Follow Up on the News

The Other Side Of Memoirs

I don’t even mean stories that they might be saving for their therapists--- tales of obsessive love, days of sorrow and despair, bad nights filled with suicidal thoughts or murderous rages,.
Oh, no, I mean full-on, BIG stories, huge secrets that they have never shared with a soul before. Stories about cheating and binging and lying and more. Stories about bags of stolen money stashed in the basement behind the boiler, or husbands that are secretly gay, or how they are sleeping around, binging on drugs and alcohol, lying to their friends and families. Accounts of spouses who hit them, or spouses they hit. Stories of elderly parents who are being mistreated, or parents who are knocking around their kids,
Stories that, frankly, make me blush, which is no easy feat. Oftentimes I am scared, because the stories come from so deep in the heart, so filled with fear and shame, that I don’t know what to say. I’m not a therapist, and have been known to be greatly unawares, going through my life on only a wing and a prayer.
But when someone tells me one of their secrets, there’s only one thing I know for sure--- I will take these stories to my grave. And I think that’s why people are sharing these anecdotes with me--- because they know I will never, ever tell a soul.
Because I was honest in my memoir, Hats & Eyeglasses, because I told about my own addiction and how horribly it affected my life, and, most importantly, because I admitted that I had never told anyone about my own demons, people feel that they can share anything with me. And because the book is funny, because I made them laugh in between cringing for me, they feel that there might be something lighthearted and utterly human in what I did. They always start off by telling me that what they’re doing is worse than what I did, which I often doubt. But because they cannot see anything remotely humorous in their own stories, it does seem like mine was a combination of the horrific and the hysterical, like Lucy becoming a kleptomaniac or an overeater while at the chocolate factory. Cue up the laugh track!
So people have been emailing and telling me that they are staying up all night for 5 days in a row playing online poker and then walking into the operating room to do surgery, or that they have stolen their kids college fund and put it into a slot machine in the local casino. They stop me at the post office and ask if they can meet me for lunch. I can see the look in their eyes, the furtiveness, the tears welling up. And part of me wants to run away. I'm afraid that their secrets will overwhelm me, that I'll take on their problems as my own. But I don’t run away. I meet them at Bread Alone, and over grilled portobelo mushroom paninis I listen, because I wish that when I was in trouble--- when I was playing poker online and lying and afraid all the time--- that there might have been someone, anyone, that I could have opened up to.
Do I think that would have changed the outcome for me? No, not at all. But I think that it might have moved things along quicker, that I might have stopped earlier than I did, and that when people tell me their dirty little (and big) secrets, it brings them one step closer to stopping the downward spiral of their own lives. I hope that by telling me they are taking the first step to getting help, or telling the truth to their families, or maybe even telling the truth to themselves..
At least that's what I tell myself. So if you see me at the supermarket, please don’t hesitate. I’m dying to know what’s on your mind.
Martha Frankel’s great book, Hats & Eyeglasses: A Family Love Affair With Gambling, is available in bookstores and online... and is a real blast. Get it!

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A Declaration Of War?

“I am urging Ulster County residents to stick together and defend Belleayre against unjustified criticism and if they continue, I urge Ulster residents to boycott Hunter and Windham,” Donaldson said at the county legislative offices in Kingston, standing alone despite invitations to his fellow legislators to join him. “It’s all about money… I say we take a stance here in Ulster County.”
Donaldson’s attacks against his neighboring county, and the state, came after he and the legislature were called to the carpet by Coalition to Save Belleayre Chairman Joe Kelly in a June 24 press release for not being supportive enough of its major ski area.
Kelly’s angry missive reacted to news that a bill proposed by state Sen. James Seward to set up a commission to study unfair competitive practice’s on the state’s part in the outdoor recreation industry had passed both the state Assembly and Senate and was awaiting the governor’s signature.
Officials in Greene County have complained that Belleayre and similar facilities have an unfair advantage because they can charge lower prices than private businesses and, thanks to taxpayer funding, not have to worry about losing money.
“The Ulster County Legislature has been totally AWOL on this issue,” wrote Kelly in his call to action aimed directly at Donaldson, Chairman of that body. “The inattention of this county administration to this issue is mind-boggling to me. These governmental officials say tourism is important to the county, but they sit back silently while Greene County relentlessly attacks the biggest attraction in western Ulster County. If they aren’t willing to fight for a property that pulls 200,000 visitors a year across the county from Kingston to Highmount, what will they fight for?”
The state-owned ski area, created in 1949, has been the center of much controversy in the past year since former Governor Eliot Spitzer announced an Agreement in Principle with local developer Dean Gitter and his Crossroads Ventures to conjoin their proposed upscale Belleayre Resort to long-awaited expansion plans for the family-oriented ski area. The September, 2007 “compromise plan” was signed on to by a number of national and state environmental organizations who had previously opposed the resort development, spurred Kelly’s Coalition to come out as avid supporters’ of Gitter’s development, and focused a private ski area response, led by Greene County’s Hunter and Windham Mountains, to have the increased competition of such a public/private entity looked into.
The legislation now sparking all the battle-cries is for the formation of a blue ribbon commission okayed last month, “to examine issues surrounding the public ownership of outdoor recreational facilities and make recommendations regarding methods to promote competition in the outdoor recreation industry.”
The measure passed unanimously in the state Senate and with only two no votes in the Assembly, one of those being Ulster County legislator Kevin Cahill. It is currently awaiting signing by Governor Dave Paterson, who has yet to veto a legislative bill sent to him. The blue ribbon commission will include appointed members that represent the interests of both privately and publicly owned outdoor recreational facilities.
The move to create a commission to look into unfair competition on state-owned Belleayre’s part, as well as other publicly-owned recreational facilities being increasingly paired up with private development around the state, started during the Spring and Summer of 2007 when Spitzer began holding a series of closed-door talks involving Gitter, state DEC officials (also in charge of the resort and expansion’s environmental reviews), and opposing environmental organizations. In his Albany offices with strict gag orders.
A story on the current and expected effects of Climate Change on the Catskills, state and entire Northeast ski industries last summer yielded comments from Hunter Mountain Ski Center owner Orville Slutzky, then turning 90, that he and other ski areas were worrying about increased competition as their markets shrank.
“The ones who’ll come out the winners in all this are the state-owned areas. If we’re not careful, they’ll be all that’s left,” Slutzky said. “As for building hotels up there at Belleayre, I don’t think the state constitution allows it. This stuff needs to be looked into if you ask me.”
Those concerns pushed the two Greene County ski areas to get their county legislature and state representatives on board to push for the current legislation, which aimed its sights at state competitiveness after discussions with the trade association, Ski Association of New York, and other northeast ski areas, showed a reluctance to go after private development.
In addition to the 30-plus members of SANY, the blue ribbon commission legislation and opposition to the current public-private Belleayre expansion plans have also been signed on to by the state-owned ski area’s nearest neighbor, Delaware County-based Plattekill Mountain.
According to Kelly, though, any attack on the current expansion plans are an attack on the state-owned ski area’s survival.
“This legislation was pushed through by Greene County real estate interests in protectionist efforts to grab an ever greater share of the skier visits to the Catskill Region,” he said in his press release, sent to the entire ski industry press as well as the county and state legislatures. “We call on Governor Paterson to veto this legislation and urge all Belleayre Mt. supporters to call and e-mail the governor on this matter,”
Donaldson, upping the ante after Kelly’s challenge, went one better by not only taking on his neighboring county and their two main businesses, but the state legislature as well… including not only Senators William Larkin and John Bonacic but, by inference, the body’s new Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, a longtime supporter of Belleayre and friend of Kelly’s.
“If this legislation becomes law, it calls into question the State’s right to provide low cost recreation for its citizens,” Donaldson said in his press conference. “Are they going to study the impact of Jones Beach? Bethpage Golf Course? State Campgrounds? And how about local parks, pools and the like, that receive State funding? When they finish studying the impact of State recreation outdoors - will they then study the impact of the State University system on private colleges? The State has legitimate interest in operating recreation facilities and does it well and in line with its mandates. The study being proposed is a waste of time and money.”
In a separate interview, Donaldson grew even sharper in his criticisms. referring to his own experience with blue-ribbon panels and commissions created at the county level that “just go on and on and really come back with nothing.”
Asked about Donaldson’s dramatic stance after the press conference, the chairman’s fellow legislators were supportive, but also admitted not having read the blue ribbon commission legislation being questioned so vehemently.
District Two’s second legislator Don Gregorius noted that although Donaldson’s Hunter/Windham boycott was not something the legislature had ever agreed on, his chairman’s stance represented “an educated decision” and he would support a resolution calling for the governor’s veto of the state legislation to create a study commission… if it came up.
But he added that with Donaldson now on vacation in Ireland, it was unlikely any formal action would be taken in the coming weeks.
“I’m very disappointed. Besides having a lot of people in Ulster County - a lot of employees in Ulster County - we do a lot of business in Ulster County,” noted Hunter Mt. Manager Russ Coloton of Donaldson’s diatribe in a personal interview. “It’s a shame that this is being blown out of proportion. I think it’s pretty fair legislation… To make this a Hatfields and McCoys thing with Ulster County is not good.”
The Hunter manager’s equal at nearby Windham Mountain, Tim Woods, added that he found it “curious” that Donaldson, and Belleayre-supporter Kelly, would be so vehemently opposed to the state creating a commission to look at state-owned recreation facilities.
Speaking on behalf of Bonacic, long seen as a key supporter of both Belleayre and the resort project, the Senator’s Chief of Staff, Langdon Chapman, said his boss disagreed with the base assumption of the legislation but believes taxpayers have a right to know how their money is spent. Furthermore, he found Donaldson’s attack offensive.
“After scrutiny, we believe Belleayre will come out smelling like a rose,” he said, accusing the Ulster County Legislative Chairman of employing scare tactics and nonsense.
Finally, Dennis Lucas, head of the Coalition of Watershed Towns but also supervisor of the Town of Hunter, whose economy could be hurt should anyone heed Donaldson’s words and actually boycott his town’s leading destination, said that although his regional entity wasn’t getting involved in the situation, he was personally offended by what was happening.
“I think what this comes down to is having someone look long and hard at the impacts of this Spitzer deal, Lucas said. We need to know the effects of what’s being planned on neighboring counties, other ski areas, and other businesses. Our state has a responsibility to the entire state in regards to Belleayre, and not just its supporters. There’s an awful lot of state money involved in all of this. With growing concerns about Climate Change, this has become risky business.”

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Trouble Hits Our Shores

With all of the ‘For Sale’ signs going up in the area, it’s natural to wonder just how directly related they are to the dramatic shift in the economic landscape within the past year and signs along that trail are alarming at a glance, to say the least and even more so the closer you look. With the dollar shrinking under huge budget and trade deficits, food and fuel prices climbing expeditiously, even moderate income families are reaching limits already breeched by those in less fortunate circumstances as economic forecasters speak of a "foreclosure tsunami" bearing down on us.
Chief Deputy Ulster County Clerk Nina Postupack reports that judgments of foreclosure in the county, from January to June 16th this year, have swelled to 143, compared to 82 in 2007 and the sharply upward trend seems to be just getting started after holding to a reasonably gradual increase since 2003, which, she said, is as far back as the system currently in place would allow her to check. (There were 71 in 2006; 69 in 2005; 70 in 2004 and 65 in 2003.)
For homeowners in Olive, with a pressured reval inflating their properties near the height of the last real estate bubble, the current deflation in true value doesn’t paint a pretty picture but there are much more threatening situations developing which deserve urgent attention. Since national media has been soft-pedaling or ignoring these developments (for reasons which will become apparent), some readers may be as shocked as if NASA suddenly discovered parking tickets on its Mars rovers but the evidence and indications are too abundant and substantial for us to ignore any longer. So, this report will outline them as simply and concisely as space will permit.
Cutting through a forest of financial opinion from experts with vested interests is a bothersome chore for anyone who wants to know what’s really going on and how it is destined to impact our region, so I’m going to distill the views to a few representative examples.
Trends Research Institute is described by The Economist magazine as "a network of 25 experts whose range of specialties would rival many university faculties" and its CEO, Gerald Celente, has a perspective on the current situation widely shared on Wall Street. A Dutchess County resident since 1979, Celente maintains an office in Kingston as part of the firm’s operation which strives "to see where we are, understand how we got here and forecast where we're going and to provide insights and directions to help better prepare for what the future may bring."
"It’s more than the Northeast. This is a global meltdown. Every stock market around the world is involved," Celente said on Monday. "The New York markets started to unravel almost a year ago-July 24th, to be precise-when the subprime problems hit. But, it’s much bigger than subprime; it’s all of these leveraged buy-outs- the Blackstones, the Carlyle Groups, Cerberus (Capital Management LP) that have been buying all these multi-billion dollar companies, Chrysler, Hilton, with virtually no money down. The subprime is an easy one to blame- ‘the little people went in over their heads, hee hee’-but how about all of this commercial development- the malls, office buildings, condominiums? Now you have a credit squeeze and foreclosures are just a part of a huge problem that’s not going to go away. It’s only going to get much worse, actually."
When Celente returned from a trip to South Africa last week, he said he found a notice of a fuel oil delivery on his doorknob and had to wonder "How are people going to afford this? How are elderly people on fixed incomes; people that are living from paycheck to paycheck now- how are they going to be able to make it?"
T old that was the answer being sought by the present phone call, Celente bluntly responded, "They’re not going to...This is what people don’t want to face and they’re not talking about it. ‘Well, maybe things will chanage around.’ Yeah, maybe Santa Claus will come, too... People are not prepared. They’re not standing up, taking precautionary actions. No one is. Every community should be cutting back now. Every community should have contingency plans and they’re not doing it. They don’t want to face it. ‘The future is off limits’ is what it basically comes down to. If there’s a cabinet position that’s missing, it should be, as Kurt Vonnegut said, a Minister of the Future."
Celente wasn’t one to be shocked by Martian parking tickets, as he points out, his Trends Journal newsletter forecast the coming "Panic of ‘08" before the fact and his projections for the near future are as grim as a Diogenes searching for an honest man in the U.S. Senate. Recent trips to Rome and Paris showed him first-hand how swiftly rates of exchange, based on the "petro dollar," are shifting to make up for the loss in value of the American dollar.
"What they’re going to have to do in order to salvage the dollar is raise interest rates," said Celente, reciting a familiar see-saw theory of economics. "They’re going to start doing that after the election and slow down an already slowed down economy even more. When you lower interest rates to juice the economy, you devalue the dollar and that’s part of what got us into this in the first place, following the phoney ‘Dot-com’ bubble burst of 2000. After 9/11 they lowered the interest rates 17 consecutive times, flooding the marketplace with cheap dollars, building on speculation instead of letting the decline of excess take its course. Anybody who thinks these Presidential candidates are coming up with a solution, don’t know the first thing they’re talking about..."
There are other strong indications to suggest that a political solution isn’t in the offing and, more than that, when you look closely at the precise mechanisms which produced the crisis and the deliberate structuring of current situation, a political and economic landscape becomes visible which is infinitely more alarming.
To do that, we’ll need to look at views which diverge from Celente’s on certain key issues, like the allegations that energy and food prices are being driven up by major speculators at the Wall Street casino; allegations that were the subject of hearings by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission last week with New York Mercantile Exchange President James Newsome and others testifying in regard to possible regulation of energy futures markets. An examination of this and other issues will help to explain exactly what is happening to the economy, how and why it’s happening and what we can expect in our future.
As we will see in the second part of this report, when we look at author William Engdahl’s detailed analysis (as representative of a school of thought apart from Celente’s understandably defensive stance as a commodity trader, himself, since 1978), of how the creation of what is now called the "Enron loophole" eight years ago and a crucial change in the way oil is traded has led, deliberately, to today’s situation. We’ll also engage in some obvious and nonpartisan speculation of our own as to where it’s leading us and justify the call of an "alarmist" when an alarm needs to be sounded.

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A Jar Of Olives...
Krista’s Mitzvah

The Shokan Reformed Church, commonly known as the Stone Church on Route 28, is having a Flea Market on July 5 from 9 to 3. Table space costs $15.00 and can be arranged by calling Lynn Swenson at 657-2547. The rain date will be July 12.
There’s no good news out there on the cable networks, so I plan to share some good news with you before I comment on the fact that we will be prisoners in our cold homes eating four-dollar-a-box cereal with five-dollar-a-gallon milk this winter with oil and gas prices going through the roof.
Here’s a sampling of Olive’s good news:
LeGrand Shultis and wife Dottie just celebrated 74 years of marriage. Now that’s a long attention span!
Bruce and I just had our 43rd wedding anniversary. Thirty-one more to go, sweetie!
Michael Gagliardi just got married on June 21.
Sara Sofranko made the Dean’s List at Cortland.
Caleb Merante was the Salutatorian of the Alternative School.
Kathy Carle retired.
DonDuBois became a great, great grandfather.
June is a month for celebration. It is the month for weddings, graduations, births, retirements, and school endings.
June is usually not the time of year to hear chainsaws. As I write this column, I hear dueling chainsaws going as people try to prepare for what will be a challenging winter with heating oil at least double last year’s quoted prices. Gas prices have passed the “Shock and Awe” phase of public reaction. Now we get to see the surcharges tacked on bills for deliveries and utilities. Food at the supermarkets has climbed a few cents higher each week. The food market is the only market that has been on an upward curve. The stock market has tanked. The housing market is deplorable.
As a topic of conversation, people grouse and complain about the economy and ask, “What are THEY going to do about this?” First of all, I am not sure who THEY are, but I know it is time to start making some noise about it so THEY can hear us loud and clear.
I am listening to politicians discuss which path to take to lead us out of this economic quagmire. I want to scream back, “Do it all! Do something!” I truly believe all the technology is out there. Cars, even big ones, can get much better mileage. You can buy “chips” that increase a car’s mileage, but car manufacturers dissuade purchasers by saying that these alterations will void the manufacturer’s warrantee.
We are overlooking the free energy of sun and wind. Why not run our vehicles and furnaces on processed garbage so the bears can’t strew it up and down the neighborhood on pick-up days? We have the options, but the corporate empires have not divvied up the loot in this new era of Capitalism. The problem lies not in the options but in how our economy will structure the profits. CEO’s are sitting down to corporate lunches sorting out whose pockets will benefit from which alternate source.
Why not go back to bartering with countries that hold us hostage with oil? Why not trade wheat and corn for oil? We can exchange one carton of Doritos for a barrel of crude oil. Let’s not worry about the dollar’s worth against the pound, euro or yen. They need food; we need energy products. I know that’s way too simple, but we do have some bargaining chips. (Chips! Did you get that pun?)
Also, let’s get rid of all that excess packaging. I am noticing more shoppers bringing their own cloth bags. Why can’t manufacturers pare down the paper and plastic that envelops the product? When Bruce, JanWullum and John Parete went to Lillihammer, Norway for the winter Olympics, the “paper” plates and cups were edible because they were made of cornstarch. The animals, and hungry spectators, could consume the waste.
Can you imagine the cost of school bus transportation that will fall on the backs of the taxpayers? Onteora is, geographically, the second largest school district in New York State. Why not consolidate some runs? The first high school late-run might be incorporated with elementary dismissal. Some schools, and industries, are trying four-day weeks to conserve energy.
Until THEY make some changes, WE will have to make some concessions to our lifestyles. I, personally, will drop the temperature of my hot tub a single degree and drink my Merlot without ice. Seriously, there are ways we can conserve. Even small sacrifices multiplied by millions can change the economy.