Ready Kindling
Amagansett
January 11, 2025
Dear David,
The main causes of the dreadful California fires (dry weather, winds, and abundant fuel) remind one of the potential for fires on the East End. Although the acreage here is far less, there remain thousands of dead and dry pines that would serve as ready kindling.
Given this, It would seem that a large-scale program to remove this fuel would be well worth the cost.
Sincerely,
GERALD PANE
Hamptons Next
Scottsdale, Ariz.
January 9, 2025
To the Editor:
Are the Hamptons the next Los Angeles firestorm?
Take a drive on Montauk Highway east of Amagansett toward Montauk and look at the fuel load. Dead trees, tens of thousands of them, line the roadway. In other areas of the Hamptons similar fuel loads exist — and have existed for several years now. What is the town, the county, or the state doing about this? Anything? Something? Nothing? Who should be doing something and what should be done?
I only have a question — someone should get the answers and start to initiate action.
ANTHONY GIACCONE
Bury the Lines
Montauk
January 13, 2025
Dear David,
I am heartsick about the devastation and loss of life in Southern California. I know one family in which eight homes were lost.
There has to be something good that comes out of all this tragedy, otherwise how can we make sense of the world? While investigators are getting to the bottom of what started the firestorm, we know one thing for sure: Downed and arcing power lines are often the culprits.
Over the years I have heard many people say that burying power lines is prohibitively expensive. Tell that to those who have lost businesses, homes, and loved ones in L.A.
Right here on the East End, a couple of days after the L.A. fires started, I lost power at my home in Montauk. Turns out a downed and arcing power line had caused a pole fire. This is not a rare occurrence; in a wind-prone region like ours, above-ground power lines are just courting disaster.
If we can learn anything from the L.A. fires, it’s this: Bury the lines!
Regards,
JESSICA JAMES
No Barbecues
Springs
January 11, 2025
To the Editor:
Thirty-five years ago, I organized a share house in Ocean Bay Park on Fire Island for 10 friends, but when I met the property’s owner, he waved his index finger five inches from my face, and loudly proclaimed, “No barbeques!”
“I’m paying you ten thousand dollars for two months,” I shouted back, “and you tell me, ‘No barbeques!’ “
“Do you see how close these houses are?” he said.
“That’s the idea!” I answered, “so after my parties, guests can crawl home!”
“No-no-no,” he answered. “Fires.”
“What fires?” I asked.
“If one of your barbeque’s embers blows to another house, all these buildings will burn,” he shouted again.
“Did you notice, there’s an ocean 10 feet away?” I politely asked.
“And what if you’re blacked out in the back bedroom with one of your ‘friends,’ or dancing like a lunatic in Flynn’s?”
“I’m sure someone will notice the fire, grab a bucket of water from the ocean, and throw it on the fire.”
With that, he ripped up the lease into 20 pieces, stuffed it in my hands, and said, “Put this in your barbeque somewhere else!”
Needless to say, I wasn’t offered the lease for the Fire Island share house, but instead, rented a few bungalows in the beautiful Breakers, in Montauk, making bottomless pina colada-mimosa themed, high-energy, Madonna blaring, late night barbeques, soon becoming bestest, lifelong friends with its owners, Helen and Jay.
“Hey, Frankie boy,” Jay called to me one evening from his hilltop office, “When do you and your tribe plan to leave?”
Best friends forever.
Thank you again.
FRANK VESPE
Destruction of Habitat
East Hampton
January 13, 2025
Dear Reader:
First, about Larry Penny: We’d been friends since we met at Southampton College and, over the years, had worked together on a few projects. Although Larry was a modest man, his was an expansive intellect, loose and tight together, generous and strict. He was a well-known and highly regarded columnist and a towering figure in his field of environmental science. My first thought on hearing of his death: It’s not as much a loss for him as it is for us. (I think Larry would’ve forgiven that sentiment.)
Then, about the forest on Abraham’s Path: Since last January, I have had 10 informative letters published locally, comprehensively describing the past and present actions of the current East Hampton Town government regarding their planned destruction of the habitat of a federally-declared endangered mammalian species. (Any reader interested in receiving copies of the 10 letters is welcome to contact me.)
Finally, any member or hired agency of our East Hampton Town government, at any level, who advocated for or supported the problematic exemption of the town board from any planning, zoning, and architectural review, and/or who advocated for or supported the subsequent destruction of the endangered northern long-eared bat habitat on Abraham’s Path, will forever have their name and public reputation availably attached to this abortive, shameful, and illegal flouting of federal law.
Sincerely,
PATRICIA HOPE
Misguided Fiscal Follies
Springs
January 13, 2025
To the Editor,
As we start a new year, it’s unfortunate to see that there is little check on the free-spending ways of the town board. While inflation is a convenient excuse for the need to approve more than an 8 percent increase in 2025’s budget, our real problem is fiscal and planning mismanagement.
How else can one explain what has happened with the boondoggle that the senior center has turned into? This has been studied for over a decade now (with the same person in charge the entire time) while the budget has gone from $8 million to a recently revised $28 million — inflation can’t explain that.
What does is a grossly oversized and inefficiently designed structure — no, you can’t “just heat the bottom eight feet” of a 20-foot ceiling room, as one of the crack architects said at a town meeting earlier this year.
Can anyone in the town administration explain first of all why two different architectural firms had to be hired and, more important, why one is from almost halfway across the country? Are there really not qualified architects in our own town who could handle this project?
This situation reeks of political patronage abuse, and these firms are looking to be paid nearly $3 million alone to simply come up with plans and supervise the construction — that’s almost 40 percent of the original budget!
What is more frustrating is the town had a perfectly fine plan for an 18,000-square-foot facility (more than 50 percent larger than the current one) over five years ago, but after years of planning and getting the approval from various committees, they didn’t realize it didn’t meet the town’s own zoning requirements. Considering that is the same situation once again today, maybe the town board should use the Monroe exception to approve the original, more practical and significantly cheaper facility plan at its current site, which is conveniently next to the town’s largest senior housing complex.
Instead, the town has now used this legal loophole to push a vanity project that will be twice the size of the current facility yet offer fewer services (no adult day care) to the small number of people who actually use it. In all 22,000 square feet of this plan there is not even a library or living room area for citizens as the current facility offers? They talk about planning for the future, but there is absolutely no data that would suggest doubling the size of the current facility is needed.
In addition, the town wants to completely clear more than seven acres of an environmentally-sensitive site to accomplish this — twice the amount of land this type of project should need. Perhaps this parcel could better be used for affordable housing that is in short supply?
Moreover, the town never mentions this project will mostly be financed with borrowed money despite maybe getting $5 million in a state grant funding. With well over $20 million in debt needed, taxpayers are perhaps looking at an additional $18 million in interest costs in the long term. If the real cost is $46 million for this proposal, is this really the best use of town resources?
I wish I could say this is the only fiscal mistake the town has made in the past year, but committing $5 million to just dumping a greater amount of sand at Ditch Plain is also a huge mistake even if New York State will split the cost. This sand will just wash away in the next few years. The town board doesn’t seem to have learned from its mistake in committing to sand dredging for the downtown area of Montauk; half of the $11 million of sand deposited there less than a year ago has already washed away.
With climate change only intensifying and projections for sea level rises of 8 to 10 inches in just the next few decades projected by NOAA, it is hard to understand what the town board thinks it will achieve by just dumping eventually tens of millions of dollars of sand.
To add insult to injury, the town board recently approved $2 million for an unneeded traffic roundabout at the intersection of Two Holes of Water Road and Stephen Hand’s Path where in the past just two stop signs had been recommended by the Town Highway Department. Perhaps a $100,000 stoplight might be needed, but this decision is apparently due to five people complaining at a town board meeting? Or maybe it is just more political patronage since just the plans will cost nearly $200,000.
Unfortunately, the traffic data doesn’t justify this, and almost a third of the accidents at this location over the last decade are due to deer! Will a roundabout solve that problem that plagues the entire town? We have roughly 500 deer collisions a year, if the town board hadn’t noticed, and no, they are not due to the summer crowd since the vast majority occur during the fall rut.
While this is only a partial list of errors for the past year, another problem is that the town seems to pat itself on the back whenever it can get the state or county to help kick in for some of these misguided fiscal follies. In the end though, all of this money is coming out of taxpayer pockets in a state that has the highest spending and most debt per capita than any other by far.
At a certain point, there is no free lunch. This town administration should be much wiser in how it allocates its capital in good times since they probably will not last. The last thing we need is a double-digit tax increase next year, but given the lack of fiscal foresight, that is probably not far off.
BRAD BROOKS
Who Is Entrusted?
Amagansett
January 12, 2025
To the Editor:
The Panopticon was the 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s design for a prison in which no prisoner could take any action which was not in the line of sight of a guard. It has become a metaphor for our surveillance society.
By purchasing the Flock traffic cameras, the village is heartily buying into Panopticon-world. A worthy second question (after, “Why do we need these?”) is, “Who is entrusted with the information?”
I have written many letters to The Star about the village’s First Citizen Jerry Larsen, first focusing on his insensate, McCarthyesque ragging on some people better than himself, the ambulance volunteers who innocently found themselves in his way when he decided to take over their operations. Of the people in power in the local area, whom I almost universally don’t like, the First Citizen is the one I would actually least trust with license plate data.
The word “total” forms the root of totalitarianism for a reason. That form of autocracy requires its First Citizen to have total access to information about his subjects. Looked at that way, the camera purchase clicks into place next to other actions — the ambulance putsch, the proposed takeover of the inns, the repurposing of the historical society building, and the highly symbolic replacement of a living pond with a dead replica.
For democracy in East Hampton Village,
JONATHAN WALLACE
Wants More Pie
East Hampton
January 13, 2025
Dear Mr. Rattray,
I write today to say it’s time to stop the greed! In the last few days, Altice, owner of the only viable source for internet and television on the East End, has chosen to put profits over delivering superior customer satisfaction. In this case, they have blacked out a number of television services, ranging from such stalwarts as the MSG channels and FS1 (the easiest way to access Rangers, Devils, and Islanders and Knicks games) to such channels of enjoyment as Antenna TV and Rewind TV, whose daily fare consists of such classic shows as reruns of “Murphy Brown,” “Becker,” “News Radio,” “Wings,” and “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”
They claim that these blackouts are due solely to outrageous bundling demands from the parent companies of these channels. But the real reason for the blackout is because Altice wants more of the pie as they get ready to punish their customers with yet another increase in rates, coupled with a diminishment of services, which, all too often, is aided and abetted by complacent local town governments all too happy to allow Optimum a monopoly in their communities, presumably in exchange for “license” payments by Altice.
It’s time to stop the greed! Now is the time for the Town of East Hampton to form a unified front to modernize the state of internet, television, and even phone service from Wainscott to Montauk through technologically advanced competition. Verizon 5G Home Internet has spread to Sag Harbor and even to at least parts of Amagansett and Montauk. But in the Northwest Woods, nada. Why? Are we not important enough?
I hope our town fathers will make filling in the gaps an immediate priority.
Sincerely,
JAMES R. WELDON
Captain Jack
East Hampton
January 13, 2025
Dear David,
Hope all is well at The Star. Congratulations on the price raise. It was probably long overdue.
I was going to write about Marina Lane but your two editorials in the Jan. 9 edition caught my attention. “Troll Kings” and “A Taste for Violence” are pure diarrhea of the mouth. I still can’t imagine how your editorial staff operates! You pick on Donald Trump for wanting to pardon the Jan. 6 “rioters,” but you bless Joe Biden for pardoning his son along with murderers and rapists. Your moral compass is a match to that of Capt. Jack Sparrow’s compass. It points where you want it to.
Just think, if you and the editorial staff put the same energy into your boat as you do bashing Trump you would have been sailing last summer.
Best regards.
Yours to command,
JEFFREY PLITT
Truth and Reality
Montauk
January 10, 2025
Dear David,
Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to eliminate independent fact checkers on Facebook marks a clear surrender to Trumpism and its propaganda wing, Fox News. From now on the truth and reality will be determined by the internet’s Tower of Babel consisting of Facebook, Instagram, X, Reddit, YouTube, and Fox News.
This is a seminal event in American journalism and certainly resonates with a look back to the future. In George Orwell’s “1984,” a classic study in totalitarianism, a futuristic society is controlled by Big Brother. Through skillful use of propaganda, society is convinced war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. The intent of the messages is clear: Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.
Another look back to the future would involve the Third Reich’s Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment from 1933 to 1945 in Germany. After the Nazis established total control in 1934, the free press ceased to exist. Many publishers and journalists were sent to concentration camps. From 1934 to 1945, the German people heard only one view of truth and reality from the office of Joseph Goebbels. A few of his favorite themes were: “The Jews are our misfortune” and “the Jews are trying to poison our pure German blood.” After listening and reading this from 1934 to 1939, thousands of Germans did not have a moral crisis in murdering six million European Jews — and an equal number of others deemed unworthy of life, in shooting pits by Einsatzgruppen and in death camps located in Poland.
In my life, the American president that I have respected and loved the most is Abraham Lincoln. He always did and said the right thing. The one thing he got wrong was that he never believed that you could fool most of the people most of the time.
Contemporary America has just shown that you can fool most of the people all of the time.
Sincerely,
BRIAN POPE
Let’s Work Together
North Haven
January 13, 2025
Dear David:
Now that we see clearly the schism between what we have ahead for us, and what is actually good for us, let’s work together locally to support those political programs that are actually good for all of us.
If we keep falling into the traps of political opposition, blind self-interest, and the zero-sum gain game, we will continue as a divided community in a divided nation, perpetuating the status quo.
Our valuable votes and energy will be wasted if we just battle against powerful self-interests that remain blind to the reality of what is actually good for all of us. We need to educate our fellow citizens, and seek their cooperation rather than defeat. Politics being local means most local issues are obvious to our local representatives. We need to wean these people off the Washington Kool-Aid, and get them to actually work for us, their powerful and cohesive constituency.
Many in our local community already benefit from important forward-thinking government activity, but seem not to understand that. We must explain education, environment, health, economy, jobs, immigration, and housing issues that affect us all, and reach a cooperative understanding.
This brief time before Jan. 20 shows two very different paths ahead for us all. One path shows the angry cuts and threats offered by our incoming administration, and the other path includes honesty, generosity, and good character as described during the eulogies for Jimmy Carter. We already know the character of both former presidents, so which of these contrasting paths will we choose to take for our country?
Let’s consider the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken.” Both paths look inviting, but the title suggests the path not chosen is the subject to be considered. We are about to send our democracy down one of these paths. It’s a critical moment because these two paths are definitely not similar. Robert Frost’s final paragraph of “The Road Not Taken” (1913):
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Let’s remember that character makes a real difference.
ANTHONY CORON
From Day One
Montauk
January 11, 2025
Dear David,
It sure seems that this Biden administration is headstrong on totally making America look so stupid and as ignorant as all get-out.
Biden lied from day one about pardoning his son Hunter; he waited for the election results before putting his plan in place. Who’s next for his pardoning — his brother James?
Joe Biden awarded a presidential medal to George Soros (mega-donor). Soros is a principal sponsor of virtually every far-left cause calculated to undermine our criminal justice system. Soros, I believe, has blood on his hands. He completely supported the woke movement.
Hillary Clinton received the Medal of Freedom. She really deserved this; she ordered the deletion of 33,000 emails, after they were subpoenaed, then she wiped clean her computer. She got the honor, despite working for years to undermine the nation as we know it. Hillary, let’s not forget Benghazi and the murder of our soldiers and America’s ambassador.
A few more days left for Biden to do much more damage, including emptying death row inmates.
BEVERLY DERRICO
Eye of the Beholder
East Hampton
January 13, 2025
Dear David,
I appreciated Jeff Gewert’s attempt to answer some of my questions I raised to his Dec. 5 “Guestwords” essay, “Beautiful People in an Ugly World.” He says he answered most of them. He didn’t, and avoided answering the two most important ones: Who sponsored, helped plan, fund his trip, and gave permission to conduct his class? As an academic my entire life, I couldn’t just walk into some Israeli or Palestinian village and teach a sociology course or anything else without some special permission — especially in such a “hot spot” as Hebron has been over the last 100 years.
Look it up, Jeff.
The Star credited him as a retired video producer, writer, and director. Not mentioned is that he’s also the founder/owner/C.E.O. of Anomaly Media/JMG — offering, as his website points out, “global marketing expertise translating business goals into successful content deliverables” — whatever that means. We, the readers, should know what it means and what role, if any, his business interests played in his three-week journey to Hebron. He has every right to make money on his venture — just be upfront about it.
The other even more important question Mr. Gewert fails to answer is why he wouldn’t offer his class to a few young Israeli filmmakers as well? They could work together with their Palestinian counterparts so that both sides could learn the pain each had experienced and see the futility of violence as a way of resolving differences. I could provide a number of names for him if he were interested. There are many groups of Israelis and Palestinians working together for peace: Standing Together, Combatants for Peace, Women Wage Peace, Seeds of Peace, New Israel Fund, etc., are just a few. By all indications in his letters, he, unfortunately, rejects that possibility.
Mr. Gewert has taken an interesting story and dug himself into a very deep hole. If he simply offered the stories of his students and stopped there, it would have been moving and touched hearts and minds. When one starts calling one side beautiful people, the other, by definition, become the ugly ones. Messrs. Ashner, Russo, myself, and Rabbi Franklin didn’t take us down that path — Mr. Gewert did.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To be considered precious is something else — it’s universal. As Cornel West puts it, “An Israeli baby is as precious as a Palestinian one.”
I would hope Mr. Gewert could mouth those words — I have my doubts though that he could or would.
To reference Norm Finkelstein as Mr. Gewert does to support his position is to reference someone who has equated Israelis with Nazis; has argued that a vast Holocaust industry exists to justify Israeli policy; denies the right for Israel as a Jewish state to exist, and has had a very checkered academic past including being denied tenure at DePaul University. He’s at best a strident, bright scholar using his oratorical and writing skills as a biased polemicist and propagandist.
Rashid Khalidi, on the other hand, is a world-class scholar and the leading American-Palestinian academic in the country. You can talk civilly and rationally with him — I’ve dialogued with him on the “Radical Imagination” cable television show I host in the city — we disagree on some of his basic premises, but he does open up minds.
By the way Jeff, I’ve had Jewish Voice for Peace on my show and discussed their recent book offering of Palestinian poems, short stories, photography, narratives, etc. I strongly believe in having a forum where forgotten and neglected voices can have their say. Where you and I differ is that I try to present a balanced perspective where the other side, and sometimes a few other sides, get a chance to speak with each other.
When you say that your message by nature has to be unbalanced in order to achieve a balanced perspective, that’s totally illogical and patently ridiculous. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Where you’ve really gone off the deep end and crossed the lines of human decency is your questioning that a “small team of Gazans in an Oct. 7th blitzkrieg strike have time or the inclination to mutilate bodies and rape women, let alone pre-heat ovens to cook babies.” The AP, the BBC, The Guardian, The New Yorker, Haaretz, CNN, the United Nations, NBC, CBS, and many more media outlets have all documented the mutilated bodies and rapes. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli leader Netanyahu and Hamas leadership including the Hamas commander Muhammad Deif.
Your questioning of the facts supported across the board by others raises profound concerns as to your motivations and the possibility of some deeply rooted animus toward Israeli Jews and Jewish people in general.
To the hard-working and committed editorial staff of The Star: Can’t we do better to vet these “Guestwords” contributors? By all means, print provocative, controversial, stimulating writers. I don’t agree with Rabbi Franklin that Mr. Gewert’s piece should be censored, but this was a hack piece by someone who has no expertise on the Middle East. Neither does David Saxe for that matter. Both of these articles belong in the trash heap of the “Guestwords” Star history.
Very best as always,
JIM VRETTOS