Ugly Plastic Signs
Springs
September 20, 2024
Hi,
Thanks so much for your editorial about signage. It’s ugly and appalling that there are so many unattractive plastic and paper signs all over East Hampton and the East End. Among the useless and ugly plastic signs on beautiful Gerard Drive there are actually several signs advising people not to litter. The signs are worse than litter and do little or nothing to stop the offenders. Who puts these signs up? Are there any regulations about who can put up signs on public lands? Most of us are way out here because we love nature, not because we want to see it altered with unnecessary signage. It’s okay for a citizen to pick up litter. Is it, in fact, illegal to remove the signs?
Yes, the political signs are a form of free speech but they should be removed with greater speed once the elections are over.
The other aberration that breaks my heart is the way that trees are chopped up or even chopped down to accommodate the ever-larger electrical wires overhead. I don’t want to live without electricity but I wish we could begin to talk about burying the wires.
And thanks for giving us a voice in The East Hampton Star.
MARY LAMBERT
Only One Sock
Springs
September 22, 2024
Dear Editor,
We wish to thank all for participating in National Cleanup Day, also proclaimed as East Hampton Cleanup Day, on Saturday. Hundreds of pounds of litter were removed by groups of volunteers all over our town, including the wonderful crews provided by Bistrian Materials and Mickey’s Carting.
We found the remains of the very hungry: chicken rotisserie bags and aluminum lunch containers, along with plastic utensils and lots of napkins, as well as evidence of those people who just needed a snack (candy, cookie, cake, and chip wrappers of all kinds).
Clearly many are trying to stay awake — Red Bull containers, coffee cups, oversize plastic soda bottles, and even a two-pound Chock full o’Nuts tin (empty) were found. And then there are those relaxing at the end of the day — so many tossed beer bottles and cans we lost track, with spiked seltzer and iced tea cans coming in as a close second.
Somebody is shoeless, a few are gloveless, and someone else only has one sock.
Clearly many are ignoring the surgeon general’s warning, supported by the number of cigarette butts thrown from vehicles. However dental hygiene might be on the rise; those little plastic teeth-flossing items are found everywhere.
From the tossed to the blown, we found it all, including a flat-screen TV, the rusted front of a bicycle, and evidence of a fight with a tiki torch — go figure. The message of picking up after dogs has clearly hit home. Well, sort of. Those little green bags (filled) are everywhere on our beaches and roadsides.
Making East Hampton litter-free is simple:
Don’t toss it.
Cover the stuff in your truck bed.
If you see litter, pick it up.
Let’s make littering a taboo in our beautiful community.
Sincerely,
CHRISTINE GANITSCH
Co-Chair
Town of East Hampton Litter Action Committee
Refusal to Recuse
Amagansett
September 18, 2024
Dear David,
I am writing to express my concerns regarding Judge Steven Tekulsky’s decision to continue overseeing the case involving Amber Waves, now in his court, with easement violations and restrictions placed on the right side of their property by the East Hampton Town Code Enforcement Department ($2 million of taxpayers’ money was given to the previous owner for these easements and restrictions). Judge Tekulsky’s ingrained connections with Amber Waves, specifically his participation as an amateur musician at their events and as a loyal customer, significantly compromise the neutrality required for the judicial process.
Transparency and impartiality are the cornerstones of our justice system. They ensure public trust and fair outcomes in all legal proceedings. When a judge presides over a case that involves an entity they have a personal relationship with, it inherently raises questions about potential biases. Despite how one may perceive their ability to remain impartial, the appearance of fairness is crucial.
Amber Waves’s influence on Judge Tekulsky extends beyond casual patronage, thus potentially impeding his ability to make an unbiased ruling. His refusal to recuse himself and his court request of the town attorney and Amber Waves’s attorney as to whether they had a problem with him staying on the case undermines the integrity of this particular case. It sets a precarious precedent for future cases. It underscores the pressing need for local officials to meticulously evaluate conflict of interest allegations to preserve the legitimacy of our judicial system.
Judge Tekulsky should turn the case over to Judge Filer so that the trust we place in our legal institutions ensures that considerations of personal involvement do not compromise justice.
JILL DANIS
Nothing Is Perfect
Sag Harbor
September 19, 2024
To the Editor:
Stephanie Dora’s letter in the Sept. 12 Star, taking Governor Hochul to task for including nuclear energy among carbon-free options, is an example of what I have elsewhere called environmental perfectionism. This is the tendency to oppose any alternative technology that has any negative environmental impacts whatsoever, even if it’s a lot better than what we’d have without it. It’s a disease that mostly infects liberal environmentalists, even as that other pernicious malady, climate-change denialism, preys largely upon conservatives.
Antinuclear activists seem to think that there is such a thing as clean energy. In fact, nothing is perfect: not solar, not wind, not geothermal. Nuclear energy is not absolutely clean, but according to Our World In Data, an internationally recognized source of numerical facts, it is as safe as solar or wind power. For an equivalent amount of energy produced, it is responsible for fewer greenhouse gas emissions than solar, and less than 1 percent of what coal emits when it is burned. And did I mention that the waste from a coal-fired power plant releases more radioactivity into the atmosphere than a nuclear plant of equal capacity?
Solar, wind, and nuclear energy all have a role to play in our low-carbon future. The best way to get there is to put a price on carbon emissions and let market forces rather than regulation determine how much of each we get. Arbitrarily rejecting one form of carbon-free energy in favor of another plays right into the hands of the fossil-fuel interests.
JOHN ANDREWS
Co-Leader
Long Island East Chapter, Citizens’ Climate Lobby
Tom Is Loved
East Hampton
September 23, 2024
To the Editor,
The community is upset about Tom House being put on leave from the school district. Has he done something wrong? Is this a targeted attack from a homophobic school superintendent?
I believe Tom to be a good man. Tom started the Hamptons Pride event. Tom is loved by his students.
The community deserves answers from the school superintendent. What is her/his background? How long have they been in the community? Where did he/she come from?
If this is target harassment we need to know.
Thank you,
RICHARD MORDESOVICH
Is It Good?
Springs
September 23, 2024
David,
I write in comment on “Teacher’s Sudden Leave Leads to Parent Protests” (Sept. 12). I am a personal friend of Tom House, who is the teacher who has been placed on leave. I point out from the article that the administration of the Bridgehampton School posted an opening for Mr. House’s position before he was notified that he was to be put on leave. The timing questions the assertion that his leave was from “unforeseen circumstances.” It appears that the particular reason for discipline may have been convenient for a decision lying in wait to be made. Or at the very least to say that the leave is excessive relative to a stated infraction.
There are larger issues that play to the matter at hand, and true in any system in its administration. One is the use of authority for the intended aim or purpose of the organization. For education, I presume it is the good of the students and the health of the teaching environment.
In Mr. House’s case, he is respected by his colleagues, and I know from messages of commendation and support he has received from former students and from parents that his teaching [for] 15 years at the Bridgehampton School has been superior. That includes his role teaching A.P. courses. Those students are being held to higher expectations of learning in furtherance of higher education. It is a privilege.
A related issue in education is what happens when a student complains. Complains to parents, and parents complain to an administration. It is right that a child or parent has that opportunity. Ideally, the matter would be worked out in mutual consultation with the teacher. From what I read more generally in this kind of situation, it’s possible that an administration acting unilaterally can accede to the complaints to show the process is open, but lacking good will to resolve a particular matter, and the teacher is made the fall guy. The system looks good. But is it good?
I don’t know what the outcome will be here, but I personally am concerned for Mr. House, thus my letter. It appears there is an injustice, or excessive punishment for an alleged infraction. I vouch for Tom’s moral character and for his mental fitness, having known him for 35 years. Maybe the process and the administration can work for a better resolution.
REV. ROBERT STUART
Daisies and Puppies
Amagansett
September 19, 2024
To the Editor:
In your Sept. 12 letters column is a missive from Kirby Marcantonio, an employee-housing advocate and real estate developer: “Jonathan Wallace . . . worries we are creating a ‘company town’ that will leave tenants another day older and deeper in debt. Fear not, friend. Unless you think Southampton Hospital, the Town of East Hampton, the local school, and police systems have nefarious goals in mind when buying these units, think again.”
Wow. This is a classic “soothing parental noises” letter. Run through my English-to-English translator, it emerges: “We are all good people here, and it will all be all right.”
Against this background of daisies, kittens, puppies, and cups of tea, it was a bracing experience to read Christopher Gangemi’s Sept. 19 front-page article, “For Those Who Earn Too Much and Too Little,” exemplary setting-the-record straight journalism. Employee housing as Marcantonio proposed would have no restrictions on identity of employer or on employee income; as the article mentions, it could be luxury housing for high-performing Douglas Elliman brokers, a corporate perk. The most substantive change from current zoning law would be to accelerate the urbanization of the town by increasing density — a proposal which (originally, without much consideration) sounded appealing applied to housing more blue-collar workers and seniors here, but now seems to rhyme with the overpeopling of party and share houses in the summer.
High-earning executives and salespeople in the corporate world may have opted for financial rewards over personal freedom, or may thrive in an environment where, as high earners for their employer, their personal foibles are tolerated (or both). For blue-collar people, the class I was thinking about when I wrote my original letter, your boss owning your home creates a near-feudal condition of surveillance, interference, and unfreedom. I reiterate my original position: Let’s concentrate on affordable housing which is not employer-owned. However, Mr. Gangemi’s excellent article makes me wonder whether Mr. Marcantonio’s proposal would actually create any housing for blue-collar workers.
A lesser, but highly interesting, takeaway is the disagreement among town board members. Mr. Gangemi reports at their hearing on the matter. After the merciless elimination of Jeff Bragman from the board by his own party, we witnessed robotic faithfulness during the remnant of the Van Scoyoc* years: no public dissent and every vote unanimous. I am fascinated to know, but no one is saying, what the re-emergence of democratic disagreement tells us about Voldemort: Is he mellowing? Or losing his hold?
*By the way, why am I the only one who ever mentions Van Scoyoc?
For democracy in East Hampton,
JONATHAN WALLACE
Maid’s Rooms
East Hampton Village
September 22, 2024
To the Editor,
It is not simple to wrap one’s brain around the housing proposal for the Pantigo Road long-vacant chunk of land just before the road, now more a highway in any case, gives way to Amagansett.
In order to be able to finance the construction of the new housing, the developer must sell the houses to viable companies, who in turn will then rent the homes to their own workers. Hm . . . do I have that right? It reeks of a kind of new feudalism. There are oblique precedents as most of the large mansions in East Hampton of an earlier era included rooms for the household staff: maid’s rooms, housing for one’s drivers in or near the garage.
There is something unnerving about the idea that one will be paying rent on one’s housing to the same man who is giving you your weekly paycheck. It entails the result that the workers are unlikely to ever build up any equity in the house they are renting from their boss, much like the maids of the robber barons. Something is wrong with this picture though I can’t quite put my finger on it. It seems our civic officials are having a similar problem.
FRED KOLOUCH
Will Die for You
East Hampton
September 19, 2024
To the Editor,
I am a dedicated dog owner for over 70 years. I support Carol Dray’s letter regarding the Springs Park and our ocean beaches where, I believe, indeed, that we should keep our dogs on the leash in designated areas and during designated times. (I actually support having to get a permit to do so.)
However, I take exception to her following quote: “They are not humans. Dogs eat and drink from bowls, squat on the ground to relieve themselves, and when they feel threatened or their territory invaded, they will attack.”
Don’t humans drink soup from bowls, sit/squat/stand to relieve themselves anywhere if they have to? Don’t humans protect their property? How many wars are going on in this world!
A dog is a man’s best friend and will die for you.
Please do not blame all the responsible dog owners for the few who don’t train their dogs properly (like blaming those parents who don’t train their children properly)!
We should be able to live with each other not ban each other!
PATRICIA ANHOLT HABR
Wise Roman
East Hampton
September 23, 2024
To the Editor,
“Some men shrink into dark corners to such a degree that they see darkly by day.”
So Seneca, the wise Roman Stoic, wrote 2,000 years ago. They, too, as we know, had one such as Trump in those days.
I choose light.
TOM MACKEY
Speaking the Truth
Amagansett
September 22, 2024
To the Editor,
The only people who are mad at you for speaking the truth are those people who are living a lie. Keep speaking the truth. Subsequently, nowadays, people don’t defend what is right; they defend whom they like and benefit from.
Still here,
JOE KARPINSKI
Weird and Pathetic
Montauk
September 22, 2024
Dear David,
J.D. Vance is living proof that an elitist education at Ivy League Yale does not make a graduate particularly intelligent. However, I cannot blame Yale for J.D. being a pugnacious, obnoxious, hypocritical, and stupid politician.
I must admit that every time he gives a speech, I love it, because he advances the call for unity, community love, and traditional family values advocated by Kamala Harris. His recent tirade that Haitian immigrants were eating kidnapped (sorry, catnapped and dognapped) pets in Springfield, Ohio, reveals how weird and pathetic this politician is.
The only advice that I can give to J.D. is to sit down with Mark Robinson, the self-proclaimed “Black Nazi” and “Peeper Perv,” to have a few beers and discuss their future after the November election.
I think that, like most politicians without a moral compass or any ethical values, they will soon disappear into the dustbin of history — much like their mentor.
Cheers,
BRIAN POPE
Rig It for Kamala
Montauk
September 22, 2024
Dear David,
The entire debate, instead of being nonpartisan, there was plenty of blowback almost immediately after David Muir and Linsey Davis acted as moderators for the Trump/Harris debate.
Linsey Davis revealed to The Los Angeles Times that she and Muir spent weeks war gaming for the debate to rig it in Kamala Harris’s favor. Davis explained she and Muir studied videotapes of Trump’s speeches and rehearsed when they would jump in to rescue Harris by, guess what, “fact-checking” Trump.
Worse yet and making matters worse, Muir and Davis incorrectly fact-checked Donald Trump on multiple occasions. The most egregious came when Muir falsely claimed crime was down after Trump said “crime was up.” Only a day after the debate the Department of Justice released new statistics showing violent crime up nearly 40 percent from 2020. Being honest, Muir certainly protected Kamala Harris during the debate, instead of being nonpartisan.
Who understands Kamala when she talks? She jumbles and mumbles while dancing around questions, so much so even Oprah Winfrey had to interject to ask her, “Please answer the question”
I don’t know about you but I’m getting tired of “when I was a little girl. . . .” When she talks around questions she concludes with exactly what she already said; this is why it’s being called “word salad.” Refusing or can’t answer the questions. Kamala Harris is running for president of the United States of America and all we get are scripted comments.
In God and country,
BEA DERRICO
Bar Mitzvah Boy
North Haven
September 16, 2024
To the Editor,
The peripatetic blatherer Jonathan Wallace (Letters, Sept. 12) is at it again. He has revealed his contempt for Columbia’s Jewish students who dared to raise the scourge of antisemitism (both physical and verbal) directed against them by pro-Hamas student and faculty thugs. According to Wallace, it was the peaceful pro-Hamas protesters at Columbia who were lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights when they were put upon by militant Jewish students. Of course, this is a blatant distortion of reality as evidenced by the detailed report issued by Columbia University covering the disorder and antisemitism on campus, as well as the observations of many others.
It is our opinion that Wallace’s odious commentary in the face of irrefutable facts through which he refuses to acknowledge even a whiff of antisemitism speaks to his identity, which is unaffected by his Brooklyn Bar Mitzvah boy reminders that he conveniently pulls out.
DAVID SAXE
MITCHELL AGOOS
East End Jews for Israel