are they unable to coordinate everything so paving is done last?
I do not understand why East Hampton Village does not put some bushes, greenery, near the two (not one, but two) new ugly basketball courts along Newtown Lane.
I do not understand why the Town and Village need to put up so many signs — and flashing ones at that: speed-limit signs, walking signs, parking signs, bikes-in-lane signs, no-U-turn sign, weight-limits signs, people crossing signs. (Get ready. Crossing sign, again. Okay, now the final sign. People crossing.) Signs are one after another, over and over again. A once-pretty village is now a visual obstacle course.
I do not understand why, when the village is crowded in the summer, one cannot turn left onto Newtown Lane when leaving the main parking lot. Police direct all cars to turn right, sending them into the village, which creates more traffic and a backup. The hundreds of people who live in Northwest Woods must drive several miles around the village to get home. This is ridiculous. As long as there is an officer there, stop traffic and let the left turners turn left!
JANE ADELMAN
Leisurama Time Warp
Springs
July 23, 2024
Dear David,
One could say we are living in tumultuous times, globally, nationally, even locally. I have a thought on escaping from it to a far simpler time. Visit the Montauk Historical Society’s extraordinary Leisurama exhibition at the Carl Fisher House. Prepare yourself to be transported back to 1960s America, an era of possibilities where anything felt within reach. Imagine going to Macy’s Department Store on 34th Street or Roosevelt Field for a shirt or a blender, and coming home with a Leisurama vacation house in Montauk! At a glorious 730 to 950 square feet (who needed more?!), Leisuramas came fully furnished, down to the toothbrushes and silverware. As if this story can’t get any better, think Moscow, circa 1959. Remember the historic Kitchen Debate, with Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev? Yup, that was in a Leisurama kitchen! Leisurama is a one-of-a-kind, only-in-America, feel-good story, and entering the time warp that is this Leisurama exhibition will make you ooh, ahh, and smile. I would know; I’m the Monday docent here, and that’s the reaction of our guests that I’ve witnessed, every time!
Sincerely,
IRWIN T. LEVY
Democracy, Theocracy
Springs
July 23, 2024
Dear Editor,
Jonathan Wallace’s letter (July 24) makes a good case that one should be able to criticize the policies of the State of Israel without being labeled antisemitic, a case made stronger by a Jew during these fraught times when a gentile saying the same thing could be accused falsely of antisemitism.
But the ease with which many make this equation is helped by the very nature of the State of Israel. True, it was founded, as its Declaration of Independence has it, as “a Jewish state in Palestine,” but the majority of people in Palestine were, however, not Jewish, something Jewish immigration and the aliyah sought to remedy, with only partial success. The Declaration of Independence also said, “It will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed, or sex. It will guarantee full freedom of worship, education, and culture.” Nevertheless, over 700,000 Arabs were driven from the State of Israel and more are killed or forced to flee because of the current conflict in Gaza. What we see here is a conflict between two visions, one of the State of Israel as a democracy and the other of the State of Israel as a theocracy — the other theocracy in the region, Iran, being its archenemy. Which concept will win out is hard to say. According to the Pew Charitable Trust of 2016, 48 percent of Israelis agreed with the statement that “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel.”
How these conflicting principles and attitudes will play out over the coming years is difficult to predict, but it is hard to be optimistic.
Sincerely yours,
JAN DE WILDE
—
The writer is a retired United States Foreign Service officer. Ed.
Bragging Alert
Amagansett
July 27, 2024
To the Editor:
David Saxe joins Anna Skrenta in the small club of people who respond to my letters; Jerry Larsen and Q, the Montauk billionaire fish hobbyist, have not yet.
David claimed last week in The Star’s letters column that I ignore “the blatant acts of antisemitism being directed at Jewish students at some of the most elite universities in our country, Harvard and Columbia, to name a couple.”
Ha. Bragging alert: I went to both institutions, Columbia College and Harvard Law School. David probably does not know, though I have mentioned this in my letters, that since Oct. 7, my full-time day job has been a pro bono law practice representing students and faculty being disciplined or terminated for First Amendment-protected criticism of a nation-state, Israel, or expressed support for the people of Gaza. In that practice, where I have had about 100 faculty clients and 400 or 500 students so far, I have not encountered one antisemite. And, by the way, David, though you rebuked me, it “doesn’t work,” I will keep mentioning in every letter on this topic, for context, that I am Jewish, and proud to be.
As it happens, I have had clients at both Columbia and Harvard — about 30 professors and students at Columbia, where I talk to people, handle disciplinary and Title VI meetings, and communicate with the institution’s lawyers every week. I have represented people at Columbia who are in trouble for using the word “Zionist” in a sentence, asking aggressive counterdemonstrators not to insert themselves into their protest to harass people, and for holding an event on campus to discuss Palestine. At other institutions, I have defended people in danger for using the phrase “settler colonialism” in an argument, and for writing the names of dead Palestinian children on a blackboard in easily erasable chalk.
Thank you for the opportunity to mention that Alexander Kestenbaum, a.k.a. “Shabbos,” the Harvard student who your friend Mitchell Agoos said “knocked it out of the park” at your Herrick Park event, spoke at the Republican National Convention a few days later, where he called for the deportation of international students who attend pro-Palestinian demonstrations. I refer readers who wish to learn more about Kestenbaum to the coverage of him in The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, which has a photograph of Kestenbaum in Harvard Yard carrying a sign calling for protesters to be “sen[t] to Gaza,” and quotes his post on social media titled “Have you considered blowing yourselves up?” Zev Mishell, in a piece in the historic, formerly Yiddish, paper The Forward (titled “I’m a Jew Studying at Harvard Divinity School. Shabbos Kestenbaum Doesn’t Speak for Me”), concluded that “Kestenbaum’s rhetoric and policy positions” have been “weaponized” by the Republican Party “to conceal their very real antisemitism.”
I said in my letter to which Saxe is responding that the Herrick Park antisemitism demonstration was, on the down-low, a MAGA event (Nick LaLota also spoke), attended and later praised by Jewish Hamptoners who did not know that. My guess is that your friend, and the event’s sponsor, Mitchell Agoos, is voting for Trump in November. What about you, Mr. Saxe?
Am I right in thinking that you are Mr. Agoos’s quiet friend, who accompanied him to the counterprotests he organized against the weekly pro-cease-fire demonstration in Sag Harbor? If so, you stood by while he shouted things like, “Turn Gaza back into a sandlot” over his bull horn. On the day when he steered two sociopathic passers-by over to scream threats in our faces, standing back with a smug expression, I went over to ask you if you were okay with that. You memorably replied, using other words, that you are not your brother’s keeper.
For democracy in East Hampton, and at Harvard and Columbia,
JONATHAN WALLACE
Sincere Debate
East Hampton
July 29, 2024
Dear David,
Mitchell Agoos’s goal (Letters to the Editor, “A Reminder,” July 25) as the organizer of the Israel Solidarity Rally at Herrick Park a couple of weeks ago was to promote the “call for the release of the Hamas-held hostages and to send an unadorned message concerning our community’s commitment to the ongoing security needs of the people of Israel — nothing more and nothing else.” In his opinion, “there was no room at that rally for any other message.” Mitch, through his own words, evidently sees himself as the spokesperson for the entire East Hampton community (Jewish, Muslim, Christian, secular, etc.) on this matter and the gatekeeper/censor as to what message will be heard and not heard.
Benjamin Netanyahu has served as the longest-standing prime minister of Israel in its history — serving three terms from 1996 to 1999, 2009 to 2021, and 2022 to the present. He and his Likud party have had or been close to the seat of power for close to 30 years, yet their policies have obviously not brought about the security for the people of Israel that Mitch and millions of Jews and non-Jews yearn for, for the state — let alone the region generally. In fact, one can make a reasonable argument that their policies have led to the greatest catastrophe, trauma, and loss of life Israelis have experienced since the Holocaust. Their policies simply and empirically have not worked.
There’s an intense debate within Israeli, American, and world Jewry about what needs to happen now and what changes are necessary to bring an end to the hostilities. That dialogue and debate should be happening in East Hampton, as well. The only way that can happen is to open up the forum of ideas to include concerned Muslims, Palestinians, Christians, secular Jews, and those from all its different branches who are willing to be open to sincere debate and questioning of each other and themselves. Israeli security will only truly happen when there is Palestinian security, as well. That’s why it’s so important to open up the dialogue to others in our community beyond who Mitch decides fits his agenda.
To be transparent, Mitch did call me and we have discussed him coming on the “Real Talk,” the LTV cable show I co-host in East Hampton. Our last call ended with his saying he was willing to come on if David Saxe agreed to come on, too. A reminder, Mitch and David: The invitation is still open. I’m quoting David’s last sentence from his letter last week (“It Doesn’t Work,” July 25): Get It On! Agreed. Call me and we’ll Get You Both On the show.
Very best,
JIM VRETTOS
A Piñata
East Hampton
July 29, 2024
To the Editor,
In the moment of the apotheosis of his hubris, when he ascribed to God his escape while a supporter was murdered, Trump came apart like a piñata beaten on by the furies.
TOM MACKEY
Women-Haters
East Hampton
July 28, 2024
Dear David,
I have the ability to listen. That is one thing that makes me a writer. You can’t be jawing all the time if you plan to record, report, or even craft a story. That said, I found it almost impossible to listen for more than two minutes to the likes of Lindsey Graham on “Face The Nation,” which came on right after “CBS Sunday Morning,” which I love. “Sunday,” as we fans call it, is not a political show. It’s human-interest stories, new movies or books with heart, a story about how good people are getting on and treating one another in our grand country.
The diabolical words coming out of Graham’s mouth this morning were just so awful, misguided, and full of lies. The stuff he is spreading is poison; and people are lapping it up because they think he’s a good Christian there to protect them. It’s sad and insane. The only thing he said that was true is, “I don’t have any children.” Hmm. Is he a “cat man?” His wife a “crazy cat lady?” Must be. He went on to say, “America is in danger of losing the family” if Dems win. What? Nothing wrong with my hearing, but are you sniffing the shoe polish, Mr. Graham? Maybe you’re just old.
Have you looked around? America the beautiful is teeming with babies, in all states. You can’t go from here to there on foot, in a car, on a plane or train or boat, that the little tots aren’t everywhere. And their parents aren’t all from the heartland or the bayou or the Deep South. Imagine that. Can you appreciate that? We are all about family. Don’t even get me started. Too late.
My grandmother, departed at 101, originally from Bari, took no prisoners and warned me (with the pope’s picture behind her on the pantry door), “Don’t buy no babies.” Meaning, don’t have them. Ever? My mom clued me in: Grandma was bitter.
She had three boys, one was my father, her youngest. She wasn’t warm and nurturing. It wasn’t her forte. It isn’t everyone’s, lads. Anyway, Nunziata was ahead of her time. Albeit as Catholic as it gets without being born in the Vatican. She just didn’t have patience. She became a widow early and never remarried. My grandfather was a saint. A gentle, soft-spoken man. Anyway, grandma had issues. She wasn’t quite ready for marriage. Grandpa was a bit older. Nobody talked about the birds and the bees. Likely, she was surprised at what was expected of her. Then she had anger issues. I’ll bet my last book that she was “interfered with,” as a girl. Poor grandma.
I did not heed my grandma’s warning. I got married young and had a son straightaway. And then another six years later. Best thing I ever did. I loved being a mom. It was my choice. Nobody decided for me.
Nobody ever should.
Grandma Nunziata also told me an interesting story, for a woman who was in love with a pope and so devout, and yet no one was the boss of her. She told me about this famous person’s mother who “took care” of women when they had nowhere to turn and were pregnant. What? Shocking to learn. An Italian Catholic woman? “Be quiet,” she told me. “She helped them. Who was going to help them, some men? They already helped themselves. Basta.” Okay.
I think of this today as I listen to the self-righteous nonsense coming out of the mouths of men and some women. Men, I expect it. They’re followers. Club joiners. But women? That’s so very disappointing. Where’s your moxie? Who keeps your home running? Sees the kiddies are safe and sound? Exactly.
So search your souls during this crucial time in our country’s history. Don’t elect women-haters and cat-haters and the real child-hater men in red ties. Do your diligence and educate yourselves to the real facts, not conspiracies whipped up to get you frenzied and confused.
In the words of my grandmother, “Hey, don’t you cover your ears. Be smart and listen.” You can’t argue with wisdom.
To sense,
NANCI LAGARENNE
Energy and Guts
Springs
July 29, 2024
To the Editor,
A torrent of enthusiasm and energy has changed the dynamics of the presidential race virtually overnight. Break-the-internet zoom calls have raised astronomical sums for Kamala Harris and resulted in thousands of first-time donors giving money and volunteering.
This explosion of grassroots support reveals that the majority of people in this country still believe in democracy, and want a government that works for the people, instead of for a chosen few.
We can’t let Trump and his followers convince us that the dream and promise of America is dead. America is not the hellscape Trump conjures in his rambling rally speeches; it is an imperfect union made up of millions of everyday people who want to keep their rights intact (or for many living in red states, restore their rights), and who will work toward a future that protects our rights.
There is no longer any distinction between MAGA and the Republican Party. To vote for a Republican is to vote for Donald Trump and all that he represents: an extremist Supreme Court hell-bent on stripping us of our freedoms and dismantling environmental and workplace protections; an immigration policy that labels people seeking refuge “vermin”; claiming climate change is a hoax; economic policies that benefit billionaires at the expense of the middle class, and so much more.
The Republican incumbent, Nick LaLota, has been a steadfast supporter of Trump and his reprehensible policies. John Avlon is a common-sense Democrat who, like Kamala Harris, has the intelligence, energy, and guts to stand up to Trump and his acolytes and fight for the common good. In November, the choice will be ours.
Sincerely,
CAROL DEISTLER
Capitol Hill Jobs
East Hampton
July 29, 2024
Dear David,
The Heritage Foundation — the organization that intends to foist the draconian Project 2025 on the American people, camouflaging it as “progress,” has launched its first attack on candidate Kamal Harris.
And it is a lie.
In its latest attack, Heritage announces “[a]s a senator, Kamala the ‘border czar’ tried to open the floodgates for illegal immigrants by introducing the ‘American Dream Employment Act of 2019’ to give illegal aliens work authorization.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
The only thing the 2019 A.D.E.A. would have done would have been to formally allow recipients of DACA protection to work in paying jobs on Capitol Hill for members of Congress. Recall that the DACA program (the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) allows children of undocumented immigrants who were brought into this country under a certain age to receive work permits as adults.
Under then current law, employment in the House or Senate was available only to U.S. citizens. Then Senator Harris’s proposal would have opened Congressional employment to DACA recipients.
“Open the floodgates”? Hardly. The Heritage Foundation is going to have to do better than this to derail the train that is the Harris candidacy.
As a somber postscript: Godspeed and R.I.P. to Neil Hausig. I will miss his commentaries.
Sincerely,
BRUCE COLBATH
Women Are Smarter
Montauk
July 28, 2024
Dear David,
I’m sure every political party has their sneaky way of running the show from behind closed doors.
There isn’t a live person on the face of this Earth that didn’t see the failing health of Joe Biden. He had cognitive problems when he first ran three and a half years ago. What’s so disgusting is the Democratic Party, including Kamala Harris, played along. Pitiful that the news media covered it up 100 percent.
Joe Biden has been thrown under the bus by his own party, and cackling Kamala patiently waited in the wings to step out and announce she’d be your next president. Stating she has enough votes to receive the Democratic nomination. Without a convention? Replacing unpopular Biden with even more unpopular Harris isn’t an electoral cheat code?
Kamala Harris is more far-left than Bernie Sanders. Should you vote for her because she’s a woman or because she’s Black you’re not thinking about the United States of America. We need someone whose heart is with all of the American citizens. Lower gas, rent, taxes, and we need someone to stop demanding or forcing us to think only electric.
We need freedom of religion. Stop taking our rights away and saddling us with yours.
I watched a television show with a woman telling the journalist that “if they don’t put Kamala in Joe’s place, should he step down from the presidency, there will be a civil war.” Really? A woman who lies better than the president, loses her aides because she’s too hard to work for, also blames everyone else for her failed actions — spare me. Women are smarter than that.
In God and country,
BEA DERRICO
Gish Galloping
North Haven
July 29, 2024
Dear David,
Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and all of us need to understand and avoid the Gish-gallop technique of argument that right-wing zealots now favor. This gimmick is also called the firehose of falsehoods. It overwhelms one’s opponent with a flood of so much nonsense that there is no time for factual rebuttal.
Named after Duane Gish, a creationist who argued against the science of evolution in this way, it often works for an aggressor with no facts or scruples, as we could see during Trump’s deliberate destruction of President Biden during the last attempt at a debate.
Bullies favor this tactic because it is mindless, fact-free, and easy. It often works! We should not fall prey to it. We have to stay on our own good message and ignore the disruptive noise of these rabble-mongering bullies.
Kamala Harris is an experienced prosecutor and has the focus to keep to the facts. We need to do the same. There is no value in trying to respond to Gish galloping. Ignore it, or briefly identify it then move on with one’s own valid points.
Although Trump’s character is obviously deteriorating, and his own abhorrent behavior becomes intolerable, he is supported by many other right-wing bullies. In the media we have Fox “News,” individuals such as Ben Shapiro, Steven Miller, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tom Cotton, Lauren Boebert, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, and even our local wannabes like Nick LaLota.
All of them are trying to defeat good progressive candidates at any cost, using false statements and accusations.
Unfortunately, many already have their own media outlets for spreading their endless, unchallenged falsehoods. We would be wasting our time and opportunity arguing with them, and should just keep to our own better and honest messages.
ANTHONY CORON
Since 1976
Amagansett
July 28, 2024
To the Editor,
To quote Plato, “Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.” As I was always taught in regard to the teachings of Plato, late-stage republics will devolve into a democracy. If I were to go off the teachings of Thomas Sowell: “People who talk incessantly about ‘change’ are often dogmatically set in their ways. They want to change other people.”
At least for the first time since 1976, a Bush, Biden, or Clinton isn’t on the ballot. Perhaps some other local boards should follow suit. Otherwise they just cover up anything and everything for others’ upward mobility.
Still here,
JOE KARPINSKI
Profound Costs
Westhampton
July 26, 2024
Dear David,
Your readers may recall my writing to you in November 2012 about the need to address the scourge of child sex abuse nationwide. I was endeavoring, at that time, to reform New York’s statute that limited the prosecution of pedophiles while also addressing the need to bring equality to the imbalance of statutes and justice across the country.
New York recently reformed its statute allowing me a “Look Back Window” and I am now represented by legal counsel. However, eight states have no statutes limiting prosecution, including the Territory of Guam; all the other states vary in their treatment of this crime against children. This is a violation of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment that guarantees equal justice to all. The exact same legal justification was used to argue Roe v. Wade when women were facing unequal justice in the denial of access to abortions because the issue had been left for the states to determine. That was 50 years ago.
Twenty-four years ago, the Center for Missing and Exploited Children told me I’d never succeed in ridding ourselves of statutes that limit the prosecution of sexual predators. Perhaps it’s because they suspect that pedophiles and many other sexual abusers seeking power gravitate to politics and thus have no interest in altering laws that protect them. It is true that at least one former speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, is currently serving a prison sentence for child sex abuse. The current chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan, is accused of covering up sex abuse while he served as an assistant coach of the Ohio State University wrestling team.
I’ve spent the past two decades asking candidates to talk about how they’re going to address this scourge. They don’t and they won’t: either party. It’s why I decided to enter the Democratic primary to face Congressman Nick LaLota in November. Unfortunately, my candidacy was hobbled from the start due to my lacking a political action committee and the millions of dollars in financial backing I would need. Those I thought to be my natural base and allies did not want to waste their time and effort on what they perceived to already be a lost cause. The tragedy is that, while several other issues I hold dear will likely go unaddressed, like global warming and gun control, it’s likely my primary mission of protecting our children and our society will also never be discussed, due to the timidity of every candidate I’ve ever met since I began this quest. I’m pinning my hopes on John Avlon to be the one candidate to address this.
So — why do I persist? Why do I believe child sex abuse must be addressed?
Children are often preyed upon by a family member, a friend, or person in a responsible position who has access to the child, instilling in them for their lifetime a profound sense of shame, betrayal, and loss of self-worth. The consequences for society are many, they are costly, and they are profound.
Abuse of and addiction to drugs, nicotine, and alcohol are among the least effects, something I’m quite familiar with. Unsurprisingly, school shootings are another result. I’m an abuse survivor who had fantasized shooting all the elementary school kids getting off the school bus at my corner. Guns were not as readily available in 1962 as they are today. I’d thought of buying a machine gun BB gun advertised in the comics for my purposes. Just imagine if AR-15s had been as accessible as they are today! Actually, you don’t need to imagine: Nearly every day there are mass shootings.
Bullying of children, partners, and pets can be anticipated due to a desire to re-establish one’s sovereignty. While I never abused anyone or any creature in a physical manner, I know that I was verbally abusive to partners for much of my life; it is something I’m still addressing today. An inability to form intimate relationships due to issues of trust and betrayal will often result in divorce, and if children are involved it’s likely they will be left vulnerable to the wiles of others who can easily spot the estranged child resulting from a damaged relationship.
Self-mutilation through cutting oneself would not be surprising. Nor is suicide. It’s never been a distant thought for me but I think of the mess and the effect it would have on the people I care about and I don’t follow through other than to lament and continue to desire to do so. As a result, over the years, I’ve put myself in many dangerous situations and survived only through sheer luck. Many times it has been “there but for the grace of God.”
Petty crimes like burglary, shoplifting, and vandalism are really cries for help. These are attempts to draw attention to an underlying anger the person is suffering, often without having any idea as to what is motivating their acting out. The results are that we incarcerate many young people and, in doing so, we reinforce the chasm existing between the young person and the society attempting to rehabilitate them. We need to revisit a criminal justice system that punishes the victim instead of healing the tortured spirit.
Child sexual abuse can erase the boundaries separating proper and improper sexual behavior. This can damage the child’s ability over the years to recognize behavioral mores and norms expected within our communities and society at large. Sexual harassment, rape, voyeurism, and homophobia can result in a young man going off to college with smudged boundaries and a brain that’s anatomically and chemically rewired because of early sexual trauma. It’s no wonder many young men do not know how to behave with a young woman and/or feel threatened by other males.
How many young women learned sexual behaviors as adolescents from a relative or family friend? Being sexually “educated” in early childhood can fix in a young woman’s mind how to satisfy a man and gather the possible rewards bestowed upon them as a prostitute, call girl, porn star, or trophy wife. Barbra Streisand touched on this very subject in her movie “Nuts.”
Some victims of pedophiles will go on to commit major crimes like arson and murder. Road rage, anyone? Three police detectives I spoke with who profile serial killers informed me that child sexual abuse is the one form of abuse that all serial killers share. A child’s willingness to torture and kill animals is an early sign of serious antisocial behavior to come.
Pedophiles produce more pedophiles in geometric progression. In my troop of more than 40, I estimate that roughly half of them were abused, and, of those, I strongly suspect that a quarter of them have gone on to abuse other children. One I know for certain abused all his siblings and was never charged in court. Not all victims become abusers: Some become protectors, like my buddy and me. Sandy taught in San Antonio, Tex.; I taught in New York City.
Many adolescent fathers exist because their libidos were stimulated early in life before they were mature enough to consider the consequences of failing to take precautions. Abortions are one result of their just-created dilemma; sexually transmitted diseases resistant to antibiotics are another. It is not normal for a 14-year-old in ninth grade to already be a dad caring for a 2-year-old child. Children become sexually active too early. I did at age 14 and fathered a child at 17 that was given up for adoption. That still haunts me today.
Sexual assault results in the death of the child’s innocence, forever altering the trajectory their life will then take. This death of innocence cannot be reversed. We’re cannibals eating our children and spitting out damaged goods by the score. Do we possess too much Pan paniscus and Pan troglodyte DNA to escape our roots? I would like to believe otherwise.
Some will ask why I reveal such personal and intimate information about myself. I do so because the consequences of preying on our children are so monumental that one must admit the impact it has had and will have on so many others unless we come to terms with this scourge and understand its societal impact. It’s time to remove the statutes that limit the prosecution of all sexual predators. While we are at it, let’s get rid of the backlog of rape DNA kits yet to be analyzed. It’s criminal that predators are walking free without any accountability.
I’m not ashamed of what happened to me nor of whom I’ve become. I know who I am: I’m a man.
LANCE COREY
Full Responsibility
Plainview
July 23, 2024
To the Editor,
The ex-Secret Service director, Kimberly Cheatle, has just become the one-millionth government official this century to claim “full responsibility” for some massive failing — without resigning or willingly accepting any consequence or punishment.
She also failed to explain how elderly congressmen were able to walk on the same sloped roof which she feared to send her young and fit Secret Service officers onto so as to guard against any potential shooter.
Current President Joe Biden should fire her today, but I can’t help wondering why former President Donald Trump — who has bragged for decades about his billions of dollars of personal wealth — was not wise enough to spend a few million dollars to supplement the Secret Service with his own detail of roof-guarding security men?
RICHARD SIEGELMAN
—
Ms. Cheatle resigned later in the day on July 23. Ed.